Meowscarada teaches you how to play video games

"Then how about switching things around? Could Old Jia or Nurse Joy take the train with him?"

"Uh, Teacher Liu, maybe I wasn't clear enough. It's not that finance won't reimburse your train ticket. They won't reimburse any ticket of yours."

Li Han stressed the key point again, then delivered another blow.

"And Teacher Liu, our itinerary... actually doesn't include you."

"Hold on a moment."

Old Liu pulled Li Han aside and asked her, "I'm the one who brought him here, and now you're shutting me out?"

"No, Teacher Liu, this was decided by the higher-ups. I'm just carrying it out. Let me walk you through it.

If this year's school team gets good results, we'll expand the staff later, and you'll take on one of the extra positions."

"Exactly, so why can't mine be reimbursed?"

"Because we have to win this year's Academy Cup before we can expand. Right now, you're nominally part of the school team, but you're not in the system, so..."

Li Han spread her hands, indicating that there was nothing she could do about it.

Just like Xin Mu, whose paperwork hadn't been submitted yet, Old Liu was in limbo. If the team performed poorly, they would have to reconsider everything.

But as a competitor, Xin Mu at least had something to fall back on. Old Liu didn't even have that.

"So it's not just the tickets, but food and lodging too..."

"Right, so how about... staying at school and watching the livestream?"

"No need. I'll pay my own way and come with you. I heard there was some esports coach who started out just ordering takeout for the players, but didn't he eventually make something of himself?

I can't plan tactics, but surely I can handle that much?"

"Ahem. Whatever makes you happy."

Old Liu was worried that someone would poach his recruit if he didn't go. Hearing how firmly he insisted, Li Han naturally didn't try to talk him out of it.

Over the next stretch of time, Xin Mu's life mostly revolved around two places. When he had nothing to do, he played with his cat at home-or perhaps his cat played with him.

He trained himself with the Enhancer, then went to the school team's training grounds every day to practice with the team and get familiar with their tactics.

He also learned about their opponents.

"We need to watch out for that local Tianfu team. They have a complete Shadow Tag and Perish Song strategy, plus a really troublesome Wobbuffet that knows Destiny Bond. If we let them drag things out, we'll be in trouble."

The longer the tryout period went on, the more they understood Meownei's strength. Besides the previous group battle, Meownei also demonstrated her ability to fight successive opponents, further beating everyone into submission.

Based on past match data, they couldn't imagine how Meownei could lose, aside from rule-based moves like Destiny Bond.

If she really lost, they figured either the other side was cheating or Xin Mu had thrown the match.

"It's fine, don't worry. She knows U-turn. If the other side uses Perish Song, I'll just have Meownei pull back."

Shadow Tag couldn't restrict moves like U-turn, and moves like Mean Look couldn't trap Pokémon that knew U-turn either. The downside was that the remaining fighting had to be left to other Pokémon.

As long as she had a dependable partner and didn't have to fight one against six, Meownei wasn't particularly afraid of that sort of thing in a match.

"That makes things easy, then. If we really face them, we'll handle taking out the Pokémon that uses Perish Song."

Another weakness had been covered, improving their odds of winning further. The atmosphere within the team visibly grew more harmonious.

Still, with Li Han and Jia Qiong keeping everyone in check, nobody started celebrating before the job was done.

Although the school team wasn't top-tier, there was no scheming or infighting. Apart from being a little too fond of pushing the limits, the teachers in charge had some genuine ability too. Xin Mu thought things were pretty good this way.

A few days later, Xin Mu's makeup exam results came out. His score in the nineties even gave his GPA a slight boost, and graduation season arrived at the university as well.

It was held in the familiar student activity hall. After a string of speeches, Xin Mu received his graduation certificate and degree certificate, and the other students gradually left campus in the days that followed.

Zhang Lin stayed, though. He had applied to extend his dormitory stay and remained there while waiting for his civil service interview.

Despite an entire class of students leaving, the campus didn't change much. The hardest-hit business was probably the college's print shop. With no students printing graduation theses or revision materials, its revenue plummeted.

The weather gradually grew hotter too. A few days before the competition began, the school team suspended training so the members could relax on their own for a while.

Xin Mu hadn't gone anywhere lately. After making a trip to the insurance company to collect his post-graduation insurance payout, he stayed in his rented apartment and spent time on his computer.

He occasionally played a few games to unwind and tried livestreaming in the process, but the results weren't great. His viewer count never reached double digits.

In the age of Pokémon, many things had changed under their influence, including what was popular online. That rendered most of Xin Mu's previous memories useless.

Besides... he was pretty clumsy with the controls. He only streamed for fun.

"Meownei, play for me for a bit. I'm going to the bathroom."

"Meow? (Me? I don't know how.)"

"It's fine. You've been watching for a few days now. Just play the way I do."

Looking at her paws, Meownei retracted her claw tips as far into her pads as possible, then tried gripping the mouse.

Although she only had three fingers, operating the mouse wasn't complicated for Meownei. The keyboard was more troublesome. She could only press keys with one finger at a time, or she would hit the wrong ones.

"Meow... (Stack Double Strike, Flash, auto with Hail of Blades, apply Ignite, follow up with Q...)"

In League of Legends, a level-two Master Yi could kill enemies from an absurdly high health threshold. Xin Mu's play was always bizarre, but Meownei had remembered the combo.

So when Xin Mu returned, his character had another kill. That made him think his opponent was terrible, and that assumption promptly came back to bite him.

The next day, however, an edited video appeared on a video-sharing site.

[Meowscarada teaches you how to tower dive at level two...]

Because the webcam had been on, the part where Meownei played had been recorded.

There had indeed been very few viewers, but one or two of them were real people.

At first, the video only had a decent number of views. But after a well-known streamer from Paldea showed it on their stream, it generated quite a buzz.

A human pulling off that play was nothing unusual. A Psychic-type Pokémon using psychic powers to control the keyboard and pull it off was understandable too. A Rotom possessing a specially made computer and doing the same was even more normal.

But a Meowscarada doing it was bound to make people curious.

Xin Mu, however, knew nothing about any of this.

By dawn the next day, he had already taken Meownei to the train station, ready to head out early for the competition.

Some people were convinced it had to be staged. There was no way a Meowscarada could do that with only three fingers. But when they went to the livestream to check for themselves, all they saw was...

[The streamer has gone to compete. Streams are on hold. See you again if fate allows.]