Pokemon BW fic
Chapter Six: Strength
What was strength?
The ability to do what he wanted, perhaps. What Cheren wanted was to beat the Champion. Simple. Perhaps strength was a measurement that only had meaning subjectively--strong enough for x.
If he had strength, then he could do whatever it was he decided to do next.
But was his particular type of strength conducive to the things he would want? Being a strong Pokémon trainer would be useless if he wanted to be, say, an aerospace engineer, except for the momentary prestige of fame. Most adults stopped battling once they stopped travelling, except if they were in the League or as a weekend thing.
He could join the League. He could research Pokémon like Professor Juniper, he was smart enough. He could work in any of the industries supporting trainers, like his father, the boisterous but brilliant Pokéball engineer.
So he wanted to be with Pokémon forever from the sound of it and if he was smart enough, which he was, and strong enough, any number of doors would open for him. Touko was right about the Champion being full of shit.
Without his Pokémon, he was smart, but was he strong? Strong in body no, beyond being able to put up with the annoyances of travel. But he had never understood the martial artists he saw training in the mountains. The strength a human body was capable of was insignificant compared to that one gained by harnessing the strength of Pokémon.
The furthest his interest in the subject went was training his body to ignore the annoyances and weaknesses of the flesh, but that wasn’t much of a long-term or primary goal. He didn’t want to be a monk and technology was such that he couldn’t become a cyborg yet.
What did people talk about, emotional strength? That just seemed to mean not crying a lot, the way people used it.
What other kinds of strength were there? His Servine had taken to rolling his eyes every time he saw he had gotten stuck ruminating on the question again.
“Am I strong?” he asked Touko. He trusted her to have a more balanced view of reason and emotion. “Me, not my Pokémon.”
“Of course. You have… confidence, conviction, ambition, will. That’s a kind of strength too.”
Cheren agreed, but added, “Ambition tends to get a bad rep.”
“Screw ‘em.”
Professor Juniper always said opposing viewpoints had value, but he too had never seen any reason to believe the people who were wrong.
Touko stood out with him as he thought, gazing at the dark clouds instead of going back inside the Pokémon Center. It wasn’t like the stars were visible with the rain falling on the awning over their heads.
“Did you want to ask me something?” Bianca always said he was slow on the uptake.
She shook her head ruefully. “No. I already know your answers to the political questions I’m thinking about. But… a guy just confessed to me.”
He wondered how or if those things had anything to do with each other, but suspected they didn’t and she’d been trying to distract herself with the former from the latter. He wasn’t surprised she’d chosen to tell him, not Bianca, because Bianca would freak and squee loudly enough to be heard back home and Touko didn’t look deliriously happy.
“Congratulations,” he ventured. “I suppose you haven’t given an answer yet?”
He wasn’t sure how he felt about it. It had always been the three of them. Would a fourth wheel ruin that? Not that he had imagined himself the hero of a harem anime or anything. Besides, then he would have to choose between Touko and Bianca, the story would go, and they were such good friends it would be bizarre to see them setting themselves up as rivals for his affection. (Though he had secretly wondered if Touko’s protective tomboy and Bianca’s flighty girly-girl routines were part of a romantic schoolgirl friendship.)
Not that he cared about romance in the least. It was stupid. It was just surprising that it would be Touko. Bianca did whatever it was girls did to make themselves pretty. Touko’s primping went as far as basic hygiene and she got ready as fast as he did in the morning. She’d gotten taller over their journey but was still as lean and tomboyish as ever.
“It’s complicated. There are so many ways for it to not work out and only one I can think of for it to, even if I wanted it to. I’d have to defeat him totally and utterly, usurp his dreams, and change him to my ideals.”
“I’ve heard it said that trying to change the other person is a terrible basis for a relationship.”
“I know. If he were to defeat me completely, all our previous arguments would become moot, but I don’t think I’d join him: I would never forgive him. But I think that he wants to be changed, maybe, he says, if I were strong enough.”
“You’re strong too, Touko.”
(a/n: This was supposed to be a chapter about Cheren... and it still ended up being at least as much about Touko.)
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What was strength?
The ability to do what he wanted, perhaps. What Cheren wanted was to beat the Champion. Simple. Perhaps strength was a measurement that only had meaning subjectively--strong enough for x.
If he had strength, then he could do whatever it was he decided to do next.
But was his particular type of strength conducive to the things he would want? Being a strong Pokémon trainer would be useless if he wanted to be, say, an aerospace engineer, except for the momentary prestige of fame. Most adults stopped battling once they stopped travelling, except if they were in the League or as a weekend thing.
He could join the League. He could research Pokémon like Professor Juniper, he was smart enough. He could work in any of the industries supporting trainers, like his father, the boisterous but brilliant Pokéball engineer.
So he wanted to be with Pokémon forever from the sound of it and if he was smart enough, which he was, and strong enough, any number of doors would open for him. Touko was right about the Champion being full of shit.
Without his Pokémon, he was smart, but was he strong? Strong in body no, beyond being able to put up with the annoyances of travel. But he had never understood the martial artists he saw training in the mountains. The strength a human body was capable of was insignificant compared to that one gained by harnessing the strength of Pokémon.
The furthest his interest in the subject went was training his body to ignore the annoyances and weaknesses of the flesh, but that wasn’t much of a long-term or primary goal. He didn’t want to be a monk and technology was such that he couldn’t become a cyborg yet.
What did people talk about, emotional strength? That just seemed to mean not crying a lot, the way people used it.
What other kinds of strength were there? His Servine had taken to rolling his eyes every time he saw he had gotten stuck ruminating on the question again.
“Am I strong?” he asked Touko. He trusted her to have a more balanced view of reason and emotion. “Me, not my Pokémon.”
“Of course. You have… confidence, conviction, ambition, will. That’s a kind of strength too.”
Cheren agreed, but added, “Ambition tends to get a bad rep.”
“Screw ‘em.”
Professor Juniper always said opposing viewpoints had value, but he too had never seen any reason to believe the people who were wrong.
Touko stood out with him as he thought, gazing at the dark clouds instead of going back inside the Pokémon Center. It wasn’t like the stars were visible with the rain falling on the awning over their heads.
“Did you want to ask me something?” Bianca always said he was slow on the uptake.
She shook her head ruefully. “No. I already know your answers to the political questions I’m thinking about. But… a guy just confessed to me.”
He wondered how or if those things had anything to do with each other, but suspected they didn’t and she’d been trying to distract herself with the former from the latter. He wasn’t surprised she’d chosen to tell him, not Bianca, because Bianca would freak and squee loudly enough to be heard back home and Touko didn’t look deliriously happy.
“Congratulations,” he ventured. “I suppose you haven’t given an answer yet?”
He wasn’t sure how he felt about it. It had always been the three of them. Would a fourth wheel ruin that? Not that he had imagined himself the hero of a harem anime or anything. Besides, then he would have to choose between Touko and Bianca, the story would go, and they were such good friends it would be bizarre to see them setting themselves up as rivals for his affection. (Though he had secretly wondered if Touko’s protective tomboy and Bianca’s flighty girly-girl routines were part of a romantic schoolgirl friendship.)
Not that he cared about romance in the least. It was stupid. It was just surprising that it would be Touko. Bianca did whatever it was girls did to make themselves pretty. Touko’s primping went as far as basic hygiene and she got ready as fast as he did in the morning. She’d gotten taller over their journey but was still as lean and tomboyish as ever.
“It’s complicated. There are so many ways for it to not work out and only one I can think of for it to, even if I wanted it to. I’d have to defeat him totally and utterly, usurp his dreams, and change him to my ideals.”
“I’ve heard it said that trying to change the other person is a terrible basis for a relationship.”
“I know. If he were to defeat me completely, all our previous arguments would become moot, but I don’t think I’d join him: I would never forgive him. But I think that he wants to be changed, maybe, he says, if I were strong enough.”
“You’re strong too, Touko.”
(a/n: This was supposed to be a chapter about Cheren... and it still ended up being at least as much about Touko.)
Back to main page