Only four trainers met today for the remaining two spots in the quarterfinals, fewer than the six victors who watched from the stands. Two gym leaders were among them, one the other leader of Hoenn's efforts against Aqua and Magma, but who had been thought not to even be the strongest of her region, the other the interim head of Viridian City Gym. There was one champion who had held Unova's crown for a long time and recently regained it from Black, and one ex-champion often called the "Half-hour Champion" for the speed of his dethronement at the hands of his rival. And there were two pokedex holders – one from Johto, one from Kanto.

The fact that Blue was one of the trainers in all of these comparisons didn't trouble him; on the contrary, it meant there would be an interesting angle to whoever he ended up facing. Two super-deformed faces soon appeared on the scoreboard, revealing to a hundred thousand people that it would be the pokedex holder, Crystal of New Bark Town, who would be his opponent. Winona and Alder glanced at each other with anticipation in their eyes, but their battle would not be until the evening, so both of them returned to their rooms to review film and plot their strategy for the next match. They both knew in advance (if a short advance and only through the process of elimination) who they would be fighting, which was more than anyone else could say.

The two trainers who were about to battle did not know one another well, but what little they did know they respected. Blue admired Crystal's skill at capturing pokemon and her tenacity in coming back from an injury which would have ended the careers of many a trainer (though playing soccer with poke balls still had to be seen to be believed,) while Crystal respected Blue's own support against Team Rocket. There would be none of the bitter rivalry which had marked so many of the other matches, just two skilled trainers, both desperate to win.

The two pokemon would battle on conveyer belts so big they took up half the width of the stadium, which carried their cargo into Pikachu-shaped tasers which shocked any pokemon who dared get too close. This electricity was not the only in the area, for although it was only drizzling slightly, lightning fell like in the fiercest of storms. Yet running against the belt did not lead to safety, for between the two belts sat an open pit. The pit was less deep than that in the previous match, and falling did not mean disqualification, but this was little comfort, given that the pit this time was electrified.

"Charizard, go!" Blue shouted, and a great orange dragon (at least in appearance, although taxonomists know better) with its enormous, orange and teal wings and an eternal flame on its tail roared into battle, dangerously stomping the conveyer belt as it moved.

"Suicune, you can win this!" It was met with a large blue legendary beast as much canine as feline, its fur dotted by crystalline spots. Suicune's purple mane flowed all the way down its back as if it was being blown by the north wind, and a white, ribbon-like tail swirled around its legs so many times it was a miracle Suicune didn't constantly trip.

"Start things off with a Hydro Pump!" Crys ordered, and the tail lifted itself into the air, swirling to create a vortex of wind which collected raindrops from the sky. It soon flung its tail forward to fire the vortex at the Charizard, who jumped into the air and flew out of the way of the attack.

"Charizard, Fire Spin!" After spending the entirety of Suicune's attack taking a deep breath, from deep in the dragon's stomach a towering inferno of flames burnt through the rain to envelop and scorch Suicune in its might. When the attack finished, Charizard stopped flapping its wings and hovered in midair, visibly exhausted.

"Suicune, race through the flames and jump!" Crys ordered, and blinded by the inferno, Suicune complied. It was badly singed, but made it not only through the flames, but above the pit of thunder all the way to the other side of the arena. "Now, hit it with an Aurora Beam!"

"Aurora Beam? Why not Ice Beam?" Blue asked, momentarily puzzled by the attack choice. He soon understood, for the beam not only struck Charizard's wing, but left it sitting dazzled by the aurora's colors, forgetting its own pain. The attack continued this way for about a minute, far longer than it had any business doing, until Charizard roared in pain, regained its adrenaline, and finally paid attention to the attack command its trainer had been shouting nonstop for the past thirty seconds: "Seismic Toss!"

Charizard dove low to the ground, snatching Suicune up from its position. It didn't fly particularly high, let alone around the earth. The struggling and quite heavy carnivore kicked, screamed, and spat water at it and even tried to bind the two pokemon together with its tail, and was dropped halfway through above the pit of thunder.

A less tough water pokemon would have fainted from this attack, but Suicune had learned much from its latest trainer. Using its own tail as a rope, it climbed out of the pit, crackling with lightning as it rose. "Tailwind!" Crys shouted, and Suicune's roar summoned an enormous wind at its back which carried past it, forcing Charizard to fall down to the conveyer belt and run with everything it had to avoid being hit by a powerful electric attack.

"Aurora Beam!"

"Fire Spin!"

Charizard attempted to take in enough energy to fill the arena with fire, but belched out only a weak cloud of smoke before being dazzled like the fans by an aurora not fired at its wing or neck, but harmlessly up into the sky. As it was watching, the fire-type forget to outrun the conveyer belt and tailwind (which to it was more of a headwind) and was zapped by the Pikachu-shaped taser at the edge of the arena.

And zapped.

And zapped some more.

"Charizard, return!" Blue shouted, reluctantly acknowledging the inevitable; if this went on too much longer, his starter pokemon would faint without taking down a single foe. Not that it was all that far from doing so even now. "Go, Exeggutor!"

Crys held her laughter at the odd pokemon's appearance; it may have been a tropical plant with six fruits for heads, but it did have a type advantage and an impressive mental acumen; it wasn't stupid enough to fall for her Aurora Beam trick. On the other hand, it was still weak against ice. "Suicune, another Aurora Beam!" she shouted, and boosted by the wind, a beam of snow and ice coated in multicolored light rammed into the oversized bush in a point-blank shot. The beam struck one of the leaves which shielded its head and it froze and fell onto the conveyer belt, which took it into an electric incinerator.

"Exeggutor, Wood Hammer!" Crys briefly wondered which part of the Exeggutor's body could ever be converted into something resembling a hammer – or wood for that matter. Her question was soon answered as Exeggutor ran the short distance needed to hit her pokemon, had its foot solidify and change shape to a hammer, which it raised as it stood on one leg, then pounded into the Suicune's foot in some bizarre attempt to cripple an opponent.

And it worked. The hobbled, wounded Suicune slumped against the moving ground, beaten by an Exeggutor of all things, who did look a bit hurt by its own efforts. "Suicune, return!" she yelled, catching it with the poke ball's laser seconds before it would fall. "Go..." she began, trying to quickly figure out the optimal matchup for that strange pokemon before her before Exeggutor fell in: she didn't want an unfair advantage, or a disadvantage, for she would quite possibly be penalized for gaining one and her opponent's pokemon resisted electricity anyway. "Arcanine!"

Were it not for the existence of Entei, the beast she summoned might have been called Suicune's fire-type counterpart. It was certainly more doglike in its appearance than Suicune; no one would call this beast a feline even if the rebuttal to such a description wasn't in its own name. It was a large, reddish-orange beast with black stripes that recalled Raikou's and a true, off-white mane, not the flowing hair "mane" of a Suicune.

The tailwind had faded. Both pokemon were on their own side, facing off against each other across an open pit. "I wonder how well Exeggutor burn. Arcanine, start this off with a Will-o-Wisp!"

Blue did a double take as the light blue, spectral orb floated slowly towards the Exeggutor; wouldn't it make more sense to just use flamethrower? This girl's style was certainly an unorthodox one; had she beaten all her opponents by confusing them until they lost all sense of a coherent strategy? She wouldn't be the first to do that to him: Green did it all the time.

And if so, Blue had fallen right into her trap – that, or Exeggutor simply had no room to run. When the orb made contact with Exeggutor, the grass pokemon's leaves caught on fire, and ignoring the rain and its usual concentration, it ran around in circles trying to put it out and began falling into the pit.

"Exeggutor, don't fall! The rain will put you out – don't worry about that, climb back up by using Vine Whip on the belt!" Blue shouted desperately, but his pokemon could not comply; in his desperation to save his pokemon, he had forgotten that Exeggutor could not actually learn Vine Whip. Not, of course, like another order would have mattered.

"Exeggutor, return!" Blue yelled soon after it fell: at least the pit didn't do its damage too quickly. As bad as things looked, he was thankful that he hadn't lost a single pokemon, although two of them had been badly hurt. Then again, one of those two probably wouldn't get a better match-up than this one. "Charizard, your turn again. Earthquake Arcanine's conveyer belt!"

The Charizard flew over unchallenged; there was no sense in fighting fire with fire, and for a moment, Crys watched helplessly; if the belt fell, this match was as good as over. "Arcanine, Extremespeed!"

Charizard's attack was a direct hit – at least, on the belt, which buckled in two and fell into the electrified pit, creating a pile of rubble barred the lightning and was actually safer than the land on which it had stood. Yet in an orange blur, Arcanine escaped the collapse and stood facing Blue on a different conveyer belt, but failed to stop before it, too, got a jolt of its own.

Crys grit her teeth. She was behind and she knew it; there was no easy move to make here. Arcanine, a physical attacker, had almost worn out its usefulness in this match, for there was so little room left to run. She'd just have to make sure it brought someone with it. "Finish it off! Extremespeed again, this time at Charizard!"

An orange blur. An orange fake dragon, trying to stop it with hands and wings alike, but lacking the reflexes. And two pokemon missing the rubble and falling into the electric side of the pit, one fainting on contact with its opponent, the other the moment it hit the lightning.

"Xatu, go," Crys said, sounding clearly dejected – it wasn't that she had given up, but her earlier enthusiasm had considerably dimmed as she faced defeat and a green bird with white wings flew out of her poke ball, looking more like it should have flown out of a work of ancient Mesoamerican art.

She hadn't counted on the possibility that her opponent was out of flying pokemon. "Damn. Shouldn't have left Pidgeot at home," he muttered, thinking over his four remaining poke balls; he didn't have a type advantage in the bunch. "Go, Porygon2!"

The pokemon he summoned bore a vague resemblance to members of the order Anseriformes such as Magmar and Ducklett, but real Anseriformes were not bright pink and blue of the sort of computer-generated colors one rarely sees offline, nor were they made up entirely of interlocking cylinders. Without the protection of cyberspace, the creature was virtually immobile, but it was sturdy enough to remain in place despite the conveyer belt's motion. It almost seemed like it was still halfway in the digital world.

"Thunder Wave," Crys ordered, and as lightning fell from the sky, Xatu's eyes glowed an eerie yellow and the bolt became a wave, flying outward in all directions and short-circuiting its mechanical foe.

"Ice Beam," Blue answered, but his pokemon did not comply, either because it couldn't hear his command, or simply because it couldn't move. Crys was grinning as Porygon2 stalled, like she had finally won the match.

"Psychic!" she soon shouted, and blue waves seemed to envelop the rain, redirecting it from a slight drizzle to a fierce downpour localized entirely right above the Porygon2, who hummed in pain as water poured into its circuits.

It would not fall so easily.

"Porygon2, Thunderbolt!" Blue yelled, and as though Xatu's attack had been reversed, a bolt flew from the mechanical duck into the Xatu's wings, causing it to flap around like a Zubat as it circled the arena in search for a landing spot.

"Xatu, there's only one piece of solid ground in this whole arena outside the rubble pit. So roost on Porygon2's head!" The bird gave a brief nod of its beak to confirm its compliance, then half-crashed, half-landed feet first on the head of the paralyzed pile of cylinders which called itself a pokemon.

It was hard to tell whether Blue or his Porygon2 was more surprised by this technique. "What are you doing? You can't roost on a pokemon's head!"

"Nothing in the rules against it."

"Yeah, but..." Blue sighed. "Forget this. I'll show you why it's a bad move. Porygon2, Thunderbolt!" The paralyzed pokemon attempted to make its lightning flow upwards, surrounding itself with the crackling electricity which Xatu had shocked it with earlier, but to no avail; like a Pidgey on a power line, the electricity failed to flow upwards and Porygon2 only shocked itself.

"Xatu, Drill Peck!" Taunting its opponent, Xatu flipped over slowly, until instead of standing on the Porygon2 it hovered upside-down while drilling its bright yellow beak into its opponent's head.

"Porygon2, you can't win in this position!" Blue shouted, recalling his pokemon in a flash of red light, not that he had much in the way of options. "Exeggutor, it's your turn again!" The green tropical bush emerged from its poke ball once again; at least it had a head or six that would be a bit more uncomfortable as a resting spot – being on fire had its advantages - although on Crys' order Xatu began Drill Pecking it all the same.

It would have one attack before another Drill Peck and the burn wounds took it out, if it didn't just fall into the pit again and faint – it had been hurt pretty badly by her Arcanine and Suicune. So there was no real downside in what he was about to do, although Blue never liked to sacrifice his pokemon. "Exeggutor, Explosion!"

At first glance, Exeggutor detonated like a bomb, its six heads exploding in a flash of light and leaving nothing behind, an intentional casualty of the drive to win at any cost. Seasoned trainers and fans, of course, knew this was not the case; when the light faded, Exeggutor could be seen face-down at the bottom of the pit, fainted, but intact and very much alive. It had only expelled its outer layers of energy.

And yet Xatu was still flying, badly injured but not defeated. "How did you..."

Crys grinned and said nothing, but the singed Focus Sash which had fallen out of Xatu's wing after the attack revealed exactly what had happened.

Blue smiled. It looked to be enough. "Good game. Porygon2, finish the match with Ice Beam!" Again, the pink mechanical duck of cylinders emerged. Again, it opened its mouth, but the earlier thunder wave had slowed its circuits, like a once-fast computer slowed to a crawl by a virus.

Crys agreed. "Good game. Xatu, let's win this with a Psychic!" Before Porygon2 could move, Xatu's eyes glowed a bright red as it hacked into the cybernetic pokemon's systems and activated a command to take damage.

It did not faint. It could not attack. It opened its mouth, summoned up ice into its beak, and then suddenly stopped as its system rebooted. The next series of waves came before Crys said a word, and this time, Porygon2 shut down.

"Porygon2 is unable to battle! The winner of this match is Crystal of New Bark Town!" the judge announced, although apart from a few fans who had seen the frequent switches but were not seated at a good angle towards any scoreboard, and had consequently lost track of the score, everyone already knew. Blue lowered his head as Crystal walked around the arena, through the stands to greet him as fans cheered in adulation.

"If it makes you feel better, Blue, I was extremely lucky to win that match."

"Paralysis saved you twice, and if Ice Beam had made better contact..." Blue noted, recalling many matches gone by. "But if the trainer who should win won every match, Red would never have beaten me. That's just how the battle goes."

Crys sighed. Her clumsy attempt at reassurance had failed, and Blue seemed as dejected as ever, turning from his trainer's box and leaving in what seemed like a very short walk of shame. As he reached the exit, he turned around, making one final request to Crys before leaving for Viridian City.

"Hey. If you happen to play him, beat Red for me, will you? He's a good friend, but someone has to wipe that smirk off his face. He hasn't lost a match in years."

Crys nodded. "I don't know if I can, but I'll do my best!" And with a thumbs up to her vanquished opponent, she smiled and made her way to the exit as well.