Chapter 15: Potent Planning
Booth enters the Tiered Trainer Center and makes his way through the lobby. Fridays always have more trainers coming to the center than other days, but today is busier than normal. This is all because of the team competition on Saturday.
The pokemon team competitions are only held once a month and are held for two days. The team competitions pull in about as many spectators as the weekly pokemon contests do on the first day. The finals on Sunday is what brings the most people. There is nearly double attendance on the day of the finals.
What attracts tiered trainers are the prizes. In addition to cash prizes, teams that make it into the top three get discounts on tiered trainer gear, and access to the premium practice rooms at the Tiered Trainer Center for a whole month.
The prizes may not be much to experienced trainers, but to Tier 1 trainers the benefits are quite generous. By winning the competition, Tier 1 trainers can greatly accelerate their progress. Just being able to afford a better Integrator makes their training and battling a lot better.
The beginner Integrator simply lets you connect with pokemon. While, advanced Integrators are said to improve your actual mental ability. So with the competition tomorrow, trainers can't help but be excited.
The energy in the air reaches Booth and makes him feel excited as well. Booth takes his time walking down the walkway and finds the practice rooms.
Ben is waiting in the practice room that Booth enters. Booth doesn't waste any time and starts getting warmed up.
Today Ben is giving Booth a lesson about evasion. Booth knows a good deal about how to position himself, but he still has a lot to learn when it comes to evasion. When Booth finishes his basic warmup, Ben starts explaining the concept of evasion to him.
"You may think the purpose of evasion is to avoid attacks. But instead what we want to do is avoid certain situations. By playing around these situations, it's likely we can avoid taking as much damage, and find more opportunities to deal damage ourselves.
This is the reason I like to play pokemon with lots of mobility. Being mobile allows you to constantly change the situation you are in, even if it's only a little bit."
"Is there a reason you use the word mobility instead of speed?" Booth asks.
"Yes, there is. While a pokemon's speed is related to your pokemon's mobility, it's not the same. To put it in a way you'll understand, if there's a small pokemon and a large pokemon that both have the same speed, which one do you think is more mobile."
Booth nods as he understands the question, "It would be the small pokemon. I'm guessing this doesn't only apply to size, right?"
"That's right. A pokemon's size, shape, and abilities all affect a pokemon's mobility. I believe the best way to learn how to use a pokemon is to figure out how they move. This will help you plan your attacks, prepare your defenses, and of course, be evasive."
After teaching Booth what to keep in mind, the two start the practical part of the lesson. In order to teach evasion, Ben teaches a similar concept to Booth's court positioning. The main difference is that Booth uses court positioning to gain an advantage through offensive pressure. While Ben uses the concept of evasion to gain an advantage through mobility.
Booth and Ben spar for a couple hours, trading moves and learning better habits. Booth quickly learns what he needs to do to avoid the worst situations.
Perhaps the greatest lesson Booth learned from his sparring is that there's a lot of waiting. To master the concept of evasion, you have to know what situations to look out for. And the only way to know for sure, is to see them first. Once Booth discovered this information, he was able to relax a lot more and just play patiently.
"Good job, Booth! I think you got this. If you can use what you learned for the tournament tomorrow, we might even make it to the finals on Sunday."
"I'll do my best!" Booth says in high spirits.
---
Booth arrives at the venue for the Team Competition early in the morning. He stands around the entrance and waits while he looks for his teammates.
The venue for the Team Competition is at Clanton Arena. The size of the Arena is a little smaller than the Pokemon Contest Hall. The stands around the field at Clanton Arena are larger though. This is because the Pokemon Contest Hall has two different stages for multiple performances.
The arena can seat around 8000 people in the stands. It doesn't normally fill that many seats for Tier 1 events, but it can easily do so for Tier 2 events and above.
As Booth is looking around he sees Ben and Damon walking towards him with some extra drinks.
Damon asks Booth a question after handing him a drink.
"Hey, Booth, how are you feeling?"
"Hey, I feel a little nervous, but pretty excited overall."
"I'm feeling pretty excited myself. This will be my first time doing a team competition." Damon says cheerfully. "I think we have a pretty good team, so we should have a good shot at making it to the final day."
"For sure." Ben adds, "Our team has done great so far, making it to Sunday should be easy."
A few minutes later Tyler joins the group. The team gets together and talks for a while. At 8:30 the competition staff start letting everyone into the Arena. The trainers check the bracket schedule and make their way to the stands. Booth's team doesn't have a battle until later, so they find their way to the stands.
The Team Competition has almost 50 teams attending this time. The tournament is single elimination, and continues until there are only eight teams left.
On average, the length of a Tier 1 team battle should only take around 4-8 minutes. If everything goes smoothly, all the battles should be done before 3.
The first match starts as soon as both teams are ready on the field. The stands are mostly quiet. This is because most of the people in the stands are trainers who are competing in the tournament. Normal spectators usually come to see the tournament in the second round after lunch.
Booth watches the battles, taking notes of the maneuvers he likes. After watching for almost half an hour, Booth finds an excellent Sneasel trainer. Damon notices Booth paying attention to the Sneasel trainer and tells Booth about him.
"That Sneasel trainer is Reed. He actually used to be a traditional trainer before becoming a tiered trainer. He was a good battler in traditional battles too. He could always find the right answer to any situation. His firm and unrelenting battle style would have made him an expert amongst traditional trainers if he continued doing traditional battles.
But, about a month ago he started feeling dissatisfied with the nature of traditional battles and switched to tiered battles. In any case, I'm really excited to see him battle. The battles he's in are always really intense." Damon says.
"It seems like you've seen quite a few of his battles already." Booth replies.
"Yeah, I've tried to adapt a lot of his battle style to my own. When I was getting started as a tiered trainer, watching his battles helped me a lot."
Booth watches Reed's battle more closely.
'When Reed uses power in an interaction, he uses it almost all at once. He doesn't seem to be wasting any of it either. He is confident that he can subdue the opponent with each interaction, and that's why he can leave so little power in reserve.
He really does deserve the title of unrelenting too. He takes one opening and knocks out the opponent every time. After he uses his power, he is weaker, but not defenseless. He's always able to keep enough power in reserve to pull him out of a tight spot if he needs to. I can definitely see why Damon respects him.'
Booth enjoys watching Reed's battling all the way to the end. Booth's team watches a couple more matches until they are called down to the field around 10 o'clock.
Booth's team walks down from the stands and lines up on their side of the field. The other team also reaches their side and gets ready for the battle.
"Alright, we'll have Ben and Booth lead for this game. As always we'll want to start gaining momentum quickly. First, I want you guys to take the field center. Even if we have to take some damage for it, we need to get that first." Damon sees everyone understand and says. "That's it then, here we go."
Damon gives a thumbs up to the judge and the other team does the same. The judge checks the field one last time then gives the teams a countdown to start the match.
Ben and Booth listen and prepare their Integrators with their fingers ready on the switch.
"Start!"
Their team's first match in the competition begins!
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