"Retreat away from the smoke!" brawly said calmly. 'Tsk , he noticed the trap.' I thought before moving to a different tactic. I had set up a series of orders with Rune that worked for different strategies I made. Smokescreen followed by thunderwave was the set up for an ambush at close range as the smoke worked to hide his exact location and the thunderwave made quick reactions to him difficult for the opponent. In other words I set Rune up to viciously use hit and run type attacks. Obviously Brawly figured this out in no time flat but I wasn't upset since that was what I expected a gym leader to be capable of.-

"Negative shock!" I called and Brawly frowned not understanding what the command was even when the thundershock hit the Machamp causing it to cry out in pain. "Earthquake!" He called clearly choosing to pull out all the stops. Now it was my turn to frown as while I knew the Machamp had the move I had hoped to not see it used. Earthquake was not a move that the Machop line learned naturally but it was possible to teach them via tutors or tms.-

It was also the bane of most electric types and had no real defense for besides literally flying above the ground until the move ended. Rune didn't even get that option until his third evolutionary stage. I had to suppress my concern for him as he screamed as the ground of the arena turned brown and shook violently. "Positive thunder!" I yelled while hopping Rune pulled through the powerful super effective move. "CHAR!" Rune screamed defiantly and a super bright and thick bolt of lightning shot out of the smoke and Brawly sighed in relief as it looked like it was going to miss , then it happened.-

The thick bolt of lightning suddenly shot to the side the moment it got near the Machamp like it had a mind of it's own. Brawly was stunned at this result and I am fairly certain that only an electrician or electric type specialist would likely understand what just happened. It is a well known fact that there is positive and negative electrical charges but it is less known that they are attracted to each other. By having Rune hit the Machamp with a negative charge thundershock I primed another electrical attack of the positive charge to be a guaranteed hit , in this case the much more powerful thunder.-

"Machamp is unable to battle!" the referee called and the smoke cleared to reveal rune as well and he was no looking good at all. He was covered in large bruises and I was pretty sure a rib or two was broken or at least fractured. He was panting heavily but seemed satisfied with the outcome as he had a wide grin before the little shit started to glow and get wrapped up in a glowing orb of energy , he was evolving.-

"Charmander has started it's evolution! By league regulations this match is to be moved to the auxiliary arena to continue and the Charmander is disallowed to continue the challenge!" the referee said sternly and both Brawly and I could only shrug and comply. This was by no means an uncommon thing to happen but since it would be unfair to stop the challenge for the hour or so that an evolution may take there was another arena in every gym. Brawly took the brief time it took to get there to hand off the Machamp to a Joy clan member that was on standby as well as drink some water.-

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Once we got in position the match started back up and we both tossed out our pokemon. "Vulcan , set!" "Hariyama crashes in!" we both called at the same time as two large and intimidating pokemon appeared on the field. Vulcan wasted no time at all raising the temperature of the arena upon release while roaring proudly and the Hariyama tensed up but didn't flinch even a little. 'Fighting types are all battle maniacs so obviously intimidation won't work here.' I thought before checking the level and moves of the thing before frowning deeply.-

"That pokemon exceeds the grade five danger rating!" I announce sternly but also rather confused as I very much doubted that Brawly was the sort to try and cheat like this. "I figured Birch told you?" Brawly said confused. "Apparently not so care to fill me in?" I said still frowning. "There's a rule for gym battles involving a Legendary where the leader is allowed a single pokemon higher grade than the challenge if the leader does not hold a type advantage , it's to keep things fair." Brawly said and I sighed while cursing Birch mentally for not telling me.-

I can't say that I was expecting such a rule to exist but in hindsight it did make sense considering how broken legendries are. 'I have got to actually look over the league rules more closely after this.' I decided before motioning for the battle to resume. "Extrasensory!" I called and Vulcans eyes glowed pinkish purple and the air around the Hariyama started to shimmer. "Knock off!" Brawly said with a grin as the sumo pokemons hands glowed dark grey and it slapped the shimmering air dispelling it. It was a clever use of the slow buildup of extrasensory to dispel the attack with a dark type move since the dark type energy repelled the psychic type.-

"fine then , the hard way it is. Lava plume!" I called and Vulcan stomped a glowing red paw onto the ground and Brawly didn't even bother telling the Hariyama to dodge as it was already in the motions as the small geyser of lava erupted under it. Vulcan wasn't stupid enough to think it's opponent would stay still and let the hit land and thus had it erupt in a cone for less damage but equally greater chance to hit.-

Hariyama were deceptively fast pokemon for there appearance but it was still not able to truly dodge the attack. "Leer double!" I called seeing this as an opportunity. "Belly drum!" Brawly said with a grin and a gleam in his eye. Vulcan did as I ordered and it was only after the lava cooled that I realized what had happened as I had overlooked it's potential ability , in this case thick fat. This ability might sound like an insult to have but it was anything but in reality. A pokemon with thick fat was nearly fifty percent more resistant to fire and ice type moves as well as the burned and frozen status effects.-

All in all not good news for me and Vulcan with his most powerful moves effectively half as damaging as normal. "Yup definitely hard way. Roar!" I called and Vulcan obeyed without hesitation after dropping the Hariyama defensive stats by two stages. Roar by the way didn't work like in the game where it force switched someone's pokemon but rather was basically a full on oppresive force wave of normal type energy traveling via sound. It was also super disorienting to get hit by and caused confusion.