"Meow."
Meownei covered her face with one hand, feeling too embarrassed to face anyone.
Based on her experience and keen eyesight, she was 100% certain that Squirtle hadn't been employing any special tactics. He had simply slipped.
Slipping wasn't a big deal. Even a world champion couldn't guarantee they would never trip while walking down the street, but that didn't make it any less embarrassing.
When two armies sent their champions out to duel, having your own general fall over before the fight even began was bound to hurt morale.
Kingdra, however, paid that no mind. It was the Water-type Gym's mainstay Pokémon. For the sake of efficiency, the Gym hadn't chosen a Pokémon of comparable strength for the battle, instead using its mainstay to blitz through the challengers.
Whether to award a badge would be determined by the opponent's reactions and responses.
So far, not a single challenger had managed to get past Kingdra.
Seeing that its opponent couldn't even keep his footing, and was still in his first evolutionary stage to boot, Kingdra felt even more certain that he would be easy to handle.
If Squirtle hadn't shown absolutely no sign of struggling after falling into the water, Kingdra would have suspected that he couldn't swim.
Someone who couldn't swim could still struggle. If he really had fallen into the water like that, he shouldn't have been so quiet.
Meanwhile, underwater, Squirtle was making much the same gesture as Meownei.
[Squirtle...: (Which bastard made the platform so slippery?! Do I not have any dignity to preserve?!)]
Protecting your dignity after a fall was a mysterious art, but as long as you didn't get up, you wouldn't have to watch other people laugh at you.
But this wasn't the roadside. It was a battle arena.
With efficiency as the