Chapter 28 Lucas vs Roark
*(Ryan POV)*
I heard him before I saw him.
Not talking eating. That specific sound of someone working through a plate like it owed them something. I pushed open the door to the dining room and there was Lucas, halfway through a full breakfast, Bolt sitting on the chair beside him like a small orange co-conspirator, and a second plate across the table that nobody had touched yet.
"Morning," I said.
Lucas looked up with his mouth full. "Gmmorge." He pointed at the second plate. "Ordered for you. Didn't know what you wanted so I got the same thing."
I looked at it. Eggs, toast, something that might have been mushrooms cooked in butter. "I already ate."
Lucas stopped chewing. Just stopped, fork in the air, and stared at me. "What do you mean you already ate."
"Outside. Earlier. I found a place near the market that opens at six."
He looked at the plate. Looked at me. Back at the plate, like it had personally let him down. "Ryan, I paid for that. Out of my own pocket. For you."
"I didn't know you were going to do that. You could've said something last night."
"I wanted it to be a nice thing that's the whole point of a nice thing, you don't announce it beforehand." He pointed at the empty chair with his fork. "Sit down and eat it anyway, I'm not sending it back."
I sat down because there was no version of this conversation where I came out ahead. The dining room was warm and smelled like coffee and something frying in the back kitchen, and through the window Oreburgh was already moving miners finishing night shifts, a Graveler hauling a heavy cart down the main road, two kids running somewhere with a Shinx struggling to keep up.
Deino came out from under the table and put his head on my leg. I broke off a piece of toast and gave it to him and he chewed it slowly and stayed where he was.
Bolt watched this from his chair. He looked at Deino. Then at Lucas's plate. Then he began moving toward it slowly, the way you move when you're hoping that gradual enough means it doesn't count.
"Bolt," Lucas said, without looking up.
Bolt stopped.
"I can see exactly what you're doing and I've been able to see it since you started."
"Buizel," said Bolt, with the energy of someone who'd been falsely accused.
"That's not a defense, I watched you do it with my own eyes." He pointed at him with his fork. "One more time and you're eating on the floor." He turned back to me. "How early did you actually get up? I came down at seven and you were already gone and your bed was made, which was honestly a little unsettling."
"Maybe five-thirty. Couldn't sleep, went for a walk, ended up just staying out."
"Five-thirty." He said it like I'd spoken a foreign language. "Ryan, the sun wasn't even up at five-thirty."
"It came up while I was walking. It was fine."
"That's that's not the point." He leaned forward on his elbows. "The point is you could've woken me up. I would've come with you."
"You were asleep."
"I would've woken up."
"You were snoring."
Lucas opened his mouth. Closed it. Turned to Bolt, like Bolt might back him up. Bolt looked back at him with his tail very still and his expression carefully neutral. Lucas turned back to me. "I sleep deeply. That's completely different from snoring and I don't know why everyone always confuses the two."
I ate a piece of egg and didn't say anything to that.
He went quiet in the way he always did when something was sitting on him not nervous exactly, Lucas didn't really do nervous, or if he did he buried it somewhere I couldn't see just quieter than usual, the chatter dialing back until there was only him and his food and whatever he was working through.
"Cranidos is the problem," he said finally.
"I know."
"Bolt can beat Geodude, that's not even a question. And Onix is big but Bolt's fast enough to wear it down if we're smart and don't let it set the pace." He pushed some egg around. "But after two fights like that he'll have nothing left I'm not going in there pretending otherwise. So I switch to Starly, and Starly can fly, which helps because Cranidos can't go straight up, but if it lands one clean hit on her she's done. And Magnemite against a normal type is" He stopped and made a face. "Magnemite's not the answer today. I know that."
"You've been thinking about this since last night."
"I've been thinking about it since I watched your battle two days ago and saw what Cranidos did to Deino." He set his fork down. "You had Deino for that. Deino's a completely different situation from anything I have right now. I'm not saying that as a complaint it's just the reality."
Bolt, in the silence that followed, leaned over very slowly and took a piece of egg off Lucas's plate.
Lucas watched him do it. Sat there and watched the whole thing, start to finish. Bolt froze with the egg halfway to his mouth.
"You know what," Lucas said. "Keep it. You're going to need the energy more than I need to make a point." He picked his fork back up. "But we're having a conversation about boundaries when this is over."
Bolt ate the egg very quickly.
I drank my coffee and looked out the window at Oreburgh going about its morning and didn't say anything, because there wasn't anything useful to say. Lucas had already done the thinking. He knew exactly where the difficulty was and he'd been sitting with it since last night, and telling him it would probably be fine wasn't going to change what Cranidos was going to do to his team in a few hours.
Under the table Deino shifted and pressed closer to my leg. I put my hand down and he turned his head into it and stayed there.
---
*(Lucas POV)*
The gym smelled like rock and chalk and old battles.
Lucas had expected something more dramatic some feeling when he walked through the door, nerves or adrenaline or whatever it was supposed to be. Instead he just felt alert. The same way he felt before anything that mattered, like his brain had quietly switched gears without making a thing of it.
He could feel Bolt's ball in his hand even before he reached for it.
Ryan had sat down on the bench behind him. Lucas didn't look back. Looking back wasn't going to help anything.
Roark came out and looked at him the way Roark apparently looked at everyone patient, measuring, already filing things away. Lucas met it straight on because looking away from that kind of look was the worst thing you could do.
"First gym challenge?" Roark asked.
"Yeah."
Roark nodded once and walked to his side of the field. "Three on three. Only the challenger switches. Ready when you are."
Lucas took a breath. Let it out. Looked at Bolt's ball in his hand.
*You good?* he thought, which was a stupid thing to think at a Pokéball. Bolt always seemed to know anyway.
He threw it.
Bolt hit the field with his tail already spinning before he'd fully materialized, eyes on Geodude like he'd been waiting for this since breakfast. Which, knowing Bolt, he probably had.
*Okay,* Lucas thought. *Let's go.*
"Bolt Aqua Jet."
Bolt crossed the field in a second, the hit clean and hard, and Geodude skidded back across the stone with a sound like grinding rock. Lucas watched it land and already knew Geodude was going to curl and roll that was Roark's answer to an aggressive opener, he'd seen it in the recordings Ryan had mentioned and spent two evenings watching on his phone.
"Geodude Rollout."
There it was. Geodude curled and launched and picked up speed and Lucas watched it come and counted the distance and waited, because calling it too early would give Bolt the wrong angle.
There.
"Swift."
Bolt went left and the stars fired mid-movement and caught Geodude coming out of the roll at exactly the wrong moment. The momentum broke completely. Geodude hit the wall and didn't get up.
Something loosened slightly in Lucas's chest. One down.
Roark returned Geodude and reached for his second ball and Lucas already knew what was coming and made himself breathe normally anyway.
Onix came out.
It was different in person than on a screen. On a screen it was big. In person it was *big* in a way that filled the whole field and made everything else feel smaller. He heard a sound from the bench behind him not words, just that specific noise people make when something comes out that they hadn't quite expected and he understood it completely.
He looked at Bolt.
Bolt was looking at Onix with his tail still and his whole body tight and focused. For a second Lucas just watched him this ridiculous fast little water weasel who had never once backed down from anything.
"You good?" he said quietly. Just between them.
Bolt looked at him. "Buizel." Quiet. Like a yes that didn't need more words.
"Okay." Lucas rolled his shoulder. "Aqua Jet. Straight at it, same as before. Let's see what it does."
Bolt launched and the hit connected with Onix's mid-section and Onix made a sound that went through the floor and up through Lucas's feet and barely moved. It absorbed the hit, turned its head toward Bolt, and just looked at him.
Lucas kept his face level.
"Rock Throw," Roark said.
The stone came fast and caught Bolt on the shoulder and sent him skidding halfway across the field. Lucas watched him hit and watched him get back up and felt his chest clench and unclench in about half a second.
"Again," he called. "Keep going, same spot."
Second hit. Onix took it and threw another rock. Third hit lower this time, catching Bolt in the legs, making him stumble before he found his footing. Lucas watched the landings and counted and kept calling Aqua Jet because that was what was working and changing it now would just give Onix time to reset.
Fourth hit.
Bolt was moving slower. Lucas could see it the left shoulder favouring, the tail barely spinning between calls, the way each landing had a little more weight than the last. He was running on will, and Lucas knew what that looked like because he'd seen it before and it always looked exactly like this.
But Onix was slowing too. Movements heavier, reactions a fraction late.
"Again," Lucas said. "One more."
Fifth Aqua Jet.
Onix swayed first one segment, then the whole length of it and came down slowly, and the floor shook when it hit, and the bench behind him erupted, and Lucas didn't hear any of it because he was already looking at Bolt.
Bolt was standing on the field with his left side held carefully and his legs trembling and his tail doing one slow spin. He looked at Lucas across the field.
*I'm still here.*
Lucas knew. He also knew what was coming next, and what Bolt had left, and that those two things didn't match.
Roark sent out Cranidos.
Cranidos hit the field and found Bolt immediately and didn't look anywhere else. Lucas had watched this in Ryan's battle. He knew how fast it was, how hard it hit, that it didn't stop once it had a target.
He looked at Bolt.
Bolt looked back.
Lucas crouched down right there on the field, just crouched down to Bolt's level, because this wasn't the kind of thing you said standing up. "You gave me everything," he said quietly. "Both of them. That was you, not me." He held out the ball. "I've got it from here."
Bolt looked at him. Then at Cranidos. Then back at Lucas and his tail spun once, not slow, a real spin, quick and sharp and he walked forward and let himself be returned.
Lucas stood up.
He took a breath and reached for Arc's ball and tried not to think about the math, because he already knew the math and thinking about it more wasn't going to change it.
Arc came out fast and sharp, wings already moving, eyes on Cranidos.
"Cranidos Headbutt," Roark said.
Cranidos launched and Arc cut hard right and it missed, the impact on the stone cracking through the whole arena.
"Aerial Ace," Lucas called.
Arc came down fast and the hit connected and Cranidos shook it off and turned and found her again, and Lucas's stomach dropped because he could see it it hadn't even flinched. Clean hit, absorbed, moved on.
"Headbutt."
This time the distance was wrong and Arc didn't have the room and Cranidos hit her and she went down hard and rolled and came back up with one wing dragging and her eyes not fully focused. Lucas knew before she even looked at him.
She looked at him anyway. Trying to hold position, wings working, telling him she was still in it.
"I know," Lucas said. "It's okay. Come back."
He returned her.
He stood on the field with Magnemite's ball in his hand, the arena completely quiet, and thought about breakfast that morning running this battle in his head four times and knowing every time that Cranidos was where it fell apart. Then he threw the ball anyway, because that was the only thing left to do.
Magnemite came out and hit Cranidos with everything it had and Cranidos hit back once and Magnemite went down.
The referee raised his hand.
Lucas looked at the field for a moment. His face felt completely normal. That was the strange thing he'd expected something to collapse, some big wave of it, but instead there was just quiet. Like a door closing gently in a house where everyone was already asleep.
He knew what had gone wrong. He'd known before he walked in. He just hadn't been able to fix it today.
Roark crossed the field and Lucas met him in the middle.
"Good battle," Roark said. "Your Buizel is strong. He took down two of mine."
"Yeah," Lucas said. "He did. That part went exactly how I wanted."
Roark looked at him with that same measuring expression. "You know what the problem was."
"Bolt had nothing left for Cranidos. I should've protected him better through Onix so he had something in reserve." Lucas held his gaze. "I knew that going in. I just couldn't solve it today."
Roark nodded slowly. "Come back when you can." He said it simply, the way you said something that was just true. "The badge will be here."
Lucas nodded and walked toward the exit.
---
*(Ryan POV)*
I was already at the door when he got there.
We came out into the afternoon and stood on the street outside the gym and Oreburgh went about its business around us like nothing had happened a Ponyta pulling a cart down the main road, two men arguing outside a shop with a Geodude planted stubbornly between them, kids somewhere being loud in a way that echoed off the stone buildings.
Lucas had his hands in his pockets and he was looking at the street and I let it sit, because some things needed a minute before they became words.
After a while he said, "Bolt did everything right. Two full battles, full power, didn't stop once. That was exactly what I asked him for." He paused. "The problem was me. I kept him in because I thought one more hit would be enough and it never is, it's never just one more hit. Should've switched him out after Onix the moment I could see he was running low."
I thought about my own battle two days ago. About the decisions I'd made without knowing if they were right until after. "You'll know next time."
"Yeah." Not deflecting, just taking it as true. "I'll know next time." He looked at the gym door. "I'm going to stay. Train until I can actually answer the Cranidos problem and then come back and beat him properly. Bolt deserves to walk out of there with that badge, not just get close."
I looked at him. Thought about the road north, about going alone for the first time since the route out of Sandgem, about all the empty space between here and Eterna.
"Okay," I said.
Lucas glanced at me sideways. "That's really all you've got? I just told you I'm not coming with you and you said okay."
"What do you want me to say instead?"
He thought about it genuinely, staring at the Geodude who was still refusing to move for the two men outside the shop. "I don't know. Something that sounds like you actually had a reaction."
"I had a reaction. The reaction was okay."
Lucas looked at me for a second and then laughed short and real and shook his head. "You're a strange person, Ryan, I hope you know that." He started walking and I fell in beside him. "Come on, I need to eat something, I can't process losing on an empty stomach."
"We ate two hours ago."
"Post-loss food is a completely separate category from regular food and I will not be explaining this more than once." He glanced back at Deino padding along behind me. "See, Deino gets it. Look at him, he's already thinking about food."
I looked down at Deino. Deino looked back up at me with an expression that communicated nothing whatsoever about food.
"He's not thinking about food," I said.
"You don't know that."
"I do actually, I know him pretty well at this point."
"You know what, let's ask him." Lucas stopped and crouched in front of Deino with complete seriousness. "Deino. Food. Yes or no."
Deino looked at Lucas. Then at me. Then back at Lucas.
Then he turned and started walking toward the main street.
Lucas stood up and pointed. "See."
"He walked away from you."
"He walked *toward food.* That's a yes." Lucas caught up to Deino and they walked side by side, which I'd never seen Deino do with anyone but me, and I stood there for a second just watching it before I followed them.
One badge between us now. One more day in Oreburgh, maybe two.
Then I'd be going alone.
I put my hands in my pockets and caught up.