The next round of battles began without waiting for Johnathan, leaving the Caterpie-paired trainer facing off against one of the Bidoof with no trainer. The rest of the group shuffled around, and I found myself up against one of the more interesting Pokémon I'd seen in the area, a Dwebble. Bug and rock-type was an interesting combination, and I maintained my Pidgey form for this upcoming battle as well. Not only did I want to avoid transforming over and over again to wear myself down, this was the form I had the most battle practice in. I would need to adjust that going forward, but I wanted to see how I would fare like this for at least the next battle.

While the opponent had an advantage against me as a rock type, the bug addition all but cancelled that out, right? I hadn't delved deeply into the ways that different types of energies interacted with each other, and I had a feeling this was going to come down to accuracy during the battle more than anything else. If I landed attacks against the rocky, protective shell than I would have to dump in way more effort to achieve the same result. Hitting the exposed hermit-crab-like body, on the other hand, should mean that my damage was all the more effective.

My opponent was peeking from their shell, orange-hued claws raised in my direction and snapping eagerly. "I'm not scared of you, bird! I've been working on my aim!" The painfully high-pitched voice that called out to me was so shrill it could almost be considered an attack of its own, and made it completely impossible to guess gender. It was the high-pitched squeakiness I'd only ever heard from someone breathing helium in the past, and I burst out laughing. Looking offended, the Dwebble crawled itself out into a battle position. "Laugh it up, feather duster! I'm gonna blast you out of the sky!"

Wheezing for breath as I hovered in place near Annabelle, I couldn't think of any way to explain away the laughing. I wasn't laughing at their determination, but the voice just caught me so off guard. Before I could compose myself, I heard the twin calls of "Begin!" from the nearby adults. "Dwebble, Smack Down! Blast it out of the air!" After the trainer's call I had a chunk of rock being hurled at me immediately. Where did they even get that rock from, in the middle of a grassy field?

Annabelle's voice broke through my panic at the sudden fist-sized rock whistling inches away from my head. "Focus on dodging, Ditto! You can't lose your mobility this fight! They can't keep blasting away like that forever!" Frantically flapping my wings after I narrowly managed to avoid the first rock, more and more just kept flying at me, leaving me no room to counterattack. Annabelle was right, a battle came down to whoever was standing in the end, and the opposing Dwebble seemed intent on sprinting through all their firepower in one burst.

All my aerial practice was being pushed to the limits as I twisted, turned, and even flipped in short loops to try and throw off my opponent's aim, while the Dwebble kept their claws visibly pulsing with a dark brown-hued energy. After each pulse flared, a rock was all but magically created on the tips of the claws before launching at me. Ignoring the screaming logical part of the back of my mind at how absurd that was to just create matter from energy in preference for focusing on the battle, I noted that the pace of the rocks shooting out was slowing down. The moment I let myself relax slightly, however, thinking the worst of it was over, the pacing redoubled and I felt a chunk of rock hit me square in the chest.

I grunted in pain, and I flopped out of the air as I went from a soaring Pidgey to a limp-winged chicken after the impact. It was like I had suddenly had training weights strapped down over every last inch of my body, and I plummeted to the grass below with a hard thud. "Now's the chance, Dwebble, Dig underneath and catch 'em off guard!" The energy from the rocky impact seemed to linger in my body, even as I forced myself up from my prone position. I could manage to stand, and it was like the energy was flowing slowly out of me while I maintained contact with the ground. If I was able to endure long enough, I'd be able to ditch the added weight, but my opponent wasn't going to just give me that chance.

Looking around after I stood, I couldn't see any sign of my opponent, but I heard the trainer's call the same as the enemy. Knowing what their plan was didn't make it that much easier to stop it from being effective, though. "Ditto, prepare Gust and hit Dwebble as soon as it pops up!" At this moment, the call-out was actually the only reason I was even remotely prepared in time. I had still been considering my options, but I started to push the sky-blue energy into my wings at Annabelle's voice all the same. I still wasn't entirely ready when the orange claws burst up beneath me, however, and clamped down around each of my ankles in turn with a painful clench. I flapped my wings and the Dwebble retreated its head into its rocky shell, evading the worst of the effects of the Gust of wind.

The rest of the battle could hardly be called as such, as the Dwebble remained hidden away in its shell and simply used its grip on my legs to yank me back and forth, keeping me in place and wearing me down. Even if the energy that seemed to bind me to the ground wore off, the rocky shell of my opponent was an anchor that kept me from even thinking of taking to the skies again. Considering it was hiding its head and keeping its claws down at my feet, I couldn't even effectively Peck at them, only clacking my beak ineffectually off the rocky shell. Annabelle was calling encouragement from the sidelines, even suggesting I transform in order to see if it would help me disentangle myself, but things dragged out without me being able to break free.

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"Ditto is unable to effectively battle, Dwebble is the winner!" Mable's voice called out my loss, and I winced as the claws slowly released from around my legs. A very smug-looking hermit-crab stuck its head out to peek up at me.

"Good one. Sorry for laughing, it's just your voice... caught me off guard." I apologized and tried to be a good sport about my loss, and the Dwebble just rolled its head backward dismissively, its eyestalks wobbling in a vaguely circular motion. Did... did it just roll its eyes at me? Honestly, I was more impressed than insulted, it was sort of neat to watch.

"That was a good try, Ditto! Why didn't you try and transform at the end, though?" Annabelle tipped her head aside and peered down at me curiously as I pecked away at another Sitrus berry. I was still astounded by these things as energy coursed through me, washing away my muscle aches and the pain in my legs where I had been grappled. It was like growing a mobile medical bay, these things were practically a miracle food. I hoped these weren't too expensive, but seeing as they brought out a whole sack of them for a kid's competition, they couldn't be that rare. After I finished eating, I drooped my head down and let my wings dangle limply, making a show of barely peeking an eye open upward at Annabelle. "Ooooh. You were worried about getting too tired from transforming. Yeah, that makes sense. I forgot about that. Well, don't worry, it was a bad match-up, right? We'll do better in the next one!"

The following couple of battles were almost ridiculously easy by comparison. I battled against a Fletchling that must have been a newborn as well, or near enough to it as to make no difference. It didn't display any of the fire moves that the species was known to grow into as they grew older and more experienced, and after my practice it simply wasn't a match for me in purely physical aerial combat.

After the Fletchling, it was a sleepy-looking Lotad who was matched up against us. The impact of their Water Gun attacks was much lesser than the rock-based attacks I had to deal with from the Dwebble, and had the added benefit of not forcing me from the sky. Several fly-by attacks with Gust secured another win for us, putting us up to four, with only a single loss under our belt.

I spotted that Johnathan had returned to battle that round, paired up with one of the Arons that none of the other students had selected. I was glad I had battled him already, as I wanted to avoid getting into a slugfest with the little metal mini-tanks. The Aron seemed enthusiastic about following commands, and I noted that the boy seemed to be fighting more directly and with less trickery now. The Aron battled by hardening its defenses to maximize its advantage, sure, but then followed it up with a battery of physical attacks. I wasn't sure it was an improvement, since the end result was bullying many of his opponents, but I couldn't expect the boy's personality to change much just because the Pokémon he was using did.

There was just one more battle left to wrap up the little mini-tournament we had going on. Without anything as complicated as brackets, it was just each member of the six-per-side split facing each member of the opposing six. The last trainer we had to face off with was the Caterpie trainer. Honestly, I expected this to be another landslide victory.

When the call of "Begin!" rang out again, I took to wing and soared over toward my opponent. "Ditto, look out!" Annabelle called almost immediately, but I still reacted slowly, having felt like there was nothing a Caterpie could do to me while I was in the air. A sticky sensation latched onto my talons, as if to prove me wrong. I was shocked, seeing a String Shot connecting the Caterpie below to me, and then as I struggled to fly higher, it actually began to climb up the strand toward me. What a fearless little bug, not even to talk about his accuracy. Did he take lessons from a New York-based webslinger or something?

I began to fly erratically, causing the line to swing about in wide, wild arcs as I tried to either disentangle the string from my leg, or to launch the Caterpie off his impromptu perch. Like a trapeze artist, the bug Pokémon seemed almost unbothered by the motions, crawling steadily up toward me. The boy in the bug-catcher outfit wasn't even calling commands to the Caterpie, just staring upward at what was going on with his mouth hanging open in shock. Annabelle wasn't far off from looking just as surprised, but she called out "Try and blow it off with a Gust!"

It was hard to aim below myself like this while I was also maintaining my flight, but I tried to follow through all the same, the Caterpie flinching on the line as the wind stung against its carapace. By now it had gotten close enough that it was already against my legs, and I kicked erratically to try and shove it off. In return, it rammed its head off my underbelly and all but knocked the breath out of me. Fine, you little unwanted passenger! I tucked my wings and began a sharp plunge straight toward the ground, squinting my eyes as I tensed in preparation for impact. I used my wings to keep myself level, so the bug-type remained beneath me, and slammed us both into the ground. I grunted out and was left rolling away, while the slightly-squished Caterpie was left looking a little flattened and remained at the point of impact, as if it had gotten stuck in the ground.

Phew. I hadn't expected to have to work that hard to battle an unevolved bug-type Pokémon! Respect, little guy, you did better than a lot of the battles I had today! When that little bug grows up and evolves, he's either going to be a stunt Butterfree in movies somewhere, or he's going to be a terror on a battlefield. "Caterpie is unable to battle, Ditto is the winner!" Finally, I let my transformation drop, as I had been starting to feel the strain of forcing it to hold. At least now I was able to feel when I was pushing the limits of a transformation, rather than spontaneously reverting to my natural form without warning, so I was still showing improvements in that regard.

Annabelle walked over and excitedly exchanged thoughts on the battle with the bug-catcher boy as he lifted the Caterpie up from the divot it had left in the grassy terrain, and I slumped down into a relaxed semi-puddle state to wait for the last of the other battles to wrap up. I was pretty sure no one had gone undefeated in the battles so far, so our five-and-one record should be competitive for that Pokéball prize, but if anyone managed to tie us, we'd have one more hurdle to jump through.