Wanted an excuse to keep practicing with this Sonic Battle-lookin' art style while also having Pokemon on the brain lately, which caused me to remember that the Goodra on my competitive team back during Gen 6 was nicknamed Ulala because Goodra's head tendrils kinda look like Ulala's hair.

I'll always remember the brief time I spent in the competitive scene very fondly because I basically lived the plot of every sports movie known to man, but way cooler cuz the sport was Pokemon. It all started back in high school learning that a classmate of mine named Scott was organizing tournaments at the town library. It somehow managed to get back to him that I was planning to go to the next one, and he somehow expected it wasn't gonna get back to ME when he talked shit about it, saying I "didn't belong" there, that I was bad at the game. And the unfortunate thing is that he was technically right. At the time, I walked the path directly between being a normal competitive player and being what the competitive players called a "Karen," I primarily focused on just using my favorite Pokemon, not necessarily ones that won a lot, I built teams the same way I build decks in card games, which is the same way characters in the Yugioh anime build decks, I wanted it so that if someone who didn't know me looked at my team they could still kinda get an idea what I'm about, but I would still breed them for perfect IVs, EV train them, and at least attempt to give them an optimal loadout, which made it REALLY frustrating to get other people involved in team building. I distinctly remember one time in particular I was on Pokemon Showdown, which was a good way to test out a team before going through the effort of making it in-game, and I asked in the public chat if anyone could recommend a moveset for Mr. Mime and got my throat absolutely jumped down, cuz why would I POSSIBLY wanna use such a trash mon? I explained that it's because he's my favorite, then I was asked why I'd be asking for a moveset recommendation if my only real concern is using my favorites, then I explained that I still wanna have the highest chance of winning with my favorites, then I was told that if I want the highest chance of winning to not use Mr. Mime, and I swear to fuck never before or since have I ever wanted more to swing a bitch around like Manray did Patrick that one time. I don't wanna hear any "can't read" jokes in Yugioh fandom ever again, Yugioh fans don't complain about the amount of text on the cards because they CAN'T read it, they complain cuz in the modern game everyone plays like twenty cards in one turn and they know fully well if they actually stopped to read every single one of them to know how not to bone themselves you'll just complain that a turn that's already taking all day is now taking all week. Competitive Pokemon players are the ones that ACTUALLY can't read! Present them with the sentence "I want to use my favorites but still maximize my chance of winning within the bubble of using said favorites" and they will only read half of it and ignore the other half! Pokemon Showdown userbase circa 2013, go fuck yourselves.

So yeah, Scott was technically right, I didn't exactly win most of my Wi-Fi battles, but HE didn't know that! I had never battled him in Pokemon! And even more unfortunately, he had the experience to back up his smugness. Not only did he have a reputation for being the local champion, but during Gen 5 he allegedly had the highest online ranking in America for a while. I say "allegedly" because even back then I had no idea how anyone would have known that, as far as I know there was no way to check where you stand on an online leaderboard in-game, but multiple people much closer to him than I was corroborated the claim, nobody really challenged him on that claim, so I always assumed they just knew something I didn't. So even if said claim was total bullshit, at the very least he was considered that good at the game by the people he played with, and he definitely saw it that way too since he didn't even participate in his own tournaments, no, the chance to battle him was the PRIZE for WINNING the tournament! Yeah, he made himself the Pegasus of this proverbial Duelist's Kingdom! Maybe he had the highest online ranking in America during Gen 5, maybe he didn't, what mattered was that he THOUGHT he did, he ACTED like it, and SOMEONE needed to take him down a peg!

I had about a month before the tournament, so I used that time to get coached by a friend me and him had in common who also played with him, he gave me tips on the metagame, recommended some mons to use, I workshopped teams on Pokemon Showdown and manually recorded each win and loss until I had a team that won the majority of the sample games, then had my sister on her copy of Gen 6 help me breed up the mons I needed, it was basically the training montage of this movie. On the day of the tournament, I arrived at the library. Even went the extra mile with the theatrics, wearing a Charmander tee shirt adorned with crappy pins made of sculpy resembling the Gen 1 gym badges, a Genesect flip-coin from the card game attached to my 3DS with double-sided tape, and a belt with six foam balls glued to it painted to look like the specific Pokeballs my team were in. I looked like a fucking dork, and that's putting it nicely, and keep in mind I was around fifteen or sixteen, definitely old enough that I should have felt more compelled not to go out of my way to look like the biggest dork possible, but in hindsight it ended up working as just as much of a play as anything done in the game, with a similar risk vs reward factor; Pokemon has a degree of luck to it, even with the best team possible and never making a single bad decision, victory is never guaranteed. If I went all-out with being a fucking dork only to get my ass beat and make Scott's point for him, I was gonna look like an even bigger dork than otherwise. But on the other hand, Scott was basically Kaiba in real life, hell before this I knew him from the same library's Yugioh play and trade events where he ran meta against nine year olds like a fucking cretin. He was a kid who evidently took this game VERY seriously. So if I won, it would be pretty embarrassing for him that he not only got his ass beat and proven wrong, but he got his ass beat and proven wrong by the biggest fucking dork in the room.

I went into the library conference room with my 3DS in hand and my team saved to my Battle Box:

Lead: Cloyster - Nickname: Junior, after the baby scallop from the classic Spongebob episode Rockabye Bivalve

Special Sweeper: Mega Alakazam - Nickname: Dumbledore, after the bearded headmaster of Hogwarts from Harry Potter (before you jump down my throat remember it was 2013, J.K. Rowling hadn't opened her mouth yet)

Physical Sweeper: Aegislash - Nickname: Lula, after Dave the Barbarian's talking sword

Special Wall: Goodra - Nickname: Ulala, after the main character of Space Channel 5

Physical Wall: Ferrothorn - Nickname: AudreyII, after the killer plant from Little Shop of Horrors

Cleaner: Talonflame - Nickname: Grayson, after Dick Grayson, Batman's sidekick

At first there wasn't too much of a challenge considering some of the contestants were the same nine year olds from the Yugioh events he ran meta against, (and no I didn't feel like the cretin I just accused him of being for beating their asses into oblivion and not making any attempt to level the playing field because this wasn't a casual play and trade event, this was a TOURNAMENT, completely different environment, if they were between my foot and Scott's ass then they were getting kicked first) but eventually I did take a loss from another classmate of mine, so a kid my age, I remember his name was Clayton cuz every time anyone would say his name my brain would immediately play a sound clip in my mind of Tarzan in Kingdom Hearts going "ooh ooh NOT Clayton!" Not-Clayton was running a very unconventional team. Most of his mons were common to see in competitive play like Tyranitar and Wash-Rotom, but none of them had their generally-accepted optimal loadout. The mons were meta but the builds weren't. I don't even think he was trying that hard to win, I'm pretty sure he was just playing casually like I was originally planning to do cuz In theory this team should have been pretty bad, but that ended up working to his advantage when I couldn't actually predict anything he was going to do, every decision I made was under the assumption that he was about to use one move when he actually used another. Through a combination of that and some sheer dumb luck, he beat me. At that moment I knew what it felt like to get beat up by Jar Jar. Thankfully, this was double-elimination, so I wasn't out yet. I worked my way back up through the loser's bracket, eventually it was me against Not-Clayton again, for all the marbles. This time I had a better idea of what to expect and was able to adapt to his drunken-fist. I won, but it still wasn't over. I had to claim my prize: THE BATTLE WITH SCOTT!

I approached the table at the front of the room he perched himself at, sat down across from him, found his character on the PSS and challenged him to a battle. Everyone else in the room that cared how this went and didn't already start heading home or waiting outside for their ride crowded around us, watching over our shoulders as

I...

kicked...

Scott's...

ASS!!!

Yeah yeah, I know it was just a children's video game, that all the guy did was say some mean words he didn't even mean for me to know about, and the guy we're talking about is someone I haven't been made to interact with in well-over a decade, who if you tracked him down and asked about this story probably has no memory of it even happening, and almost definitely doesn't reflect on his personality today. In the grand scheme of things this whole spiel didn't actually mean much to basically anybody, you just kinda have to take my word for it that in the moment it was very satisfying. So much so it kinda killed my interest in competitive Pokemon. I went to a few more of his tournaments, wasn't trying as hard to win as I was that one as by then I had made my point, but still managed to get first place one more time and then second place a couple times, a downright good record, but it was just like...now what? Going back to casual play just wasn't the same after living the plot to a Rocky movie, and I don't mean the first one where he loses the fight but wins in life, I mean the one where he ends the Cold War by punching it. Might as well retire with my record in-tact. Roll credits.

Color alt as a reward for reading all that: https://images2.imgbox.com/b4/f6/cFrMdWvM_o.png