I was down half my team so who I was using was pretty obvious. Between Ian and Sin I thought that Ian was stronger, even after years of training and trying to find better ways to use his moves on his own Sin was unable to. I could only undo so many bad habits in the short time I had personally worked with him. He wasn't particularly adept at being creative but over the last few days I had figured out that he would follow instructions from someone he respected, to the T if he believed it was a good instruction. Over the course of the second half of the game I realized I overlooked something and I wanted to beat that something up, if indirectly.
I released Ian and he started with Hero, a Ralts. He realized what was happening and awkwardly spread his little legs into a combat stance restrained by his skirt. I looked the Ralts dead in the eye and when he saw me staring he nervously shifted, unsure of himself. I felt the dark energy inside me start powering up around annoyance and trying to expel anger as I started ordering Ian around. Starting with swords dance of course.
"Double team and then avoid the pointy end!" Stew ordered. I saw Hero give him a dumb look as if to say 'no duh Sherlock'. I took advantage of that and signaled for Ian to use shadow sneak. A neat thing I figured out was that Ian had an eye side of him such that he could both see me and his opponent all in one. We had planned a signal for shadow sneak and destiny bond but otherwise it wasn't needed to be silent about my orders.
He dipped down into his shadow, becoming one with it as he started moving really fast, faster than after an autonomize. Hero turned back to see no one around before performing his double team and splitting into 3. Gah we were too late, even so, we had the element of surprise.
"Pick one using destiny bond and drive through, make sure this one hurts" I watched as Ian's shadow zoomed towards the right one. Everything worked easily, the frail Pokémon and his trainer waited for whatever was happening to happen and did not preparing a confusion.
Unfortunately for them Ian wasn't playing around, he knew how I felt and he had no qualms with it either as it was similar to his grudge against his late captain. Like a small splinter the abyssal substance throbbed when it was touched and I have yet to get accustomed to the sting.
He pulled up behind the right one and stabbed it with a shadow tipped point. He kept it up and pinned the small Pokémon to the ground before spinning overtop of him. The confusion was messed up in, funnily enough, the confusion and Ralts spent a decent chunk of time to gather enough power to fire punch Ian off of him.
Ian was dented but it wasn't bad, and he got right back to attacking the downed Pokémon with furry cutter again and again. Arm, head, body, Hero was having a hard time dodging his attacks and hitting back, he was too physically weak despite his obvious preparation to become a Gallade one day. Right now it was too contrary to his nature and body to be able to pull off such movements and it has been hurting him in this brawl. Soon Ian slashed hard enough to knock him out and I felt better knowing that I was making steps to achieve my goal one day of ridding the forest of his species. Wow that sounds kind of bad...eh they deserve it and I have to get strong enough to kill their alphas anyways. From what I read when I met Henry Johnson, the strongest had fought against a team that placed in the upper half of the conference. I would need to be better.
Stew recalled the beaten up Ralts, a small bleeding hole in his stomach that had been drilled in was a little concerning as it had been focused enough to break through the natural protection Pokémon were granted. He released Hero right next to him and used a hyper potion real quick before returning him to his ball to rest and tossing out Monster. He looked like he was thinking of something while glancing at me but I zeroed in on his Charmander.
Monster already knew what was up, looking like he had waited for this moment all day before he roared. He looked cute now (Hannah would debate this), but already he was looking redder which was a sign of evolution. Ian was still a long way off from splitting into his dual blade form and already they were somewhat evenly matched. It wouldn't be soon per say, but I would start facing evolved Pokémon on the regular especially from the royal Pokémon given to almost every single trainer.
Ian was already making his blade sharper and stronger, chuckling like an old man as he hovered higher. "Let's do this Ian, start building and make yourself thicker." He started pulling steel energy towards him from his hilt, using it as a power source and shaving off the excess to grow and cover his sword body. Stew wasn't about to let me fool around though.
"Sunny day and then get closer to go for a flamethrower, knock that ghost out of the sky and get revenge for Hero!" Stew was getting settled into the fight. He was nervously bouncing his leg because of the 1v2 situation but he had his strongest Pokémon remaining.
"Don't worry about him until he starts spitting those flames, just keep building up!" I commanded, smiling as I watched the energies from both of them move and runes form to perform their functions. I watched as they glowed with power and I watched as Monster started leaning forwards and pumping his legs in a very aggressive sprint. I pulled out of my trance as he slowed and tried to correctly time my next action. Right when his mouth was opening and flames sputtered, I called out to Ian "Fall into it!"
Ian hesitated, unsure what I meant. I was a little vague but, in this moment, I wasn't sure how else to tell him. When the flamethrower started working, he figured it out and dived into the flames although he did me one better and dodged it while diving. Monster readied metal claw and fully came to a full stop to aim flamethrower at Ian. The move whipped around, catching Ian a couple times until they clashed.
Or would have "Dodge!" The fire type jumped sideways and Ian fell right into the floor. He tried pulling out but was stuck and started taking hits from both flamethrower and metal claw.
"Shadow sneak!" I called out after some thinking and more scratches and melted patches on Ian's undefended blade. He ducked under the last hit and popped out the opposite direction point first wrapped in ghost energy. He landed two hits before going down, a poke to the back and a slash to Monster's left arm.
Then his beaten form dropped out of the air, knocked out. "Good job Stewart Pidgey, but I still have one Pokémon to go."
"Ha, as if some underlings are going to best my strongest partner" he scoffed, playing around with me. I wrapped my hand over Sin's pokeball and tossed it into the battlefield. He opened his eyes to look around, noticing the burnt patches on the ground and the arena set-up. He stretched his shoulder and settled into a fighting stance with his back foot and good arm towards me.
"Let's beat that lizard black and blue, punch!" They were close together so Sin went right at him with a focused look about him. Monster tried to deflect the punch with a sweep his claw and counter attack but that wasn’t going to be enough for a solid attack from a fighting type.
He blew through the flimsy attempt and rocked the fire type with the simple attack. It wasn’t quite at the level of a new or even variant move as it only changed where karate chop was directed and how it was used but in my opinion it was easier to use than wide swinging chops.
Monster backed off as I called out for focus energy.
“Switch to dragon claw, and put his body in between you and…never mind just attack!” Stew was hesitant to take advantage of the disabled being the good guy and all. I understood and thought it was a nice thing to do. So instead of pulling some other trick I let Sin do his thing, he knew better how to fight with one arm than I did but I watched closely to see where he could improve.
They traded blows, blocking some and Sin only landing a few but hard hits that rocked his opponent. Monster slowly started powering up as blaze started to activate so Sin had a harder time breaking through his defenses. Finally I had seen enough and was ready to do something fun.
“Put it all into this next one, everything you got” I told him. And that’s what he did, backing away and focusing on slowly building power while escaping from the wildly swinging Charmander after him.
He kept backing up, building his attack while trying to escape from harm.
“Forget about dragon claw and tackle him quickly!” It had been going well but neither I nor my Machop had an answer for being jumped too early.
The energy dispersed and Sin got destroyed on the ground until he was also knocked out. That sucks. It looked really sad too since there wasn't anything I could do. I should have thought of something anyways, dad would have and so would Aubree.
I returned Sin and finally paid Stew his winnings for the great odds he offered. Other people had beaten me mostly by being older trainers who needed the money and raised a new Pokemon to entice first years into thinking they had a chance. I also faced kids my age with evolved teams(cheap evolution materials that would take forever to see the full benefit from) that boosted their abilities sharply right now. Everyone else I had a good chance of winning against because I traveled alone, attracting fights from wild Pokemon and battling more relentless and dangerous foes. Whereas groups scared them away even though group traveling was somewhat safer from accidents.
Stew though, he was different than others for me. Simply because he kept retrying. He didn’t get fazed from losing and neither did he ignore the reasons he lost, building upon his past failures or tidbits he could do better.
“Aha, a main character always wins in the end!” He walked up to Monster to give him a head scratch and shake my hand and smiling.
“The conference is a long ways away you know. I’m planning on making it to the finals” I boasted while recalling Sin before shaking his hand firmly.
“Well how about this then” he pulled out his pokedex and after a couple seconds mine dinged.
Alert, you have received a rival request from Stewart Pidgeot
I pulled it out to look at it dumbly as the message stuck to the screen.
“Uh, what’s this?” Trying to figure it out I tapped various things that didn't change anything on the screen.
“Here just give it” he said, concerned over my ineptitude with computers and advanced technology. I handed the pokedex over and he tapped enter and moved the select option to accept. “This is mostly for friends to keep up with each other and compete.”
New rival registered, you may now see Stewart Pidgeot’s trainer statistics the screen read.
“Also makes things more interesting at the higher levels, people love a good rival battle and sponsors love the attention they can bring” he explained. I still didn’t understand, but I had a few other questions that I was more interested in.
Stewart Pidgeot for example and also the trainer statistics thing.
He laughed “All in good time my dear rival, all in good time. Maybe at the end of the season I'll clue you in.”
Man spilled two minutes later on our way out of the city after I almost socked him for ignoring me and talking about how his Ralts would be so awesome when it became a Gallade.
