Covalence: Chapter 3

The thunderstorm left clear skies in its wake, and Saturday dawned bright and sunny. Lyte actually had the day off for once, and he was making excellent use of it by watching the stream of the local pro-battling tournament. Settled onto his couch, snacks close to paw, he was ready to potato through the whole thing. Zinnia was actually in this one, with a full charge, and Lyte couldn’t wait to see her use it—but he’d have to, since her matches were still a ways out.

It was such a nice day that he felt a little guilty about not going in person, even though he had plenty of excuses—no, reasons—not to. It was more expensive, the view was worse, seats were probably wet, no live commentary, if he got the shade it was still pretty cold to sit outside for several hours… the list went on. It’s not like tickets support Zinnia directly anyway, Lyte argued to himself. I could do way more by just buying her dinner next time…

Trying to logic himself out of illogical feelings was going about as well as usual (badly). Lyte tried to focus back on the stream, glancing between the big (for him) screen on his wall and the little screen of the connection orb in his paws. Oh, a message!

The pikachu rolled his eyes. *Oh, Weft.* He shook his head and looked back to the broadcast. An elegant servine was dueling a ferocious zangoose, wielding a blade they'd formed out of vines. They were having trouble dealing with the zangoose's aggression—his orb buzzed again. The crowd roared on the broadcast. Lyte looked up to see the servine standing panting over the collapsed zangoose; he'd just missed the final hits. *Dang it.* Well, he hadn't really been watching that one anyway. He looked back down at his orb.

Just ride in hers? He wondered if Zinnia would be cool with that. He wasn’t sure if he was even cool with it. Sure it was really nice to ride in her pocket, all snug and warm against her chest… but he liked having agency, too. And that was ignoring the obvious issue of freezing while getting to and from wherever they were meeting. Unless she picks me up here. The thought was tantalizing, yet also repellent; it’d make him even more dependent on her, and that rubbed the little pikachu the wrong way. His independence was important to him.

Lyte shook his head and set his orb aside to watch the stream. Another fight was underway: an absol stoically stood her ground against a staravia darting about the arena. Wind ruffled the absol's pure white fur, coalescing into blades to ward away the staravia whenever he got too close. Despite keeping him from connecting properly, he seemed to be coming out ahead in all their trades, wearing her down with his own buffets of wind and cuffs of his wings. Yet she seemed serene, while the staravia got more worked up with every pass.

The commentators were keeping pace with a quick analysis. “Conrad’s faster, but not by as much as he might think. He gets impatient and Felicia knows that. She’s stalling him out, but if he just keeps this up—”

Conrad let out a proud shriek and dove, wings tucked and claws outstretched.

“Hey, leave the curses to us!” said the other commentator, her voice carrying the signature resonance of a less solid ghost-type.

The staravia’s talons raked through empty space where the absol had been moments before. She crashed into him from behind, scythe-horn aglow with deep lavender malevolence. It formed a blade much larger than her horn itself, smashing the staravia into the ground hard enough to crater it.

“Oof, he’s gonna feel that one tomorrow!”

“Conrad took the bait and Felicia takes the match!”

“Conrad’s generated a lot of buzz this season. Once he evolves again he’s got a real shot at making it big.”

“If he doesn’t tighten up bad habits like that, evolution is just going to reinforce them until he hits a real wall in the upper ranks.”

Lyte nodded in agreement. Sure, he’d be impressive as a staraptor, but it could also let him power through with bad fundamentals and make him plateau hard. With the match over, the pikachu finally turned his attention to his orb, which had been buzzing for a while now; Weft was never one to send one message when five would do.

Lyte rolled his eyes again. *What. Why does she care? Is she gonna tease me about this too?* Lyte stared at the chat, his cheeks getting so hot he worried for a moment he was shorting himself. *Why'd I even...* She had him there; he was too stunned to even keysmash, not that he was in the mood to lean into her teasing. *That sure was an extremely normal thing to say. What was I thinking?*

He half-typed several attempts to defend himself before he gave up on sending anything at all.

Weft saw him typing. Of course. *Unforced error, 15 point penalty.*

He couldn’t believe that had just slipped out. Obviously Weft was a dork who knew what he was into, but the thought of saying something like that around Zinnia by accident terrified him. She was going to think he was so weird if she found out. Why can’t I just be normal…

The pikachu slumped into the couch.

The pikachu sighed. He didn't know how he felt anymore; a big tangled mess of bleh. There was some hope mixed in there, at least. Weft was right about one thing for sure: the best of all possible worlds would be one where they matched each other's freak, and that was still possible. He really had no idea. *She's right about the sex, too, with our sizes...*

He decided it was a great time to tune back into the stream for a while. An altaria hovered cloud-like above the ring, fluffy wings barely flapping. Lyte squinted at the screen, trying to spot their opponent. The arena floor was absolutely torn up, crisscrossed with raised ridges and scattered with piles of rubble.

One of the debris mounds shifted. A barrage of rocks launched up at the altaria, one after the other—at that long range, most of them went wide, and he simply swerved out of the way of the ones that flew true. The blue birdlike creature let out a shrill cry and thrust his long neck down, blasting a line of purple flames from his open beak.

The view cut to a different camera, showing a glimpse of the excadrill taking cover behind the rubble, her pointy snout creased with a frown. She burrowed back into the floor well before the dragonbreath reached her.

Lyte slumped against the couch. Well, this is a snoozefest. They were each hiding it with varying degrees of success, but both combatants were clearly frustrated. There were definitely worse matchups, but this wasn’t a good one, and there was a lot riding on it. That was one of the downsides of elimination tournaments, even double-elim ones like this.

He watched them sling attacks back and forth for a while. The commentators seemed to have run out of things to say about the fight and were mostly rambling on tangents about how the season had been going.

His orb was buzzing repeatedly. He had been planning to ignore it on principle and actually watch the thing he was paying to watch, but it was hard to imagine something less interesting at the moment. With that many messages, Weft’s probably doing a bit at me…

She sure was. Lyte snorted with laughter and considered how to respond. First of all, those numbers were ridiculous. Sure he was small for a pikachu, but he wasn't *that* small. *Fuck.* He remembered that night vividly; his whole body felt hot this time, not just his cheeks. Weft knew just how to press his buttons. *Maybe inviting Zinnia to movie night was a mistake. If she learns how to tease me like this I'll just actually fucking die.* Lyte envisioned the braixen's member in his mind. *It* is *taller than me, but... wait no why am I thinking about this?!* It was bad enough being shorter than her dick, but doing the math only to find out it had more volume than him would be humiliating. *Also kind of hot.* Regardless, he couldn't watch that video without becoming a flustered mess, and it was far too early in the day for that. *Maybe tonight.*

The pikachu deployed a tactical “lmao” to cover his retreat and tried to steer the conversation back on track.

He heard one of the commentators say “Zinnia” and snapped his attention back to the stream.

“We’re excited to see what she can do today,” said the haunter onscreen. “Right, Cotton?”

The lopunny next to her nodded. “Definitely! Unlike most electric-types, her species doesn’t make its own electricity,” he said. “Tech crew, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe she gets her power from thunderstorms. And there was just one last night, so she should be fully charged.”

“So it should be an electrifying match! Eh?” Her mouth split in a too-wide grin. “Don’t go anywhere, we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors!”

Lyte fumbled for the remote to mute the stream as it blared an energy drink commercial (“ΔU Energy: Unleash Your Potential”). Without fail, the ads were somehow way louder than the actual stream.

He turned it back up when it finally cut back to the commentators, who the lower third identified as Cotton and Masako. Cotton, the lopunny, was sitting behind the desk. Masako was nowhere in sight until she flew right in front of the camera, filling its entire field of view with blurry purple ghost.

“Welcome back!” she said, the camera refocusing on her as she floated back over (and through) the desk to take a “seat” next to Cotton. “Up next is Zinnia vs. Petros, and I know Cotton has a favorite.” Her toothless grin took up most of her already-big body. “You think she can go all the way?” she asked, over the lopunny’s protests.

Cotton cleared his throat and adjusted his black blazer. (Aside from his headset, it was all he wore, giving himself a nice semi-formal look.) “I think all our competitors here today are here because they have what it takes,” he said.

Masako laughed, a sound as playful as it was spine-chilling. “Well said, well said!”

They went quiet as the camera cut to the arena, showing the zeraora standing opposite a dark blue cephalopod with yellow markings around his eyes. The grapploct was wiggling his tentacles in some kind of bizarre, boneless warm-up stretch. Zinnia was stretching too, swinging her paws in loose circles. She settled into a crouching stance, waiting for the signal.

The bell rang and she was off like a shot, closing the distance in moments. She mirrored the grapploct’s boxing stance, ducking a jab from two tentacles and countering with a paw swipe of her own. He lunged for her, but she danced back just out of his reach.

“Slower fighters like Petros usually have trouble getting in close, but in a close-range matchup like this it’s not a problem,” Cotton said. “Instead it’s on Zinnia to make her speed count.”

And she was, weaving in and out of the grapploct’s range to sneak swipes and jabs, only occasionally trading blows with him. Lyte loved watching her fight; she always got up close and personal. It kept things quick and exciting.

“Which is much harder without a range advantage,” the haunter added. “Every step is a risk—whoops!”

Petros got one tentacle on the zeraora’s arm, suckers latching on through her fur. Then two. She tried to yank away and he yanked her right back, catching her other arm in tentacles three and four and pinning both arms to her sides.

The zeraora snarled, her horn glowing a bright cyan as she crackled with charge. The grapploct shuddered as the current coursed through him, but didn’t let go, instead tightening his grip on her.

“He’s too limber to get paralyzed by those zaps—” Cotton said.

“—but that doesn’t make them hurt any less!” Masako finished.

Petros tried to take her to the ground, but the zeraora wasn’t having it. He had her arms, but her tail flicked out behind her, free and unfettered. She gripped at whatever bits of him her pinned paws could reach and leapt, tail steering her straight up.

“She’s trying to reverse his—she’s—” The lopunny was speechless. As Zinnia zoomed into the sky, the fulgent glow of her footpaws bloomed across the stream, partly obscuring the two fighters with lens flare. “She can fly?!”

“I don’t think he knew that either!”

“Well now there’s no way he’ll forget!”

The match bell rang. The camera cut to one of the refs, an espurr, holding up one paw towards Zinnia’s side. Their wide pink eyes were as vacant as ever.

“Wh—” The lopunny choked back laughter. “An actual telepathic tapout! Anyone have that on your bingo card?”

“Petros tapped out,” Masako clarified. “He didn’t want to deal with whatever sky drop was about to happen to him. Can’t blame him, I wouldn’t either!”

”…Can’t you float?”

“Eh. Details.”

The camera tracked Zinnia as she dropped like a rock, slowing only when she neared the ground and landing with a heavy thump. As soon as the grapploct’s tentacles touched land, he released her to drop to the floor. After one shake, he scuttled away in shame. Zinnia brushed herself off, flexing her arms and rubbing at where his suckers had gripped her.

“We’ve seen Petros grapple fliers successfully before, but he made a critical miscalculation this time. He didn’t actually interfere with her flight, and, well…”

“Shortest match of the day right there. What’s she doing down in this rank?”

“One fight’s not everything, as you know. The higher ranks really ramp up the number of matches you need to play—I’m not talking per day, but per week and per month—which could be especially challenging for her charge management.” Cotton digressed onto a tangent about the rank structure and match schedule while the next match was prepped.

Only vaguely listening, Lyte pulled up his chat with Zinnia instead.

She probably wasn't checking her messages during the tournament, but he wanted to send a quick congrats anyway. It felt right. He checked his other messages; there was only one from Weft this time. Lyte slouched into his couch and tried to watch the stream, but watching people fight didn't help get his mind off how he, well, couldn't. Sure he could throw a solid thunderbolt, but he was supremely puntable. Really small pokémon like him were supposed to be agile and hard to hit, but his leg always gave out at the worst moment.

His orb pinged. It wasn’t Weft this time.

His ears perked up. Jodi was one of his friends since before high school; it was always fun to see her again! She was an emolga, a flying squirrel, and gave really good hugs. Lyte had fond memories of being wrapped up in her fuzzy yellow wings. They'd dabbled with a more serious relationship for a bit, but had gone back to being just friends when she moved away to go to med school. Friends with occasional benefits. *Oh, I should tell her about Zinnia...* He swiped away to go dig up some photos of Zinnia. He had some promotional photos from the pro-battling site, and some stream screencaps... *Eurgh. These are all kind of weird to share, but oh well.* Lyte glanced at his low ceiling and doorframes. The whole apartment complex was built for smaller pokémon, like him and Jodi. Weft barely fit when she visited, and she was only about three feet tall: solidly medium for a pokémon. The braixen's (admittedly huge) ears squished against the ceiling when standing and she had to duck to get through the doors. There was no chance Zinnia would fit except on all fours. *Wait, hold on. Why's she talking about Zinnia being at* my *place?* Lyte winced internally. Too many "haha"s. Oh wait, he'd mentioned seeing Zinnia on Thursday, but he hadn't actually checked with Weft to make sure she could come. *Gotta do that.* *Phew. That was easy. Why was I nervous about that?* The pikachu blinked. *Wait fuck I need to ask her not to be weird.* Lyte shook his head. *It'll be fine,* he told himself. *Probably.*

---

A couple hours later, Zinnia was in loser’s finals and Lyte was on the edge of his seat. The zeraora was squared off against Felicia, the absol from earlier. No jets of water or pulsing psionic energy beams here; this was an up-close slugfest, the two trading blows back and forth. The absol wasn’t holding back, dark energy extending her slashes to connect even when her horn and claws only hit the air. The same couldn’t be said for Zinnia. Her claws stayed dim, the zeraora seemingly unwilling to electrify them.

Lyte clenched his paws. “C’mon, Zinnia!” he shouted at the screen. “You can’t hold back now!”

The commentators noticed the same thing. “Why aren’t we seeing the lightning-fast moves from earlier?” the haunter asked. “What’s your take, Cotton?”

“Any athlete knows the importance of pacing yourself. We’ve all seen it, a competitor pulls out all the stops and has nothing left in the tank in their next match. But most pokémon, you go home, drink some leppa juice, sleep it off, you’re good to go.”

“Shout-out to our sponsor, Delta-U Energy,” Masako chimed in. “Full of leppa extract!”

The lopunny chuckled. “Like I was saying earlier, Zinnia’s not so lucky. If you’re Zinnia, you’re not thinking in terms of the day. You’re thinking about the week. Maybe weeks, in the dry season. Ooh, nice tail swipe from Felicia there. She’s sharp at both ends! That’s gonna sting.”

“The next fights are important, yeah, but if Zinnia keeps fighting like this she won’t have a next fight today.”

There was a lull in the action; the absol and zeraora circled each other, each all too aware of their opponent’s strength. Zinnia panted for breath, chest rising and falling in her usual hunched combat stance. She snarled, her horn and chest patch blazing with brilliant blue, glaring across the camera lens.

Zinnia darted inside the absol’s reach, her electrically-accelerated movements almost too quick to show up on stream. A cuff to Felicia’s head with her right paw, a left knee to the belly; the absol simply couldn’t keep up with the zeraora at max speed. Zinnia stomped her left footpaw down and pivoted on it, spinning to deliver a thunderous kick before the absol even hit the ground. The spark when she made contact was bright enough to throw off the auto exposure and tank the bitrate, the earsplitting sound wobbling the lens and clipping the mics. It flung a blurry and glitchy Felicia back towards the edge of the ring, the absol bouncing off the floor and tumbling wildly.

Lyte could barely hear the commentators over his own cheering. “Wow! Just like that, three solid hits and—Wait! Felicia’s still in!”

“Incredible neck strength!” the haunter said. “Can’t relate, myself.”

The stream quality returned to show the absol hanging sideways in the air, suspended by her massively enlarged horn. It had dug a long gouge in the floor all the way to the arena edge, where she wobbled precariously. She had her eyes closed, her face a picture of quiet concentration.

Zinnia was already sprinting towards her, but Lyte couldn’t help but feel she was running slow. She could’ve closed that distance in the blink of an eye—

It happened so quickly. Felicia lifted her forelegs and swiped. Ghostly purple claws extended from her paws to grip the edge of the arena, slashing chunks of it free. She flung herself up just as Zinnia arrived to finish her, the zeraora throwing a punch to smack the absol down.

Felicia twirled through the air, head down in a half front flip. Eyes still closed, she contorted herself so Zinnia’s punch missed her by hairs, brushing through her long white fur. Her horn shrank, spinning her faster, and wind currents swept up the dust, swirling around the absol as she spun. She landed on all fours behind Zinnia and howled, the gathered whirlwind answering with a howl of its own. The ring of wind erupted around her in all directions, flinging the zeraora out into the grass.

The match bell rang.

Silence hung across the patchy crowd for a long second before it erupted with cheers. The last moments replayed in slow-motion: the flip, the whiffed punch, the way the already off-balance zeraora was buffeted from behind and blown out of the ring.

Lyte felt deflated. Intellectually, he hadn’t been expecting her to win the whole thing, and it wasn’t like third place was terrible, but it still felt like a blow to the gut. He couldn’t shake the feeling Zinnia had given Felicia that chance. She could have been on the absol before she had a chance to recover like that. If she didn’t have to budget her charge so much…

The commentators had similar thoughts. “All her attacks are very calculated,” the lopunny was saying. “She used just enough force to ring-out Felicia, but it just barely wasn’t enough.”

“Twice,” the haunter added. “That punch was so close. Bad luck… or was it, with an absol involved?”

The stream showed Zinnia picking herself up, grass and dirt clinging to her black and yellow fur. The zeraora started brushing herself off, but begrudgingly held still when an audino medic trotted up to fuss over her. She squeezed her eyes shut for a couple seconds, her mouth a thin line. Then her eyes flicked to the camera and she turned away.

“That’s Zinnia; calm and collected, even in defeat.” Masako hummed, an odd noise for someone who didn’t need to breathe. “I dunno what she’s thinking, but I know I’m wondering ‘what if she used more’?”

Lyte waved a paw at the screen. “Exactly!”

“Hard question,” the lopunny said. “They were all calculated risks, for sure.”

The haunter nodded with her whole body. “Maybe you lose in grands. Maybe you lose here anyway.”

“Maybe you get knocked out early in the next tournament. That’s what’s so tricky for her. Just because it didn’t work doesn’t mean it was wrong.”

“Oho, that’s some big brain analysis.”

“I think it’s something people often overlook. You can do everything right and still lose. Should you focus on what’s in your control? Yeah, of course. But not everything is.”

The pikachu frowned. He wasn’t sure he agreed.

Onscreen, the commentators shrank down to show the two combatants again. The absol, her white fur scuffed and dusty (in spots, even marred with red) pushed away from the medic hovering around her and hopped down from the arena edge. She trotted up to Zinnia, held out her paw, and said something the camera didn’t pick up.

Zinnia looked like she laughed. She shook Felicia’s paw.

“Good sports about it. As they should be!” said Cotton.

“Y’know,” Masako said. “This charge thing seems like a very solvable problem for a pro team or a sponsor to take care of.”

Or a friendly electric type, Lyte thought. Like me. I’m no thunderstorm, but surely I could help…

“That’s the paradox of the sport. Sometimes in order to get that support you have to prove you can do well without it.”

Lyte hmphed. “That’s a load of crap, is what that is,” he said to himself. He swiped through his chats, brought up Zinnia’s, and stared at it. He felt so much weirder seeing her lose now that he’d been to dinner with her. Should I text her? What would I even say? He cursed himself for texting her before. Now she knew he was watching, so not saying something would be a statement too. Should have seen this coming, really.

He’d made his bed and now he had to lie in it. Good run? Will that sound insincere? Close one? No that’ll just remind her of the loss. Tough break? That makes it sound like luck. But it was luck, in a way. Like they were just talking about. You make your choices and then see what happens.

Lyte sighed. Good fight? I mean, it was, right?

He closed his eyes, taking deep breaths to try and release the tension he felt. You did it, he told himself. Good job. After a few more breaths, he opened his eyes and checked his other notifications. A secret chat request? From Weft? Is she sexting me at work? This better not be that video again…

It wasn’t the video. It wasn’t a dick pic either; it was just a normal message.

Against his better judgement, Lyte opened the attachment. It was a screenshot of a vague offer, looking for someone to work shifts in the evenings this week. Tracking tabs, working taps, prior experience he mostly had… It seemed fairly normal until he read the pay and had to double take. It was eye-wateringly large, at least compared to his day job. The fuck kind of bartending gig is this? The pikachu flopped back on his couch. He really could use the extra cash, but some of Weft’s connections were… well, sketchy was putting it lightly.

He thought back to the day before, when he was flying with Zinnia. The moment of the lightning bolt was seared into his mind. He’d never been so close to raw power like that. Not everything worth doing is safe.

The pikachu stared up at his ceiling, painted an eggshell white. He knew the minute imperfections and vague discolorations like the back of his own paw. He was stuck. Stuck in Halcyon Falls, stuck in his routine, his job, his life.

Zinnia’s loss played back in his head. She almost won, but almost wasn’t worth squat. Last week he’d taken one step. Could he take another?