Back in the lounge area, Computer guy was still at the kitchen table. Dragonair guy and both Ninetales had left, and Leo and Zoroark were sitting on the couch and watching TV with Kaiju and Boltund fast asleep next to them. Both of them had their hair sticking up like they got zapped by lighting.
Winnie giggled as he poked Zoroark’s staticy mane with a paw and got slightly zapped. Zoroark grinned and rubbed Boltund’s fur before rubbing its paws on Winnie’s head tuft, making it puff up like a fuzz ball and the two of them snickered at each other’s appearance.
I thanked Leo for watching Kaiju and returned Kaiju to his ball.
Then I went upstairs with Celia and down a hallway with a bunch of doors, kind of like halls of an apartment building, but less suites. A few of them had nametags and decorations on the doors.
Celia pointed at the doors at the end of the hallway. “You can pick what room you want as long as it doesn’t have a name on it. I suggest the one of the ones furthest from the lounge and from Angela’s room.”
She pointed as a room decorated with cute Pokemon themed halloween stickers and the fancily written word, Angela, on it.
“Why Angela’s room?”
“Cause she smokes even though, WE’RE NOT ALLOWED TO SMOKE INDOORS!” Celia suddenly shouted.
“It’s as if there’s a smoking area outside just for her!” Celia shouted again.
The slight scent of woodsmoke suddenly got stronger, as if someone purposefully wafted the scent in our direction. Wrinkling my nose, I waved my hand in front of my face to try to clear the scent away. I thought she meant smoking cigarettes. Not…wood?
We heard some muffled footsteps and Angela’s door opened. A tall lady who looked like a classy hex maniac stepped out with a slightly annoyed expression stepped out. Notably, she was holding a long smoking pipe that was emitting more smoke than it should’ve been. “Leo smokes too asshole.”
Celia put her hand on her hip and rolled her eyes. “Not inside. And he doesn’t turn the building into an unfiltered medieval smoker. For the hundredth time, either go outside or put your pipe away. Building management isn’t going to be happy about this.”
Angela huffed and sassily dropped the pipe. Her shadow reach out and caught it as she retreated back into her room and shut the door behind her with a sharp, “Clack!”
Anyways…“Umm, I’m good now Celia. Just one more question, uh, where can I got to let one of my Pokemon stretch her legs a bit before bed? She’s been in her Pokeball all day.”
“Out back. It’s the fenced in area with the big barns on the opposite side of the parking lot. You’ll see it. If you have anymore questions just ask–uhhh, wait you’re not in the group chat. I’ll get Justine to add you so you can ask there.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
Celia nodded, “Good night then.” Exit stage right.
I chose one of the rooms at the end of the hallway and put Kaiju to bed. Shuppet was assigned to babysit him while we went outside.
A sharp chill went down my spine as I stepped into the hallway. Did someone turn the air conditioning on?
“GRAAHHH! FEAR ME PEASANTS!”
Suddenly, I was nose to nose with a gruesome face plastered on a golden mask. I blinked in surprised, the face reminded me of the sad side of those theater drama masks with one happy side and one sad side.
I waved the mask away like it was some fly buzzing in my face, “Oi, watch it. You ever heard of personal space?”
The Pokemon holding the mask phased into view with a rather grumpy expression. “Yeah, I have lady.” Yamask crossed its arms and growled with an extra side of rude.
Winnie jumped up onto my head and growled back, “hey! watch your manners masky!”
I just raised an eyebrow, is it upset that I didn’t get scared?
Rotom chose this moment to fly out and scan the new Pokemon.
“Yamask, the spirit Pokemon. These Pokémon arose from the spirits of people interred in graves. Each retains memories of its former life. Each of them carries a mask that used to be its face when it was human. Sometimes they look at it and cry.”
Yamask growled again, it’s red eyes glowing maliciously, “Hey, watch your mouth you little shit or else I’m gonna make you regret it!”
A wave of angry ghost type energy radiated off of Yamask and the temperature dropped significantly.
Rotom let out a robotic giggle and Winnie grinned, “what? can’t deal with some hard facts? You started this.”
“Why you! You idiots should know when to respect a noble ghost like me!” Yamask sneered, putting a lot of emphasis on the word ‘noble.’
Its aura turned murderous and it began floating towards us terminator style. I heard the Winnie’s gang getting restless in my shadow as their collective auras became more hostile in response to Yamask and the temperature dropped even lower.
Rotom buzzed with alarm and flew back into my pocket while Winnie’s hackles rose and he got ready for a fight.
I put my hands up to try to block Winnie and Yamask from getting at each other.
“Oi! Guys! Guys! Chill! Geez, don’t start a fight in the hallway!”
My hands went ice cold as Yamask phased through it and I sucked in my breath through my teeth in a grimace. Thankfully the angry ghost stopped at the sound of a bunch of footsteps running up the stairs.
Yamask huffed and blew a raspberry at us, quickly vanishing into the wall, it’s voice echoed, “This isn’t finished you bastards.”
What the fuck? Jeez, someone get that ghost a therapist.
I turned to see two identical girls with brunette hair in neat ponytails and dressed in the same exact outfits ran dow the hallway toward us, moving in sync. A pair of Meowstic, one male, one female, followed them. What is this, The Shining ft Pokemon?
“Hiya!” The girls said at the same time, waving at us at the same time.
“Brrr! It’s cold in here.” The girl on the left commented, I was able to pick up a slight french accent from her words.
“Hi, uh, who are you guys?”
“I’m Chloe!” The twin on the right said. “And I’m Zoe!” Said the twin on the left.
The two Meowstic waved and posed, meowing, “Meowstic!” at the same time.
Oh yeah, Celia and Tim mentioned ‘the twins.’ Are they the Kalos versions of Tate and Liza?
“are they performing for something?” Winnie whispered in my ear, “I dunno.” I muttered back.
“Nice to meet you guys. I’m Azalea. This guy here is Winnie.”
Both twins grinned, “You guys must be the ones Marcus was yapping about.”
“Uh, yeah I guess.”
“Meowstic!” Both Meowstic shouted and pointed to their wrists.
“Well, we’ll see you later then, we need to go to bed.” All four of them began to float in the air. I took a few steps back expecting them to do something crazy.
“Good night!” They chorused.
“Good night?”
I blinked and then all four of them were gone.
“Am I hallucinating?” I looked around and pinched my arm. What we’d just seen felt like the type of weird shit I’d see in a dream.
Winnie shrugged. “nope, they were real. they’re weird.”
“Yeah, they sure were uh…interesting.”
----------------------------------------
It was a crisp and cold fall night, I had to put on some extra layers but the fresh cold air was nice after hours on a plane followed by a long meeting cause I absolutely sucked at sitting still for long periods of time. Some bird Pokemon in the distance
The lights from the lab buildings illuminated a pretty large area around it, including the fenced in field we were in, so I could see pretty decently despite it being night out.
Sahara was eager to train since she’d been stuck in her Pokeball all day, so I let her practice the usual sandstorm tactics against Winnie, who was working on a slightly new tactic that we had come up with.
Since Winnie could fool his target’s senses, why not trick them into not knowing that they’re taking damage? This only worked with chip damage, but if Winnie could improve on this then he’d be able to abuse the shit out of this tactic and not take any damage at all.
A few minutes in, Rotom notified me that Justine had added me to the expedition group chat, which was named ‘Santa’s Elves.’ Nice to know that Santa exists in this world too.
“Heeyy~”
The three of us stopped and looked in the direction of the lab where a younger version of Angela but with darker purple hair, a Golett, and the same Yamask from before were approaching us.
Rotom was excited about finally being able to scan new Pokemon again, “Golett, the Automaton Pokemon. The energy that burns inside it enables it to move, but no one has yet been able to identify this energy. These Pokémon are thought to have been created by the science of an ancient and mysterious civilization.”
Yamask gave us the most contemptuous smirk it could muster, “What’s up losers!”
Winnie growled but I nudged him with my shoe for him to stay calm.
I smiled and waved at them “Hey!”
“Nice to finally meet you! I’m Justine, I helped you with the plane tickets.” Justine reached out her hand and I shook it. She seemed pretty friendly, but why did it feel like she was trying to figure out the best way to dissect me?
“Nice to meet you too Justine. What are you doing out here so late?”
“Celia told me where you were, and I wanted to meet the new expedition members! That Rotom of yours is super interesting though, I wanna have a Rotom phone! How has no one thought of something like this yet? I’m gonna ask Jason to make one for me.”
“Oh, yeah if you need any help on that feel free to ask me. By the way, are you by chance related to Angela?”
“Ha! Yes, I am! I’m her younger sister, aaaand also aspiring to be a ghost type master like her someday!”
“She’s a ghost type master?” I asked, that’s one step above ghost type specialist right?
“Yep~” Justine’s smile widened, “She was personally taught by Agatha of the Indigo Elite four and is her best student. She helped me get my starter, Golett, and Agatha gifted me Yamask~ Aren’t they cute?”
Yamask floated closer to Winnie to get in his face, it’s golden mask now had a shit eating grin plastered in it in place of the sorrowful frown it had earlier.
“You hear that loser? I was deemed worthy by THE Agatha and I was taught by ghosts on the same level as an elite Pokemon. Elite. E-L-I-T-E. Which also means, you’re weaker than me and should be bowing and begging, for, my, forgiveness.” The mask ghost poked Winnie on the nose for each of those last few words.
Much to Winnie’s credit, he kept his temper and didn’t react to Yamask’s taunting. Sahara just scoffed at Yamask’s words and said something under her breath.
Golett didn’t seem to like Yamask’s behavior and clicked disapprovingly, stepping forward and pulling its teammate away from Winnie, who was giving Yamask his version of one of Sahara’s death glares.
Oooohh, that’s where the brat’s inflated ego comes from.
“That’s pretty cool. But umm, could you possibly reign your Yamask? It’s been pretty rude to us since we first met it back in the lab building.”
“Oh really? I’m sorry, he’s a bit spoiled.” She leaned forward a bit, covering the side of her face with a hand an whispering, “Between you and me, he’s pretty full of himself because he’s never lost a battle against other Pokemon of the same level as him.”
Winnie’s ear twitched when he heard that and he got an big grin, “Az! Why don’t we battle them? I gotta test out the new thing we were doing anyways.”
Yamask wriggled out of Golett’s grip. “Yes! A battle where I can crush you imbeciles!”
“It seems like Winnie and Yamask want to battle. You up for it?” I asked Justine, who smiled deviously,
“Sure! There’s no better way to get acquainted with a fellow trainer! I’m especially excited to see what tactics a ghost type species like Hisuan Zorua will use in battle!”
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Oh. If she wanted a battle in the first place she could’ve just asked…
We agreed to a 1 vs 1 until knockout. Golett and Sahara stood by to watch. Golett seemed pretty done with Yamask’s behavior and just kinda facepalmed when the battle was announced.
Golett automatically assigned itself the referee position and waited until we’d all properly positioned ourselves before declaring the start of the battle, with a robotic sounding, “Battle begin!” And a quick vertical hand wave.
“Usual trick tactics plus what we were just practicing Winnie, be careful to not make physical contact with Yamask cause it’s ability can temporarily negate yours.”
“got it az!” Winnie crouched down, readying himself but not visibly moving from his spot. Yamask and Justine didn’t notice that the Winnie they were seeing was just an illusion. I actually didn’t know when he’d switched from the real him to a fake version but that would just make it easier to fool the opponent.
“Oh? A trainer who actually knows a bit about ghosts? This is gonna be fun. Boost yourself Yamask.”
Yamask’s eyes narrowed and it grinned, it’s already malicious aura darkening as it thought evil thoughts. Now that it didn’t have to hold back, Yamask freely let its ghostly aura flow and I shivered from the coldness of it. It was way stronger than Winnie currently was, but I was confident that its hubris would make sure it couldn’t land a single hit on Winnie.
Yamask’s energy was hella negative and just angry compared to the energy Winnie and his gang emitted, probably because they were more friendly ghosts. Yamask clearly had issues it needed to work through.
Winnie and I waited as Yamask finished using Nasty Plot, the white fox was already working his illusion magic. Seeing that we weren’t react, Yamask tried to use Nasty Plot again. Yeah no, we’re not letting that happen.
“Torment then Will-O-Wisp.”
Fake Winnie dove into action and growled unintelligible but obviously insulting words at Yamask, the dark type energy quickly taking effect and preventing Yamask from using Nasty Plot again.
“Crafty Shield, don’t let it burn you.”
A pink translucent barrier with hexagonal honeycomb patterns slowly flickered to life around Yamask. We didn’t need to burn Yamask, it was already moving slower than it was before due to the burn it unknowingly had. Now we just had to wear away at its health.
“Shadow Ball, don’t let it finish the move.”
Fake Winnie created a Shadow Ball and shot it at Yamask, who easily dodged it and laughed.
“You call that a Shadow Ball? What a–grakpshdfg!” Winnie’s Shadow Ball stopped midair and boomeranged back at Yamask, hitting it in the back and catching it by surprise. Critical hit!
The golden masked ghost was sent flying due to the mini explosion from the Shadow ball’s impact and did a few flips before recovering.
“Steady there Yamask, Disable!”
Yamask’s face contorted and it’s eye glinted at fake Winnie, who shivered from the moves effect and glared back at the masked ghost.
“Why don’t I show you what a real Shadow Ball looks like?” Yamask began to charge up a Shadow Ball between it’s hands.
“Change to Dark Pulse, ghost type moves won’t work on your opponent.” Justine shouted.
Yamask huffed in annoyance and the swirling purple-violet ball of energy between its hands turned into an angry stream of dark type energy that Yamask shot straight at Winnie.
There was a loud BOOM as the rays from Yamask’s Dark Pulse impacted the ground where Fake Winnie just was.
Fake Winnie reappeared from the smoke, seemingly uninjured and began to run at Yamask.
“Grab Yamask’s mask with Extrasensory, then Hex!”
“No you won’t! Protect and Double Team.”
Yamask used Protect, but fake Winnie’s had seemingly teleported behind Yamask, eyes glowing with Psychic type energy. Yamask’s mask was nearly ripped from it’s grip, distracting it from properly reacting. It quickly recovered and spun around to face fake Winnie, scattering clones of itself everywhere and creating a barrier that protected it from Winnie’s Hex.
“Imprison!” Justine shouted with a bit of a flourish. Trying to seal our moves huh?
Yamask cackled, its eyes glowed again with a slight magenta tinge and a red circular insignia appeared under Fake Winnie’s feet and flashed brightly before disappearing.
Fake Winnie shook himself off and continued running around to make himself a hard target for Yamask to hit.
“Catch him with Psychic!” The glow in Yamask’s eyes turned a deeper magenta and it picked Fake Winnie up by his tail, swinging the flailing fox around in the air like a toddler swinging around a stuffed animal.
“I’ve got you now you mutt! HAHAHAHA!” Yamask crowed victoriously, its clones from Double Team circled around Fake Winnie and made faces at him.
“Stop playing around, Dark Pulse to finish him off!”
Winnie and I both grinned, “Night Shade to clear the fakes. Scare tactics into Hex.”
It took a moment for Justine to register what I’d said. She realized too late that the Winnie they were seeing wasn’t real, and Winnie began to use one of the moves that Yamask was supposed to have sealed.
“Yamask, it’s an illusion! Use Dark Pulse on the entire area and look for the real Winnie!” Fake Winnie’s illusion faded away to reveal a large chunk of dirt vaguely shaped like Winnie, and a ripple of ghost energy spread out, destroying Yamask’s double team clones.
Something massive jumped out at Yamask from behind it and the ghost swung around, the fury etched into its face turned into horror as it came face to face with an exact replica of Kaiju’s mom.
“HYYYDREIGON!” Illusion Hydreigon roared loud enough to make my ears were ring. Despite knowing that this was fake, even I got goosebumps from how real this illusion was Winnie had improved a lot since we’d first started training just a few days ago.
I heard Justine squeak in surprised as illusion Hydreigon bore down on Yamask. To the ghosts’s credit, despite its both it and its trainer losing their composure, it steeled itself and shot a Dark Pulse at Illusion Hydreigon, dissipating a large chunk of the illusion.
Reassured that the dragon wasn’t real, Yamask began to charge another Dark Pulse but wasn’t able to finish the move as it suddenly fell to the ground with a clatter.
The chip damage from the burn that Winnie had applied at the beginning of the battle plus the extra powerful Hexes Winnie had been spamming had taken their toll and finally knocked Yamask out.
The air next to my shin rippled and Winnie reappeared, not a scratch on him. He was pretty winded from having to keep up so many accurate illusions while attacking Yamask at the same time.
“heh, i taught the brat a lesson.”
I scooped Winnie up in my arms and pet his head, “Yeah you sure did. Your illusions were terrific! I’m so proud of you.”
Justine returned Yamask to its luxury ball and walked over to talk to us, “Wow! That was amazing! I didn’t know that the Zoroark line could create illusions like that!”
“What? You never seen Leo’s Zoroark do something like that?”
“Well, not exactly. Zoroark uses its Illusion ability to copy what others look like onto his own appearance but he’s never done whatever Winnie just did. What did he do?”
“I just had him use Will-O-Wisp early on and use his illusions to trick Yamask into not knowing that it was taking damage from its burn. All we had to do after that was stall, use Hex, and make sure that Hex wasn’t disabled by any of Yamask’s other moves by preventing him from being spotted by either of you.”
“Hmmmm, I didn’t know that was possible with just illusions! Perhaps Zoroark doesn’t do it because its illusions can only affect sight and sound, or because there’s a difference in the type energy that fuels their illusions.”
“Eh, we’ll find out tomorrow.” Justine shrugged, “I’ll ask Marcus to whip out the good ol energy wave reader and we can run some tests.”
“Okay. Um, by the way is Yamask gonna be alright? Am I gonna have to worry about any hauntings from an angry ghost?”
Justine chuckled, “Oh, he’ll be fine. He’s a bit of a jerk, but he’s not a sore loser. Yamask will have a bruised ego but it’ll just make him want to train harder to surpass Winnie. ”
“Cool. I mean, having rivals is pretty great for getting a good challenge. You hear that Winnie? You’d better not slack off in your training unless you wanna lose to Yamask.”
“humph, like i’d neglect my duties as a leader like that stuck up brat.”
“Uh huh.”
“GRAWRR! GABITE!” Sahara stepped forward and roared, her eyes literally shining with battle spirit.
“You want to battle too?”
“Gabite bite!” Sahara pointed at Golett with a sharp toothed snarl that looked like her version of a grin. She didn’t just want a battle, she was demanding a battle.
Golett took a step back with raised hands and vehemently shook its head. “Nononononononono. Nope.”
Patting Golett reassuringly, Justine also shook her head, “Yeah, Golett isn’t a huge fan of battling. BUT! Ben and Collin are probably still out training, if you guys wanna go find them. Gabite will be able to get in a great battle, though I’ll have to warn you guys, you’re not gonna win against either of them.”
Sahara’s eyes gleamed and she snorted in excitement, “Gabite!” She took Justine’s words as a challenge.
“I hear you girl. Yeah that sounds great, let’s go!”
----------------------------------------
It wasn’t hard to find the guys Justine told us about even though we had to hike through a section of woods in the dark using our phone flashlights.
All we had to do was head in the direction of a giant column of fire in the distance and the sounds of multiple loud crashes that kicked out large dust clouds.
“That’s them.”
We came to a large battlefield lit up by a few stadium lights.
There were two guys on each side of the field, their teams standing around and watching an Armarouge and a Mienshao fight and cheering on their teammates.
The Armarouge’s trainer was a guy with outrageously red hair and loud fire themed clothing. The Pokemon cheering Armarouge on were all fire types, Charizard, Turtonator, Talonflame, Arcanine, and a Heatran of all things.
The guy just casually had a Heatran, a minor legendary. Wow.
Obviously he was a fire type specialist. His hair has to be dyed that color red, right? Then again, Justine and her sister have purple hair and Celia has ice blue hair.
Mienshao’s trainer was more normal looking guy wearing some sort of martial arts outfit and a bandana with a fighting type symbol on it. The rest of his team included a Machoke, Breloom, Crabominable, Hitmonchan, and a blaze breed Tauros. Do I need to say what type of trainer he was as well?
Armarogue was literally one with the fire and kept its distance from Mienshao to make the most of it’s specialization as a special attacker. It combined its control of fire and psychic type energies to manipulate fire like it was just another part of its body and had a large coat of fire acting as an extra layer of armor.
Despite the disadvantage it was at, Mienshao gracefully weaved and dodged through Armarogue’s attacks, quickly closing the distance before disappearing in a blur and assaulting its opponent with a blindingly fast flurry of kicks and punches that flowed together like the water of river rapids constantly chipping away at a boulder in its path.
A translucent barrier formed in front of Armarogue as the fiery knight tried to block it opponents constant blows, but Mienshao shattered Protect with ease before continuing it’s assault.
We sat by and watched the battle with occasional comments from Winnie or Justine until the match ended with Mienshao getting knocked out. Armarogue helped its opponent up and they gave each other friendly but competitive smiles as they talked to each other, probably about their fight.
“Yoohoo! Hey guys! Great battle~” Justine jumped up and I followed her to the center of the field.
Redhead grinned, “Hey Justine! Wassup? Who’s the new girl?”
“This is Azalea, she’s the newest member of the expedition team. This little guy here is Winnie.”
I waved at Redhead and Martial arts guy, who was giving Mienshao a Rawst berry.
“AAAAYYY! Welcome! The name’s Bennett, but everyone calls me Ben!” Redhead guy raised his hand up and I high-fived him.
I kinda winced as my hand touched his for just a brief moment, the guy’s palm was hot enough to fry an egg. Is he part fire type?
Then Martial arts guy joined us, “Since when?”
“Since about an hour ago.” Justine answered.
“Nice. Welcome to the team.” Martial arts guy smiled and nodded, “I’m Collin.”
“Are you guys done for the night?” Justine asked, “Gabite here is looking for a battle, if any of your Pokemon are up for it.”
Ben and Collin looked and pointed at each other.
“You wanna?” Collin asked.
Ben shrugged, “I mean if you’re done for the night I’m totally up for one more battle.”
“Yeah sure go ahead.”
“Thanks bro! Turtonator! You’re up!”
A massive Turtonator that was standing not too far away from us nodded and began to stomp to one side of the field.
“Hey Azalea! You take the right side, I’ll take the left.”
I nodded, “Sahara, come on.” Jogging over to the outlined square box where the trainers stood in, I finally realized how big this field was compared to the ones at the Pokemon center, it was almost three times bigger! It felt a lot more professional.
Yeah, we definitely weren’t winning this battle. We were facing the same issue Winnie had with his battle against Yamask. Out repertoire of moves and overall power level were puny compared to out opponents, and this time we didn’t have any obvious ways to win.
I was still eager to see what both Sahara and Turtonator could do. I hadn’t been able to properly battle with her yet so this was a great opportunity to finally see what we needed to work on. Hopefully Ben and Collin would also be willing to give some pointers after the battle.
Collin jogged over to the side of the field, “I’ll ref for this one. You guys ready?”
Ben and I both said yeah and Collin declared, “Match start!”
“Set up Turts!” Turtonator roared and it’s shell glowed before the glowing area layered on its shell shattered like glass and disappeared. Shell Smash huh? This isn’t good.
“Set up too Sahara!”
With her battle spirit at maxed out, Sahara roared with glee. The biggest Sandstorm she’d ever created swirled to life, covering almost the entire battlefield in sand. Before she was only able to create a sandstorm big enough to cover only half that area.
“Dragon Rush! Get in close and use Dragon Claw and Tail, don’t attack it’s back, try to get at its front, there’s a hole there that’s its weak spot.”
Now that Turtonator’s defense was lowered, Gabite needed to get in there and deal as much damage as possible before the dragon turtle could boost its defense again.
Sahara rushed in, dragon type energy cloaking her and boosting her speed. Turtonator expertly turned its fire covered shell whichever way Sahara tried to strike at and blew white hot Flamethrowers or powerful beams of Dragon Pulses to slow the landshark down when it couldn’t move fast enough.
The spikes on its shell glowed before bursting from the shell right at Sahara.
“Dig!”
Sahara ducked and quickly burrowed underground to avoid being struck by Turtonator’s Scale Shot.
“Earthquake and Heat Wave.” Shit.
“Get out and use Rock Tomb to shield yourself from the Heat Wave.” Sahara burst out of the ground, a Rock Tomb already forming and collecting together to form a barrier. I’m gonna need to teach my entire team Protect sometime in the future.
Turtonator stomped a foot into the ground, creating a shockwave that shook the entire area. I stumbled, trying to keep my footing. Sahara was able to keep her footing better than I did and braced herself for the shockwave to decrease the damage she took.
Then Turtonator sent forward a wave of fire that quickly began to melt the rock wall Sahara was hiding behind. I shielded my eyes and felt my entire front get literally baked in the heat from the attack. I could smell my clothes getting burnt.
Winnie, who was standing with me as support squeaked and dove into my shadow for cover.
“Fire Spin, trap them.” A giant swirling column of fire instantly shot up around Sahara, who roared in pain as the heat began to deal damage.
“Dig out of the Fire Spin and underneath Turtonator, try to get at its front again.” Sahara did as I said and burst out of the ground beneath Turtonator’s front side, dealing a powerful Dragon Claw attack to it before burrowing back underground.
Turtonator growled and raised it’s foot for another Earthquake.
“Get out! Jump on Rock Tomb to stay in the air.”
Sahara jumped out of the ground, creating rocks for her to jump off from to avoid the taking any damage from Earthquake.
“Hmmm. That’s clever, but it won’t be able to hold us back. Mega Kick on the ground straight at Gabite!”
Turtonator’s legs tensed and it instantly rocketed up, withdrawing into its shell in order to spin around with Rapid Spin and turning itself into a spikey projectile going straight for Sahara.
“Dragon Rush at it’s weak point while it’s still in the air!”
“Grab Gabite, Payback!”
Sahara jumped off of Rock Tomb boulder and rushed at Turtonator’s weak spot again. Unable to turn midair, the fire turtle grunted as it tanked damage and doggedly grabbed and held onto Sahara.
The two struggled in the air as they plummeted down, crashing to the ground together.
Urgh, that wasn’t good. Is she still up?
The dust cleared and Turtonator moved away from its spot to reveal a hole underneath where Sahara had burrowed away.
The landshark reappeared from another hole a good distance away from Turtonator, but she was badly burnt and was starting to struggle to stay standing up. She wouldn’t be able to tank another powerful attack.
“Hang in there! Keep your distance, hide in the sandstorm, and spam Dragon Pulse.”
“No more Sandstorm for you, Sunny Day and Taunt.”
Sahara tried to used the waning Sandstorm for cover and began blasting Turtonator with Dragon Pulses that were weaker than what she started out with and kept on getting weaker.
Turtonator created a ball of flames and threw it up into the sky, causing the already weak sandstorm to completely dissipate. There goes our chip damage.
Then the fire turtle growled a challenge, tauntingly wagging a claw at Sahara, causing her to roar in anger and charge at it.
“Stone Edge and trip it, then get close with Mega Kick and Body Press.”
“Use Rock Tomb as stepping stones and jump up again!”
“Overheat.”
“Use Twister on Overheat!”
Sahara got up high again and spun around to charge up and release a massive twister that sucked up Turtonator’s Overheat, turning the twister into a huge column of fire and sparing Sahara from being hit by a boosted Sunny Day Overheat.
“Dragon Rush dive! You got this Sahara!”
“Protect and Mega Punch.”
Aaagh, shit!
Turtonator faced Sahara as it created a barrier to protect itself from Dragon Rush. The fire turtle grinned as Sahara hit its barrier and was blocked.
Despite being blocked, Sahara didn’t stop going and raised a claw, chopping down on the protective barrier just like how Mienshao did earlier with Armarogue and and shattering the barrier.
Was that Brick Break? She doesn’t even know any other fighting type moves, how did she just learn that?! Sheer determination?!
With a battle crazy expression, Sahara didn’t take a moment to hesitate and crashed straight into Turtonator’s torso with Dragon Rush, finally getting a clean hit and pushing the turtle back a few steps.
The two began a pushing contest, claws locked together and trying to push the other down in order to get a clean hit. Despite her failing strength, Sahara was still fired up and enjoying this fight. She was grinning like a maniac.
So she’s a huge battle junkie. Honestly, that’s probably pretty good for a battling Pokemon to have, but I hope she doesn’t overdo it just for the sake of battling. Will probably have to keep a closer eye on her training and battling.
“Turrr tonator.” The fire turtle grinned and growled in Sahara’s face, making sure to use it’s larger stature to try to intimidate the smaller dragon as it pushed her back, creating deep scores in the dirt from both of their feet digging into the ground.
The fire turtle’s body glowed a steel gray and seemed to shine as it used a buffing move, Iron Defense if I were to guess.
Sahara responded by glowing a blindingly bright white. I blinked a few times and watched as Sahara’s form got bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and bigger, until she absolutely towered over Turtonator.
“Rotom, how big is a Garchomp supposed to get?”
“Bzzt! Garchomp are around six feet on average.”
No way, Sahara was way taller than that. Turtonator was almost seven feet tall, and she was just towering over him. I mean, she was big for a Gabite but I never expected her to grow this big. She hit the genetic lottery!
“GARCHOMP!” Sahara roared, I covered my ears and everyone on the field stepped back a bit as her eyes began to glow red. That’s not good.
“Sahara!” I shouted, trying to snap her out of whatever battle maniac berserk mode she was going into, but she wasn’t hearing anything anymore.
My hand hovered over Sahara’s ultra ball as I debated returning her, but before I could do that, she began to absolutely beat down on Turtonator in a frenzy, completely disregarding any of her own safety. The fire turtle quickly turned its back, letting Sahara hit it’s shell.
There was a huge explosion that rocked the field. I crouched down and shielded my face from the heat and waited until the temperature returned back to normal.
As the smoke and dust cleared, I saw Sahara laying on the field with spirals in her eyes. A very relieved Turtonator stood over her.
Still a bit shocked, I returned Sahara. “Good job Sahara, get some rest.”
“BRROOO! That was crazy! Your Garchomp is a freaking MONSTER! Hahaha!” Ben ran over with a huge grin on his face and affectionately rubbed Turtonator’s head that may I add, was still fresh out of the oven hot from the explosion Sahara had set off not two minutes ago.
Justine and Collin walked over too and Winnie popped back out of my shadow once I told him the coast was clear.
“az, what the hell was that?” Winnie squeaked, his eyes wide with a mixture of fear and excitement.
I gave him a frazzled smile, “That, was a Pokemon battle.” My heart was pounding from sheer exhilaration. That was incredible! And Sahara evolved!
“Wow, Gabite looked like she was gonna evolve, but I didn’t expect she would evolve this soon~”
“Really? How’d you know?” I asked Justine.
“Her size and the color and texture of her scales. They were less light blue and more of a dark purple-blue. She was basically ready to evolve but just hadn’t yet.”
“Huh, I didn’t know that at all. Did she wait until she was in a battle?” I mean, I found her trying to fight a Hydreigon she had no match against, maybe she was trying to trigger an evolution. I think said something about that when we first talked.
Collin nodded, “Dragon’s grow the fastest during battle, Kenta told me. Usually when they’re ready to evolve they won’t do so until they’re in an actual battle. Something about risk and reward and learning new moves, though a lot of that stuff also depends on the species.”
“Who’s Kenta?” I asked.
“He’s our resident dragon type specialist.” Ben said, “If you need any advice on dragons, feel free to ask him. He’s very helpful.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
We cleaned up the area and shut off the stadium lights before heading back. Ben, Collin, and Justine laughed and joked the whole way back about other training sessions, and they gave me pointers on the battle as I’d hoped.
It was nice having people to talk to. Of course there was Winnie and his ghost gang and they were great, but hanging out with other humans for the first time in what felt like forever was just different in a good way.
Seeing Ben and Collin’s Pokemon battling and being able to actually battle one of them with Sahara was simply awesome. Just how quickly Turtonator and Ben were able to adapt to any of our strategies, I mean, Turtonator had no trouble dealing with anything Sahara and I threw at it and it basically shrugged off an Outrage from a Garchomp.
The power from Turtonator and Armarouge’s fire, and Mienshao’s martial arts were thrilling! I wanted to be able to do stuff like that with my team and be super overpowered. And we definitely would be. Well, someday.