Chapter 176: Where do you stand ?

" Though there are some morons you will find on your journey, trainers who capture a relatively decent amount of pokémon, win the badges but lose at the conferences because they have spent their entire time poking their noses into matters they have no business with, instead of training and evolving their pokémon. Then, they just start afresh with a new region, hoping to catch newer pokémon, and repeat the entire thing."

Austin's sweat dropped as he heard Cynthia dissing what Ash did in the anime.

"Let me guess, they lose again"

Cynthia arched her eyebrow. "What else did you expect?"

"But… but what about the pokémon they caught earlier? What about them?"

She shrugged. "Sitting in the corals, perhaps. Waiting for their trainer to come back and train them some time, I suppose. Pathetic, I tell you."

"I don't think that I'd like to follow that route."

"Good. As long you stay sensible, you always have a chance of winning a league conference." The blonde-haired girl laughed. "The Sinnoh league holds its annual conference in December, every year, so I had around sixteen months before my first try. That got me a lot of time to prepare for." 

"That didn't mean I did pokémon training and nothing else. There was a lot about Unown research and visiting places, though I'll admit, I never got to see any legendaries as you do. I'm insanely jealous."

Austin scoffed.

"I had finished acquiring all my badges by the first ten months. The rest of the time, I spent on Mt. Coronet. It is a wonderful place for training."

"Tell me about the Sinnoh conference." He asked while making it seem like he was ignorant of what it was.

Even though he knew many things about Pokémon like the back of his hand, it didn't mean that he still didn't enjoy talking about it with a friend.

"It's not called Sinnoh Conference, dummy." Cynthia chortled, much to his chagrin. "It is called Lily of the Valley Conference, hosted every year on Lily of the Valley Island."

"Oh."

"You'd be surprised by the starting rounds of the Conference. For one, you need to register yourself as fast as possible, since they take only two hundred and fifty-six participants every year. The rest, they have to wait for the next year."

"Isn't that unfair?" Austin scoffed.

"Not really. You get a four-day duration to come up and put your names in, and the dates for registration are announced months prior. If you still cannot make it to the registration in time, the blame's on you."

"I guess," Austin mumbled.

"The eliminations are a group of four matches, winning it will bring you to the Top 32. You'd need to fight one battle every day for four days consistently, so you better keep your pokémon arranged in teams and in the peak of health for that. There are some trainers… you'd find, who only keep a tiny team of six or seven perhaps, and train them to their best. However, if even one of their pokémon gets a fatal injury, they run the risk of getting eliminated in the next match. That is why it is always better to have a large team, for insurance if nothing else."

Austin had to agree. She had a point. Besides, his thoughts paralleled hers on the subject.

"The best strategy, I think, is to take around seven to eight pokémon at a time, train them rigorously, and then rotate them with the next batch. It helps to have multiple teams sets to rely on."

"I was working on something like that," Austin admitted.

" And here I thought you were catching dangerous pokémon to impress me." The Sinnoh girl teased.

Austin just mumbled something incomprehensible, causing her to chortle even more.

"Tell me more about your experience at the league." Austin tried, wanting to change the topic.

"Spoilsport," Cynthia muttered playfully. "Well, the talented trainers are those you face from Top-32 onwards. The matches become a six-on-six from there onwards, instead of a three-on-three, right till the finals." She paused. "There was this trainer called Reginald, who was a prankster. He and his ghosts gave me a really hard time in the finals. Also, there was this guy called Reggie"- Austin stiffened—" he gave me a really hard battle in the semi-finals, but then I managed to defeat him. Come to think of it, your team reminds me heavily about his own—large, powerful, heavy hitters."

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Crap.

"Just like him?" Austin asked, more to himself than to her.

"Yeah," Cynthia was oblivious to his reaction, lost in her nostalgia. "All of them strong as hell. It took a lot out of Garchomp, but he managed to defeat his Rhyperior and Gyarados."

A Rhyperior and a Gyarados.

Austin repeated in the back of his mind.

"Yeah, and that reminds me, you should start looking for a moonstone for your Munna and Clefairy."

" Because of Evolution."

" Ding, Ding, Ding, correct. You know you're smarter than you look ."

" Hey !"

" Kidding."

"I am waiting to see how you'll do in the Pokémon League, it will certainly catch the eyes of those at the top."

"Do you think that they will… you know, try to get my team from me?" he couldn't help but shudder at the thought of his team getting snatched from him.

"Nothing like that." Cynthia denied. "However, they would get acquainted with you. For some, like Steven for one, you are like an experiment of sorts... I think. For Lance, from what I have heard, you are a significant… entity, no thanks to the interest that Mewtwo has demonstrated in you. The fact that you have also managed to acquire a little legendary interest doesn't help matters."

"That's what you meant about Lance wanting me tied."

"It was metaphoric, but yes."

"And you?"

Cynthia widened her eyes, caught off-guard by the sudden question. "What about me?"

"What about you? Where do you stand?"

"I…" Cynthia tightened her hold on his wrist. "I stand with you."

Somehow, Austin felt that he couldn't have been happier with any other answer.

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[ Omake Paragraph]

In the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, a period known to laymen as the dawn of mankind, Charmander abounded in a desert east of Fuschia city. They used their flames to hunt bug and grass pokemon and were as abundant in this land as Zubat and Tentacool are in theirs, and dug surprisingly sturdy burrows to protect themselves during infrequent rainstorms.

It was climate change that did them in. Kanto is far wetter than it once was, and those few Charmander who tried to adapt to growing forests failed: leaves were a poor shield and there were no forests in Kanto with a thick enough canopy to prevent rainfall. In Kanto's Warring States' Era, the last patch of desert was converted into pasture by a local warlord and the wild Charmander became extinct.

Not all was lost, however, for man is a species which builds shelters and loves fire, and before they learned to rub sticks together they domesticated the Charmander, both for its valuable flames and its role in eating disease-carrying insects. In modern times they are still a fairly common household pet, although never as numerous as they were before the invention of the matchbox.

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