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At dinner time, Mai glanced at the hungry Pokémon practically puddling drool onto the floor as they crowded around her. With a sigh of fond resignation, she waved to Blissey to start handing out the food.
She still couldn't find Luther anywhere, so she figured she might as well fetch Cynthia first. But just as she reached Luther's door, she heard shouting from inside.
Mai paused, then pushed the door open before she could talk herself out of it.
"Where's your buff? Where's your buff?! Stop tunneling damage for two seconds and heal me!"
Luther's banshee-faced avatar darted across the screen, weaving between attacks as he yelled at Cynthia with the desperation of a man who'd seen this movie too many times.
Honestly, he would never understand how Diantha and the others tolerated Cynthia's incurable case of "greed syndrome." Her HP bar was literally a single pixel, and she was still lunging in for "just one more hit."
The game's armor-break mechanic was merciless. Luther's helmet had already shattered, leaving his character's grotesque face on full display, something that definitely shouldn't exist in any sane dimension.
But at this point, Luther didn't care. Two more hits and the dungeon was theirs.
"Panicking won't help! I've never played support before, I don't even remember what Moves I put on this class!" Cynthia protested.
Luther gave up on the idea of waiting for the world's slowest Recovery spell. Ending the fight himself was faster.
Without hesitation, he plunged into the writhing, slime-slick forest of tentacles guarding the boss. Cynthia was too busy trying to cast magic while keeping aggro to react before Luther slipped in two clean strikes.
The boss let out a wet, miserable sound and collapsed. Victory flashed triumphantly across Luther's screen.
Cynthia's avatar, meanwhile, lay dead, because Luther had very obviously used her as bait.
"My armor durability! My full-clear rewards! My achievements!" She howled, staring at her grayscale death screen as if it had personally wronged her.
"It's still better than nothing. I brought revival potions, get up. Come loot before the timer runs out. And stop whining."
Cynthia bounced back immediately. While praying to whatever RNG deities governed the loot tables, she kept sneaking peeks at Luther's drops.
Unfortunately, the gods were in a bad mood.
Both of them ended up with garbage-tier scraps barely worth the cost of repairs.
"Another run! We're doing another run," Cynthia declared, revving up to persuade him.
She didn't get far. A hand landed on her shoulder. Another on Luther's.
"Dinner." Mai's voice was calm, but had all the weight of judgment.
"…Right," The two muttered in unison, like kids caught gaming past curfew.
At the table, Mai asked, only half teasing, if Luther had always been this good at games. Wailing Road had come out just last year; back when Mai wasn't traveling, she'd played it casually at home. But as far as she knew, Luther shouldn't have had much opportunity to play at a Pokémon Center.
For him to pick it up this quickly was… unexpected.
Cynthia knew why. Luther had told her before, back in his original world, gaming had been his biggest hobby. And clearly, his skills hadn't faded. After she helped him grind out a basic equipment set, Luther had spent the entire afternoon dragging her through the game.
Luther simply shrugged and told Mai he was "talented." She accepted that with a quiet "Oh," and didn't pry.
…
Life at Cynthia's villa had its routines, and one of Luther's favorites came after their daily training sessions, when his Pokémon sparred with Cynthia's team, refining what they'd learned for real battle.
Losing a sparring match didn't bother Luther. Failure was something every trainer, and every Pokémon, had to work through. Without it, no one improved.
His second daily ritual was far less noble: playing games with Cynthia and Mai.
There were only two consoles, so they followed a simple rule, whoever died had to get up and swap out.
Naturally, Luther almost never died. Cynthia and Mai, on the other hand, rotated in and out so often it looked like an organized drill.
But even as they played night after night, one thing continued to nag Luther: Oleander was nowhere to be seen online.
Normally, she was active in their group chat almost every day. But lately? Radio silence.
"Looks like that mysterious document really is the real deal," Diantha said, eyes glued to her character as she kited a mob around a corner. "Oleander hasn't taken on an investigation this seriously in ages. She must've picked up on something big."
"How did she even get the document?" Lance asked.
"Oleander said she came home from her International Police shift and found a sealed packet sitting in her yard. Her Ninetales didn't get a clear look at the person who threw it over the fence, just that they were tall and built like a brick wall, Lance, seriously, move, you're blocking my screen."
"Oh, right, right." He shuffled his avatar aside. "So she didn't tell any of you what was in the file?"
"No. Just said it was deeply connected to the Hodgepodge Organization and needed delicate handling. That's all."
Luther frowned. Oleander had stood by their side that night without hesitation. If she planned to help uproot the Hodgepodge Organization entirely, why keep the contents a secret?
Was her International Police training kicking in? Or was there something else she hadn't said?
Before he could dwell on it further, Cynthia's doorbell rang, right as the battle reached a critical moment. She instinctively tried to hand her controller to Mai… only to remember that Mai, responsible as ever, had gone to bed hours ago.
"Someone's visiting this late?" Luther asked, grabbing another handful of snacks. "You're not just telling them to leave?"
"It's express delivery," Cynthia said. "I told them late-night drop-offs were fine. Pokémon handle the transport, anyway. They run around the clock. Nocturnal Pokémon take night shifts, it's not a big deal."
"Can't you just… make them wait?"
"Pokémon have their own schedules too. I'm not making things harder for them."
She exhaled, resigned. "Forget it…"
Then she grabbed the Blissey she'd been leaning against like a plush cushion and shoved the controller into her hands.
"Fill in for me."
And just like that, she walked out.
Luther stared after her. 'Blissey? Seriously? She expects Blissey to fill in?'
'Wait… could Blissey even play?'
He turned slowly. Blissey blinked at the screen, then at him, her expression one big question mark.
Yeah. She definitely could not play.
"Lance! Pull back! Stop attacking! Cynthia left, Blissey's controlling her character now!"
He wasn't joking. This was no longer a three-person party. This was a two-person party and one very confused egg nurse.
What made it worse was that Cynthia had accidentally closed voice chat when she set the controller down. Lance and Diantha had absolutely no idea their third teammate was a Blissey.
Luther scrambled to cover for both of them. Diantha, still holding aggro, managed to spam her character's "???" emote twice during a brief lull, she clearly wanted to know why Cynthia had gone brain-dead mid-fight.
Blocking a swipe aimed at Diantha, Luther tried frantically to teach Blissey the bare minimum.
"Those circles on the left move your character, no, not that, that's the power button, yes, that joystick! Push it and you'll move!"
And somehow, impossibly, Blissey had Serene Grace in real life. The moment she nudged the joystick, Cynthia's character happened to dodge the boss's Bulk Up swing by sheer luck.
If that hit had connected, Cynthia's character would've been flattened on the spot.
Blissey stared at the screen, trembling as she shuffled Cynthia's avatar around, dodging attacks with sheer panic powering every movement.
Even Lance started spamming question-mark emotes at this point.
Honestly, if you saw your teammate spinning in circles at spawn, running into walls, and randomly jumping like a malfunctioning NPC, you'd probably spam question marks too.
Four players in a dungeon, but only three actually contributing, no wonder the chat looked like a migraine.
Luther wanted to explain, but he couldn't spare his hands long enough to reopen voice chat. So they soldiered on: three players doing insane DPS while one was, effectively… decorative.
Still swinging away under the boss's towering legs, Luther hesitated, then risked a glance at Blissey.
"Blissey… maybe try the buttons on the right? I don't know how Cynthia mapped her controls, but you can experiment a little."
Realistically, the loot for this run was already doomed. Might as well let Blissey enjoy herself.
"Don't feel pressured. Nothing here is valuable. Cynthia won't mind losing a bit of repair money."
That line instantly relaxed Blissey. She set the controller on the floor, braced herself, and went to work. Her left paw flew across the buttons, steering with surprisingly crisp precision, while her right paw tapped rapidly in a chaotic rhythm. She clearly understood none of the abilities popping up on screen, so she simply ignored them, and mashed everything with complete abandon.
And then, Blissey buffed Lance's attack. Healed Luther for a huge chunk of HP. And even sprinted over to help Diantha soak a lethal hit.
Luther nearly dropped his controller. Blissey didn't even have fingers, yet here she was playing like some kind of unorthodox prodigy, like a newbie mashing keys but stumbling into advanced tech by accident.
With healing restored to normal levels, Diantha and Lance went feral, pumping out damage like they'd been hooked up to a power plant. Luther found the perfect window to lock himself into a crit chain, slicing pieces off the boss's health.
But Blissey wasn't done.
She dodged the boss's instant-kill mechanic, twice. Then she pulled the boss's aggro out of the dangerous zone entirely, relieving almost all the pressure from the team.
Luther felt light-headed. This level of gameplay, he couldn't replicate it, couldn't study it, and couldn't believe it. Lance and Diantha spammed the "thumbs up" emote nonstop, cheering for "Cynthia" to keep going.
Meanwhile, Cynthia finally returned after dealing with the delivery, signatures, confirmations, the whole tedious process. She'd assumed the dungeon run was already a total disaster.
Instead, she walked into a raging climax of a boss fight.
Just as she opened her mouth to take back her controller, she froze.
Blissey, her Blissey, was piloting her character like a battle-crazed champion, charging straight at the screaming boss in the middle of the arena. One perfectly timed leap, one stylish spinning slash,
And she stole the final hit clean out of Lance's, Diantha's, and Luther's hands.
Cynthia stared at the massive "Victory" flashing across the screen, then numbly turned on voice chat.
"Incredible! Absolutely incredible! How did we never know you were this good at the game?" Lance shouted.
"That aggro pull, those dodges, how did you even do that? That last-hit steal? That's not meta, that's not even human. I could grind for years and never pull something like that off," Diantha added.
Cynthia slowly turned toward Luther, pleading for an explanation.
Luther sighed, utterly defeated.
"In simple terms… I think this Blissey plays better than you."
(End of chapter)
PS- Hey Guys I have picked up 2 new fanfictions
New Fanfiction— 1. One Piece—Maxed Out Conqueror's Haki!
2. One Piece—Master Of Devil Fruits