The Ghost Specialist

“Redi! You can do it!”

Sam screamed at the top of his lungs, trying to force his voice over the clamor of the crowd. His hands gripped the railing, and Cyndaquil hung off of it, shouting her name just as hard. For a moment, her fervor made it seem she was about to topple forward, but Mankey jumped up to pull her back, and then both Pokémon returned to shouting, too.

But Redi didn’t hear them, as her face was scrunched up with worry that replaced her usual smug confidence. Teddiursa was battered, poisoned, and exhausted, but he wasn’t giving up just yet.

“Fury Swipes!” she ordered.

The little bear leaped up and slashed downwards. His arms spiraled forward like a child trying to maintain their balance, but he was trying to absolutely eviscerate his foe. Unfortunately, the opposing Pokémon cackled and merely shifted out of the way. Sam groaned horribly and barely resisted putting his face into his hands.

Any other day, and he would have been jealous of the trainer with the Gastly on the field. Now? Now, Sam was just getting frustrated.

“It’s immune! You have to figure out a different way to damage it!” he yelled again.

His Pokémon matched his volume, but Redi still didn’t hear.

“Teddiursa, you just need to land one strong hit on its central body,” Redi said, eyeing the darkened orb in the center of Gastly’s gaseous form. “I believe in you. Please! Just one hit, one hit and you can—”

“Go ahead and finish it off, Gastly,” its trainer said.

Redi was in the top eight. She and Teddiursa had utterly destroyed her previous opponent—a pair of Bellsprout whose vines had been torn up by Teddiursa’s claws. This trainer was a completely different story in just how difficult he’d been to fight. First, an Ekans had poisoned Teddiursa, and then a Tentacool had worn him down. Now, there was a Gastly, where Redi had not put two-and-two together to realize that if Teddiursa landed a hit, any extra damage of the attack would be worthless against the Ghost Type.

“Redi, please!” Sam shouted, but his yells continued to go unheard.

Gastly dove down in the air, rushing to where Teddiursa was swaying where he stood. It popped up right in front of his face and shouted, causing the bear to flinch back in surprise. This wasn’t even a move; it was just a frightening shout. Still, with just how worn out he was thanks to everything else, Teddiursa fell back, and he did not get up.

“It’s over,” Sam groaned.

His Pokémon groaned alongside him, covering their faces with hands and paws.

On the side of the field, a referee swung down a flag.

“Teddiursa is unable to battle. Trainer Meredith has no more usable Pokémon. Trainer Edgar wins!” the referee called out.

Redi stared at the field, seemingly lost under the weight of her own defeat. Her opponent, Edgar, laughed and hugged his Gastly, the poisonous smoke surrounding the Pokémon wrapping around his chest as he wrapped his arms around the central sphere.

She was never going to win this fight, Sam could tell. Gastly had done well to manipulate her into thinking it was dodging moves to avoid damage, but truly, Teddiursa knew no attacks that could have bypassed its Ghost Type immunity.

The audience clapped around Sam, cheering for a battle well-played. To reach the Top 8 with only one Pokémon was incredibly impressive, and to lose solely because of blatant immunity meant Redi could have progressed further against a different opponent.

Yet, Sam wasn’t paying attention to the crowd’s reactions, nor did he share the same excited feeling as the rest of them. Instead, he was just worried about his friend, who stiffly shook Edgar’s hand before running off the field.

“We’re going after her,” he declared.

Cyndaquil let loose a squeak, immediately agreeing with his plan. Mankey, though, looked a little disappointed they wouldn’t be watching any more battles. He still followed along.

Sam pushed through the crowd, squeezing through and apologizing for any unintentional bumps into them. Once he reached the staircase, he dashed into the arena’s interior and ran deeper inside.

“Redi!” he shouted.

He got no response, so Sam kept running. He searched the competitor’s rooms. He searched where the nurses healed Pokémon. And he searched the stands, hoping she had returned to watch the rest of the tournament.

But, no matter where Sam looked, he did not find Redi. Out of options, he returned to her aunt’s place out of hope she would head back there.

Day turned to dusk, and dusk turned to night. Sam sat and waited in the living room for Redi to come back, but as the moon passed through the sky and the sun began to peek over the horizon, Redi still did not return.

When the tournament ended the next day, the final four participants of the tournament were presented with a prize. Each one of them got a cash fund to help support them on their respective journeys, and they got a selection of berries, TMs, and the first place winner even got a Pokémon Egg.

However, the overall winner did the unexpected and turned down that egg, surprising everyone involved. He was the same boy who had beat Redi—Edgar—and he didn’t want a Pokémon on his team that wasn’t a Poison Type.

So, instead, the second-place beginner trainer got the egg, and he did not look happy about it.

Sam was amused when the second-place finalist’s face twisted up in disapproval when the egg was passed to him within its protective case.

If you don’t win, you’ve lost. Right, Xavier?

He watched this all happen from within Redi’s aunt’s home. The only thing he received in exchange was a simple participation ribbon. It was akin to something someone might earn from winning a Pokémon Contest, but it was clearly labeled to mark it as a prize for placing in the Top-32. Overall, it was pretty useless.

He was tired, but Sam refused to go to sleep. He needed to make sure Redi was okay. Cyndaquil nudged him, trying to encourage him to nap while she kept watch instead. He refused; after all, Sam wouldn’t sleep until he found her if she had gone missing, too.

Mankey slipped out the back a few times, but he always stayed nearby. Sam drank the coffee that Redi’s aunt offered. He could feel the bags under his eyes, but he refused to fall unconscious.

“Redi will be back,” her aunt would say, speaking as if she knew that to be the undeniable truth. “Give her time. Her loss is not anything to mourn. Instead, celebrate how high she managed to place.”

But Sam stayed up, and dawn crested back into day. Every movement felt sluggish as he sat in the living room and waited for Redi to show back up.

Then, a click.

The handle of the front door twisted open.

Sam shot to his feet and snapped his gaze to the entrance.

Redi stepped inside, yawning and looking just as tired as he was.

“Redi!” he shouted, honestly in slight disbelief.

The girl blinked and turned to Sam, looking surprised that he was there.

“Sam! Good, you’re here!” She had a bag slung over her shoulder that she dug into while quickly moving forward. “It took me all night, but I managed to finally trade for it. You’d be surprised just how rare it was even though no one else seems to care about it.”

“What? What are you talking about?” Sam muttered as Redi moved closer. “I thought you had run off! I thought you were upset you lost!”

She paused when approaching him and stared at Sam, confused.

“Why would I be upset? I managed to advertise my family’s company, and I managed to beat you!”

The grin on her face was as wide as ever, and Sam couldn’t stop himself from smacking his own forehead.

“All this time, you were...”

“Trading!” she cheerfully replied. “Didn’t get much for placing as high as I did, but I did get an exclusive ribbon, of which there’s only eight in the world. Took some asking around, took some looking for favors, but I managed to trade it away to get you this. Here!”

Grinning, she pulled out the object she was holding to present it to Sam. Sam stared at it in complete silence. It took him several seconds to gather up any words.

“A... Curse TM,” he said, dazed.

“Yeah! I heard you talking about it, and I thought it wasn’t fair that I got something out of this tournament while you didn’t.”

She held it out forward a bit more, encouraging Sam to take it. He stood there, not moving, before falling back onto the couch to laugh.

“What? You don’t want it?”

Redi stomped a foot, annoyed, but Sam just threw his head back and laughed even harder.

“No... no! It’s not that, it’s just... You were gone all night. Considering you disappeared after your loss, you understand why I might have been worried, right?”

“Oh. ...Huh.”

Redi moved to sit down on a reclining chair. There was a flash of light, and Teddiursa released himself from his Pokéball to hop up and sit next to her.

“I didn’t think about that. I mean, yeah, I was upset, but I went to the Pokémon Center to heal Teddiursa instead of using the nurses at the arena. I felt like they would have better supplies to treat him. He was poisoned, after all,” she said.

Sam shook his head.

No wonder I couldn’t find her.

He sat there, enjoying the silence and the knowledge that his friend was actually okay before he spoke next.

“You know, for such a greedy person, you’re surprisingly not that materialistic.”

Redi puffed up her face in annoyance.

“Hey! I’m not greedy!” she shouted. “I’m filial.”

Sam snorted. Redi walked over just so she could smack him in the arm. She stood over him, glaring at him like a mother scolding her child, before the pair of them burst into laughter.

“So, what now?” Sam asked once they had calmed down.

Redi went silent and inched back to her chair.

“I don’t know.”

The Beginner’s Tournament had ended. That had been their shared goal before now.

She plopped back down, the sudden motion caused Teddiursa to bounce up a few inches into the air.

“There’s the local Gym, which Jasmine runs,” Sam said. “That’s full of Steel Type Pokémon, which I think my team can handle. You, though—”

“Teddiursa is tough!”

“Teddiursa only knows Normal Type moves. It’s why you lost to Gastly.”

Redi frowned but didn’t comment. Sam started to think.

Redi’s amazing at training her Pokémon. Just a week ago, Cyndaquil beat Teddiursa, but now she managed to get halfway through an entire tournament with just him at her side! I know I could probably beat Olivine Gym with a bit more time to get stronger, but what about Redi? How powerful would she get in that time?

“So, uh,” Redi unconsciously scratched at her arm. “What did you mean by ‘Teddiursa only knows Normal Type moves?’”

Sam frowned.

“Olivine Gym specializes in the Steel Type. Steel Types are highly defensive Pokémon that resist Normal Type damage.”

“Oh. Okay.”

A few seconds passed.

“And when you said it’s why I lost to Gastly?”

“Ghost Type Pokémon are completely immune to Normal Type moves. It was tricking you by moving around, pretending to be vulnerable to Teddiursa’s attacks to make it so you wouldn’t change your strategy,” he answered.

She nodded, thinking about it and pursing her lips in consideration. Sam blinked, then he turned her way, staring at her in disbelief.

“Did you... did you not know?” he asked.

“Alright, look. In my defense, most of that stuff is pretty boring,” Redi said.

“Redi, the Type chart is the most basic of basic things you can know!”

“So what? Does it even matter if we’re just going to rely on pure strength, anyway?” she shouted.

Sam opened his mouth to respond, but then he closed it. He didn’t have anything nice to say, after all. Instead, he sat up on the couch to stare Redi in the eye. She refused to meet his gaze.

“...How much do you know about Pokémon?” he asked cautiously, needing her to give a truthful answer.

“...Not as much as you,” she mumbled.

Sam blinked yet again.

“But you trained Teddiursa so well?”

“My family is all about training Pokémon. My entire life, I’ve helped out with making sure everyone was up-to-par for manual labor when it comes to building. We’ve got Machop, Machoke, Ursaring, and Teddiursa here...”

“But you never bothered to look into what’s needed to be a Pokémon trainer before you left home,” Sam concluded.

She once again nodded her head.

Redi is great at training her Pokémon. I’m not.

Thanks to the New Pokédex, I know a lot about Pokémon. She doesn’t.

We’re each bad at what the other is good at. We’re each good at what the other is bad at.

“Redi,” Sam said slowly, putting the pieces together in his mind. “I have an idea. What if we—”

“Let’s travel together!” Redi shouted. “Look, Sam. I’m great at training. No offense, but you aren’t. Mankey should have put up way more of a fight against Teddiursa than he did.”

Nearby, Mankey snorted, offended. Redi ignored him to hop up and pace.

“But, I’m also super bad at knowing what to do in battle,” she continued. “Yeah, brute strength is great, but if Ghost Types are immune to it, then what’s the point? So, instead, if we travel together to help one another—”

“We can fill in each other’s gaps and be stronger for it,” Sam finished.

Redi paused and turned to Sam. She now had just the biggest of smiles on her face.

“Not just that,” she said. “You know how much money we could save? Pool together our cash, and we could buy bulk supplies for both of our teams and not have to pay anywhere near as much!”

Sam couldn’t help it. The fact that she so quickly resorted to talking about money made him laugh.

“Hey!” she shouted.

“No, no. You’re completely right,” he said, waving her off.

Sam looked up at Redi, grinning as much as she was.

“Let’s do it. Let’s take on all of Johto together,” he said.

He stood up, approaching Redi and offering his hand. She looked at it for only a second before clasping it to shake, squeezing Sam’s arm.

“To partnership!” she said.

“To partnership,” Sam wheezed. Her grip was painful.

“And we already know our first step: defeating Olivine Gym!” Redi declared. “So! Follow me outside, mister! I don’t care how tired you are, we’re going to start training right now!”