—Jin Blackwood—

Click!

After announcing the victory, the lock on the car door behind George clicked open, letting them move onto the next car. George brushed up Minccino’s ear with an ointment made from Oran Berries to heal, and the duo moved to the next car.

On the Green Line, there are eight cars during each set. After the first battles between the Pokémon who start in each car, the victors from the cars on the ends will move closer to the center, while those in the center will also go towards their corresponding partners.

This cycle continues two more times until the winner is crowned, and makes it similar to a tournament-style format.

In the next car, a Mienfoo waited in the center of the car, watching George’s door intently as he got set up in the Trainer’s box. On the opposite side, a woman with blonde hair and a bandana tied tightly around her head shadow boxed in her Trainer box, lost in her own world.

‘Damn, these are some awful matchups today. Minccino really can’t catch a break. This round she’ll be able to do damage, but any of Mienfoo’s Fighting-Type attacks will deal major damage.’

“Battle, start!”

After the voice came from the loudspeaker, Minccino jumped on top of the benches on her side, and sent a Swift in Mienfoo’s direction. Mienfoo didn’t move at all, but a blue glint appeared within its eyes.

‘Not a bad strategy. Minccino staying out of range seems to be the strategy again, and with the option to use Swift from the start she’ll actually have a method to take Mienfoo out without taking one of those deadly hits.’

The rays of starlight streaked towards Mienfoo like a blur, splitting off into separate paths that traced tens of lines through the car. There seemed to be no area for Mienfoo to dodge, and it looked inevitable that it would take the hit.

But instead of getting hit the blue glint in Mienfoo’s eyes brightened, and Mienfoo gracefully danced through the streaks. Like the rays were stuck in molasses, Mienfoo stayed just ahead of its tempo, and kept itself fresh without taking damage.

In the split second during the rays’ flight, Mienfoo used Detect and calculated the trajectory of each ray using its dynamic vision, mapping out the dangerous zones within an instinctive mental map.

‘That’s a problem. With that as a counter for Minccino’s only ranged attack, she’ll either need to get up close to fight or overwhelm Mienfoo’s mental strength.’

Although Detect had the benefit of allowing Mienfoo to avoid Swift, it wasn’t a flawless Move. Of the various flaws it held, the biggest ones were the intense toll it placed on the user’s mental strength and the reliance on the user’s physical attributes in order to maximize its utilization.

In this aspect, it was much different from another defensive tool, Protect, which primarily functioned using the user’s Essence quality and quantity. But that just meant each were more suited for different users, and in this case Mienfoo could utilize Detect with a high level of proficiency.

‘How much training did they perform in order to get that down? That looked completely instinctual!’

With the rays of Swift pelting the floor of the subway car, Mienfoo didn’t stay still and let Minccino get another attack off. They dashed forwards and jumped onto a bench on the opposite side of the aisle, staying out of reach of Minccino’s tail.

‘What can Minccino do here? Jumping for the rail to reposition would be nice. But if Mienfoo knows any ranged attacks then she’ll be a sitting chinchilla.’

“Drop!” George yelled, and Minccino immediately flung herself from the bench through the gap below and towards the back of the car again. Some Pokémon might have lunged for the center of the car, but Minccino didn’t want to deal with Mienfoo in the open half of the car.

Instead, staying by the benches where she could kite around and try confusing Mienfoo was her preferred strategy.

Seeing Minccino drop, Mienfoo didn’t press the advantage, staying up on the high ground of the bench. With no risk of Minccino attacking, and it being possible that Minccino wouldn’t even reappear for a couple moments, Mienfoo circulated some Essence through their body using Meditate.

Meditate increased Mienfoo’s level of bodily control to an even greater level, while also enhancing their senses slightly, allowing them to pick up on Minccino jumping back over onto the furthest bench at the back.

‘Risky strategy. Although Mienfoo’s enhanced body is a benefit, it’ll take too much of a toll on their mind. At this point, they’ll need to land a hit or Minccino might get the advantage back.’

With the boost from Meditate, Mienfoo launched itself at Minccino, stepping lightly on the backs of the benches and charging across the gap.

On the other side, Minccino reached the top of the bench and met Mienfoo’s charge with a wild Tail Slap to take away the approach angle, but Mienfoo stayed just out of the reach of the first strike.

“Again!” George yelled, and Minccino used another Tail Slap, but fanned again.

“Mienfoo!” Mienfoo yelled, and darted at Minccino in the gap left by the back-swing of her tail.

‘Can Minccino block this? Mienfoo just entered her range and will be able to strike first.’

Seeing her defensive position get breached, Minccino reached up both of her arms in a preemptive block. Sadly, Mienfoo anticipated this, and instead of unleashing a strike into the block dodged to the side, taking Minccino off guard.

Then, they unleashed a quick Fake Out, striking Minccino’s cheek with a heavy paw strike, stunning her and knocking her down onto the ground.

‘No! Minccino won’t be able to dodge a finishing blow here!’

With a practiced precision, Mienfoo jumped down after Minccino, gathering Essence into their paws for a falling Pound on the defenseless Minccino.

But with no hope of dodging or blocking the attack, Minccino retaliated instinctively with a spinning Tail Slap, interrupting Mienfoo’s attempt at a finishing blow and knocking them into the left wall.

“Good! Hit again!” George yelled, and Minccino obliged by striking out with another Tail Slap. This time, Mienfoo’s eyes glowed blue again as it used Detect, barely jumping over the swinging tail.

To every spectator paying attention, it looked like Mienfoo was on the ropes, cornered by Minccino’s rapid-fire Tail Slaps.

‘But that’s not the case at all.’

Although the mental strain of using Detect seemed to have a non-negligible effect, the Move used quite little Essence compared to other defensive Moves, and the distinct lack of tension in Mienfoo’s eyes showed how they still had a lot left in the tank.

Compared to the miniscule usage of Essence from Detect, Tail Slap used a lot more Essence. Every strike needed the reinforcement from Essence in order to be threatening, and by constantly using it Minccino drained her reserves much quicker than before.

‘Minccino’s Essence will bottom out before Mienfoo’s, but as long as Minccino can last until the mental strain is too much she might eke out a win.’

After using five Tail Slaps in a row, Minccino dodged backwards and took more distance back towards the center of the car, noticing the futility of each strike when Mienfoo could predict their trajectories.

Mienfoo jumped right back on top of the benches and followed after Minccino. With the boost from Meditate, they could keep up completely with Minccino’s pace, and maintained the high ground advantage.

With Mienfoo’s chase, Minccino jumped onto the bench closest to the center, and immediately shifted directions with another leap towards the railings. In order to stay away from the dangerous physical attacks that Mienfoo could dish out in close quarters, the easiest place to escape would be into the air.

‘But that leaves—‘

“—her vulnerable for a ranged attack.” A melodic voice interrupted my analysis, mentioning the same weakness I noticed. But at this moment I didn’t care much. The battle had just gotten interesting as Minccino latched onto the rail with her flexible tail and sent another Swift at Mienfoo.

But instead of Mienfoo responding with Detect and the same evasive maneuvers as the start of the fight, they instead charged up and released a Swift of their own.

One beam of starlight erupted from the bottom of the car in the aisle, while a second matched its intensity from high up looking down. Neither of them had a discernible advantage as rays of light collided and exploded into miniature poofs of light.

‘But one clearly has the advantage...’

Regrettably, Minccino’s use of Moves with high Essence consumption, both in this fight and the previous fight against Roggenrola left her Essence reserves nearly bottomed out, while Mienfoo still had the majority of their reserves at their disposal.

This resulted in Minccino’s Swift splitting into much fewer rays of starlight after the initial blast than Mienfoo’s. With each collision the disparity between the two grew further and further until Minccino’s Swift completely disappeared and she needed to block the incoming rays of light.

Schwee! Thik! Thik!

Although Minccino did her best to block, the rays of light pierced through her arms leaving bloody wounds.

“We forfeit!” From the back of the car George yelled, and Mienfoo halted the Pound which they charged during the earlier attack. Hearing the forfeit, Mienfoo dashed over to its Trainer at the other side of the car.

“Minccino is unable to continue! Apprentice Trainer Lea Lexander and Mienfoo have won their second match!”

“Mien!”

“Good job. Don’t release your Meditate now and get acclimated to that feeling, it’ll be our next form of training.” Without any excitement the other Trainer coolly spoke to Mienfoo, but instead of being discouraged the Mienfoo instead seemed more excited.

‘That was a nice fight. I didn’t expect a counter-Swift, but that’s an interaction I haven’t seen before. Even if we left now, that’d be enough to make today a success.’

“That’s it? Nothing else?” The same melodic voice interrupted my thoughts once more.

‘Wait… Did I say that out loud?’

Something felt weird. I definitely didn’t think I said anything. Mostly because my sister would’ve already called me a nerd if she’d heard anything.

‘It’s probably just coincidence.’

“It’s not.” For the third time the voice responded, and this time I finally turned to see who talked.

Facing me, a woman who looked to be some years older than me —maybe a decade if I’m being generous— stared directly into my eyes. The only word which seemed appropriate to describe her was average, and she looked like an amalgamation of every person who I’ve ever seen mixed together.

But that didn’t diminish anything from the aura she exuded. Not aura aura, but the air around her. It felt like she both was completely taking up the entirety of my attention while at the same time being completely invisible.

“How odd…” She waved her hands in front of my face.

“Rude,” I scoffed, slapping her hand away. “Get your hands out of my face.”

“Oh!” She gasped, not seeming to care that I slapped her. Then, she giggled. “Hehe…”

‘This shed seems to be missing some tools.’

“Oh now who’s being rude!” She exclaimed in response. By now, if I couldn’t tell that she was reading my thoughts I’d be an idiot. In normal circumstances, this revelation might have been intensely worrying, but this woman seemed like an airhead with how she immediately responded to everything I thought.

But why wasn’t she responding to what I thought right now? Were there some conditions on what she could hear? Is this unique to her?

My mind spun as I thought about this woman’s power. In this world where Pokémon and Trainers are all capable of supernatural feats, what was the difference between those and mind reading? For all I knew this was just another Trainer’s tricks.

‘I probably should be wary, but this is interesting!’

She looked to be lost in thought, ignoring me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of her and started looking at her like a treasure trove. There were so many possibilities for a mind-reader, especially in battles, so there was no way I’d miss this opportunity to gain more information.

“Ahem!” She coughed. “I got distracted. But you have potential, Jin Blackwood.”

‘Oh wow, how did she learn my name? I didn’t mention anything about that? Also, I have potential? Potential for what?’

“You’ll find out later, I wish we could talk more, but I must leave now.” She continued, and summoned a manila envelope from the air which flew directly into my hands.. “Take this, if you have the desire to become a Trainer after you awaken, follow the instructions within.”

Then, she disappeared into a cloud of smoke, leaving the envelope in my hand as the only evidence that she’d existed.