Chapter 2: Torch-Bearer
The arena audience seats were packed full of mon who wanted to support their friends in their exams for the day. For most mon, this would be a blessing.
For Inari, it was the very image of fear itself.
"It'll be okay." Galiana offered the strongest smile she could manage.
"Thanks." Inari had to question herself. How could Galiana be so confident when she was freaking out? She was supposed to be protecting her!
"Would Inari and her partner please enter the arena?" The PA system for the locker rooms echoed over them.
"Ready?" Galiana offered that strong smile once more. Inari hesitated briefly, before nodding her affirmation. "Ready."
They marched out to the stadium battlefield, and across from them were a set of Sophomore students. The horned skeletal dog from hell, Houndoom, and the behemoth, tusked, pig-nosed beast, Mamoswine. Inari's eyes went wide with fear.
Not only was she fighting to showcase teamwork - a skill she sorely lacked in - but Galiana had weaknesses to the obvious elements presented. Furthermore, she was also fighting against a mon that was probably immune to her fire. She looked at the Houndoom, and grimaced.
That Houndoom reminded her of Alex. One of her mentors. A rough and tough Houndoom who seemed to have gained his street-smarts from the blood-splattered bone-and-marrow-paved roads of hell itself.
"… for him. I'll do it for him." She paused. It wasn't just Alex. It was everyone who had pushed her this far. Galiana glanced at Inari with that same gut-wrenching look of concern. Inari shook her head. "Don't worry about it. Old mentor."
The female Houndoom with four neon pink dreadlock tails dangling from her mostly shaved head, adjusted her leather jacket over her torn tank-top with her exposed midriff, an emblem of a flaming Marowak skull on the back.
"You bad, hot stuff, but you ain't bangin' enough to brawl with Roxxi and Erik!"
Her Mamoswine partner, a burly oaf in a simple red muscle-tee who looked like he could take on a Mac truck and win without a scratch, crossed his arms as he gazed down at the two. His beard, fitting for a Viking seemed to hang ominously from around his mouth, the dreads in it swaying as he spoke slowly but surely.
"A mismatch if I've ever seen one," he said, with all the bluntness of a sledge to the face.
Inari just shook her head and composed herself. "Isn't it?"
"Oho! The little fire fox has a little spicy tongue! Yeow!" The punk Houndoom roared with raucous laughter, and grinned devilishly with her fangs bared. "I eat spicy bitches like you for breakfast, lunch and dinner. You don't even look hot enough to give me indigestion." She proceeded to spit at Inari, who took it on the cheek.
"Not worth it," she muttered to herself, radiating with enough anger and heat to evaporate the spit right off of herself. "Not right now." She then looked to her side at Galiana, and frowned at her case of knocking knees.
"S-scary," Galiana whispered. "You'll be alright?"
She shook her head, ignoring the question. "I'll protect you," she whispered, the words pushed through an iron wall of a concealing smile. "When the match starts, stay back and make sure you don't get hit."
"Wh-what? But I'm your partner!" Galiana clutched Inari's shoulder.
"I got this. Don't worry," Inari forced through clenched teeth, yanking her shoulder away.
Before Galiana could argue, the refereeing Girafarig walked between the two teams, looking to all four competitors for confirmation, with a shakey nod from Galiana for the final confirmation. Inari started firing up her Flame Charge, readying to rocket from the starting point, leaning forward like a sprinter, taking a deep breath.
She couldn't use her Toxic Orb right off the bat - no, she would wait for when the real threat had to be dealt with. Asking Galiana to heal the damage she took from it would be too much to ask, especially since the poison would worsen in intensity as she kept straining herself. She had to do this right.
She had to take down two tough-as-nails mon…
"3!"
By her inexperienced self…
"2!"
With a partner that had weaknesses to both of her opponents.
"1!"
Do or die trying.
"Fight!"
At that sound, Inari engaged her afterburners, and blasted from the starting point, taking a quick glance to check that Galiana was following her instructions. An expression of pained shock was written all over her face - didn't need to be psychic to read it.
Clenching her teeth, Inari surveyed the battlefield. The punk Houndoom had slipped out of view at some point. But she couldn't ignore the other danger - the massive Mamoswine, who was preparing to stomp the ground.
Engaging full power with Flame Charge, Inari rocketed and closed in fast on the Mamoswine - couldn't let him get off what she assumed to be a Ground-type move - something that would really mess her day up.
"Peekaboo, hot stuff!"
Inari glanced around in alarm as she heard the jeering voice, but it was too late. She felt dark-type energy clamp on her extremities like electrified barbed wire.
"Not yet!" More afterburner output, more - and yet, the more she struggled, the worse it got. The pain seared through her nerve endings and caused her to crash face first into the ground as she lost focus, skidding on her face before coming to a full stop inches from the Mamoswine.
"Looks like the bad ol' bitch got her Punishment." She grins devilishly, as she smothers the Flareon's face with her steel-and-spike-toed boot.
Of course. Punishment tended to make certain attacks backfire. In this case, it had made her flame output from Flame Charge backfire on her, as if the raw force from her afterburners had fried her hands and feet.
"Now, Erik!"
The Mamoswine bellowed in response, and channeled an Earthquake-inducing stomp right on Inari's spine.
"HRGH!" Her body wanted to cry out louder, biting her tongue with tears in her eyes.
"Sick, Erik! She ain't bangin' no more! She can't dig it right now, so let's dig it into her!" A stomp from the Houndoom's boot on her skull elicited a muffled groan from the nearly limp Flareon.
"Let's move on to the pixie and clip her wings."
Inari's eyes shot wide open, and she spat two words in defiance.
"Fuck. You!"