"You can't go through with this, Narumi-san. She probably hacked your Gameboy to explode!" Hiyono pleaded desperately.

"Look if you want to be the one to battle her, that's fine by me." Ayumu shrugged. "She's been playing avidly since it first came out, and honestly I've been too busy. Given time to prepare, I might be able to win, but I don't want to ruin your chance to have a high-stakes pokemon battle."

"Thanks."


"I challenged the younger Narumi. Not you." Rio said, her excessively youthful facade completely absent; the person who was talking to Hiyono at the beginning of this match was as serious as she had been in their prior life-or-death contests, and every bit as confident.

"Pokemon is a game where we command others to fight our battles. What Narumi-san did is no different."

"But the challenge was three pokemon each. If you're his first pokemon, that leaves only two others. Can you win like that?" The fact that the match itself, like most contests with the Blade Children, was an elaborate assassination plot, and that Ayumu had foiled it already by sending Hiyono, and more importantly Hiyono's un-tampered gameboy, in his place, seemed to slip Rio's mind at the moment. Win or lose, regardless of the lopsided stakes, she was sufficiently bored in the hospital to agree to this match.

"Two pokemon is all I need to defeat you." Hiyono said, then took out her red Gameboy Color, a sharp contrast to Rio's limited Pikachu edition and deposited her third pokemon while Takeuchi Rio unwound the link cable. "Marowak, gooooo!"

"You don't have to call out your pokemon by name." Rio said as her first pokemon, an Electrode, came out on the screen. The two trainers made their first moves; Hiyono retreated her Marowak for a Gengar, and Rio's first Electrode exploded harmlessly.

"So now it's two against two."

"A ground type and a ghost type. I didn't think you'd waste both pokemon just to get around such an obvious first move. But even Gengar have a weakness, and my team covers everything." Rio said, selecting Mewtwo as her second pokemon.

Gengar could not absorb Mewtwo's attack, but it could make sure it fainted as well, with a Destiny Bond. "Better than I expected. But my last pokemon is Gyarados. I win."

Hiyono smirked and sent out her Marowak again, and both trainers pressed the A button on their respective gameboys. Marowak's quick claw activated, and a single thunderpunch won the match.

"Twenty percent. You had the battle planned perfectly, you read every move of mine, yet you staked everything on a 20% chance."

Hiyono shrugged, "It was the best I could do. If I used a sturdier ground pokemon, Electrode wouldn't have sacrificed itself with an explosion. Besides..."

"Yes?" Rio asked.

"I think it's fair game given that you put a bomb in Narumi-san's gameboy. Because I had predicted every move, I was able to hack the random number generator."

Even Rio was amazed. "Fine. You win. I'll tell you everything I know."