Toxic-infused razor leaves were Erika’s latest joint creation with Gwen.
The idea had come about after months of using toxic to enhance the lethality of her poison powder, and Gwen eventually realized that the same principle could be applied to her leaves.
Doing it was proving to be a slightly tougher challenge than she had anticipated though.
“No results?”
Gwen shook her head. Her head leaves visibly drooped, now coloured a sickly yellow.
Erika grabbed one of the leaves gently, pressing her thumb against it and applying some force. Feels kind of mushy.
“Too much poison,” Erika concluded. “I don’t think your leaves are a strong enough medium to hold the poison from toxic. Maybe tone it down a bit more?”
‘Works… strong…unnecessary’
“You’re right,” Erika agreed decisively after hearing her pokemon. “Your fighting style revolves around attrition anyways, unless you decide to boost with growth.”
Once Gwen decreased the quantity of poison infused into her leaves, it became a lot easier for her to pull off the move without hurting herself. She did the same for bullet seed, adding just a tiny wisp of toxic poison into each individual seed she fired, minimizing the strain on herself to the utmost.
Toxic was a highly vicious poison already, and even small quantities could have an impact. Furthermore, if Gwen’s razor leaves and bullet seeds only contained trace amounts of toxic poison, it would become harder to detect it at first, since the symptoms wouldn’t immediately become apparent. It was like the old story about boiling a politoed in hot water - if you placed it into a boiling pot immediately it would just jump out, but if you put it into a warm pot and slowly raised the temperature until it was boiling, it wouldn’t notice the change in temperature until it was too late.
In the same manner, Gwen would be free to keep peppering the enemy with bullet seeds and razor leaves and insidiously let the poison accumulate and build up in their bodies before it finally became too late - once they noticed that they had been poisoned, their bodies would already be slowing shutting down and their muscles would be locking up.
For Mordred, Erika had been thinking over his position on the team. Functionally speaking, the current team had three members.
In an official arena setting, each member’s roles would be vastly different, but what Erika presently cared about was their teamwork out in the wild.
Mordred’s role was primarily that of a tank and vanguard. He led the charge and used his powerful body to absorb blows that Erika and her other pokemon could not, and could inflict devastatingly powerful strikes to put down heavier targets or halt their movements. His fighting style was very basic - hit an enemy really hard until they died. Mordred also occupied the bulk of the enemies and prevented them from reaching Erika, and while that usually involved putting his body between Erika and her foes, he could also use glare as a last resort.
Gwen was currently the team’s battlefield controller and ranged support, specializing in spraying out a wide variety of airborne spores and powders that could poison, paralyze, and debilitate enemies en masse. Once her area of effect poisons had been deployed, Gwen usually hung back to pepper enemies with bullet seeds and razor leaves, and would occasionally spew a globule of acid or two if she saw an opportunity. If necessary, she could also boost with growth and temporarily assume the role of a frontline combatant.
Nimue was obviously the team’s healer, scout, and defensive support. She had access to her innate ability flower veil, which could be used to sense enemies around her and prevent her teammates from being debuffed, and flower shield, a brilliant team-wide protective move that covered them in a layer of protective fairy aura. If anyone was hurt, Nimue could create a synthesis orb for them to absorb. If Nimue saw an attack incoming, she could deploy a thin reflect screen to ablate some of the damage.
Knowing this, if Erika wanted to help Mordred come up with a new move that would suit his position as a heavy hitter and tank whose job was to occupy enemies, there was undoubtedly nothing better… than fashioning a net.
Nets. That was the conclusion Erika had come to.
She’d been thinking about how to work with Mordred’s vine whip for a while, as while the move was versatile, it was limited in the power it could output.
There were plenty of uses for it on the fly, as Mordred had demonstrated in his fight against Cesare by using it to grapple and trip up the pinsir, or to stop himself from being knocked away, but Erika knew she could do more still.
And that was how she and Mordred ended up hunching over a tiny phone in the middle of the forest, watching a video tutorial on net weaving.
“No! That’s not how you do it! The vine is supposed to be woven under this vine here, and that vine goes elsewhere!”
‘Too complicated. Head hurts. Can’t feel my vines, I’m confused. Everything messy. Too twisted and tangled.’
It took a lot of work, but the duo eventually ended up with something passable as a net.
“Lift it,” Erika ordered, curious about the net he had created.
Mordred obliged, raising the net formed from his vine feelers. It rose shakily, but it was clear that he had trouble telling left from right.
“I think I see the problem now.” Erika crossed her arms to confirm her hypothesis. “Everything is too jumbled up like you said. The vines ARE your limbs, at least in part, and you can feel through them. If we weave them into a complicated pattern, then you’re going to have trouble telling which vine goes where, and which vine ends here, and so on.”
‘Literally just said that.’
Erika ignored that.
“We need to get you used to moving the net in its woven form. You don’t have to exert any fine control, just moving it in some rough direction is okay.”
Erika gestured to Gwen by her side. “Run at Mordred and try to get past him. Imagine that the tree behind him is me, and you’re trying to kill me. Mordred will try to stop you.”
Gwen started running immediately, and Mordred was about to spin around and bat her with his tail when he realized that she wasn’t an enemy.
“Throw the net at her!” Erika shouted from behind. “Don’t just stand there!”
The net, despite being horribly jumbled and woven, was still fundamentally connected to Mordred’s body as they were made from his vine feelers. He heaved the net upwards and sent it rocketing towards Gwen, and when it made contact with her mid-air, she got tangled up in it and fell to the floor in a heap.
Gwen writhed and struggled, but try as she might, she couldn’t break free. The more she struggled, the more the net tightened, and eventually she just sprayed some acid to dissolve the netting so she could escape.
“I can see this being very useful,” Erika grinned. “Even something with claws and fangs would struggle to break out from this unless they position themselves correctly to cut up the netting.”
From that day on, Mordred had another move in his arsenal when it came to denying enemies. Erika decided to call the move they had created a ‘vine net’ for simplicity’s sake.
The core issue though was creating the net…
‘How to create on the fly?’ Mordred was shaking his head disapprovingly. ‘Took hours to make. We followed video too.’
“Just wear it on your back,” Erika suggested absent-mindedly, thinking about the aesthetics of Mordred having a cape.
And so it was. Mordred would weave his vine net beforehand, and then drape it across his back like a cape. Not many would think the cape on his back was actually a net, until he revealed that it was made from feelers that he could control, and that he could control the net to entangle and restrain an enemy.
If Mordred had to block two opponents at once, he could occupy the first, and throw his vine net (or was it cape?) at the second to pin them down and entangle them. Gwen would easily finish off or down the second as Mordred continued to block the first.
Mordred could also sever the feelers that attached the vine net to his body, and just leave the vine net to entangle the enemy, but Erika realized something much more interesting while they were experimenting.
“If they’re entangled in the vine net, and the vine net is made of feelers that you can control, can’t you just squeeze them hard?”
Erika mimed a pop with her hands. “It doesn’t take any fine control to tense your vines. You just have to tense hard, and then you can strangle whatever is trapped in your vine net. This is great!”
“And you can do more,” Erika continued excitedly, waving her hands around. “Even if you don’t strangle them, you can just lift the net - with the enemy inside, and you can smash them and bash them against rocks to hurt them! You could even use them as a living projectile and smash them into other enemies! If it’s an enemy trainer’s pokemon, we could even use them as a living shield - surely they wouldn’t attack their comrades right?”
‘Last part is distasteful. But debatable if it’s an enemy.’
Erika left things at that and had Mordred continue practicing controlling his vine net.
As they continued to trek through Route 35, Erika made sure to verify that there were still trainer marks along the path she was walking, so she could be sure that they weren’t going off course.
Generally speaking, previous generations of trainers tended to leave behind “marks” along the routes as reminders of their existence. Erika saw her fair share of name carvings slashed into the bark of tree trunks using knives or pokemon claws, and at least several dozen rocks with fancy signatures.
A lot of these markings were quite helpful because their presence tended to indicate that you were going the right way.
This was especially the case if you saw a lot of markings clustered together. Some people even left helpful arrow signs pointing in the general direction of the right path, which was northward in the case of Route 35.
Erika didn’t really need to use a compass for navigation, since she knew from using a map that the structure of the route was pretty straightforward. She just needed to head directly northward, and that could be calculated by watching the movement of the sun.
Since the sun rose from the east and set in the west everyday, north was always to the right of the rising sun’s direction.
This wasn’t a rule of thumb that could always be applied though, especially if you didn’t always walk in a straight line. The more you deviated, the more you needed to be skilled in identifying landmarks on a map.
If you started walking northeast slightly instead of directly north, you might go off the route entirely eventually, since some of the routes didn’t feature any sort of visible trail. While most routes at least had a semblance of a trail carved out, there were others like Route 35 that were mostly just dense forest with occasional bits of identifiable trail.
Erika was just thinking about what she would do once she got to Violet when she stumbled upon a stone monument depicting a man standing on a skarmory’s head, flying up into a stormcloud. The monument was worn and faded, but the carving lines were still visible despite the years wearing away at it. It was enshrined next to a wind chime, a traditional symbol of Violet City, and below it, a few words were engraved.
Erika gasped out loud.
Even Mordred recognised the statue.
“Peace be with the hero of lightning,” Erika read aloud, tracing her fingers across the words engraved onto the monument. “May his soul rest in the storm. Branwen Mistral and Tempest Crown will enshrine the throne of ages.”
No freaking way!
“This is a statue of Hero Branwen, the first founding father and sovereign of the Mistral Clan,” Erika breathed. “And the skarmory he’s riding on… it’s his partner Tempest Crown! A Titled Skarmory!”
‘Learned about him during family education,’ Mordred admitted. ‘Any mortal with mettle to face a Legendary, forever enshrined in history. Even other regions give honor.’
Gwen was obviously familiar too, given that she’d lived alongside Erika and poured over books with her in the library whenever she studied.
Erika did her best to recall the exact details about the story.
In the stories, Sovereign Branwen and his titled Skarmory Tempest Crown did battle against a true Legendary! They combined their mighty powers and fought seven days and seven nights against Raikou, bringing waste to the lands around them and collapsing the once nearby Haru Mountain, rendering it into a flat plain.
Erika couldn’t even begin to imagine the scale of such a fight. An entire mountain had been razed into nothingness, and according to the story, night had been changed into day by the blazing light of the thunderbolts Raikou cast down.
Scarce few could become sovereigns. And even among sovereigns, scarcer few had a bond with a titled pokemon. Yet, even scarcer… was a sovereign and titled pokemon pair with the strength to do battle with a Legendary, a living God!
Tempest Crown and Sovereign Branwen were historic greats for a reason.
Erika herself had read many poems penned about Sovereign Branwen and Tempest Crown’s glorious battle against Raikou. The Seven Nights of Thunder was an especially famous one which she could recite by heart. Erika’s breath sped up just thinking about it.
Seven Nights of Thunder
A hero unbidden arose
To challenge the lord of storms
He was fair and tall and bright
With an aura of air and light
A flick of the wing and an avian cry
And the God Raikou was scorned.
Seven nights didst thee fight
On wings of evanescent light.
When the God Raikou roared
The thousands of thunders fell
And thy mighty wings of heaven
Sundered His great spell.
Erika felt her calm rapidly vanishing as she continued to fantasize about the poem. The sheer scale, the power, the majesty of the parties involved - it was everything she had ever wanted.
Mordred snapped her back into sense.
‘Almost walked into a tree.’ One of his feelers was wrapped around Erika, stopping her from slamming into a tree. Mordred facepalmed. ‘Try to limit the fantasy.’
“Right.” Erika breathed out slowly, rapidly restoring her calm. She took a deep breath and centered herself. “Let’s get back to the journey.”
Erika admired the monument a bit more, before paying her respects and leaving a wildflower she picked behind. She’d known there were many monuments dedicated to Hero Branwen and Tempest Crown in Violet - she’d been anticipating seeing one even, but that was Violet, and they were presently in Route 35.
Come to think of it, isn’t Falkner a descendant of Hero Branwen?
The thought hadn’t even occurred to Erika before, but she supposed it was right. Every lineal and direct descendant of a Great Clan could claim a relation to a famous sovereign of the past. Still, she could hardly imagine Falkner as being like Hero Branwen.
Erika had a few plans in mind once they got to the end of Route 35.
For one, Erika wanted to participate a bit in the Pokeathlon. She’d heard that it was located just beyond the end of Route 35, as a sort of intermediary between Route 36. Trainers from Ecruteak and Violet would often come to compete in the Pokeathlon as the journey was easy to make since you only needed to cross routes 37 and 36 in the case of Ecruteak, and route 36 only for Violet-born trainers.
The Pokeathlon was a fun competition for people in general as it didn’t involve any direct battling. Trainers who weren’t good at battling could find their place here competing in what were essentially Pokemon-based sports, and the prize pool organized was always quite diverse. Erika looked forward to pitting her team against the trainers there.
----------------------------------------
Time continued to flow by, with each day being spent monotonously trekking through miles of forest and steep hills.
Eventually, however, Erika and her team emerged into a bright clearing. A massive chunk of the forest had been demolished in the area to completely expose it to the sun, and Erika could see that the ground had been carefully flattened and paved to form a reasonable impression of a road.
Erika almost staggered when she got out of the forest into the clearing, because the sunlight was blindingly bright. Her eyes hurt in the light, and she had to blink multiple times to readjust herself before getting a proper look at her surroundings.
There was a large lake beyond the initial clearing and some apricorn trees that had just begun fruiting and… trainers!
Erika’s eyes lit up.
Dozens of trainers were milling about in the clearing, talking together and holding sparring matches, and a few were even having a picnic by the lake.
I’ve been itching for a battle. Maybe I could go challenge one of the trainers there for a practice battle!
Beyond that, however, was a large building manned by a guard.
It’s clearly some kind of relay station, or an official connecting gate the league set up between different routes for trainers to resupply at or rest, Erika thought. It also signifies that I’ve reached the end of route 35!
The entire place was colored an incredibly garish orange, with orange fencing, roof tiles, and a more muted gray wall made using some sort of brick material. The windows were translucent, stopping Erika from peeping inside, but she could still see a dense mass of individual auras from the outside with her second sight, which mostly confirmed her suspicion that this was a relay station.
Finally.
In the end, Erika didn’t stop for a battle since she was too tired and dirty, and she wanted to grab a shower in the Pokeathlon’s Pokemon Center. She’d been in the forest for nearly two weeks by now, and despite the portable washer and soap she’d brought, she was still feeling quite grimy. That would be changed in short order.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
The policeman standing guard outside the relay station barely gave her a glance before letting her through, and Erika made her way through the hall and took a left to transit into the Pokeathlon Dome.
Erika emerged into a huge open-air vista of sports fields and buildings, and of course, the eponymous Pokeathlon Dome at the very center. The lake she saw earlier extended past the dome, with long white railings built along the edges of the complex to prevent people from accidentally falling into its waters. The dome itself was aurically neutral - it didn’t radiate any form of aura that Erika could see through her second sight, other than aura which clearly originated from people inside the dome.
The track fields smelled of mint and rubber, an odd combination which Erika guessed likely arose from overuse of mint air freshener and the material used in the flooring of the field.
She saw a multitude of apartment complexes located littered around the area, and a neat arrangement of shops and well paved streets.
Even though Erika knew that the Pokeathlon Dome area - distinct from the actual Pokeathlon Dome which was a building - wasn’t a city, it sure felt like one.
The designers had done a good job of creating a miniature city - a small town, her mind supplied, centered around the Pokeathlon Dome.
There were many athletes who lived in the area full time to compete in the Pokeathlon, and a great many trainers who felt that they could go no further in the league circuit, and so had settled for a life as an athlete. All of this gave birth to the need for residential areas and shops, and slowly the Pokeathlon Dome expanded and grew.
Erika didn’t waste any time and went to grab her shower at the Pokemon Center, and had her pokemon healed up in the meantime.
When they were done resting, Erika applied for entry into the beginner’s Block Smash competition.
“I need to buy an outfit from the Pokeathlon shop to compete?” Erika asked in confusion. “Why?
“It’s just a requirement set by the higher ups,” explained the man at the counter. He was clearly exasperated, and trying not to let it show too much. “All participants need to wear proper sports wear made by the Pokeathlon Dome. You can go buy an outfit over at the Athlete Shop on the left.”
Erika’s frown persisted. “I brought my own sportswear. Why can’t I wear that?”
“Unless you’re a trainer with more than six badges, then you have to wear the clothing produced by the Pokeathlon Dome,” the man apologized. “ I don’t set any of the rules…”
“Ugh.”
Fuck it. I’ll just buy it.
The outfit was a nice blue with decorative white lines, and it came with a complimentary water bottle and some electrolyte packets, so Erika was appeased eventually.
After assuming proper attire, Erika was led by one of the workers to a small stadium filled with stone blocks.
There were about twenty people and a referee, and he was holding a sign that read “beginner’s block smash.”
The trainers were corralled together and the referee began explaining the rules of the format.
“This isn’t a complicated format,” the referee began. “In fact, it’s simple enough that even an idiot could comprehend. You just have to avoid breaking the very explicitly described rules, and you should all be good. So Coach, what are the rules? Well, allow me to explain.”
Coach signaled his machoke to walk over, and it formed a flat karate chop with its hands.
Then, it swung down lazily and cleaved through about ten stone blocks before its hands came to a stop finally. The stone plates/blocks splintered away at the point of contact and formed a deep ridge where its hand entered, with small fragments and chips having been directly powderified and turned into dust.
“See that?”
The trainers present nodded.
“That’s what you’re allowed to do,” Coach explained. “In Block Smash, you MUST smash the blocks from the top down. You cannot do it any other way. Here’s an example of what you can’t do.”
“Do the thing!” Coach called to his friend, pointing to the side of the blocks. “The wrong one this time!”
The machoke lazily swiped its fist across the stone blocks, crushing a few but knocking even more off the stack.
“That’s an example of an illegal smash,” Coach said intensely. “Don’t let us catch you out! Other than that, there really aren’t any rules to Block Smash. Smash the blocks from the top down, and if you make it to the bottom of the pile, one of our attendants will bring in a new pile for your pokemon to keep smashing! The winner is the one who smashes the most! Also, don’t forget to have fun! The beginner formats aren’t serious competitions, they’re literally just so you can have fun and practice!”
Everyone present nodded eagerly.
Even Erika was grinning. This seems kind of stress relieving honestly. Good fun, and you can just smash up a bunch of stone blocks without consequence.
She released Mordred from his pokeball and positioned him next to a stack of stone blocks the Pokeathlon Dome had prepared, and when Coach announced the start, Mordred started eagerly.
“Use your tail!” Erika shouted gleefully. “Just jump and smash down like usual!”
Mordred bounced up and used his downward acceleration to drive his tail deep into the stack of stone blocks, breaking apart over ten blocks in one go. He was left slightly stuck in the stack as his tail was wedged into the broken blocks, so Mordred had to pull himself out before he could go in for another hit.
“Keep going!” Erika encouraged him enthusiastically. “You can do it!”
It was actually quite fun to not have to think for once.
Unlike in a real battle where Erika would have to keep her eye on all the moving entities and consider her response to each and every one of them, the Block Smash was extremely basic - just smash. There wasn’t anything else to think about.
I guess it makes sense why it's a popular format, Erika thought. It’s simple, fun, and you don’t need to think too hard. It’s a basic test of power, and you can have fun while doing it.
Mordred continued cleaving his way through the blocks, and when the buzzer sounded after a minute, he’d smashed open about 128 blocks.
Surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, Mordred wasn’t first place - that honor went to a hitmonchan and an older boy who Erika had discounted initially upon looking at him. They’d barely beaten Mordred out with 130 blocks broken, and Erika settled for a nice second place. There weren’t any prizes for the beginner’s tournaments other than a virtual badge, which the Pokeathlon Dome assigned to their profile.
The attendant took Erika’s trainer card and scanned it into the system, which made her a unique virtual profile at the Pokeathlon which would track her wins and losses, and competition statistics.
Erika bowed out for a bit to grab lunch, returning Mordred to his pokeball and making way for some of the shops she’d seen earlier on her way in.
Many of the restaurants and shops set up in the Pokeathlon Dome as a result of the trainer tourism that passed through constantly, so Erika figured that the food quality had to be pretty good, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to stay in business. Then again, the opposite could also be true, she mused. Maybe the food could be bad because they’re the only option available to eat at, so there’s no need to refine the quality of the food.
The roads of the veritable town established around the Pokeathlon Dome were made from a sort of rhomboid slat, and Erika found herself falling into a pace as she swiftly pushed her way through the crowd of trainers milling about and lingering on the streets as they browsed the local shops and stands.
This place looks pretty good actually.
Mordred was too big at his current size to be let out in a crowded space, so Erika brought Gwen out instead along with Nimue, who sat on her head.
She wandered around a little admiring the different stalls and shops and smelling the aromas of the street food before Gwen started tugging her towards a stall.
It was a kebab stall by an older looking man who wore a straw hat. He had quite a relaxed demeanor, and he was lazily turning the skewers of his kebabs left and right over the coals.
Erika approached him and grabbed four of the finished skewers off the coals, and pulled out her card to pay when the man shook his head.
“Cash only,” he said promptly. “This is a stall, girlie. There’s no machine to scan a credit card.”
Erika had already bitten into the skewer by the time he said that, and her chewing paused instantly.
Ah, shit.
“Can you accept items as payment?” Erika tried.
“Sure, why not.”
Erika was going to offer the vitamins she had when she realized that she’d left them inside her backpack - which was back in the pokemon center.
This time, she visibly groaned. “Fuck’s sake. I don’t have the items on me either.”
Erika looked a little awkward. She didn’t really know how she was going to pay for her kebab, and she’d already bitten into it. What should I-
“A dashing hero arises, he doth pay for the young lady’s vices!” a voice interrupted loudly and not so smoothly. “This seat will cover the bill, lest he be known as a shill!”
A boy in a long robe strode out from the crowd with a tight grip on his honedge, his hands trembling with green veins protruding. Despite his obvious smile, he was also wincing at the same time, and visibly gritting his teeth.
“The sword psychic?” Erika said in surprise. She remembered him from the Rising Stars Gauntlet over two months prior. She didn’t recall his exact name, but it was still good to meet an old opponent-
“This throne’s exalted name is Kong Hou, ye who shall cower below!” Kong Hou bellowed loudly at everyone. The moment he did that, his hands flew to his mouth instinctively, and the honedge he had clenched in his hands clattered to the floor. Or it should have, if not for the fact that it leviated itself back up.
Why does the honedge look like it's exasperated?
Kong Hou had the good sense to be embarrassed by the noise he had just made, but when everyone looked at him, he could help but speak up again.
“A setting sun treads the sky of heaven, five fairies sense the sword?” He tried.
Everyone looked at him like he was crazy and ignored him.
Kong Hou inhaled really loudly and just walked up to the kebab stall owner and shoved a wad of notes into his hand, and grabbed Erika and started dragging her away.
Erika was a little weirded out by the turn of events, but it wasn’t entirely unwelcome since he’d paid for her food. She snatched her hand back from him and started eating the kebab and followed Kong Hou out a little further away from the market crowd.
“Thanks for the food,” Erika said in between bites of her kebab. She released Mordred out and offered him a kebab. Gwen and Nimue had already been distributed kebabs. Nimue of course had been given a skewer of vegetables instead of a meat kebab.
“So, how come you’re here too?”
Kong Hou grimaced. “Master told me so. A great destiny awaits. Blessings of the sword.”
“Uh huh.” Erika popped another piece of the kebab into her mouth. “Anything else?”
“Destined wanderers,” Kong Hou explained to her. “The light of the immortal. It shines brightly now.”
Weird as fuck. He wasn’t that weird last time… maybe it was because he didn’t talk at all. Erika didn’t voice that aloud though because he’d paid for her food, which made him a benefactor, as slight as the boon was.
“Do you need anything I can help with?” Erika asked directly. “Just tell me if you need anything.”
Kong Hou shook his head. “As iron sharpens iron, so does one trainer to another. Offer me sword in combat, not thy hand!”
“You want a spar?”
“Exactly!” Kong Hou spat, forcing out the sole word almost as if it physically hurt him. “Duel to death, a song of sword and steel! Metal against mettle, foe against foe, sharpen me as one does to a treasured sword!”
Things were looking interesting all of a sudden. Erika smiled brightly. It was not a nice smile.
“Let’s fight then,” Erika emphasized, pointing to one of the for-rent fields in the area. “How about a doubles match?”
Kong Hou was clearly thrown off by her choice. “Twin fates?”
“Whatever I said,” Erika continued without missing a beat. “Let’s do a doubles match!”
The Pokeathlon Dome had clearly anticipated the necessity for easily accessible arenas since trainers were a rambunctious bunch who loved to fight - at least generally speaking - and it didn’t take long for Erika to get permission to fight in the for-rent fields.
Kong Hou stood opposite her with a pokeball and sword in hand, his robes flapping in the wind. Erika stood tall and proud on her side, looking noble and graceful, with her own pokeball raised high to the sky.
Things would have almost been picturesque if it wasn’t broken up by Kong Hou’s horrific poetry.
“Spirits of the fallen weep, for the sword master’s blade annihilates all sheep!” He shouted somewhat desperately. “Fate with the sword makes man moot, seek the heavens and not the earth!”
Kong Hou uncapped his pokeball and a pokemon which Erika did not recognize from his previous team appeared, stunning Erika a little. So he’s got enough affinity and aura for a third pokemon as an Initiate too!
“A beldum?” Erika said incredulously, staring at the creature on the field. “How’d you manage that?”
“Heavenly secrets be concealed, I shall never reveal!” Kong Hou declared in response. The honedge in his hand flew out in response as well.
Erika decided to just ignore everything he said from then on.
“Let’s do a 3v3 doubles,” Erika told him before the fight began. “One switch allowed each!”
The two foes stared at each other silently and counted down, before beginning the match. Mordred and Gwen appeared on the battlefield as usual, and Erika went on the offensive immediately.
“Add dark aura to your tail and trade blows with it!” Erika ordered. “Beldum are very slow and inflexible at this point in time, they can’t do anything more than clash head on! Gwen, you suppress the field!”
Dark aura inundated Mordred’s tail as he charged forward to meet the beldum, twisting around and slamming his heavy axe tail into the beldum. Neither party bothered to dodge - it was just delaying the inevitable.
In fact, Erika suspected that Kong Hou had just sent the beldum out first to exhaust Mordred a little. It wasn’t going to be good for anything else anyway at this point in time, so it was probably smart to use it as fodder.
The moment Mordred’s axe tail made contact with Kong Hou’s beldum, it was smashed straight down into the ground and it groaned in pain with an almost lyrical chime, before rising up once again and throwing its body at Mordred.
The strike appeared to have done nearly no damage to it at all - the only thing it seemed to have done was ignite the beldum’s fighting spirit.
Gwen erupted after accumulating powder in her body and spouted out a mass of paralyzing powder, and the barrier pokemon on duty opened a reflect screen to stop the powder from spreading too far out. It was a relatively small arena, so its consumption was minimal.
When Gwen was done with that, she started shooting bullet seeds and razor leaves at the honedge, visibly growing in size using a single growth as she did so.
The honedge was initially going to slash at Mordred, but Gwen smashed her way into it and knocked it off course - a good thing, considering that its fury cutter was charged up. The mottled green aura on its sword edge was a telling sign of danger to Erika, one which she didn’t leave unattended.
Erika felt the pressure.
“Toss it!" Erika called out. “Get rid of the beldum first! Gwen, hold out briefly!”
Mordred’s feelers lifted up the vine net on his back and threw it straight onto the beldum, entangling it and forcing it to the ground. Instantly, the vines tightened and started strangling it, and Mordred leapt upon it immediately and slammed his tail down.
The honedge was clearly alarmed and made a slash at Mordred to free its partner, but Gwen forcefully used another round of growth and expanded not only the size, but also the strength of her body, and she met the sword blade with her hardened head leaves.
At a double boost, her head leaves had already faintly surpassed the hardness of the honedge’s sword edge. The two bounced off each other as the honedge glared at her, and Gwen’s body started trembling from the strain.
We don’t have too much time, Erika thought quickly. Gwen can’t hold that state for long, even after months of training. There’s no point in switching her too, because she’ll be exhausted the moment her boost ends.
Mordred smashed his axe tail down onto the struggling beldum again, clearly finding it difficult to put it down for good. Its body seemed nearly impervious to harm despite the immense power behind her starter’s tail, and Gwen was risking her life again to block the furious honedge which Mordred had barely struck down in their last fight.
It wasn’t until after the eighth tail strike that cracks started appearing on the beldum’s metallic body, and it took nearly three more strikes to put it down completely.
“That’s a beast of a pokemon,” Erika praised after Kong Hou recalled his beldum. “Where did you capture it? Is it the spawn of an elite pokemon which your master gave you?”
I knew the beldum line was tough, but not this tough! It must have been bred for endurance!
She regretted asking almost immediately, because Kong Hou didn’t give her any kind of response that could be considered coherent.
“Seventh metal was nourished by third fire, my master bestowed me with good fortune,” he replied succinctly. “Born to the beast of the east and the best of the west, Little Silver is strong and enduring!”
“Now, face my second, I beckon!”
Erika grew alarmed instantly the moment the pokeball released its contents as it released a surge of overpowering psychic aura, almost flooding the area.
A menacing kadabra emerged from the red flash of the pokeball, holding a grotesquely bent spoon in its right hand like a sword. Its left hand held an actual sword, and behind it levitated five more menacing swords.
Holy shit his abra evolved!
“Evasive maneuvers!” Erika yelped, just one of the swords rocketed towards Mordred.
Her starter rolled away straight away, narrowly avoiding the first sword, but four more were already coming his way, animated by an invisible force which Erika perceived as purple colored psychic aura via her second sight.
The Kadabra was strained to its limits controlling the swords from afar, and it could barely move its own body, which made things a little easier for Erika, but it wasn’t much of a comfort considering the power behind its flying swords.
It’ll go down in one hit if I can get Mordred past the swords. But how though?
Through their bond, Erika could feel the pain Gwen was experiencing, and how close she was to passing out.
“Get another stun spore out at the kadabra,” Erika ordered grimly.
Gwen swelled up one last time and sent a globule of stun spores up into the air using fume hood, and it flew in the air towards the kadabra.
Erika recalled her instantly for Nimue.
Nimue created an energy ball by agglomerating energy from sunlight and sent it crashing into the honedge as it approached Mordred, knocking it just away enough that it missed Mordred when it tried to slash him, and the Kadabra responded by controlling a sword to fly towards Nimue, which she was forced to block with a reflect.
Mordred broke free from the harassment of one of the swords following him and smacked it onto the ground with his tail, before locking it down completely with the vine net. The other three swords continued to slash at him, forcing him to continue evading and rolling away.
The fume hood payload Gwen had shot out was already high in the air and rapidly descending toward the Kadabra.
The kadabra grew alarmed at the sight of the fume hood payload and sent two of its swords to intercept, but it was futile. Swords were thin and sharp - they were good for puncturing holes and creating wounds, but when it came to the fume hood payload, it was just a powdery, liquidy mass that couldn’t be cut. The swords the kadabra sent could at most disperse a bit of the contents inside, not all of it.
Perhaps if all five swords were used, something more substantial might happen, but most of them were occupied with blocking Mordred, so Kong Hou couldn’t do anything but helplessly watch as the fume hood payload exploded again and doused his kadabra with a crippling dose of paralytics.
The swords in the air started wobbling immediately, but their motion wasn’t affected by much since it was animated through psychic aura, which acted independently of the body.
At least, that was what Kong Hou thought.
Then, all of a sudden, all the swords clattered to the ground. Gotcha!
It wasn’t just stun spore in the fume hood payload as Kong Hou had heard Erika order. Some sleep powder was mixed in as well, and it made the kadabra drowsy enough to lose control over its swords. It would wear off quickly given how little there was, but Erika just needed a minute or so to win.
Just as Mordred was about to make it to the kadabra to deal a finishing blow, Nimue finally failed to knock the honedge off course with an energy ball. She even flew closer to the sword pokemon and offered her body as a substitute target, but it steadfastly ignored her in favor of viciously slashing Mordred across his back.
Mordred’s senses erupted in pain as the bug aura on the honedge drove through his back, opening up a grisly laceration that made him bleed profusely. If not for the flower shield Nimue had created, the sword blade might have gone even deeper in. It ablated some of the incoming force before popping, and Erika made a mental note for Nimue to focus more on training the move.
The wounds sealed quickly and started clotting up thanks to Nimue’s flower veil, but the damage was already done. Mordred missed his strike on the kadabra, which gave it time to levitate away. Nimue had also been too slow to manifest her reflect shield onto Mordred - no, it hadn’t been that she was too slow, but that the honedge was too fast.
Erika was sure of that. In that moment, the honedge had accelerated faster than it should have been able to - faster than it had previously demonstrated it had been capable of moving. Is it sandbagging?
Whatever it was, Erika couldn’t afford to think about it. “Add another flower shield, and fire as many magical leaves as you can and lock onto the kadabra!”
Nimue refreshed her flower shield and added another layer of protective fairy aura to Mordred before scattering dozens of glowing purple leaves which began flying towards the kadabra intermittently.
The kadabra gave up on its swords and started sending out psychic pulses to individually strike down each magical leaf, its powerful psychic aura enabling it to crush the leaves even while drowsy, but there were too many of them, far too many, especially for its debilitated state, and the few leaves which made it through bit deep into its flesh and made it howl.
Rocketing out from behind was the honedge, going in for another vicious slash, this time aiming for Mordred’s side. Its next slash was met by Nimue’s reflect screen. The honedge cracked the reflect in two but was stopped at the flower shield barrier on Mordred’s skin.
The third strike was going to be devastating. At a third charge of fury cutter, the honedge was shuddering violently from the strain, and its metallic body was trembling as fracture lines ran down its edge.
When the honedge made to cut Mordred, Nimue manifested an extra reflect screen on top of the first one she already had on Mordred’s back.
The sword descended.
The uppermost reflect screen was divided in twain instantly, shattering under the sword and splintering into dozens of wispy bits of psychic aura as it lost cohesion. The reflect screen beneath collapsed as well, this time slightly slower, and Erika held her breath and the honedge crashed into the final barrier separating it from Mordred.
Flower shield held. The fairy aura struggled weakly and almost flickered out, but in the end, Mordred was just blasted forward by the honedge’s strike as it failed to truly cut him.
“Now!” Erika shouted at him. “Strike kadabra down!”
Mordred had already been chasing the kadabra for a while, and since he knew the honedge had been chasing him in turn, he’d angled his body towards the kadabra. The force of its strike sent him flying toward the kadabra, and it could only helplessly watch as his tail came down at its head.
“Surrender now, not ignoble in defeat!” Kong Hou announced loudly. “True men of valor, defeat not dishonor!”
The match came to an end.
Erika breathed heavily, recalling her pokemon, and started administering medicine to Gwen.
She seized Kong Hou’s hand with a vicious grin.
“Great fight! Satisfying!”