A Round of Battle

"Today's concluding round will be unique from the previous battles," Mayhan tells us. "The computer has paired you with an opponent, but it has not chosen your Pokémon participants, nor will you choose as in a typical battle. Instead, your opponent will select which of your Pokémon will compete."

This is new for me, but so was the tag team match. It's certainly an interesting prospect, picking which Pokémon to battle against. I guess this is where a person's personality comes into play. The obvious decision is to choose the opponent's weakest Pokémon because that weakness grants you the best chance of success. Some people may not prefer to feel relief, however, and might get more satisfaction out of facing the opponent's strongest creature, although that brings into question the trainer's sanity and arrogance, depending on the chosen opponent. I'd be surprised to see any legendary Pokémon during this round, however; who wants to send their regular Pokémon up against anyone's legendaries?

Omar and Anfernee are selected to participate in the first match-up. Omar is given the first opportunity to select Anfernee's battler. This is an interesting decision. Anfernee will already know which Pokémon he gets to summon, and that could affect his decision as to which of Omar's Pokémon he wants to face. Omar chooses Fury, Anfernee's monferno. It's a sound choice for a man who seems to want the easy route. Monferno is a Pokémon that is considered unevolved and therefore not as strong as it might be one day. Speaking strictly by the numbers and not considering any intangibles, monferno should lose, depending on who he faces.

Anfernee doesn't take long to consider Omar's Pokémon before he selects the steelix Basilisk—named for the legendary snake with the ability to petrify its prey. I guess that's what I'd choose, too, if I used fire Pokémon. The steel snake will have some weakness to the fire element even if it comes from a statistically weaker opponent. A visual comparison makes Basilisk the easy favorite: segmented scales as hard as steel, thirty feet long, ten feet around, and nine hundred pounds. Fury, on the other side, is covered in brown fur, three feet tall, fifty pounds, and lacks much hind leg strength. Fury is an interesting specimen, with a blue crest around his eyes like war paint; his most intriguing feature is that unlike many other fire-type Pokémon I've seen, he can manipulate the flame spouting from his tail at will. He can extinguish the flame to sleep or walk around normally, and he can spread the flame when he feels threatened to make himself seem larger and more intimidating.

But during the course of the match, I don't really care about the fight. It's intriguing to watch other trainers battle, but I've got too many other concerns on my mind. What I want to know about these two is how they interact with their Pokémon during the fight.

I start by staring intently at Basilisk during the match. He's slow overall, but his head is capable of snapping forward at whip-like speeds. When Omar calls for Dragon Breath, it takes about five seconds before Basilisk exhales its paralyzing gust of airborne chakra. When Omar calls for Rock Tomb, it takes only one second for Basilisk to process the command and try to coil itself around Fury. When he calls for Iron Tail, it takes three seconds for Basilisk's chakra to add a shine to his tail before he swipes it at Fury.

When I'm satisfied with Basilisk taking commands, I turn to Fury. When Anfernee calls for Flame Wheel, it takes one second for Fury to ignite his entire body and another two seconds to build up momentum for a spinning attack. When Anfernee calls for Taunt, it takes only a second for Fury to start smacking his butt and screeching in an attempt to upset Basilisk and throw him off his game. When Anfernee calls for Mach Punch, it takes less than two seconds for Fury to slam his fist into Basilisk's neck.

I feel like I've figured out the flow of their battle now, and so I decide to watch how it ends more closely. Fury has already taken quite a beating because of his smaller size. Basilisk is also taking a beating, but he's bigger and has more stamina. He's able to hit Fury with the point of his tail like a scorpion strike—a Stone Edge attack. When Fury's entire body bursts into flames, I think maybe Anfernee pushed him too hard; it looks like his own flames are going to consume him.

But then he gets up. The monkey, who was already pretty quick on his feet, now seems to get faster. The flames make him quicker and seem almost to empower him to a degree. I can feel his chakra flowing more readily through his body now, like maybe he doesn't have full control over his ability, but it starts to show when he's sufficiently injured. His heightened speed helps him avoid Basilisk's next attack and climb onto the snake's back. Anfernee calls first for Close Combat: Fury strikes Basilisk quickly and severely at the back of his head. Basilisk manages to throw him off, but before he can fully recover, Anfernee calls for Flare Blitz, and Fury essentially tackles the snake straight in the face. Basilisk hits the ground hard, and the effect is exacerbated when the flames consuming Fury's body spread like wildfire. Only when the monkey lets go and steps back to relax does the fire die down.

The referee—who also seems surprised by this turn of events—announces Fury as the winner. Anfernee and Omar recall their Pokémon, shake hands, then walk to the onsite nurse who examines Pokémon after a battle. While she's checking out Basilisk's condition, Omar's group of friends approaches to see if he's okay. That was a tough loss and I understand if he's disappointed by it. That brings Omar to two wins and two losses, the same record Anfernee now has.

I watch the next fight the same way. Jess decides she wants to face Geoff's weezing Pesto—apparently a nickname for Pestilence rather than a tribute to the Italian sauce—probably because he's statistically easier to beat in battle than either a garchomp or a regirock. A weezing is essentially two koffings who merged during "evolution." I'm not sure where koffing or weezing came from originally, but the rumor is they were created in a factory in order to absorb toxins from the air. Unfortunately, they sometimes release toxins, as well, and so are much more rarely seen as trained Pokémon except by people who can appreciate the utility of absorbing and releasing airborne toxins. Pesto is four feet tall overall, and because it is largely a gaseous Pokémon, it only weighs twenty-one pounds. A skull-and-crossbones logo develops on weezing's purple belly; it was probably genetically designed to do that as a warning of its potential hazard.

Geoff chooses to face Lita, the blind luxray. A luxray is similar to a lion with black fur and blue skin, but being female, Lita has a shorter mane than average. She's around four-and-a-half feet long from snout to hind legs, but she's terribly skinny at only 120 pounds. A luxray's ears tend to be more rounded than a lion's, and the tail ends with a yellowish, star-shaped patch of fur. The thing luxrays are most known for is their eyesight, which is also Lita's ironic weakness. Whereas a fully healthy luxray can almost see through objects, Lita can't see at all. She does have a radar-like awareness of her surroundings, however, because of her other senses compensating for her deficiency. That's what makes her such an interesting choice as a battling Pokémon.

From Shock Waves and Poison Gases to Thunder Fangs and Sludge Bombs, I pay closer attention to the lag between commands than I do to the actual battle. Geoff sometimes slurs his words but Pesto seems to understand him okay, and his actions always start after Geoff gives the command. The same is true of Lita; she always responds to Jess's commands instead of anticipating them, although I notice she seems to have a much quicker response time. I almost feel bad for Jess that she underestimated Pesto; it's news to me that a weezing can expel all kinds of poisons—not just pollutants. Emetics, paralytics, and depressants are all possible toxins for a weezing to expel, and all things that can severely impair the senses of a Pokémon already relying on only four senses. Jess was right to assume the ions in the gas would conduct electricity right back to Pesto, but she didn't realize those same ions would cause Lita to shock herself and that shocking Pesto forced him to release his more dangerous toxins unintentionally.

Geoff wins the fight, and then he tells Pesto to absorb the poison from Lita's body, something I never really thought about. I know weezings can absorb airborne particles, but I didn't know that some of them are even skilled at reabsorbing substances that have been absorbed through the skin. That's certainly a relief for Jess and for the onsite nurse.

Shawn and Olivia are up next. He wants to battle her heracross because a giant beetle is much more beatable than a dragon, and she decides to battle his weavile because it's smaller than an electivire, and generally smaller means weaker in a brawl. Olivia is down to one win and two losses, which certainly explains why she's so interested in facing the weaker opponent. Shawn is up two wins to one loss, but for the moment, that leaves him in a seven-way tie for second place. That so many of us are tied is probably why almost everyone is going to want to face the weakest opponent possible.

Heracles the heracross wins the battle through brute force and good timing… and a little luck—a well timed Megahorn sends Bandit flying and the landing a Close Combat attack immediately after landing. But more important than the result is that both Pokémon reacted to their trainers' commands with a little bit of a lag. I couldn't tell what they were going to try before the trainer gave a command. There's no instantaneous response or preparation of an attack before the command was given. As strong as these Pokémon were in battle, they are still normal Pokémon.

The next battle is between Fell and Bernie. Bernie is convinced he's got a better chance of beating Hatter—that same mischievous haunter who scared me so I broke my bathroom mirror—than either a lucario or a latios. He could be right; haunter is also not yet in the final stage of development, suggesting it could be fairly beatable assuming Bernie gets to summon a Pokémon capable of attacking Hatter at a cellular level. Sunday was able to beat him before using her metagross's psychic abilities. Unfortunately for Bernie, Fell gives himself a huge advantage when he chooses to face Cockatrice, the fighting breloom.

The fight is hardly worth commenting on. I admire Cockatrice's efforts in trying to inflict damage upon Hatter, but just as I experienced when I threw that shampoo bottle, no physical attack can hurt a ghost Pokémon.

"Use Stun Spore!"

Bernie is very apt in realizing that perhaps his best chance of defeating a gaseous Pokémon is to disrupt the animate particles by numbing them. Cockatrice shakes heavily and releases a cloud of spores that blanket the sky. I notice once again that the spores seem to hit an invisible wall around the field to protect us.

Lisa explains, "That's pretty typical in order to protect the trainers. They have generators in the base of the arena walls that simulate a Light Screen kind of thing. It's based on the same technical machine technology that teaches Pokémon how use the Light Screen technique. Can you imagine how hard it would be for either of these guys if that Stun Spore numbed them, too?"

That's a good point. Even more important, I think, is what would happen if a human were hit by a Flash Cannon.

The Stun Spore doesn't seem to do much to Hatter, though; I would guess it's because the spores are too big to affect Hatter at the cellular level. Or maybe Hatter's body composition is such that the spores just failed to attach to any of the molecules that make up the ghostly body because of all the empty space. Whatever the reason for the failure, Hatter is still floating around easily, maybe even giggling.

"Use Hypnosis," Fell tells him. The Haunter looks at his trainer for a moment, then glares back at Cockatrice. I can feel the energy emanating from the gaseous body as short waves of energy pulsate through the air and disrupt Cockatrice's hormonal regulation. The fungal kangaroo slows significantly for a moment, caught up in its sudden drowsiness, and promptly falls unconscious. He lies on the field on his side with his head resting on his hands.

Cockatrice hasn't even been asleep for ten seconds before Hatter swoops in close and reaches out with one of its disconnected hands. Cockatrice remains asleep, but his face shows an expression of pain and he begins to toss and turn. It looks like he's having a Nightmare.

"Yeah, Nightmare," Fell says, finally catching up with his Pokémon's attack. "Now use Dream Eater." Hatter changes the flow of energy with his hand. Having already afflicted Cockatrice with nightmares, Hatter begins drawing energy from Cockatrice as well.

Honestly, I'm not sure when, exactly, the battle ends and Cockatrice is unable to battle. As if the Nightmare didn't hurt him enough, that Dream Eater really seems to have taken it out of him. The referee steps in and ends the battle about the same time Cockatrice no longer seems bothered by his nightmares; that's probably when Hatter's technique lost effect and Cockatrice went from drowsiness to nearly comatose.

Geoff laughs and mocks Bernie for losing so handily, but he eventually reminds Bernie that the type match-up left him pretty much without a chance of winning. When Fell comes off the platform, I notice he's got an extra bruise showing at the base of his neck; it disappears beneath his shirt, but I can tell it's a big one. I approach him quietly and try not to make a big deal out of it.

"Are you okay?" I ask him. He tries to cover his bruise, but he already glance at it, suggesting he knows what I'm talking about.

"I'm fine," he assures me.

That's an awfully curt response. No attempt to explain it? No telling me it looks worse than it is? I verbalize a thought that suddenly pops into my mind: "You didn't go into the jungle, did you?"

"What?" He shakes his head rapidly. "No. Why would I do that?" He pulls a Pokéball from his side and holds it up without releasing the Pokémon inside. "Bibi and I just got into a little brawl is all."

I wasn't expecting that. "You got into a fight with your Pokémon?" Is it the same kind of controlled fighting Musashi and I do?

"Yeah, but I'd word it differently. He likes to jump me in the middle of the night and try to beat me to death." His words shift from speaking to me to yelling at the Pokéball. "I call him 'Filthy Luca' because he fights dirty!"

Um… okay. I certainly wasn't expecting the conversation to take this kind of turn. At least Fell wasn't stupid enough to wander into the jungle and get into a fight with a wild Pokémon. He, instead, got into a fight with his own Pokémon, which is at least safer because I really doubt that lucario ever seriously tried to kill his trainer. But between a lucario that apparently gets into fights with his trainer and a haunter that wanders off on its own to play pranks, I question Fell's true utility as a Pokémon trainer. His Pokémon are pretty good in battle, but it seems mostly because of their own merits and not because of his training influence. That pretty much guarantees to me that he was invited to compete because of his latios.

The computer clicks, and I certainly recognize the picture that pops up. It looks like it's my turn, and my opponent is the same woman whose pastimes include power plays. Deborah winks at me and scares the hell out of me that she's going to say something I don't want Lisa to hear.

"Looks like it's our turn, handsome," she tells me seductively.

Lisa simply smirks and shakes her head in disgust. I think I dodged a potentially fatal bullet there.

Mayhan flips a coin and says I choose first—which of Deborah's Pokémon do I wish to face? I try to think of it in terms of how her Pokémon match up to mine. Her articuno is legendary and therefore very strong; Ra would have an easy time against it, and Sundance could probably handle it if he weren't worn down like he is, but Musashi would get totally overwhelmed. Deborah's blissey has low attack strength, but she's got such endurance that she could be a problem if the battle gets drawn out for too long. That leaves umbreon—the dark version of eevee. Umbreon is pretty strong—an even match for Sundance—but the advantage is more likely to be in my favor considering Sundance's level of fighting and the fact that the umbreon will also be tired from this morning's team battle.

I finally decide Deborah will use her umbreon Fenrir. She spends a few minutes thinking things over in a similar way that I did—she decides to battle against Sundance. She brags that she chose Sundance because he already battled today and will be quicker to exhaust than my other Pokémon will be. Unfortunately for her, I trained all my Pokémon to push through the pain long after Dad did the same thing.

Sundance actually seems more energized when he sees that his opponent is closely related to him; taxonomically, jolteon and umbreon are members of the same family. Eevee responds to the radiation of a thunderstone to become jolteon; it responds to the radiation of a moon shard—or sometimes to the moonlight itself when the conditions are appropriate—to become umbreon. This umbreon is only slightly bigger than Sundance; it has black fur with yellow bands around its tail and ears, and similar yellow rings on its haunches and forehead. Just like all the other Pokémon in this tournament, Fenrir is slower than Sundance, but generally umbreons have greater defensive strength—that might still be true here because Sundance worked so hard this morning. Still, I feel confident in Sundance's strength.

"I noticed your jolteon exhausted himself defeating Victor's bronzing this morning."

"Don't count Sundance down just because he's hurt. Overall, he's my strongest Pokémon."

She smiles pleasantly. "Good. Then when I beat him, I'll know it wasn't just a lucky selection."

When the match starts, Sundance immediately focuses on improving his Agility; I can see it in the way his chakra moves to his feet.

"Toxic!" At the command of Deborah's high-pitched cry, Fenrir spits a wad of Toxic poison at Sundance, and unfortunately, it hits home. Sundance starts limping significantly as the poison takes an obvious and rapid toll on him. Fenrir comes in for a Quick Attack, but Sundance shocks him off with a Thunder Wave; electrical energy jumps straight from his body to shock Fenrir's muscles and lock them up.

"That was stupid," Deborah says. She grins and points to the field. Fenrir's forehead glows and suddenly Sundance shows signs of paralysis, too, due to Fenrir's Synchronize ability. Apparently umbreon was able to redirect some of the paralytic ions back at Sundance to inflict a similar atonia upon him. "Now neither Pokémon can move, but yours is poisoned. All Fenrir and I have to do now is wait. Time will win this one."

"Like Sundance would ever make it that easy," I comment.

Sundance manages to channel his chakra into the air; it jumps through the air nearly instantaneously and strikes Fenrir where he stands. Fenrir's tough enough to push past it and recharge himself by drawing in solar energy with his Moonlight ability, but contrary to the old adage, lightning strikes Fenrir again in the exact same spot. Because of his experience in battle and his stubbornness in giving up, Sundance uses up another portion of his chakra to strike Fenrir a second time. Fenrir puts up an impressive showing, though. He endures both lightning strikes and recovers from the paralysis pretty quickly, all things considered; Sundance, by contrast, is still experiencing intense pain from the poison, and it seems to be getting worse. This battle needs to end quickly.

Fenrir climbs to his feet and emits his chakra outwardly from his body—a Dark Pulse. Sundance takes the hit and looks for a moment like he won't get up. If I had my way, I would end the battle right now and take the loss just so I can get him an antidote. But Sundance doesn't want to quit; I can tell because he gets back to his feet through sheer force of will. If I forfeit the battle before Sundance is done, he'll never forgive me.

Sundance forces himself to move at full speed. He disappears momentarily and suddenly reappears behind Fenrir; he quickly lifts both his hind legs and Double Kicks them into Fenrir's belly. When Fenrir stumbles, Sundance pounces with his fur standing on end and Tackles with a Pin Missile-like effect. Sundance stumbles back in my direction, but Fenrir is struggling, too. He almost doesn't look like he's going to get back up, but at least he's still conscious, glaring at Sundance as if he wants revenge.

That's when I realize Sundance didn't just stumble toward me: He fully passed out. That toxin finally took its toll further than Sundance could ignore. Despite dominating the fight through determination, Sundance's body just had to quit in order to prevent organ failure. The referee announces Fenrir as the winner because he's still conscious and Sundance isn't.

Deborah reacts very much like I thought she would; that is, she's not good at hiding the little girl inside her that's jumping up and down with joy, even though her external appearance is limited to a bright smile. Now she, too, is just one win away from taking the lead in this competition.

"That was a valiant effort," she tells me. I simply reply with a dry "thanks." It's much more important to me that I get Sundance to the vet and get him on the road to being healthy again. She puts on a mockingly pitiful look and says, "Aww. Do you want to come over tonight and remind me that there are some things you are good at?"

I can hardly believe that coming from a beautiful woman like her, hearing that offer makes my skin crawl. "No. I'm not interested in a repeat."

Her eyes say she's offended by being blown off. "Doesn't matter. You're not even really all that good at that, either." Knowing her propensity for power plays, I think she was ready to turn me down even if I had accepted. At least this way, she gets to emasculate me a little without thinking she has any real power over me. I can settle for that dynamic.

Emily is paired up with Remy next. Remy quickly and without hesitation chooses to face Emily's delcatty: Opal. (She looks like a big cat with whitish fur, a purple mane that encompasses her ears and wraps all the way around her breast, and purple fur tips on her tail.) As far as versatility goes, a delcatty makes for an easier opponent than espeon or suicune. Being a normal-type, a delcatty can't use specialized chakra as easily as other Pokémon species can. And even though it's pretty big for a cat, at seventy pounds, a delcatty doesn't really bring a lot of mass behind its physical attacks.

We all noticed in Opal's earlier battle that she is reasonably proficient with electrical chakra. But that still brings difficulties. Remy's flygon is constantly airborne, often preventing it from taking any electrical damage whatsoever; even though it's grounded and uses water chakra, Remy's swampert is surprisingly resistant to electrical chakra; and Remy's zapdos is not only airborne, but also uses electrical chakra, which increases its own resistance to electricity. Faced with a nearly impossible choice, Emily opts to face Sylph, the flygon. Sylph is like a six-and-a-half-foot, bipedal dragonfly (heavy emphasis on the dragon) with wings that move as quickly as a hummingbird's, often giving the impression the flygon is singing when it flies. A flygon has red, multifaceted eyes on either side of its head; that is to say each eye has thousands of receptors on their round eyes that allow for an expanded visual field that is useful for detecting movement. The compound eyes put a severe limit on visual focus, but I doubt anyone's going to ask Sylph to read from an eye chart during this battle.

Actually, there isn't time to ask much during this battle. Sylph's wings kick up a big cloud of dirt everywhere it goes. (If this battle were in the beachfront arena, we'd never even be able to see what's happening.) Opal tries to channel its electrical energy into shocking Sylph's body, but it doesn't work because Sylph never rests its wings and therefore never grounds itself. And using its chakra to Sing a hypnotic song doesn't work because the sound of Sylph's wings seems to counter the sound waves. Opal is pretty agile and pounces on Sylph many times when she swoops down to attack, but it's only a temporary advantage when Sylph begins using Dragon Breath. That and other long-range attacks keep Sylph safe while keeping Opal at a huge disadvantage until the battle ends.

Emily's poor delcatty just seems to have been outmatched so far in this tournament. First it got walloped by Timmy's aggron, and now it gets outclassed by Remy's flygon. Luckily her espeon and suicune are picking up the slack.

Finally, we get to the match I've been waiting for. This one is where I can figure out if I was experiencing some kind of sensory lag earlier today… and it also tells me the tournament is not completely random. Victor, in all his pomposity and disgraceful loserness, is pitted against the top seeded trainer—one of the ones who dealt Victor is only loss so far. And Lady Sunday is thrilled with it.

"One more victory here and they might save the trouble and offer the grand prize now," she taunts Victor. "I will defeat your bronzong once more." I remember Liberty, that self-aware computer Pokémon shaped like a bell. That thing nearly won the double battle by itself until it made the mistake of giving Sundance a target at point-blank range.

But Victor doesn't bite on Sunday's combative words. I can't tell if he's ignoring her because he's trying to focus, or if it's because he's still furious about his loss and is desperate to deal payback to the woman in first place. A win here puts Victor back in the pilot's seat of this tournament, and he definitely wants to earn it.

"How's your raikou doing?" he asks Sunday. He's trying not to sound snide; it's not working.

"Gunther is fine," she replies curtly. "He's much too high-class to be injured by that little bout earlier this morning."

Victor is remarkably able to read between the lines: the raikou is not in top shape, and maybe not even halfway at full speed. "Fine. Metagross will make a tougher opponent, anyway."

Her metagross? That's a bold decision. In theory, a metagross is even more powerful than a raikou in terms of brute strength and physical condition. This metagross Hibernius is basically a five-foot, quadrupedal tank-like spider. Its body is composed of iron minerals, and just like bronzong, it is more like a computer than a living organism. I know it has a mouth on its belly, and the fact that it does, indeed, devour other living creatures suggests there is some kind of organic life inside that iron body. I'm not sure of its origin, but its computer-like features give it amazing intelligence and a hell of a logic drive. I do know that a metagross comes about by the fusion of two metang—smaller, less evolved computer Pokémon.

The comparison of this Hibernius tank and the Liberty bell is an interesting one, and honestly it doesn't look like a battle Victor should win. Every strength bronzong has is also the strength of metagross, but theoretical biology says metagross is stronger in almost every objective category. It comes down to effectiveness of training and the intangibles.

Liberty doesn't start in the air. It's sitting on the ground, the same formation it used against Sundance to use Earthquake.

"Start with Earthquake," Victor says. I can't be sure Liberty is the one calling the shots because it's possible Victor already told his Pokémon what move to make before the battle even started.

Sunday is quick to react. "Magnet Rise!" Hibernius's four brains give it a fast reaction time as it starts generating static electricity in each of its four legs. The chakra propels Hibernius over the ground, protecting it from the violent ground beneath it.

"Now use Meteor Mash!" Hibernius manages to hover using just three legs for a moment. The fourth leg disconnects from the main body at high speed and shoots straight for Liberty. As soon as the leg connects with Liberty's hollow body, I become acutely aware of a transfer of chakra from the connection point straight into Hibernius's individual limb. It's such an intense transfer that I notice it even without meditation. What was that?

"Use Payback," Victor grumbles. Liberty channels a dark energy flow into its bell, then turns itself upward to fire back at Hibernius.

Hibernius's fourth arm already reattached by the time Sunday tells it, "Protect yourself!" Hibernius channels its energy into the air immediately surrounding its body—like it's able to manipulate the molecules in the air to create a hardened, impenetrable shell around itself.

"Ready Hyper Beam," Victor tells Liberty. It's redundant, though, because I can already see the energy collecting in Liberty's bell.

A deafening crack causes everyone to flinch when Hibernius Explodes. The tank-like Pokémon—still Protecting itself—suddenly blew up. The way the technique generally works is a Pokémon consciously focuses all its chakra into a single point inside the body, and when that chakra can't possibly be focused any more tightly and ruptures just a tiny bit, all that focused energy erupts into an enormous Explosion, usually obliterating everything within fifty feet. In this instance, though, the exploding chakra was contained by the Protect shell, thus hurting only Hibernius.

"What the hell happened?" Geoff utters. He's the only one not speechless with shock. How could a machine with four brains malfunction to such an extreme? Did it have to do with that energy transfer when Hibernius hit Liberty? Maybe that dark energy was the real Payback move Liberty used—a kind of "you hit me, I infect you with a virus" attack. The battle is probably over before Hyper Beam hits, but Victor had such an overreaction to his earlier loss that he wanted to make certain everyone knows that Sunday can't compare with him as a trainer.

"That was definitely a unique battle," Lisa comments.

I can't be certain what I saw. It seemed like Liberty was executing commands before Victor actually gave them. Is its reaction speed that high? Or maybe its neural network is complex enough that Liberty can make its own decisions in battle, much like Musashi and Sundance do. Or maybe Liberty's psychic powers really do give it some level of telepathy, and it can read Victor's mind without waiting for him to speak. The last option seems terribly implausible, but that is merely opinion based on the knowledge I currently have of biology and neuroscience; I suppose it might be possible, even though it pains me to say so. Maybe if I could watch the earlier battles again… to see if the time lapse also occurs with Victor's scizor, which doesn't have a psychic bone in its body.

When I remember the tournament's prize money, I feel a little more anxious about falling behind Victor and Sunday in number of wins, but I'm really more interested in Lisa than the money right now. I've never had a lot of luck with women—maybe I'm too picky—but Lisa really seems like a match for me. I could yet be wrong in the long run, but I'm very interested in giving it a shot. If it works out, a relationship will be much more rewarding than any amount of money.

My best chance to woo Lisa comes after her battle against Timmy. She thought her blaziken Apollo would be able to topple Timmy's aggron Granmarg, but the final result came down to Granmarg's size advantage. That aggron is seven feet and eight hundred pounds of bipedal triceratops with a tail the size of an anaconda. Her scales are like black and silver plated mail, which renders physical attacks all but useless. Apollo is a much more skilled fighter, and certainly the faster one; ground attacks have very little effect because Apollo is so light and agile that he can spend most of the time in the air while the ground shakes below him. But Granmarg still has a tale as solid as iron, and one smack to the stomach stuns Apollo long enough for Granmarg to finish it with an Iron Head butt. That aggron has already proven to be one tough customer as the one responsible for both of Timmy's wins so far.

Lisa takes the loss gracefully, but I can see her disappointment in her eyes. I try not to sound condescending when I ask her to join me for dinner. She accepts with a warm smile. When I try putting my arm around her shoulder, she doesn't recoil or shrug it off, so I enjoy the feel of her strong shoulders.

While we walk to the dining hall, she tells me, "You're limping more than usual."

"You've only known me two days. How do you know what's usual?"

"I'm good at paying attention," she says. "For example, I know I didn't hit you in the leg last night. What happened to you?"

"I started to take a walk around the island when I was attacked by a wild slaking."

I have no idea why the truth slipped out there; I couldn't help it. Sure, I left out a large part of the story, but what I told her is exactly what's wrong with my leg. I probably could have avoided that confused look she's giving me if I told her I stumbled and tripped over my coffee table or something.

"What were you doing walking around the island in the dead of night?"

I simply tell her, "I was curious."

"Despite being told not to leave the mansion grounds?"

"Yes. That's probably what made me curious."

She scoffs and shakes her head, but she's still smiling—I'm not in too much trouble with her. "You're an idiot. I guess I'll have to lift without you tonight."

She's right, but not because of my leg… I have some video to review.

This chapter would have been way too long if I went into great detail on all the battles; for most of them, I just described the closing. In case you're trying to keep score, Geoff and Bernie are 1-3, Victor and Sunday are 3-1, and everyone else is 2-2. I hope the imagery of the battles was a little better this time; it's certainly easier to do one-on-one battles, though it's easier still to do it with humanoid fighters. (Metagross versus bronzong was tough to picture.)

Thanks to Imagination Domination for pointing out something in the story I wasn't clear about so far. It won't change the story, but she deserves thanks for bringing to my attention something I need to include that I might otherwise have neglected.

When I started this story, I decided I was going to keep it short (I'm pretty much incapable of writing a short story and wanted to try it just once). I gave myself a 70-page limit, and with this chapter, I have hit page 72 (size 10 Comic Sans font). Don't worry, though; I'm not stupid enough to hold myself to an arbitrary limit like that. It will take two more chapters just to close out Day 2 of the tournament. We may have hit the halfway point already, though I won't be sure until I finish writing.

One thing about me is I tend to make cultural references in my humor. I can't do that with this story, though, because it's not in Jin's personality. One example is that Pesto is not only the name of Geoff's weezing and an Italian sauce, but also the name of one of the Goodfeathers from Animaniacs. I couldn't make that reference, though, because that sounds too much like me and not like Jin. I did get to make the Robin Hood: Men in Tightsreference, though, with Filthy Luca--an archer involved in the plot to assassinate Cary Elwes. I just wanted to throw that out there.

Credits:
Emily....sunshine5991
Anfernee....watts63
Lady Sunday....Happy2BMe
Fell....Happy2BMe
Shawn....Jack Krieg and James Crusade
Jess....Imagination Domination
Everyone else....YamiRuss