The Hyper Fang That Shall Pierce The Heavens (Pokemon SI)

Chapter 6: Fire in my Pants

"Alright, recruit. You know now what we're up against," Joey said as he released rattata into the clearing they usually trained in. His pokemon, as always, seemed mostly undaunted by any type of odds, and just excitedly shadow-boxed in the air against an imaginary fighting type.

In a way rattata exhibited the behavior of a fighting type himself, making Joey curious as to what kind of life his starter had lived to gain such an attitude. Or maybe his parentage was special in a way? After all, some pokemon had latent potentials due to having a parent not of the same species. Perhaps somewhere out there, there was a machamp violently and sexually in love with a particularly elegant raticate? Or maybe, the other way around? Joey cringed at the imagery he'd created in his mind, and wiped the last five seconds of his memory. Pokemon didn't breed, they just magically appeared as eggs after their parents held hands. Yeah, that was it.

"We're going to be most likely dealing with a mankey. It's going to know moves that use its legs like low kick, moves that utilize its arms like karate chop or fury swipes, it's going to know leer, which decreases your defense by interrupting your TE strengthening with a foreign injection and last but not least, it's going to know sucker punch." Joey paused, as he considered how to communicate the strategy that they were going to use. It wasn't very complicated, as rattata as a species simply didn't have access to a diverse enough move-set for him to come up with anything exotic.

It was inadvisable to give such young pokemon technical machines either, since they first needed to learn how to deal with their own energy.

"It's going to be very much like that battle with the tyrogue," Joey eventually said. "Probably a bit tougher, since Kong actually specializes in the fighting type. The good news is that we almost won that fight, and that was two weeks of training and approximately 20 battles ago."

Rattata puffed up at the remainder of their changed luck when it came to winning battles. Joey didn't know how to tell him that youngsters really didn't count. They'd probably swing right back into a negative win loss ratio when the more experienced trainers came out of the bushes again. In terms of improvement, it made much more sense to challenge those.

"The bad news is the fact that, similarly to how we lost against the tyrogue, mankey also needs to land maybe two moves to win the battle. We on the other hand have to hit about 10 quick attacks, or fifteen tackles to really get anywhere. Very unfair, when you think about it, especially since this mankey knows sucker punch, which means it has an effective close-in method. Thankfully, it's a dark-type move, so the damage should be at half of what you would have suffered from a fighting type move," Joey mused and noted, that as he spoke in more detail, and longer, he was losing his starter. His eyes were glazing over. Tail twitching erratically. In the end it didn't matter, Joey told himself for the umpteenth time. Rattata just needed to listen to Joey's orders, in training and in battle, and he would be fine. Joey hoped however, that the next pokemon he caught would perhaps have a bit more tactical understanding. Or intelligence in general. Although, with knowledge came fear, so if he wanted an unafraid battler, maybe he needed to look for a stupid pokemon?

"The battle is in two weeks, I booked us a slot. We'll be working on detect, as usual, on bite and hyper fang. Then, we'll be working on speed mostly, as all you need to do to win is not get hit. Tomorrow, we will go out into the wild to hopefully find and fight some mankey. Training and battling, alternate that for six days a week. One rest day, then repeat," Joey said, before going to his backpack and taking out a blindfold, some ear-plugs and a longish stick he'd found in the forest one day for this particular purpose.

Rattata grimaced as he noticed the utensils that his trainer was approaching him with. The pokemon didn't enjoy being blind and deaf. But, the issue that Joey had noticed when training his starter for detect was that the rat had a very good sense of hearing, which meant that he had started dodging stones by that alone, not actually using a move to do so. So, now, it was time to block off more than just one sense. "Honestly, you almost have it," Joey said to the rat as he closed his eyes. "Just try to find that fighting type energy and try to focus some of it in your brain." Plugging the ears as well, Joey took his position behind the rat, which was now sitting down in a lotus position, hind-legs crossed. Joey started lightly whipping the stick in the air, occasionally letting it whizz down to lightly smack the rattata on a part of its body, mostly focusing on the head, the two shoulders and the two sides of the torso. By focusing on five different points Joey hoped to make sure that he knew when rattata started using a move, instead of just randomly dodging. If the pokemon just guessed where it would be struck next, that guess would have a 20% chance of being true. So, if rattata's dodge rate went above 20%, then they would know that they were getting somewhere.