"Alright, so first thing's first. Above all else, you need to know your pokemon."

Ira looked at her pokeballs. "Well there's Skitty and Erynne."

"No no no, not like that! You need to really understand them!" Elron pulled out a pokeball and held it up in the sun. "Moves! Personalities! Strengths and weaknesses! You need to know everything about your pokemon to be the best teammate you can with them, and they need to know you. For instance, this is Aaron's poke--"

Aaron heard his cue and released himself from his container.

"Well, nevermind." He pointed at his pokemon. "This is Aaron himself. As you can tell, he's a little bit of a troublemaker, and he has been that way since the very start. I know all about his likes and dislikes... I think, and I have his 20+ moves memorized."

Ira dug around in her backpack and procured a notepad, which she scribbled notes down on like a journalist trying to get their next big scoop faster than all the other scores of journalists at the exact same event.

"I don't think this is something that you necessarily need to take notes on."

She waved her hand around above her head like she was trying to shoo a fly. "Continue!"

"Okay then. If you don't know these things, the best thing you can do is simply spend more time with your pokemon, but for the things likes moves and strengths you can actually just look it up."

"Where should I look things like that up?"

"Try your pokedex."

Ira put down her notepad and pulled out the object from her backpack. With each new item taken from the bag it looked more and more like it was going to explode. She tapped the middle of the glass interface and the thing slid out into a larger shape akin to a tablet.

"It of course can't tell you exactly which moves your pokemon will know, and will only tell you it for well known pokemon, but your pokemon can work with you to figure it out."

She tapped the screen to select "Skitty" and walked through the interface to find the move list. She took off one of her pokeballs and let out the creature that was inside. "Skitty, do you know Fake Out?"

The newly materialized cat meowed as its way to say yes.

Ira's eyes lit up as she scribbled down the new information down in her notepad. "What about Growl?"

Another meow.

Ira and her pokemon ran through the list like this, not stopping at any move. If Ira was going to do it, she felt that it had at least be thorough, despite Elron telling her "if she doesn't know that one that she won't know and ones after that."

Eventually in the search for moves, amid an eye roll from Elron, Ira asked her pokemon if she knew the move "Water Pulse."

The cat replied that she did.

That piqued Elron's interest. "How the heck does your Skitty know that?"

Ira shrugged. "Can you show me?"

The pink cat spazzed out in an active display of displeasure.

"Why not?"

The cat just turned her back on her trainer, resiliently refused to prove that she knew it.

Ira looked distraught. "Come on Skitty! That would be an excellent move to use in the gym battle!"

Elron hummed. "Perhaps it's because cats don't like water?"

Skitty's tail drooped, but she still refused to look back at either of them.

"Bingo."

"How did you know?"

"It's that whole understanding your pokemon thing, even though sometimes it's just a wild guess like this."

There was only one more move on that list, "Zen Headbutt," and strangely enough Skitty know that one too.

Elron scratched his head. "Where did you get that Skitty, Ira?"

"Got her from my grandma."

"Let me guess, you don't happen to know where she got her?"

"Nope."

"Figured. Well, this is certainly a start!"

-----

Eventually, Ira was ready to take a second shot at the first gym. She walked confidently through the multilayered curtains and arrived at the stage.

The three boys' gazes fell upon her.

"Ready for a rematch?" asked Chili with a cocky grin.

"Yep!"

"Alright, let's get to it then!" He stepped onto the raised platform and Ira followed suit. "Go, Pansear!"

"Come on out, Skitty!"

The two pokemon, cat and monkey, stared each other down and growled.

"Hey Skitty," said Ira, pulling a pokemon snack out of her bag. "If you win you can have this treat!" Maybe this will get her to use Water Pulse!

In a manner more like a dog than a cat, she leapt for joy and spun around once, then faced her opponent, filled with energy.

Chili smirked and threw his hand out in front of him. "Don't think that silly little gimmicks like that will help you beat me! Incinerate!"

"Water Pulse!"

A rippled shot of water flew at Pansear as it prepared to exhale flames, and the water and fire collided midair. Not surprisingly, some water turned to steam, but much of it managed to pass through and kill the flames and hit the red monkey.

Cilan's and Cress's eyes widened as they anticipated the effect of the attack from the sidelines.

It didn't take long to see that Pansear was in a heavy daze of confusion and was heavily damaged.

Skitty walked away, yawned and then curled up in a ball on the floor.

The looks on the three gym leaders' faces were priceless expressions of mixed surprise and disbelief.

"Scratch!" commanded Chili, struggling to see a way out of this situation.

Pansear tottered around, and swung its arm out in front of it, but didn't bother slowing it down so its momentum carried the arm back around to hit its own body. It finished itself off.

Everyone except Ira looked like they had had their spirits extracted from them.

Ira didn't know what to do, so she recalled relaxing Skitty. "I'll give you a treat later," she said to her pokeball.

On her own volition, Erynne let herself out of her pokeball. Apparently she sensed that she could take her turn in battle and came out.

Oh great, thought Elron, another ornery Aron.

"Oh yeah, can Erynne battle too?"

Chili walked over and dropped the metal badge into her hand and looked at the floor. "Please just take it and go."

Erynne didn't take that too lightly, and instead showed her disapproval by running into Chili's shin.

The hotheaded gym leader recoiled back on one leg and tried his best not to not fall over. "Control your pokemon, girl!"

"That wasn't very nice Erynne, get back in your pokeball." Her attention was somewhere else at the moment, so all she did was return her pokemon and strap its ball to her bag. She ran over to Elron and jumped at him with a big hug. "I did it! I did it!"

"Yes you did! Kind of..." He remembered back to when he got his first badge, the first time that is. In a mix up of pokeballs he had battled with a pokemon far stronger than his own and had won in a landside, which was not at all attributed to his own level of skill. Guess I'm not one to talk.

Ira realized that she had suddenly clung to Elron and pulled back in embarrassment. Her face turned bright red, but she tried to play it off by acting as if it was nothing and didn't make any mention of it.

Elron pretended not to notice and suggested that they leave, which they did.

Chili stumbled back to one of the seats in the room and laid back in it. "Hey guys, I've been thinking. Maybe we should stop being gym leaders."

"Yeah," the other two said simultaneously in gloomy tones.

-----

"Hold on!" yelled Ira as she fell behind Elron. She was trying to walk and put something in her backpack at the same time, and it finally happened.

Right as Elron looked back to see what was slowing her down, the contents of her backpack fell all over the dirty ground. "That's why I told you to pack light!"

"I'm sorry!" whined Ira in a shrill voice. She frantically tried putting everything back in her own backpack, but as she put things in more things fell out.

He walked back to help her, when a certain item from her bag caught his eye. He leaned down and picked it up off the ground. "Why do you have this?"

She looked at the item in his hand. "Oh that? It's just a video game in case I get bored."

"Yes I know what it is, but why do you have this?"

She didn't understand the question. "Because I like it?"

Elron's inner geek came out in full force at that moment, something which he had only ever done a few times. "You like Blightmare Tamer?! I love this series! As a kid I spent hours upon hours doing every possible thing in them! At the time I didn't like pokemon, but this game made me feel like I was the best monster trainer of them all, even if only for short periods of time. I somehow even managed to catch all 512 monsters on one of the games! It's been so long since I've heard of another person liking it!"

He grabbed her shoulder and shook her just a little bit. "I wish I had one of my games with me right now! Then we could play it together!"

This was a little too much for Ira. She cringed and responded slightly sarcastically. "Yeah, too bad you don't! Guess we'll just have to keep on walking to the next city instead."

"Oh yeah! We don't have to do that! We could just swing by Hoenn real quick and get it!"

How is going to another region "real quick?" Ira asked herself. The idea didn't sound half bad though, as it would be another excuse to fly. "Sure! I'm actually from Hoenn, so it would be nice to visit my home region."

"Great!" said Elron, letting out one of his Salamences. "Let's go!" He hopped on quickly and was rearing to go.

"Aren't you going to let your other one out?" asked Ira, not sure where to go.

"No time for that! Hop on!" He outstretched his hand.

Getting caught up in the moment, she took his hand and was practically dragged on board.

"Hold on tight!" yelled Elron, tapping his heel against his pokemon to tell it to take off.

Ira panicked and reflectively wrapped her arms around him. Before she knew it, she had gotten the moment that she had briefly fantasized about before, although not in a way that she imagined.

***

A/N: So fun fact about this chapter: I had had writer's block for almost the entire time I had to work on it, and only ended up working with it as the deadline drew very close, just finishing this minutes before I go to bed (I spent about two hours on this chapter). Hopefully I don't slack off and get writer's block anymore or this crazy update schedule won't work XD

Also yes, I threw a minor Insomnia Wake reference in there for those of you that read it. I couldn't think of what to call the fake monster collecting game, and the best one that I came up with was "Blightmare Tamer" lol.