"No problem on my end. When do we start?"
"Right away, once we deal with the 'heretic' in this meeting room. How much longer are you going to lie there?"
At that, Nurse Joy nudged Jia Qiong's leg with her foot, signaling for him to stop clowning around on the floor.
"You know the procedure. Take him over there. It's pretty comfortable here, so I'll lie down a little longer."
"Don't tell me... you can't get up?"
Nurse Joy and Jia Qiong had both worked with the school team for several years.
Although the Joy family was a family of doctors, Nurse Joy's workplace wasn't limited to the Pokémon Center, nor was treating Pokémon her only responsibility.
Patrolling the surrounding area, distributing Pokémon in place of professors in cities without Pokémon research labs, and serving as judges at various competitions were also part of the Joy family's duties.
And in such a large family, there were always some people who chose different jobs.
Jia Qiong had plenty of "experience" when it came to recklessly touching other team members' Pokémon.
Getting shocked into paralysis by a Mareep, caught in an armbar by a Machamp, burned by a Rapidash...
Now he could add getting thrown over a Meowscarada's shoulder to the list.
"N-nonsense! How could a student's Pokémon throw me so hard I couldn't get up? It's too hot out, and the floor is nice and cool!"
Nurse Joy said nothing. She merely looked at the air conditioner beside them, which had been set to seventeen degrees.
Seemingly feeling that he had lost face, Jia Qiong braced himself against a nearby chair and stood up, pretending nothing was wrong.
"Meownei, you... didn't hurt him with that throw, did you?"
"Meow... meow? (No way. He's so muscular, a throw like that should only sting a little. Is all that muscle just for show?)"
Fortunately, Jia Qiong couldn't understand what Meownei had said, or he probably would have fallen apart even more.
"Qing, take them over first. I'll tidy up the meeting room."
Qing Joy-that was the full name of the school team's Nurse Joy. Joy itself was only the family surname.
Most of the time, however, people couldn't tell the different Nurse Joys apart, so they simply addressed them by their surname.
This time, Nurse Joy said nothing and simply led Xin Mu and Old Liu toward the grounds outside.
Once he saw that they had really left, Jia Qiong shut the meeting room door, then slumped over the table to recover.
"No, I need to buy some butt padding too. Knee pads and a chest plate aren't enough..."
"The Pangoro Academy Cup has three parts: individual Single Battles, team six-on-six battles, and rental Double Battles where you choose four out of six."
On their way out, Nurse Joy explained the competition format to Xin Mu.
"Single Battles are the easiest to understand. One person, one Pokémon. Whoever wins advances.
"Team six-on-six is similar. Each competitor contributes one Pokémon to form a full team for the battle. But once the initial lineup is set, it can't be changed. You have to use that team all the way through the finals.
"For rental choose-four-from-six, you use Pokémon supplied by the organizers. Each team can select six Pokémon, then choose four of those six for Double Battles each round.
"Single Battle results account for twenty percent of the team's points, and the other two events account for forty percent each."
At that point, Nurse Joy stopped and looked toward a few people resting on the training grounds.
"Han! Come over here!"
A girl with a ponytail walked over. Xin Mu recognized her: she was the last-place finisher who had broken the Pogo Stick.
She hadn't lingered after the competition either, instead returning straight to the school.
"She's the school team's data analyst and logistics coordinator. I'll let her explain our past competition results."
"Hi. Sorry about earlier. Everyone else was curious about who had suddenly been brought onto the team, so I took a photo of you.
"My name's Li Han. You can call me Han, or Brother Han or Sister Han. I don't mind."
The girl who had competed alongside Xin Mu was also technically a student. She had been helping out with the school team for some time, and this year she was graduating from her third year of graduate school and taking a permanent position with the team.
Because she was relatively young and got along well with everyone, the others simply called her Brother Han.
"It's fine. I didn't really mind."
Xin Mu gave a casual reply. For some reason, he suddenly felt that something was off about this school team.
The team doctor, coach, and data analyst all juggled multiple roles. It gave him the impression that the team performed so poorly that nobody wanted to come here to pad their professional record.
When he saw the reports on Li Han's computer, Xin Mu felt that the truth was probably much as he had imagined.
In the one-on-one and six-on-six events, both of which heavily tested the strength of the competitors' Pokémon, they hadn't achieved any good results in recent years, placing in the lower middle of the field.
Fortunately, the school team had a decent grasp of theory. Their results in rental choose-four-from-six were fairly strong, and they had even finished as runners-up in that event twice. Once differences in Pokémon strength were leveled out, their skills were still up to standard.
But once those points were averaged in, they only hovered around the middle of the standings, leaving them in the most awkward position.
People remembered first place and last place, but always forgot those in between.
In fact, Xin Mu had guessed correctly. During the former principal's tenure, the school team's consistently mediocre results had meant it was no longer a priority.
Only the new principal's push to make an impact upon taking office had brought this place back into the spotlight. That was also why Old Liu cared so much.
"So..."
"Ahem, how should I put this... If you can take first in Single Battles, and they perform as expected in the choose-four-from-six battles, we'll have a very good chance of placing in the top three.
"If we do a little better in six-on-six too, we could probably bring the Academy Cup home. But nobody really knows you yet. Although we've watched the video of your Gym battle, we'd still like to see you in an actual match.
"Have you battle a few of our higher-ranked members..."
Before Li Han could finish, she suddenly noticed that the Meowscarada had already headed off on her own toward the training grounds nearby. As she walked, she even waved at Xin Mu and said something Li Han couldn't understand.
"Meow! Meow, meow!"
When Meownei reached the training grounds' rest area, she looked at the dozen or so other Pokémon and planted her hands on her hips, saying something nobody could make out.
But the Pokémon who heard her were clearly unhappy, and they stood up one after another.
"Did she use Taunt?"
"Meowscarada can't learn that move, but... the effect is pretty much the same."
It was roughly like a newly recruited soccer player walking up to the men's team, covering their mouth, and saying, "You're all so weak~"
The Pokémon affected by that "taunt" rose to their feet, and Meownei snapped her fingers at them.
Cherry-pink petals flew from the invisible flower bud on her body, soon forming pink whirlwinds across the training grounds.
With a sweep of both hands, Meownei sent countless petals surging outward, engulfing the entire field in a rare storm of flowers.
Under the petals' assault, the Pokémon who had just been eager to prove themselves fell one after another, buried beneath the sea of flowers after they were knocked out.
In the end, one Farigiraf managed to use Protect in time, a Gengar hid in Farigiraf's shadow, and a Charizard barely clung to a sliver of health thanks to its quadruple resistance to Grass-type attacks.
Yet the attack didn't stop. The petals hadn't vanished and remained piled across the ground.
Meownei didn't look at them again. Instead, she confidently turned and walked back toward Xin Mu. As she took a step, the sea of flowers on the ground swallowed them once more before finally turning into specks of energy that dispersed into the air.
"Meow~ (Petal Blizzard: Duet, all done~)"
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