Josh was too focused on keeping his own identity hidden to notice Elisabeth's. Putting the headset on, the stadium-sized battle court, surrounded by thousands of virtual fans as though it were the finals of a large battle tournament was as lifelike as he expected. "This is going to sound weird, but it's actually a step back for me. Years ago, I used to do beta testing for an indie dev called Shovelware Studios. They're a video game fan's wet dream; their entire business model is to scoop up abandoned video game IPs and reboot them. Technology has advanced so far nowadays that we've gone beyond VR and into the world of full-sim gaming. There's a full-sim game that's a reboot of a MMO from the early 2000s, with terminals at every Round One in Hoenn. Laurence Anderson , Josh Dragomir , and I play together with some regularity, and it's a ton of fun."

When the system prompted him to, Josh sent out his virtual Tyrantrum. It made him want to get a real one, as it would make for an incredibly intimidating mount. A rough ride and not extremely fast, but having that kind of muscle could be very useful on heavy-duty missions as a Ranger. The virtual UI was nothing short of impressive, showing his Tyrantrum's power level (normalized to 50), stamina, move list, and so forth. It was not dissimilar to the UIs of full-sim games.

"Alright, hold your TERA ORB about shoulder height, let the Infinity Energy collect inside, then toss it at your Pokémon like you would a Poké Ball. It's that simple!" Josh instructed, then followed his own advice. The interior of his virtual orb sparkled a fiery red. The tall and imposing dinosaur, surrounded in a pyramid of TERASTAL CSYSTAL for several seconds, shattered it from within, Now covered in a crystal body and adorned with a flame-shaped TERA JEWEL on its forehead, the large Pokémon prepared to incinerate whatever Elisabeth chose to battle with in an explosive, superheated TERA BLAST.

As a Gym Leader, Josh had to have an intricate understanding of applied Infinity Energy. "Exactly like that!" he smiled. "You're a quick learner!" The TERA JEWEL's amethyst color and skull-and-crossbones shape was an obvious sign of the now-crystallized Frosmoth's shift to the Poison-type. It looked like the battle was about to start, the UI having fully materialized. A very short timer pressured both combatants to make their moves with the same urgency of a real battle.

The TERA BLASTs collided with one another with lifelike physics, exploding in a deluge of fiery, venomous goop. Not even the brutal dinosaur was able to get away unscathed, Josh watching his virtual Pokémon's stamina indicator roll down. There were even red, bouncing numerals on the UI, in front of the Pokémon's portrait, to indicate exactly how hard the attack hit. This certainly took a lot of the guesswork out. Realizing he could probably attack the Frosmoth incessantly, he shifted tactics to end the fight as quickly as possible, his Gym Leader instincts taking over. He silently ordered the fire-shifted dragon-type to use HEAD SMASH, awaiting his opponent's orders. Once both were entered, the Tyrantrum lowered its head and charged the insect with reckless abandon.

The Frosmoth's AURORA VEIL was going to be a big problem for the Raikou-knight, making it very easy for the bug-type to repel attacks. There were two approaches in Josh's mind: the first to simply have the ancient Pokémon remain in a hunched position, bulldozing the Frosmoth with HEAD SMASH until it keeled over. Of course, that came with a significant risk: the potent attack was typically dangerous to both its user and the defender. While its ROCK HEAD let it use the attack with impunity, it was also quite unwieldy, represented with an accuracy value of 80 in the simulator. He had rolled the dice once and been lucky. He wasn't willing to roll them a second time, instead selecting HONE CLAWS. While it did give Elisabeth Fiorelli an opening, it would later open the door to a decisive strike at the end of the battle, when it mattered most.

After both battlers had selected their commands, Josh answered his opponent's questions while the animations played out. "I was. Not by choice, either. You would think Commissioner dahlia goode would have assigned me to fire the Desert's Primal Point, given where I was assigned. But no, she conscripted me to space. It's not an experience I'd like to repeat anytime soon. Four of my closest Pokémon almost died there, and Aslan, my shiny Pyroar... he's still in the hospital." That reminded him: he needed to check on the fire-type tomorrow.

"Like I said, she conscripted me to space," was Josh's simple answer, the two chatting as the exchange played out. "The meteor itself." Elisabeth mentioned the Darkest Day; it was a horrible battle with Ultra Necrozma that happened just before Josh had entered the region. He heard the death toll from the single battle was in the three, if not four, figures. "Any loss is hard, even temporary loss. I can't imagine how hard it must be to deal with permanent loss."

This time, there was no TERA BLAST of the Tyrantrum's own to repel the Frosmoth's: the noxious sphere would strike the now fire-type dinosaur with full force.

CRITICAL!! 1040

Josh gasped as the entire VR screen flashed white twice in rapid succession: the indicator of a four-figure critical hit. One way or another, the battle was going to end this turn.

Perhaps this was a contributing factor to Josh's lack of battle skills as a Gym Leader: he knew the battle simulators so well that he could do a lot of the math needed to win at them on the fly. He knew from running the numbers that neither TERA BLAST nor DRAGON TAIL would have the punch to get the job done. In real battles, there would be way more guesswork, as the hits were quite real, and there was no life meter to show exactly how hurt his Pokémon was. Without hesitation, he entered a command to HEAD SMASH and prayed for a hit.

"From what I understand, if the rehab goes well, I'll be able to ride and race him again around mid-March," he explained. It was such a long recovery, but given that it was a legendary Pokémon that inflicted such a wound, any outcome other than death was fortunate. "He'll never be as fast as he once was, though."