Day 8 of the trip to Kanto. Sunny.
It was also their second day on the way to Lavender Town. After breakfast, everyone split off to do their own thing.
In truth, Reiji was the only one actually busy. Amber spent the whole trip playing around, while Blaine stayed on deck to keep an eye on her. Arcanine had basically become her full-time babysitter, and the three of them hardly went anywhere else.
After his morning workout and lunch, Reiji went straight back to training. Poliwhirl and the others were all working on new moves, while Rhydon had spent the last two days learning from Blaine's Rhydon. Reiji left it alone and didn't interfere.
The team hadn't changed much over those two days. The only real difference was Kingler. After soaking in the hot spring again, it molted one more time, and its potential rose a little further. At this rate, reaching Champion tier didn't look impossible.
The others couldn't molt, but Kingler could. Every time it shed, it grew larger and its potential climbed with it. It was the same kind of built-in advantage Hanhan had with eating stones. Those race-specific talents were there from the start—trainers just had to learn how to bring them out.
That afternoon, the team split into pairs again and drilled their new moves against each other. If they didn't raise their proficiency first, those moves would be useless in a real fight.
When training ended, they all sat down for dinner together. After eating, Reiji said he was turning in for the night and wouldn't be joining the evening activities. Sitting around with a cranky old man staring at the sea didn't count as entertainment to him.
It wasn't that he had nothing to do. He just didn't want anyone seeing what he planned to do. Blaine would be busy with Amber anyway, so once Reiji got back to his room, he locked the door behind him.
Then he released Gengar, Spinarak, Ditto, and Pelipper. Tonight, he planned to take them down to the ship's underground battle arena and have a little fun.
They were traveling on a luxury liner more than ten decks high. If the upper levels openly hosted trainer events, then there was no way the lower levels weren't hiding gambling, underground matches, and everything else the public wasn't supposed to see.
Pokémon dealing. Illegal match pits. Contraband trading. Anything legal, illegal, or forbidden by the League had a place down there.
Change the name, and it was easy enough to understand. In old movies from his previous life, there were always underground fight clubs, cages, no-rules death matches. Whatever stayed out of sight usually stayed outside the law.
That was exactly where he was headed tonight. He'd stumbled onto the clue the previous evening while wandering past the bar. Some people hadn't gone there to drink at all. They entered the bar, then slipped straight into the kitchen.
That was enough for Reiji to guess what this place really was. The ship had probably been split into two worlds—an upper level for ordinary passengers, and a lower level that held the filth hidden under the cruise ship's polished surface.
He slung on his backpack, let Gengar hide in his shadow, had Ditto leap onto his face and reshape his features, and perched Spinarak on his shoulder. He also hung a black face covering around his neck so he could pull it up whenever he needed it. Then he stepped onto the balcony, shut the window behind him, mounted Pelipper, and left the room.
Pelipper carried him from the upper deck down to one of the middle decks. Reiji recalled it there, entered the elevator with Spinarak still on his shoulder, and rode it all the way to the bar on the lowest passenger level.
If this ship really had an underground black market, the entrance had to be here.
Before doing anything else, he sat down at the bar. A waiter came over at once and asked what he wanted to drink.
"Sir, what can I get you?"
Reiji placed a five-hundred-Pokédollar coin on the counter and crooked a finger. When the waiter leaned closer, he lowered his voice and asked, "How do I get downstairs?"
The waiter understood instantly. He quietly pocketed the tip and led Reiji into the kitchen behind the bar.
"Entry fee is ten thousand," the waiter said, then left.
A man in a chef's uniform guarded the next door. Reiji paid the fee, and the man opened it for him. Behind it was a stairwell leading down, dimly lit by emergency lights.
The door closed the moment Reiji stepped inside. He immediately sent Darkrai ahead to check what was waiting below.
Darkrai returned not long after. "No ambush. Just a lot of masked people."
"Good enough."
Reiji pulled up the face covering and headed down. Three flights later, the cramped stairwell opened into a wide underground square. Stalls and small shops lined the area like a marketplace.
Plenty of people were buying and selling goods, but the loudest place by far was the underground arena. Reiji could hear the shouting before he even got close.
He ignored the roadside stalls and went straight to the arena to watch.
There were several kinds of matches here.
The most popular was the fight tournament. If a trainer could hold the ring for ten straight wins, they earned ten boxes of Pokéblocks or a cash prize of one hundred thousand Pokédollars.
Twenty straight wins got you a random Fighting-type Pokémon Egg. Thirty wins let you choose any Fighting-type Egg the organizers had on hand. And if you could hold the ring from seven in the evening until five the next morning, the prize jumped to fifty million.
Reiji only needed one look at the rules before he lost interest and moved on.
Ten straight wins sounded barely possible. Thirty was absurd. Holding the ring all the way until dawn was even worse.
Even without the organizers deliberately targeting anyone, it would be hard for a single Pokémon to keep going that long. And the organizers definitely weren't stupid enough to casually hand out fifty million. That number was bait, nothing more.
Beyond the fight tournament, there were smaller events too—basically the same kind of light competitions they already held upstairs. Most of them ran once a week, usually backed by sponsors. When no sponsor showed up, the organizers sponsored the event themselves just to keep the crowd lively.
There were also type challenge rankings, complete with longest win streak records for each type. Most of the record holders were Dragon-types.
Which made perfect sense.
Even some of the other type leaderboards had been taken over by Dragons with secondary typings. Dragonite, for example, sat at the top of the Flying-type board with an undefeated streak of sixty-four wins.
Garchomp had locked down the Ground-type board too. And the Dragon-type board itself was even uglier—wall-to-wall Dragon-types tearing into each other for the top spots. Dragonite, which ranked first among Flying-types, was only third on the Dragon board.
Compared to that, the Ghost-type side looked quiet. Only a handful of Ghost-types showed up at all. The rest of the type rankings were more evenly matched, and none of their streaks came close to the Dragon-types. There was no Fairy-type board, though. That type probably hadn't been discovered yet.
As for what these rankings were for, the answer was obvious: reputation. Some trainers wanted the title of strongest in their type, and the organizers were more than happy to hand them that stage. For a name like that, people would fight like mad.
[End of chapter]
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