The Skarmory’s steel claws glinted in the sun. Its talons dug into the ground creating deep gouges.

A fun fact about steel typing is that it is the strongest defence typing out of all the 18 types. Along with being immune to poison, 10 other typing’s are not very effective against it.

Steel-type Pokemon also have the best defence stats and by adding a flying type to increase agility, you get an incredible beast called Skarmory.

But everything is balanced in nature, so Skarmory is a solitary creature with no evolution found.

And that creature was eyeing the Golbat like a snack, to be precise it was eyeing the four Golbat like they are snacks.

Cet became more expressive after his evolution, and as opposed to the predatory expression of Skarmory, Cet had a ‘new friend? Likey likey!’ expression.

Though the Golbat earned the right to be goofy in front of a powerful Pokemon, like Skarmory, after his evolution.

The sum of their stats is nearly the same aka their power level will be nearly the same, except for defence, every aspect of Skarmory will be weaker than Cet, as long as the Skarmory is not older than Cet.

The world resumed as both Pokemon finished checking their opponents.

“Mega Drain,” I called out.

“Agility.”

Four Golbats circled the awakened Skarmory like omens of death as multiple orbs of life drifted away from the shining Steel beast.

Each Golbat was in a cardinal direction, optimum positions to increase the chances of evading the Steel bird.

“Again.”

“Air Cutter.”

The Skarmory soared and released razor-like winds destroying two illusionary doubles of the Golbat giving time for Cet to recover more of his health.

Confident that Cet wouldn’t keel over after one move, I decided to attack.

“Air Cutter,” I called out one of the new moves Cet learned.

“Match it,” Ash called out.

A smirk graced my face on hearing his order. After all, Skarmory isn’t known for its power in special attacks, while Golbat is near the top when it comes to powerful special attacks.

The razor winds met Cet’s attack destroyed the Skarmory’s and resumed their way before dissipating after moving 2 meters.

That wiped away the smirk on my face.

‘Was the Skarmory older than Cet?’

The rate of Cet’s growth has outpaced every other trainer I met- not considering aura users like Celia, Madlyn, and Amanda- due to me being an elemental.

Ash himself said he was not an Aura user, so maybe Skarmory wasn’t born this year.

‘Doesn’t matter! If anyone is qualified to punch above his weight it is Cet.’

“Double Team! Agility” I shouted before whispering for Supersonic.

The evolution increased Cet’s already impressive hearing ability. I guess it would be stupid if a Golbat suddenly finds itself unable to navigate in its home- caves- because it evolved.

“Curse,” Ash called out.

“What!” he exclaimed surprised, to see the four Golbat release sounds towards the Skarmory who was buffing itself.

I have to hand it to Ash for the usage of the curse move. For non-ghost Pokemon, the curse move increases the attack and defence stage by 1 while decreasing the speed.

Ash is leaning into his advantages instead of shoring up his weakness. Increasing the Skarmories speed equal to an agility buffed Golbat takes time even considering that the Skarmory’s age is higher.

‘Damn,’ I muttered seeing the move fail.

“Fury Attack” “Supersonic again.”

The Skarmory attacked and destroyed two illusory copies of the Golbat, before succumbing to the Supersonic move.

The only chance of Skarmory landing a move on Cet is when he is using a move, otherwise dodging the Skarmory is very easy for him due to his enhanced speed. The illusionary doubles keep the Skarmory busy while Cet uses a move and gives him time to escape if the Skarmory closes in on his real body.

“Sandscreen and Bravebird.”

“Snap out of it, Skarmory,” Ash yelled, but a dust cloud formed obscuring Cet and the Skarmory.

A thunderous crash could be heard in the obscured battlefield before the dust cloud dispersed.

“Use Astonish from back,” I ordered various plans running in my mind but couldn’t see how I could win this.

In a way, the Skarmory was the perfect counter to Cet even if we don’t consider it being older.

Our strategy when we encounter a Pokemon that can take hits and dish them back is to poison it, but the Skarmory being a steel type made that a useless plan.

The poison plan was perfect in most cases as it will take care of any Pokemon that has great defence or high health, especially for a Pokemon with high defence but low health. Like the Skarmory, but it being a steel type threw a gigantic wrench in our plans.

At least Skarmory’s are supposed to have less health, but their defence being as high it is, they don’t need much health.

Cet glowed ominously before surprising the Skarmory from the back.

The steel bird flinched.

“Brave Bird,” I yelled ecstatic at the turn of events.

Cet wobbled back from the Skarmory after delivering the powerful flying-type attack.

The Skarmory screeched snapping out of confusion as I let Cet create distance between them.

There is no way I am letting him near the bird without it being confused. An awakened Pokemon has 1/3 rd chance of damaging itself. I would have preferred if the probability was higher and Cet was a ranged attacker who has the Judgment move of Arceus, but who cares about what little old me wants? You have to take risks and deal with the cards you have sometimes.

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The Skarmory having less hp was the reason Cet didn’t faint yet, as the recoil from the brave bird is tied to the amount of health the target loses. That and the earlier Mega Drain is the as to why the jolly Golbat was still flapping….

“Double Team, Air cutter.”

“Air cutter-2,” Ash copied me.

Four Golbats re-assumed their positions in the four cardinal directions.

This time the Skarmory did a little spin sending the razor-sharp winds in every direction.

“Bull shit.” Controlling a move like that is impossible for Pokemon of young age, so the Skarmory literally slapped the razor winds in all directions using its wings.

The illusory doubles of Golbat vanished without a trace, the razor winds generated by Cet cancelled the winds coming at him before crashing into the Skarmory.

Even flying-type moves are not very effective on the Skarmory due to it being a steel type.

‘I don’t think Cet will last longer,’ I thought looking at him pant like crazy. The multiple Double teams and Agility are taking their toll on him.

I didn’t want to use ‘Screech’ at the start of the match as Ash could have used the time required for Skarmory’s defence to get to the same level as Cet to make his Skarmory faster than Cet as that would be a death sentence.

Just imagine a Pokemon that can dodge any attack and shrug off any homing attacks along with an attack power that can decimate anything it touches. That is most likely Ash’s go-to strategy for Skarmory- boosting its speed- I think he would have done it if not for opening it gives for me to capitalise on using the supersonic move.

Now, all I can do is to make sure that Nia faces a Skarmory that went through the meat grinder known as Cet which didn’t operate at full power due to its idiotic operator- me.

‘You can’t expect me to think that a kid with Rattata is going to pull out a Skarmory next….. Whatever Nia will end the match.’ I was confident….somewhat.

“Double team and Screech.”

“Steel wing. Run them through,” Ash called out.

The Screech move needs Cet to be even closer to his target than moves like Leer which has 100 accuracy in mid-range and -1 defence debuff.

Screech sacrifices some of its accuracy and range for -2 defence debuff.

The Skarmory finished three of the Golbat’s clones as Cet finished the status move.

“Brave Bird,” I called out knowing that Cet would be knocked.

The Skarmory with shining wings and Golbat burning with azure fire crashed in mid-air.

Both Pokemon got tossed to the ground as dust clouds obscured their forms.

“Skar!” The steel Pokemon dispersed the dust cloud with a flap of its wings.

It stood up from all that damage with only a small delay to show for it.

Cet laid still with spirals in his eyes.

It's just a bad matchup and my fault for playing with that Rattata.

I recalled him.

“Good job buddy. Marvellous as always.” I murmured before taking out Nia’s Pokeball.

The Ducklett entered the battle, still riding on the high of her win from the match with the Goofy Graveler and gave the Skarmory a side eye before dismissing it with a quack.

Snickering, I ordered.

“Double Team, Brine.”

I wanted to see how much health the Skarmory has as Brine’s power doubles when the target has less than 50% of health.

“Close the distance with steel wing,” Ash commanded.

‘Wrong move, Nia never misses.’ I grinned and ordered.

“Kiting -2,” I ordered a tactic to deal with physical attackers, Nia recently learned the move to utilise this tactic, so this battle is a debut for her awesome new move.

Two Ducklett stood beside each other and fired two massive beams of water at the approaching Skarmory.

‘Less than 50% per cent health, heh!’ I inwardly celebrated seeing the power of the Brine.

The Skarmory was boxed in between the beams of water, it screeched in rage as a beam of water changed its angle at the last minute and hit it right on its head.

The Skarmory’s neck snapped back, and it landed harshly, its talons raking the ground, it shook its head and jumped right back into the air.

I am sure that if Skarmory had not awakened the move would have broken its neck, steel-type Pokemon or not, but now I have to settle for a critical attack.

“Damn Monster,” I muttered seeing the Skarmory continue flying like it only hit a minor speed bump.

Critical Attacks occur when a Pokemon gets hit in sensitive areas like joints, eyes, and neck. But scoring one is rare as every Pokemon know how to defend those weak spots, like how our hand automatically defends our face.

Nia already took to the sky seeing her opponent close the distance, leaving shining feathers as she ascended into the sky.

The Feathers twinkled and drifted in the air before homing onto the Skarmory.

Maintaining distance is a big cornerstone of Nia’s training so she was good -nah- awesome at it.

The Skarmory chose one of the Ducklett’s and dashed towards it, ignoring the homing feathers.

Even I don’t know which Ducklett was real and was praying that the real Ducklett was away from the Skarmory.

More feathers burst from both Ducklett and dashed towards the incoming Skarmory.

The Skarmory’s wings took a metallic glint as it ignored the feathers that were piling on its body.

Unlike Cet, Nia can’t escape the Skarmory due to their massive speed difference. The Skarmory being slower than Cet doesn’t mean it was slower than Ducklett. After all, it was the ruler of the sky for a reason.

The steel wings stuck the Ducklett, tossing it back. The Skarmory got lucky.

The illusionary body disappeared before another appeared near the real Ducklett and both took flight in separate directions.

The Skarmory picked one and chased after it, again.

Man, how come our combined luck is this bad?

Or is it that Cet was just too lucky, I mean Skarmory did miss hitting Cet even when it destroyed all of his doubles while he was using Screech.

I mean, it’s not like hitting him can change the outcome of the battle. After all, I had him use Mega Drain twice just in case the Skarmory scores a lucky hit and to take care of the recoil of his Brave Bird move.

Even if he got hit, I would have still ended the match with Brave Bird, but instead of just fainting Cet would have been injured, nothing an hour in Pokemon Centre can’t cure, mind you. The recoil damage has to go somewhere after all.

“I think there is a saying like ‘ Once an MC always an MC or something. And white knight MCs were supposed to have maximum plot armour due to their naïve nature,” I mumbled.

Like whenever a white knight of MC stumbles into a sleeping dragon’s cave, a dragon that destroyed more than one human kingdom in its heydays, turns out to be an airheaded girl and doesn’t kill the MC for trespassing.

Now I think about it, Cet is at the bottom of the White Knight MC hierarchy. Shame on you, Cet. How come you didn’t stumble into a dusty rock that is actually the jewel of life that Arceus gifted? I mean I will be happy with a mega stone too….

Nia’s quack halted my silly thoughts, it's like Nia always knows whenever I am being silly.

I am serious, sometimes I see scorn in her eyes whenever I act silly and she wasn’t even awakened, I don’t want to know how she will behave when she gets awakened.

Anyway, there was a reason I was being this carefree.

The age difference and power difference between the Pokemon suggest that the Ducklett should have been knocked out or at least ¾ of her health should have been gone, making Nia look ruffled in the least.

But not even a feather was out of place on Nia. Because Nia didn’t release the homing feathers just to make herself look cool, which she did repeatedly after she learnt the move, the feathers reduce the target's attack.

The Skarmory has a -3 attack debuff stacked on it, effectively bringing it to Nia’s level if not lower.

Status moves with 100% accuracy and -2 debuffs are rare, but with how long the Skarmory was with Ash, I thought he would have a counter for it. Flash news he doesn’t.

My original plan of confrontation was dashed because of this development.

The plan was to let Nia take a hit or two in return for hitting the Skarmory with multiple Brines… which was not a great plan, to be honest.

I literally can taste success due to this development.

As the Skarmory chased one Ducklett the other Ducklett followed it from behind.

I grinned at how the Ducklett was playing with the Skarmory before ordering a Brine.

Both Ducklett glowed blue, the Skarmory crashed into one Ducklett making it splutter out.

Before the Skarmory can turn around, a beam of water crashes onto its back, sending it crashing to the ground.

“Rain down water guns.”

The Skarmory couldn’t even fly properly as she had to dodge water guns, that were unbalancing it whenever they struck.

But the Skarmory was still closing in, owing to the Pokemon’s massive defence. And I was ready for it.

But suddenly the Skarmory stopped dodging for a second and glowed white. It dashed towards one of the Ducklett its speed somehow increased.

‘It’s not Agility. Agility takes more time.’ I was confused, In the back of my mind I knew somehow the Skarmory learnt a new move – Autotomise in the middle of the battle, just like how the Rattata evolved.

‘Am I in the presence of one more MC,’ I wondered sarcastically.

The Skarmory tried to beeline towards one of the Ducklett, without an order from Ash screaming bloody murder, instead of concentrating on dodging and slowly closing the distance.

Multiple water guns struck it on its wings right on point, unbalancing it.

Its rage cost it.

Nia rained down more water guns taking advantage of the opening.

The Skarmory crashed onto the ground.

The Skarmory bellowed in rage lying on the ground only for Nia to smack its face with a water pulse, knocking it out.

‘Savage,’ I thought with a grin.

Nia landed on the ground and tried to look down on the fallen Skarmory, but due to their size difference, she had to angle her beak perpendicular to the sky to look down on the steel bird. Her silly actions bled away her earlier awesomeness making me laugh.

She turned and gave me a side-eye.