Without Knowing Why
That day, once the stream started, Yebin and I split the broadcast into Part 1 and Part 2 the way we always did.
Part 1 was the Repu Mountain collab, already halfway through the two-week server run. Part 2 was the Pokemon collab.
And the real selling point of the Pokemon collab was me coaching Yebin.
“Haaaa… How the hell did I end up learning from you of all people?”
“Is that any way to talk to your teacher, Vini? Get outside right now and stand with your hands up.”
“If I go outside I’m coming back to beat your ass.”
“The teacher’s authority is crumblingggggg!”
Our little back-and-forth instantly cracked the viewers up.
While the chat was going wild, I closed Dig Craft and switched the screen over to Yebin’s stream.
“Alright, Vini. Fire up Pokemon Championship for us.”
“Yes sir~ Yes sir~”
“One yes is enough.”
“Yesssss~”
“Short.”
“You’re dead.”
“Yes.”
Somehow I was the one who ended up answering short, but either way Yebin launched Pokemon Championship.
Pokemon Championship—a PVP game built around the battles from the Pokemon series.
It had dropped at the start of the year and was still ridiculously popular. Yebin had played Pokemon before, so she at least had a decent grasp of the basics.
Hell, she even had a few Pokemon plushies in her room. She secretly liked them more than she let on.
“I’ve got some from before. I’ll show you real quick.”
“Okay, show me what you’ve got.”
Yebin pulled up the Pokemon she already owned, and while I looked them over I casually tossed her a question.
“So, what kind of Pokemon trainer does our Vini want to be?”
“Where the hell did that come from all of a sudden?”
“There are different battle styles, you know.”
“It’s just turn-based. What are you even talking about?”
I realized my wording had been garbage, so I corrected myself on the spot.
“I mean party concepts. Is there any particular party concept you want to run?”
“Aaaah~ Hmm… I dunno….”
Pokemon had all kinds of party concepts.
From plain old tier-list teams, to weather teams that abused specific weather, to stall teams that slowly choked the opponent to death.
Beyond that there were even more niche ideas. Hardcore veterans sometimes climbed the ladder with mono-type teams or ran the most obscure Pokemon imaginable just for the challenge.
I wasn’t expecting anything that fancy out of Yebin. Hell, I wasn’t even that good at Pokemon myself.
Not bad, but not great either. That felt about right.
One thing I was absolutely sure of, though: I was better than the Yebin sitting in front of me. By a mile.
“Oh! I wanna try a Rain team!”
“Rain team?”
“Yeah, people say it’s good!”
Where the hell had she even heard that?
Anyway, a Rain team was a party built around Pokemon that got stronger when it rained—and right now it was solidly S-tier in the meta.
I checked which of her Pokemon could actually fit a Rain team and then made her pick them out herself.
“That seagull-looking one over there, and that monster-looking one. The blue one. Wangjjangi, you know, Wangjjangi.”
After she finished choosing, I took one look at the actual builds and…
“…… Hey. Vini-Vini-Vini-Vini.”
“Hm? What?”
“Did you, by any chance, not set these Pokemon up properly?”
“Set them up? I did them my own way, though?”
These? Seriously?
“Vini, just checking—you didn’t copy some random guide for these, right?”
“Nope, I did them myself.”
The second those words left her mouth I said it flat.
“Vini, attention.”
“Attention?”
“At ease.”
“Why are you suddenly doing this?”
“Attention.”
“You gotta at least tell me why.”
I had to tell her why? Fine. Here it came.
“Vini.”
“What the hell is it already.”
“…Don’t even try. You’ve got nothing worth showing. If you want to show off, go do it in a different game.”
“What are you even talking about all of a sudden?”
“Why the hell did you dump Special Attack into Waterstar?”
In Pokemon, attacks were split into physical and special depending on the move’s category.
And Yebin had dumped every single EV into Special Attack on her Waterstar.
“If Special Attack is higher isn’t it a special attacker?”
“That’s true, but you stuck a Zeta Stone on it. You’re planning to Zeta Evolve it, right?”
“Yeah, so?”
“…When it Zeta Evolves it turns into a physical attacker.”
“Huh? For real!?”
After a second of pure disbelief at her words, I turned and scolded the chat.
“Hey, you guys. If you knew she was doing this shit you should’ve said something.”
“Not the ones who were originally my viewers—you guys who hopped over from Vini’s stream, do you not have eyes? Raise your hands if you just came from her room. If this idiot is doing Vini-level nonsense you should’ve called her out.”
“What the hell did you just say?”
Yebin’s voice came through thick with rage, but I ignored it completely and kept staring at the chat. Of course the viewers who had migrated from Vini’s room said…
What? She was cute?
“Everyone, seriously, go see a psychiatrist. What’s cute about her? She’s just gross.”
“You’re actually the worst.”
“Ah-ah, student. Sit. Stay sitting. You dare rebel against the teacher’s authority?”
“Just wait till later, I swear to god.”
Miraculously Yebin held herself back, so I went ahead and sent her a certain site.
The second she checked it she started pouring pure resentment at me.
“Hey! If a place this good existed you should’ve told me earlier!”
For reference, the site I sent was the one where rankers’ sample sets for Pokemon were all collected. That was basically day-one knowledge.
“Just copy those.”
“Doesn’t that take all the fun out of it?”
“Better to be bored now than get destroyed in battle and be even more bored.”
“Yes sir.”
Yebin accepted my feedback with surprising politeness, and I just sat there listening.
While she was busy copying the ranker samples, I gave her a quick crash course on how Rain teams worked.
“When the rain starts, switch to Wangjjangi, Mega Evolve, then just spam Wave Crush. That’s it.”
“Huh? That’s really it?”
“There’s mind games and stuff too, but honestly at your tier just doing that much will steamroll everything.”
Right now Yebin was sitting in the absolute bottom tier—Monster Room. Honestly that party could probably clear all the way up to Hyper Room without much trouble.
“Alright, Vini. Time to try an actual battle.”
“Got it.”
With that we queued ranked. And exactly three seconds later a match popped—then the second I saw the opponent’s team I couldn’t even laugh.
Because one of the Pokemon on their team was Dove-two.
It was that Dove-two famous for the “abandonment” memes, and apparently not many people in chat actually knew Pokemon well.
Why?
Because the only people who brought that thing into ranked were almost always smurfs. On top of that, Rain teams were quietly weak to Dove-two.
“Alright, Vini. What you need to do is simple. Lead the seagull, use Aqua Turn to swap straight into Wangjjangi. Next turn Zeta Evolve and Wave Crush. Okay?”
“Got it.”
Yebin answered and immediately sent out the Pokemon exactly the way I told her.
Then the battle started, and sure enough the opponent’s lead was Dove-two.
Take out Dove-two before it can do anything. That was the only thought in my head.
“Vini, Aqua Turn right now and switch.”
“Okay.”
Yebin followed my instructions perfectly and used Aqua Turn, but…
— Beeeeep!!
Dove-two Zeta Evolved into Zeta Dove-two.
And of course what came next was the signature move of Zeta Dove-two: Storm.
— Bababababababang!!!
Pelipper’s HP got shredded past half, but as far as I knew Pelipper never died to one of those. That chubby seagull was surprisingly bulky.
……Or so I used to think.
A critical hit!
One critical-hit lottery ticket and Pelipper was dead. Yebin looked pretty shaken.
“Uh… what do I do…?”
“…It’s fine. It’s still fine.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. Send out Wangjjangi, Zeta Evolve, and immediately Wave Crush.”
“I’m trusting you?”
With that, Yebin sent out Wangjjangi and did exactly as ordered—Zeta Evolution into Wave Crush.
Wangjjangi instantly became Zeta Wangjjangi, and of course it also seized the first attack.
Wangjjangi’s current ability was Swift Swim—the broken ability that doubled its Speed in rain.
And with double Speed, Wangjjangi outsped the vast majority of the roster. This time was no exception.
— Shwoooosh! Thuuud!!!
Wangjjangi’s massive body, wrapped in water, slammed straight into Dove-two and the HP bar started plummeting.
But something felt off. The bar had hit the red danger zone… and then stopped dropping.
“Huh? That’s a guaranteed one-shot…!?”
“What, what is it, what’s wrong?”
“I mean, basically… that thing is supposed to die in one hit no matter what. By every calculation it has to die!”
I couldn’t dump the entire damage formula on her, so I left it at that. But that wasn’t the real problem.
The real problem was that the situation was already going horribly wrong.
— Bababababang!
In that gap Storm slammed into Wangjjangi, landing right in the solar plexus.
A critical hit!
The critical hit instantly shredded more than half of Wangjjangi’s remaining HP.
And then the situation that perfectly matched the phrase “adding insult to injury” arrived.
— Beep-beep-beep-beep!
Little chicks started flying around above Wangjjangi’s head.
That meant only one thing.
Wangjjangi is confused!
Confusion—the secondary effect of Storm had proc’d.
“Confusion!?”
“Hey, just switch out. Better to sacrifice one and clear the confusion.”
Confusion had a one-in-three chance of making the Pokemon hit itself instead of following orders, but it cleared the moment you switched out and came back in.
Wangjjangi was the ace of Yebin’s entire party.
Without it the rest of the team was guaranteed to get cleaned up, so the correct play was to give up one more Pokemon and keep Wangjjangi alive.
But our precious little shit of a Vini completely ignored my advice and made her own call.
“Ah, whatever! Just smash Wave Crush!”
“I warned you.”
And of course.
Wangjjangi is confused!
— Thud!
It attacked itself without knowing why!
My warning landed with perfect accuracy. Absolutely perfect.
“Uhh…!?”
Yebin grew even more panicked, and Dove-two delivered the farewell.
Farewell, current meta’s strongest Pokemon, Wangjjangi. You simply had the misfortune of being born under Yebin’s ownership.
— Bababababang!
Wangjjangi fainted!
Wangjjangi’s remaining HP was completely wiped out. It collapsed without even a hint of resistance, and then Yebin muttered something I absolutely could not let slide.
“…Backseat gamer cut. Dodo’s actually shit at Pokemon.”
“If you’d listened to me at the end we would’ve won!”
“Bullshit, you said it dies in one hit! It didn’t die!”
“It’s supposed to die! For real, ahh!!”
“Nope, you’re just a total Pokemon noob~”
“I’m not! Look at that set, look at the damn sample!!!”
As a side note, the guy we actually faced wasn’t running a standard sample—he was on some weird set that dumped every EV into Defense and Special Attack.
Recalculating with that set, yeah, with enough RNG it could barely survive one hit.
Who the hell even made a sample like that. Anyway I was innocent. Completely innocent.