Luke pulled up the tournament schedule online. The group stage looked like it'd run three rounds, stretched out over nearly a month — which put it on a collision course with finals week. If Gastly lost this round, he'd reasoned, at least he'd get his study time back.
Instead: somehow, impossibly, a win.
This year's Fighting Department freshmen just aren't cutting it.
Since Gastly had advanced anyway, Luke started weighing whether to actually show up and call the next match himself. Partly to make sure Gastly didn't take any serious damage. Partly because if the next opponent turned out to be genuinely strong, he could just forfeit outright. He'd never cared about winning the whole thing — his only real goal was making sure Gastly walked away with no regrets.
Since he was committing to showing up, Luke figured he ought to scout the competition first. He called Bob, who was still actively competing, and they agreed to meet at a Starbucks near campus.
It was a brutally hot summer day. Pretty girls everywhere, wild Pokémon wandering the streets — humans and Pokémon coexisting like something straight out of Detective Pikachu's Ryme City. Look at the Poké Ball strapped to her thigh. That's a nice shade of white.
"Welcome in!" A blast of cold air greeted him the second he stepped inside.
"I'll take a medium latte."
"Sorry sir, this size here is a Grande, and this one's a Venti."
"...I'll take whichever one's in the middle."
Bob walked in a few minutes later to find Luke already nursing a pained expression.
"Brother Luke! Gastly actually won!" Bob said, practically vibrating.
"I know," Luke said, looking like his stomach hurt.
"That Vigoroth placed at the county level! And it just got completely shut down by one Substitute!" Bob shook his head in disbelief. "Man, I had no idea you had that kind of trick up your sleeve."
Luke drank his coffee in silence. There's no way I'm explaining that Gastly figured this out on its own, overnight, without me. That would be way too humiliating to admit.
Clearing his throat, he steered the conversation to the bracket. "You planning to keep competing?" Bob's eyes went wide.
Luke nodded. "I'll aim for a decent ranking." Top sixteen, realistically — that timing would line up right with finals review.
Bob rubbed his hands together. "This was round one of the group stage — win two more and you're through. Get lucky with a bye and you skip straight to the top sixteen."
"When's your next match?"
Bob deflated. "I already lost this morning."
"Pfft."
"...What's funny?"
"Coffee's hot."
Luke cleared his throat hard and pushed on. "Any tough opponents who've advanced so far?"
"Oh, definitely." Bob nodded. "Top seed's a guy named Tyler — freshman out of Crestwood University's Fighting Department, made the school team his first year."
"First year and already on the team? Impressive."
"There's also Owen, from Union Tech — even the Electric-type Gym Leader's been singing his Magneton's praises."
"That's a heavy hitter too, huh."
"And our own Elena — comes from a whole Fairy-type family, basically the Academy's resident goddess."
"Wow." Luke clapped, genuinely impressed.
"Brother Luke." Bob's expression turned uncertain. "The competition's clearly stacked. Why don't you seem worried at all?"
"Me? Worried?" Luke turned his head. "Look at me. I'm shaking."
"You are so obviously holding back a laugh right now."
Luke coughed lightly and said nothing.
Facing real competition would sharpen Gastly either way — and a loss here wouldn't sting, not against opponents like these. Meanwhile, Luke could get right back to his actual priorities. Genuinely, a win-win.
A Fairy-type dynasty. A Gym Leader's personal seal of approval. A first-year prodigy already on the school roster. With names like that stacked against him, there was just no realistic path to victory. Sure, Will-O-Wisp beat Magneton on paper, and Poison countered Fairy — but the skill gap alone made the outcome obvious.
Even losing to guys like this would be completely understandable.
"Gastly." Luke released it from its ball.
"Kojie?"
"Let's give it everything next round. No regrets, whatever happens."
"Kojie~!"
______________________________
Johto Region. Mt. Silver.
Thick white mist rolled across the mountainside — home not just to natural hot springs and rare flora, but to some of the region's most formidable wild Pokémon, making it a training ground unlike anywhere else.
Out of the fog came a Charizard radiating raw, overwhelming presence. On its back rode a black-haired young man in a red vest, hat pulled low, eyes sharp and unreadable.
Red touched down beside the lake at the summit and gave Charizard a pat. It beat its wings once and vanished back into the mist.
"You called me all the way out here — something wrong?"
A rustle of leaves. A masked, ninja-clad middle-aged man dropped down, hanging upside-down from a branch. "Sharp as ever, I see."
"You'd be sharp too, after getting ambushed on this mountain as many times as I have," Red said dryly.
The man was Koga — one of Johto's Elite Four, its resident Poison-type specialist.
Koga dropped to the ground and got straight to business. "I need you to help me settle a debt."
Red raised an eyebrow. "Even you owe people favors?"
Koga went quiet for a long moment before answering. "I made a breakthrough recently. Poison-type research."
"Yeah?"
"Look down."
Red glanced at his own feet — and immediately tensed. His ankles were surrounded by what looked like an army of tiny Muk, eyes glowing faint green, each one shrunk down to a fraction of its normal size. Ant-sized, easily hundreds of them, clumped together in a shifting, foul-smelling mass.
"Venusaur." Red's Poké Ball snapped open before the word even finished leaving his mouth, and he was already on Venusaur's back. "Vine Whip!"
Two vines cracked out like lightning and snapped tight around Koga's throat. From ball to restraint: under three seconds.
Koga raised both hands, unbothered. "No harm intended. I was just testing whether the Champion could see through the new approach." A faint smile tugged at his lips. "Looks like the answer's yes."
"This is the new tactic?" Red's voice was flat.
"It is." Koga nodded. "A few hundred, a few thousand shrunken Grimer, positioned in advance — even an Elite Four member would struggle to get out clean."
Red eyed the shrinking cloud of Grimer still dispersing around him and felt a chill crawl up his neck.
"This came from that Trainer. Luke, was it?"
Koga muttered, half to himself, "That Minimize strategy of his. Genuinely filthy work." Then, almost sheepish: "Anyway. He's where the idea came from."
"I know you're aware of him," Koga went on, suddenly picking up speed. "My daughter watches his streams religiously — swears you're a fan of his too, actually—" He barely paused for breath. "She's getting older, you know. No marriage prospects. Stuck at home all day. Sweet girl, strong personality, does help me around the house more than people give her credit for—"
"But she can't stay home forever! A daughter's got to get married eventually!"
His eyes went a little glassy, and he dabbed at the corner of one, visibly emotional.
Red cleared his throat, pointedly, trying to drag the conversation back on track.
"Anyway." Koga coughed once, composing himself. "I need a favor."
"Nobody starts a favor with a chokehold."
Koga pulled off his mask and laughed. "Well — unless you'd rather I introduce you to my daughter instead?"
There it is. That was the actual pitch the whole time.
Red sighed. "Just tell me what you need."
"I hear he recently caught himself a Gastly. This might sound like bragging, but my understanding of Toxic represents a lifetime of work." Koga tossed a scroll through the air, and Venusaur caught it neatly with a vine. "I'd like you to see that this gets to him." He bowed, solemn. "I'd owe you one."