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1.
Lance had heard of Blue before the kid actually made it to challenge the Indigo League. Several gym leaders had groused rather unprofessionally about losing to an arrogant brat, expressed their wish that he had turned out more like his grandfather, and had tried to warn Lance about his team composition and movesets, the last of which Lance found both somewhat stupid (as if Blue couldn’t or wouldn’t adjust his team to match his opponent) and quite insulting (as if Lance needed or wanted the help).
So, yes, Lance was aware of Blue as someone he would probably have to battle eventually. But up until now, like other sensible people in Kanto, most of his focus had been on the other child prodigy. Red, the mysterious boy who never spoke, never lost, and went everywhere with a Pikachu that could level buildings perched on his shoulder. Red, who had seemingly fallen from the sky like one of the Thunderbolts that his ace so skillfully threw around and swept the terror of the region aside like it was just another errand.
(Red, who had accomplished in an instant a task that Lance should have done and had thought couldn’t be done.)
All things considered, Lance had been expecting to see Red at the gates of the Indigo League before Blue, but it wasn’t Red who had shown up at 10 AM on the dot, or was currently having a building-shaking battle with Agatha. Perhaps Blue was less patient, or less inclined to make detours to do something heroic.
Lance idly fiddled with Tsunami’s Pokeball as the sounds of battle in the previous room continued. During the several years in which the champion’s seat had sat vacant, about one out of every thirty challengers made it to Lance, and none had made it past him. Would Blue be the first? He certainly wouldn’t be the first arrogant trainer to round up a few strong Pokemon only to bounce off of Lance’s mighty dragons.
There was a low rumbling and a great crash in the next room, and the sounds of battle ceased. A brief while later, the door to Lance’s battle room slid open, and Blue walked in, tossing a Pokeball in his hand. If he felt the slightest trepidation at facing someone who had sometimes been called the strongest trainer in Kanto and Johto, he wasn’t showing it. His every movement was tinged with something that Lance was going to be charitable enough to call confidence.
Lance launched into his usual pre-battle speech; Blue was visibly disinterested the whole time, and yawned theatrically once Lance was done.
“Whatever. Maybe you’ll at least be interesting.”
Lance didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, he sent out Tsunami; the massive Gyarados hung in the air, roaring for intimidation. Blue rolled his eyes and sent out a Blastoise, and the battle was on.
It was, to Lance’s embarrassment, a fairly one-sided conflict. When he tried to have Tsunami sweep away his fellow Water-type with a Hyper Beam, Blue switched in a Rhydon to resist the hit, then strike back with a super-effective Rock Tomb. The Blastoise came back to down Meteor the Aerodactyl with a Hydro Pump, and Lance’s two Dragonairs, Cyclone and Skyquake, were knocked out in swift succession. Emperor, true to his spot as Lance’s ace, managed to beat two of Blue’s Pokemon before the end, downing his Exeggutor on a switch-in, then surviving a Psychic to blow away Blue’s physically fragile Alakazam before an Arcanine came out to finish things with Extreme Speed.
(Two Pokemon was one more than the rest of his colleagues put together had managed, Lance would find out later. It didn’t really make him feel better.)
Blue sighed dramatically as he deigned to scratch his Arcanine’s ears before recalling him.
“Well, you were the least pathetic one, anyway. That Dragonite’s not half bad.”
Lance refrained from rising to the insult in favor of simply inclining his head respectfully.
“Well fought, Champion.”
Blue smiled; it wasn’t precisely a pleasant expression but it was the most genuine one Lance had seen thus far.
“Heh. Guess I am now.” Blue’s grin widened and got less pleasant. “The most powerful trainer in the world.”
Lance knew several other regional champions who might dispute that title if they got the chance- though having been on the receiving end of Blue’s prowess, he wasn’t sure all of them would dispute it very well. But he didn’t feel like having the conversation that might ensue from telling Blue that, so he said nothing.
Blue sighed and closed his eyes for a moment.
“Finally,” he said, quietly enough that he probably hadn’t meant for Lance to hear it.
Then he grinned and turned on his heel.
“Anyone who gets past you is probably at least worth my time, so keep holding down the fort. See you later.”
Blue strode off dramatically, deeper into the League Building. The effect was somewhat ruined when he and Lance immediately ran into each other again at the in-house Pokemon center to get their teams looked at, but Blue just laughed it off.
It could be a lot worse, Lance reflected. For all of Blue’s… personality, his Pokemon were clearly well-cared for and quite powerful, and he was an energetic trainer with good connections who was willing to put in some serious work when necessary. He would make a perfectly good champion; an excellent one, even, once he matured a bit.
Still, Lance couldn’t help but wait a bit for the other child prodigy of Kanto, who he was certain would make his way to the Indigo Plateau soon enough.
2.
Of course, even Lance hadn’t been expecting ‘soon enough’ to mean ‘later that same afternoon’. But there the kid was. His battles with Lance’s colleagues hadn’t been as loud or destructive as Blue’s, but they had been quicker.
Red was quiet and not especially expressive at first. He listened politely to Lance’s pre-battle speech, then sent out his Pikachu without so much as a word.
Once the battle started, Red lit up. He still didn’t speak, but he examined every Pokemon that took the field with total interest; he seemed especially excited to see the Dragonairs. Every move that Lance made, Red seemed to almost to catalog for later, as if he was a computer analyzing his opponent’s style- no, that was rude, and besides, Lance had never heard of a computer that could muster anything like the enthusiasm that lit up Red’s eyes whenever a new Pokemon came onto the field.
Red being a computer, or having psychic powers, or actually being a Pokemon in disguise, or so on, were urban legends and rumors that had been following him since his rise to fame, and now that Lance was battling him, he could see how they had started. Red never gave his team verbal orders, or seemed to give orders at all, most of the time, but his Pokemon still moved effortlessly through the battle, always making the perfect move at the perfect moment. To an inexperienced trainer, or even a journeyman one, it must have seemed like magic.
Lance knew better; he was an experienced enough trainer to recognize the subtle cues that Red used to signal his Pokemon, and also to recognize that a lot of the time, Red’s team didn’t even need orders. Red’s Pokemon were so well trained that they knew how to respond to many common situations on their own; his Pokemon all knew to use such-and-such move on these Pokemon and another move on these Pokemon, what sort of feelings meant that they should use their self-healing moves, and so on.
Yes, Lance knew enough to know it wasn’t magic, just the result of training and hard work and an incredible connection between Red and his team, but if anything that made him appreciate it more. Watching Red’s team in action was mesmerizing, a display of skill and human-Pokemon bonding so magnificent that it almost took the sting out of the fact that Lance’s team was getting pulverized.
It wasn’t like Lance was just standing there with his jaw dropped either. He was doing his best to give his team the right orders, but it was as if Red knew what moves Lance would make before he did. Even when Lance managed to connect, Red always managed a switch-in to blunt the effectiveness; his Snorlax absorbed a Hyper Beam and a Wing Attack without fear before using Rest to wipe it all away, and his Lapras laughed off Water-type attacks that had been meant for his Charizard and tanked a Fire Blast without breaking a sweat.
Eventually, Red downed Lance’s last Pokemon, his unnaturally powerful Pikachu dancing away from Emperor’s strikes just long enough to score the knockout with a Thunderbolt so potent that it didn’t matter that it was only neutrally effective. If Red had arrived a few hours earlier, he would have walked away as a champion. As it was, Lance was obliged to inform him that another challenge faced him and usher him onwards to face Blue, before rushing in a slightly undignified fashion to heal his team in time to catch the battle.
Red’s fight with Blue didn’t have quite the same eerie perfection as his other ones; Blue clearly knew him well enough to try to anticipate and throw off his rhythms and pre-trained routines. But Red thought quickly on his feet, and his team was still incredibly powerful from the care he gave them. In the end, Red still had three Pokemon standing when his Pikachu once again finished the battle by tearing Blue’s Pidgeot out of the sky with a Volt Tackle.
Blue wandered off afterwards, looking poleaxed. Red wandered further in to put his team in the hall of fame, then came out to look over the champion’s quarters and office and so on. Lance wasn’t quite sure what to do with him. He wanted to- well, he wasn’t quite sure. Shake his hand? Ask for training tips? See if he was interested in raising any Dragon-types?
Red didn’t seem to invite much conversation (unless you counted the constant non-verbal communication with one of the Pokemon he almost always had out, which Red probably did), and he was rarely actually present within the league, too busy wandering out to explore the wilds, help with the Pokedex, and occasionally vanish to Cerulean Cave and come back with Psychic-type scorch marks that he didn’t care to explain. Eventually, though, Lance found a moment to thank him for defeating Team Rocket. Red just blinked nonplussedly at him, then shrugged and smiled slightly, as if to say ‘it was nothing’.
Lance wasn’t sure what to think, after that. Red certainly deserved the position of Champion, more than anyone else Lance had ever met or heard of, but he didn’t seem to care for it much. Lance had no doubt that Red would come running if Pokemon were being hurt or the region was in peril, but the day-to-day responsibilities of running the league and serving as its public face didn’t seem to be anything like what Red wanted from life.
It would be awful of Lance to begrudge Red, a child who had already shouldered adult responsibilities (ones that Lance himself had failed to even try and pick up), the chance to make a life that suited him, so Lance didn’t. But he still had to wonder: if Red ran off to be a Pokemon-battling hermit, as it was increasingly looking like he wanted to do, what would Kanto and Johto do next?
+1.
Three years later, Lance was the champion. This did not feel entirely honest to him- he was only the third strongest trainer in the two regions and everyone knew it- but it was a lot less pathetic than it would have been three years ago.
Initially, after Red had left, Lance had offered the job to Blue, who had laughed bitterly in his face before snarling that he didn’t want a pity title. Later, after it had become clear that someone needed to fill the role, no one else was stepping up, and that politics wouldn’t permit him to just call Cynthia or Mustard and ask them if they had any proteges they could spare, Lance had realized that he was ignoring the lesson he should have learned three years ago, that he needed to take responsibility himself.
So he did.
He trained his team in the Dragon’s Den until they were all evolved and stronger than ever, found a strong sixth Pokemon for his missing team slot, and even swallowed his pride and asked Blue for some help with training, which hadn’t been as awful as he had feared- perhaps Blue was growing up after all.
The end result of all this hard work was that Lance was now… well, still the third strongest trainer in Kanto or Johto. But it was by a considerable margin over everyone else now, and his team was strong enough to do what needed to be done; to not be an embarrassment next to the other regions’ champions, to only let a truly special trainer get by him, and to stand up to whatever things might threaten the peace of the region- such as, say, a resurgent Team Rocket.
That last thing was why Lance was currently tearing around the hallways of an underground base in Mahogany Town with only a single young trainer for company. (Well, human company; Emperor was storming along at his side, as steady a companion as always.) He had considered telling Lyra to stay out of it, but even a brief acquaintance with her had made it clear that she would have come anyway, and besides, anyone with six gym badges could probably handle grunts just fine.
(Which made it all the more egregious that Lance hadn’t taken up the task last time, but the best cure for past regrets was to do better in the present.)
The two of them were separated at the moment, but Lance wasn’t very worried. Still, best to hurry, just in case. He himself was blowing through grunts with ease when he came across something surprising- a second child in Team Rocket’s lair. This one had red hair and an angry expression, and unless Lance was very much mistaken, he wasn’t associated with Team Rocket- his outfit didn’t have an ‘R’ in sight, and even Rocket’s executives generally weren’t afforded that much latitude in dress code. Was he another kid attempting to take down the radio-wave machine?
“Excuse me-” Lance started, before the kid whirled on him.
“So, you Rocket jerks finally sent out someone important, huh?”
Lance blinked. People not recognizing him was more common than one might expect- he wasn’t a media sensation the way his two predecessors had been, and quite a lot of people wore capes- but he didn’t think that he looked like someone from Team Rocket.
“I’m not-”
“Whatever. Hope you’re ready to get trashed like the rest of the weaklings.”
The kid sent out a Golbat, and Lance sighed. Best to get this over with.
The kid was a good strategist, and his Pokemon were pretty powerful, though not quite so impressive as the other prodigies Lance knew. He wasn’t ready to take on Lance yet regardless, but he wound up being swept by Emperor in large part because of the poor care he seemed to take of his Pokemon. Several of his team came out still weakened from previous fights, and some of them seemed reluctant to obey him, especially his Sneasel, which could have done some serious damage if it hadn’t hesitated.
The last Pokemon to fall had been a Feraligatr, which had almost managed to bring down Emperor with an Ice Fang, but not quite. Lance didn’t quite have Red’s faculty for reading Pokemon, but he was good enough to know that something felt off about it- it had seemed almost desperate to please.
The kid took his defeat with ill grace, fists clenched and snarling.
“Get up!” he yelled at his Feraligatr. “Get up already! Stop lazing around!”
He stormed over to his fallen Pokemon. For a moment, Lance thought he was going to strike it, but he just started shoving its shoulder as if he was trying to wake it from a nap. The Feraligatr stirred, and, striving mightily, managed to push itself up with one arm for a moment before collapsing again.
“Oh, come on!” the kid snapped at it, before he started trying to wake it again.
“That’s enough!” Lance shouted.
Emperor’s low growl underlaid his words, and the kid jumped like a startled Persian before stumbling back a step. A flash of genuine fear shot across his face before he mastered it and regained his usual angry look.
Lance sighed and held up a calming hand towards Emperor- mostly just for the kid’s sake, since Emperor had seen the same thing Lance had and stopped growling.
“You lost,” Lance said, speaking more gently but still brooking no argument. “There’s no sense in berating your Pokemon like that.”
“Shut up!”
Lance resisted the urge to sigh again and kept talking.
“As I was trying to say before, I’m not with Team Rocket, and I’m not going to hurt you. You have the talent to become a skilled trainer, but nothing will come of it unless you learn to cherish your Pokemon.”
“Not this again,” spat the kid. “I’m sick of getting this lecture from all of you bleeding hearts! I’m going to become the most powerful trainer there is by ignoring all that soft-hearted crap. Strength is the only thing that matters in battling.”
“You won’t become truly strong by acting the way you are now. Bullying people and working your Pokemon to the bone is all well and good for pushing around lowlife grunts and bug-catchers who have just started out, but you’ll never defeat a serious trainer acting the way you do.”
“What, are your Pokemon stronger because you love them?” the kid scoffed.
“Yes.” Lance said matter-of-factly. “Loving and trusting your Pokemon means that they’ll do their best for you because they know you’re doing the same. Pokemon won’t do their best for a trainer that just bullies them.”
The kid scoffed.
“So, what, I’m supposed to just coddle weak Pokemon? If a Pokemon isn’t strong enough to win every time, what’s it even good for?”
Lance was starting to really wonder just who was responsible for raising this kid. Honestly, where did one even learn to talk like that?
“Weak Pokemon become strong Pokemon when you raise them right and actually care about them. You have the potential to be an incredible trainer if you can learn how to love and trust your team. Don’t waste it.”
The kid probably needed a more thorough talk than that, but this wasn’t exactly a good time, so it would have to do. Hopefully it and the crushing defeat he had suffered would get the kid thinking about his attitude. Making sure to note his description in case he needed to ask about him later, Lance directed the strange kid to a safe exit, then went to catch up with Lyra.
3.
In the end, Team Rocket was once again defeated by a child while Lance was nowhere to be seen. At least this time Lance could say in his defense that Lyra was just too fast; looking at the security camera timestamps, Lyra had crushed Archer about the same time that Lance had reached Goldenrod’s outskirts on dragonback.
Once he had helped Whitney chase off the siege on her gym and made sure that Team Rocket was truly beaten again, Lance had then made a beedrilline for the Indigo Plateau to once again await the arrival of a prodigy. A quick poll of Johto’s gym leaders about Lyra had produced a series of positive reports (an absolutely gushing one, in Jasmine’s case) and the somewhat surprising revelation that the girl was at least partially a Flying specialist. A good specialist, too, seeing as she’d managed to deal with the Lake of Rage’s red Gyarados that Lance had been expecting to have to handle himself. She was friendly with everyone and her Pokemon adored her.
All in all, incredibly promising. Lance was eager to see how she’d do.
When she finally did show up one afternoon, she handled the Elite Four easily enough- not quite so quickly as Red or loudly as Blue, but still impressively efficient. She entered Lance’s battle room with a spring in her step and her excitement written plain on her face. Lance couldn’t help but grin back. This was going to be a good battle.
In fact, it proved to be a spectacular battle. Lyra was at a considerable deficit to start with, with one of her Pokemon not fully evolved and two more laboring under serious type disadvantages, but she didn’t let her handicap faze her. Her Togetic was a beautiful specimen and toughed it out longer than it should have been able to, throwing around annoying status moves. Her Typhlosion and her Scyther fought their hardest despite their disadvantages, chipping in important damage with coverage moves- her Typhlosion in particular managed to cripple Meteor with a burn before he had the chance to tear her team apart with super-effective Rock-type moves.
Those three managed to cause just enough damage between them to make the battle winnable for the rest of Lyra’s team- a Dragonite that was impressive even by Lance’s standards, an incredibly stubborn Lapras, and that magnificent red Gyarados. Lyra’s skill at using her weaker partners had turned a difficult battle into a fairly even contest of speed and power, an exhilarating battle whose outcome was in doubt down to the very last move.
When Lyra finally triumphed off of a last-gasp Ice Shard from her battered Lapras that brought down Emperor, Lance wasn’t even disappointed. True, it would have been nice to win, but that was the best battle he had had in years. And Lyra’s team hadn’t even reached its full potential yet! Once again, Lance could be confident that he was handing off his position to someone worthy of it.
Lyra had almost seemed surprised to realize that she was the champion now, as if she had just came to the Indigo Plateau because that was where the good battles were without thinking through all the implications, but she nonetheless took to her new title like a Psyduck to water. She proved her bonafides to the Kanto half of the league by crushing them all flat in a whirlwind tour of the region- including a victory over Blue that really cemented her position. She also managed to find a Shiny Stone for her Togetic, solve a bunch of Pokemon-related problems, and befriend what seemed like every up-and-coming trainer in the region while she was at it.
Lyra was almost supernaturally good at making friends, really, both human and Pokemon. She even seemed to be tenuous friends with the kid from the Rocket base that one time (Lance was pleased to find out that he was named Silver and absolutely delighted to find out that he had a Crobat now). She was, in many respects, a perfect champion, and one who was in no danger of running off to be a hermit atop Mt. Silver.
Or, at least that was how it seemed. But was Lance letting wishful thinking cloud his vision? After all, Lyra was young. Perhaps she didn’t realize she had options, and that if there were other things she wanted out of life, she didn’t have to hold down the fort until someone strong enough to take it from her showed up. It wouldn’t be fair to lock her into such a demanding career so early, would it?
And so, the next time he met up with Lyra for a lesson on champion stuff, Lance made sure to let her know that if she ever stopped being interested in the position, he was ready to take the responsibility off her shoulders; Lyra just laughed.
“If you want the title back, Lance, you’re gonna have to actually battle me for it.”
“I assure you, that’s not why I-”
“I know, I’m just messing,” said Lyra. “It’s nice of you to offer and all, but like, if I had known what being champion was actually like sooner, it would have been my dream job. It’s just people and Pokemon and battling, mostly, and I’m great with all of those. Well, and there’s paperwork, but that’s fine once you learn how to do it and what you can get away with delegating. And you have to fight people who are causing problems for the region, but I would be doing that anyway.”
Lance smiled.
“Well, if you’re sure. If you ever change your mind, or if you just want to take a break, my offer stands.”
“Hmm. I may take you up on that second one someday. But not for a while. Now come on and show me how to calculate these breeding quotients so I can stop running to get Will every time it comes up in a conservation discussion.”
Lyra took to the math quickly, and when she realized she had mastered it, she laughed brightly.
“You’re running out of things to teach me. Heck, at this rate, maybe you can take a vacation soon.”
Lance chuckled. That was an interesting thought. Traveling might be fun, but what would he even do in another region?
4.
“Thunder!”
Emperor roared and called down an eye-wateringly bright bolt of lightning from the heavens to slam into the Lapras on the other side of the field, which tried to tough it out but swiftly slumped into a faint.
The audience roared in excitement as the fainted Pokemon was recalled. Across the disused warehouse repurposed as a makeshift arena, Iris, Unova’s freshly minted champion, met Lance’s eyes with the feral grin of a true Dragon Master and sent out her last Pokemon. Lance recognized it as a Haxorus, and looked over its armored scales and coiled muscles with an admiring eye.
Iris had taken the early lead in their battle with the awesome power of her Hydreigon; Lance had fought his way back with his other two Dragonites and Tsunami’s super-effective Water moves against Iris’s Rock-types. Then Iris had tilted the scales again with Lapras and its Ice moves, until Emperor’s coverage had struck home, bringing it down to a one-vs-one between two champions’ aces.
The crowd watched with bated breath as Lance and Iris eyed each other’s Pokemon, before both coming to the inevitable conclusion; an all-or-nothing contest of speed and power.
“Emperor, use Draco Meteor!”
“Apophis, Outrage!”
Emperor leapt a little ways into the air, gathering draconic energy- but before he could release it, Apophis bolted forwards in the blink of an eye, slamming head on into the Dragonite with its fearsome tusks. The force of the blow shook the building, and Emperor hit the ground already unconscious.
Apophis’s roar of triumph was echoed by Iris’s shout and the crowd’s wild cheering, while Lance recalled his fallen ace.
“Apologies, old friend.” he said, patting the pokeball, before walking forward to shake Iris’s hand.
Some enterprising reporter got a spectacular picture of the two of them with the wild crowd in the background, and the two champions took a bow before heading for the Pokemon Center. As they left the Cold Storage area, they were met by a short, stout man wearing a cowboy hat, who tipped said hat to both of them.
“That was a helluva display. Your Haxorus is as impressive as ever, ma’am.”
“Thanks, Clay,” said Iris. “Lance, this is Clay, he runs Driftveil’s gym.”
“It’s a pleasure.”
“Likewise.” Clay looked around at the audience heading out. “Quite a crowd.”
“Yeah, it was wild.” Iris agreed. “But it made for a really cool atmosphere!”
“It seems a few people in the market overheard us when we agreed to meet at the old warehouse for a match in the evening.” Lance explained. “And apparently a great many people are interested in watching two champion-level trainers battle.”
“Having seen it myself, I can’t say I blame ‘em,” said Clay.
The gym leader eyed the huge crowd thoughtfully, paying especially close attention to the enterprising street food vendors who had set up outside the arena and made a killing.
“Is something wrong?” Iris asked him, following his gaze.
“No, nothing at all,” said Clay. “I just had an idea.”
“Oh, cool. Let me know if I can help.”
“Will do, ma’am.” Clay reached out to shake Lance’s hand. “I’d best be getting back to my gym. Feel free to come by any time if you’d like a battle- my team could use some practice with their Rock coverage.”
Clay walked off, and Iris nudged Lance’s arm.
“Come on, let’s hit the center then get dinner. I have some winnings to spend now, and I know a great burger joint.”
“So,” Iris asked him a little while later, over some spectacular burgers, “what brings you to Unova anyway?”
“I’m technically on vacation.” Lance told her. “But I thought I’d mix business with pleasure and pick up some Unovan dragons.”
“Ooh, cool. What are you looking for?”
“Well, I had originally planned on just picking up a few Unova-native dragons of each species to help the clan back home establish a breeding population. But having seen them in action, I’m considering finding a Haxorus and a Hydreigon as alternates for my own team.”
“They’re great, aren’t they?” Iris agreed. “Are you looking to go straight to the final evolutions or raise them from scratch?”
“Raise them, if I can find the first stages. It’s better for building trust, in my opinion.”
“It is! I raised my dragons from eggs, even.” Iris idly polished off her last few fries and checked her C-Gear. “Looks like I’m free tomorrow, so I’ll show you around Mistralton Cave- it’s just north of here and it’s the best place for wild Axew. And I’ll write you a pass to get into the old Victory Road, too, so you can look for Deino.”
Lance blinked.
“Thank you, that’s very helpful.”
More helpful than any of Lance’s fellow clan members back in Johto other than Clair and Grandfather would have been to a visitor, that was for sure.
“No problem. Drayden always says that it would be better if us Dragon trainers helped each other out more instead of being all clannish and secretive. Speaking of which, would you mind swinging by Opelucid if you have time? We’ve been looking for some pointers on raising the Dragonite line, and you are clearly the trainer to ask.”
“I’d be delighted. What kind of population do you have?”
“Just a few Dratini and a Dragonair so far. But they’re quite a handful!”
“I’ll bet. Let me tell you about what Emperor was like as a Dratini…”
It was well after dark when the two of them parted ways, after hours of sharing stories about raising Dragon pokemon. As he made his way back to the hotel, Lance reflected on the curiously universal phenomenon of young, talented trainers claiming the position of champion. Just like with Lyra back home, Unova seemed like it was in very good hands.
5.
“Alright, are you ready, Warrior?”
Lance’s recently evolved Haxorus nodded, and so Lance picked up the first of the huge stack of frisbees beside him.
“Begin!” he shouted, throwing the frisbee in a long, curving arc.
The disc flew well across the water of the Dragon’s Den before Warrior sent a swarm of stones hurtling through the air to nail it with a perfect Rock Slide; Lance grinned.
“Again!”
By the time he ran out of frisbees and ethers and Warrior ran out of PP, she had hit a hundred and ten out of a hundred and sixteen targets- above average for a Pokemon using the slightly tricky Rock Slide.
“Well done.” Lance told Warrior, petting the ridge of scales on her back.
Behind them, by the entrance of the den, an impressed whistle rang out, and a familiar voice spoke up.
“Are you ever going to stop picking up more scary dragons?”
“Silver, how are you?” said Lance, turning to greet him. “And no, I’m not- I could hardly call myself a Dragon Master if I did, now could I?”
Silver looked well. He pretty much always did, these days, which was a victory that Lance was proud to have taken a part in.
It had been tricky, getting the prickly kid who was well used to looking after himself and wandering around the region alone to stick around enough that Lance could see to his well-being. Luckily, the Dragon’s Den, with its privacy and intense atmosphere, turned out to be Silver’s favorite spot to train, and Lance had given him free reign of the place.
(Some of the clan elders had groused about some outsider who didn’t even train any Pokemon of their specialty being allowed in like that; Lance had looked them all dead in the eye, declared Feraligatrs to be dragons, and dared them to fight him over it if they didn’t like it.)
After building trust through repeated encounters (it was surprisingly similar to befriending a touchy or mistreated Pokemon), Lance had eventually gotten Silver to start joining him for meals, come to see him when he wasn’t feeling well, and even arranged for him to get medical checkups.
Lyra had also helped enormously, both by being a friend herself and by introducing Silver to her friend Ethan, a professor’s assistant, Pokeathlon star, and the grandson of Pokemon Day-Care owners, who consequently had a whole lot of knowledge about caring for Pokemon that he could share.
Between everyone’s efforts they had managed to show Silver that not everyone was like Team Rocket and Giovanni, and while the kid still hadn’t fully settled down, he had a key to Lance’s house, a bedroom permanently set up there, and a standing invitation to dinner. Lyra and Ethan had extended him a similar courtesy, and between the three of them, Silver was well-fed and well-sheltered.
“What brings you to the Den today?” Lance asked him. “Training plans?”
“No, I just, uh, needed somewhere to go and think.”
Lance took a closer look at Silver- he was physically fine, but he did look a little stressed.
“Is something wrong?”
“No, no, not really. It’s not that anything’s wrong, exactly, it’s just that…” Silver sighed. “Starting next month, Lyra’s going to be taking a four-month sabbatical.”
“Oh?” said Lance. “Good for her. Though I’m surprised that she hasn’t called me about substituting for her yet.”
“Yeah, well,” Silver laughed a little wildly, “that’s because she asked me to do it.”
Lance blinked in surprise, then broke into a wide smile.
“Congratulations! That’s wonderful!”
“Is it, though?” Silver asked.
“Why wouldn’t it be? Do you not want the position?”
“No, I mean, yes, I don’t mind doing it, it’s just…” Silver ran a hand roughly through his hair. “Even if it’s just temporary, I’m going to be the champion. The one everyone looks up to about how to treat Pokemon. But I used to treat Pokemon like shit! I even used to steal Pokemon! How can Lyra think this is a good idea?”
Ah.
“I used to just sit around the league doing nothing while letting children who had barely started training fight hardened criminals who should have been my and my colleagues’ responsibility,” Lance said. “Am I a bad person? Or unworthy of holding the position of champion?”
“What? No!”
“Are you sure? I really used to be a lot worse. I was complacent, I didn’t help my team reach their full potential, I didn’t help Red with his new position the way I should have, and I acted like I was the big adult in the room while I was actually shirking a lot of important responsibilities.”
“But that was then! You’ve got such a powerful and special team now, you’ve helped so many people, you’ve done so much for me. You’re not like that anymore.”
Lance clapped a hand on Silver’s shoulder and looked him in the eyes.
“And neither are you. You’ve overcome the obstacles in your way and grown past being the kind of person who bullies others and scoffs at weak Pokemon. You’ve become a brilliant trainer and a wonderful young man, and Lyra recognizes that. Do you really think she would have even considered letting you substitute for her if she didn’t have faith in you?”
Silver considered that for a minute, then nodded.
“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Thanks, Lance. You always know what to say.”
“You’re more than welcome.”
“I just wish I could be more sure about my battling skills.” Silver sighed. “I still haven’t ever beaten Lyra, you know?”
“That makes two of us,” Lance told him. “I think you’ll do fine, but if you really want to make sure you’re champion-level, well-” Lance tossed a Pokeball up and down in his free hand- “somehow we never did have that one-on-one rematch.”
Silver grinned, then spitted Lance with a glare.
“Don’t even think about holding back.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
The battle was ferocious. Lance’s Earthquake coverage overwhelmed Silver’s Gengar and Magnezone; Silver’s Crobat spread debilitating statuses, and his Alakazam’s psychic attacks inflicted devastating damage before it fell to an Extreme Speed. But unlike the last time the two of them had battled, Silver’s now-Weavile didn’t hesitate to use its super-effective Ice attacks, and in the last exchange of the battle, his Feraligatr toughed its way through a Draco Meteor to land an Ice Fang that this time was just enough to bring down Emperor.
Silver stood there with two Pokemon still in fighting shape, a grin slowly dawning across his face as he realized what he had accomplished.
“Well fought!” Lance told him. “I daresay you’re good enough to be a substitute champion, or even a regular one.”
Silver laughed.
“I guess so!”
He hesitated briefly before continuing.
“Thank you again. For everything.”
“It’s only what I should have done.” Lance smiled. “My apologies if this isn’t my place to say, but I’m proud of you.”
“Hmm.”
Silver had the screwed-up expression of a dignified teenager that definitely wasn’t emotionally affected by compliments like that, no sir. Lance just smiled and didn’t try to call his bluff, and was surprised when Silver briefly lunged forward for a hug.
“Come on,” Lance told him. “Let’s get dinner, and I’ll tell you everything you need to know about being a champion.”