From: "luneric" <luneric@dontrit> Subject: [PW!] A lesson never to forget Date: Saturday, April 10, 2004 9:39 AM > By the time the large pile of merchandise had shuffled off, Cass's small > group had reentered the Pokémon Center and made their way towards Alex and > company. > > "Glad to see everyone made it in one piece," Cass noted. "Any news?" > > "Roxanne hasn't seen Smasher," Alex quickly explained. "And most of us won > Stone Badges." > > "Yeah," Ben noted nervously. "Nails kinda went ballistic. But I'm going back > for a rematch as soon as I get a Poké Ball for Mawile." (Snip) > "So, what now?" Cass asked, taking a seat herself. "Do we split up into two > groups? Three? What?" > > "Let's wait until everyone else is here," Alex suggested. "I don't think > it'll be that long." * * * A light fist-meets-table whack hinted to everyone else that someone was tired of waiting. Aerie was still unpacking her purchaces and Carol was hopefully still in the Rustboro area and would be back soon. The minutes that had passed seemed more like days to Ben, especially when he was desperate to get a Stone badge. He waited for a few more seconds before slipping out of the center. As he pushed the large doors of the gym open, he thought about yelling a ketchem style, "I'm BACK," but decided against it, considering that Roxanne probably wouldn't be happy with him anyway. As he shut the doors behind him, he jumped back in surprise as a bunch of kids ran up to him, yelling exitedly and pointing to his mawile. Ben quickly hoisted mawile up protectedly, and let it clamp onto the back of his jacket. "Well...I figured you'd be back, but you came at a bit of a time..." Roxanne mutted, with exasperation. "But isn't this outside school hours?" Ben asked, trying to remember the lesson times at his hometowns small pokeschool. "Yeah, but I promised I'd give some of my younger students a practical lesson..." Looking at the teens clueless expression, she continued, "...a pokemon battle...?" Ben lifted a pokeball off his belt and asked, "Why not?" Roxanne thought about this, before nodding her head in agreement. "Okay, so long as you don't use your Aggron!" "Alright," Ben replied, and looked over his shoulder to mawile and asked, "How about it buddy?" In reply, much to his trainers surprise, mawile jumped off his trainers back and ran to the center of the gym's pitch. The pokemons oppolent soon appeared too, Roxanne's trademark Nosepass, who was popular amoung the students and got loud cheers from the stands. Because of the lack of a ref. the gym leader performed the duties, projecting her voice to fill the gym, "This will be a one-on-one pokemon battle to the knockout, and children OFF the PITCH! Let the battle begin!" "Mawile," Ben yelled, "Start this with astonish!" Before Roxanne could command the relitively slow rock pokemonshe had sent out, Mawile jumped over to it and thrashed around with its jaw, startling the pokemon into flinching; gasps coming from the stands. "Good one mawile, now quickly, bite it!" The order was carried out quickly, and mawile clamped it's jaws around the cowering pokemon and bit hard. This woke Nosepass from its stupor and without being ordered, smacked mawile with a Mega punch, sending it skyward. "You started well," Roxanne commented, "But it looks like your mawile just can't cut it against my Nosepass. It isn't famous for noth-" "Mawile...Iron defence NOW!" Ben interupted urgently. The pokemon tensed it body and then recoved, kicking off the wall it would and hit and slamming in to it's oppolent with an improvised tackle. "Quickly, bite it again! Then vicegrip!" Ben yelled out. "Nosepass, Rock Slide it!" Roxanne countered. The students on the sideline now had their eyes fixed intently on the battle, as mawile dashed in for another Bite attack, once again getting the oppolent in it's jaws. Nosepass grappled it off and fired a stream of rocks at Mawile, which it dashed under, once again grabbing the pokemon. Except this time he wrestled it about in the air, before slamming it into the floor of the gym. Ben and Roxanne silently peered into the dust, and as it settled it revealed mawile pumping it maw in the air, standing next to the nosepass' motionless body. "Well, you've proven you're worth, and thanks for giving my students a lesson they'll never forget," Roxanne said, pleased. "You deserve this stone badge." "And thank you," Ben muttered, turning to walk back to the pokemon center.