Chapter 84: Poison Guard Substitute (Patreon)

Misty was crestfallen now that her hopes had been dashed, but Renan, back at the inn where they were staying, stayed calm throughout.

On the first day of the festival, he had only told Misty part of the truth.

If he ever did run into a Mega Stone, Renan would find a way to get his hands on it, no question.

But even if he never found one, it wasn't a big deal as far as he was concerned.

Because...

The moment he'd gotten the Key Stone, Renan had felt a faint certainty take root, thanks to the sixth sense that came with being a psychic: that he, too, could use the item in his hand to Mega Evolve, just like a Pokémon.

As for how exactly to do it...

In the bedroom of the guest room, the black-haired boy sat cross-legged on the bed, the Ralts incubator pressed up against his side.

While running Meditate, Renan slowly adjusted his breathing rate, trying to pull the fluctuations of the mana inside him into line with the energy fluctuations leaking from the Key Stone in his hand.

But, unfortunately...

Just like the last few nights, he failed.

Even with the Development Abilities [Breathwork I], which let him fine-tune how he used Thunder Breathing and Meditate to a certain degree, there was still little he could actually do at this stage.

Meditate, the skill Renan relied on most right now, was the worst of it. Speed his breathing up even a hair and the Meditate state snapped at once.

Slow it down, and Meditate was just Meditate. The mana in his body couldn't resonate with the Key Stone at all.

Renan opened his eyes and decided not to continue the experiment.

After several nights in a row, roughly ten hours of attempts in total, he had all but confirmed it: as he was now, he simply couldn't trigger Mega Evolution, at least for the time being.

That left Renan a little disappointed.

Still, he had a perfectly clear idea of how ordinary his own aptitude was, so he didn't sink into pointless self-doubt.

Finish the Battle Festival first. If I make the top eight and win an item prize, great. If my luck is bad and I draw someone who's here to farm the weak, well, uh, nothing to be done about that. Misty should've had her fill of the markets in another couple of days. Then we'll go straight to pick up the Rota Badge, head east to challenge the Steel-type Gym in Lamu City, and on the way through Lavender Town I can pick up a Ghost-type Pokémon while I'm at it. After that it's all the way south to collect the Fuchsia, Vermilion and Cinnabar Gym badges in one sweep. As for Viridian Gym, where Giovanni sits... hmm, I'll decide later, depending on how things stand, whether to go challenge it.

Renan sketched out a rough plan for the future.

He had already finished the preliminaries over the past few days. To avoid any accidents, and because Misty kept dragging him off to hunt for bargains, Charizard had stepped in personally for the last two matches.

A Gym-class body and late-Elite energy fluctuations against a mid-Elite and a late-Elite Pokémon were still quite easy for Renan as he was now.

He hadn't even had Charizard use Dragon Dance to power up and close into melee. A string of Air Cutters and Flamethrowers won him the battles cleanly.

From the seventh day on, the Battle Festival entered its elimination stage.

Since 512 contestants were still left, though, the next three days of matches stayed 1v1.

Maybe he'd burned through all his bad luck in the preliminaries, because Renan's luck clearly took a turn for the better these two days.

Over three days of matches, he drew baby matchups twice in a row.

Needless to say, that meant sending out the Glameow that had already evolved into Luxio, and the Cleffa, still at its initial stage but already knowing a fair number of solid moves.

After some careful commands and coordination, he secured advancement both times.

On the tenth day, the number of contestants dropped further, each person's allotted time on the field grew noticeably, and the format naturally changed to 2v2 singles.

In the round of 64 to 32, Renan chose to send out Pidgeotto, and his opponent released a mid-Elite Gengar.

Renan had planned to let Pidgeotto probe first, then send out Charizard or Nidoking depending on how things went.

But the first Heat Wave he threw out unexpectedly triggered a burn.

After that, there was naturally nothing much left to say about how the match went.

Renan switched tactics immediately. He had Pidgeotto create a Substitute on the spot while its real body pulled quickly back, ready for a second Heat Wave.

The opposing Gengar's moveset was interesting too. It actually ran Ice Punch and Thunder Punch from the elemental-punch trio known as the "Farmer's Three Punches," plus Mean Look.

When he heard the opposing Trainer shout, "Gengar, quick, use Ice Punch!", Renan's mouth nearly twitched out of its straight line.

Sure, in the first-generation games the line between special and physical attacks was blurred, but reality was nothing like that.

What's more, Gengar was burned now, so its physical attack was halved.

Had it been running Icy Wind or Thunderbolt, Renan would have considered whether to bring Pidgeotto back with a U-turn. He was no master of defying type matchups, after all.

Then again, on second thought, the opponent's moveset made sense in a way. Among the Trainers who came to the Battle Festival, direct League lineage was only a small share. For ordinary Trainers, the TM discs on sale at the Poké Mart numbered only about a dozen, and the most famous of them were exactly the Farmer's Three Punches.

Moves like Icy Wind and Thunderbolt, whether on TM discs or in learning manuals, had to be exchanged for points.

Once he chose to have Pidgeotto take the Ice Punch, Renan also locked in its third move: Roost.

From there, the match settled into a grinding stalemate: Gengar alternating Thunder Punch and Ice Punch, Pidgeotto cycling between Substitute and Roost.

It was so infuriating that Gengar's Trainer snapped and started cursing outright: "[Johto region expletive], what kind of moveset is that, you bastard? That's disgusting!"

Renan stayed composed throughout, like a breeze brushing past his face.

Still, a Trainer who'd made it into the top 64 was clearly no pushover. After doing some mental math on Gengar's remaining HP, the opponent suddenly said, "Destiny Bond."

Renan had kept in mind that Gengar's four moves hadn't all been shown, and had been guarding against exactly this.

He immediately called out Pidgeotto's last move: "Protect."

"Pidge!"

Pidgeotto let out a cry, and the energy in its body surged out and condensed into a transparent shield right in front of it.

Across the field, Gengar had only just finished gathering its Destiny Bond energy. Then its head lolled to one side, and it passed out in an instant.

Clearly, because of Protect, its move had failed to take effect.

The result disgusted the opposing Trainer so badly that he visibly lost his composure in the second match.

On top of that, his other Pokémon was only late-Veteran strength. Pidgeotto's Heat Wave whittled it down first, and then it lost the ability to battle to two Earthquakes from Nidoking, who came out afterward.

After leaving the field, the man seemed to want a real person-to-person battle with Renan.

But the moment he got within five meters, a single Confusion pinned him in place. The anger in his eyes cleared up in an instant.

"Sigh... can we make peace?"