"Get up, Lou! One more victory, and you can be back in Unova."
I slowly nod while my brother grins. "Same rules?"
The human shakes his head. "No. You're allowed to unleash living hell this time if you want to. There won't be an audience, we will watch through cams. Rika's last fight made us... reconsider our safety measures."
'What's a cam?'
'Who cares?! We can get home!'
We follow the human to the fighting room and get pushed in. "Good luck."
They did not clean up yet, the crushed tables and chairs are lying around on the ground, only the stage is somewhat clean. The Gardevoir is already waiting on the stage, arms crossed in front of her chest and eyes fixating us. "I got told to wait until you are in position."
'It might be a bad idea to anger her, Drak.'
'You might be right, but she looks pretty calm at the moment.'
Drak is right, she looks a lot calmer, despite the bloodshed. Or maybe because of it. As we step in position her small grin vanishes and she grits her teeth. "No mercy."
We get lifted off our feet as her eyes start glowing. At least for the moment I don't feel like being airborne, so I grasp my core and use dragon breath. Despite the perfect hit on her chest the psychic type does not even flinch and steps closer, the black thorn in her hand. "No games."
A dark pulse extends from our body, breaking the psychic attack and pushing her back a few inch. Drak grits his teeth. "No show? You go directly for the kill? How boring."
Rika hesitates for a moment before returning to her battle stance. "Boring?"
I nod while flames envelop my teeth. "Yeah, did you never enjoy a fight?"
We run forward and I duck beneath her swinging spike before biting in her left arm. She drops the thorn and the object scratches my neck before dissolving.
We jump back as electricity covers her body and discharges on the spot we were moments ago. "Fight over. Shadow poison."
I quickly look at our power, but there does not seem to be any damage or alien substance on or in our body. I grin. "Nope. Don't worry, everyone fails sometimes."
She flinches, but quickly returns to her confident appearance. "Impossible. Only have to wait."
We dash and tackle into her. Drak laughs. "You should consider changing your tactic."
Her following thunder bolt misses us by a few feet and I have to snicker. "You're abysmal if it comes to adapting to new conditions."
She growls and uses thunder bolt again, missing even worse than last time. I shake my head. "The coldblooded huntress can't believe someone can withstand her attack."
The Gardevoir steps forward and grabs my head, growling furiously. "You don't understand. Not even other shadows can ignore the effect of this." She rams a new thorn in my throat before Drak bites into her right arm.
I feel shadow energy entering our body, most likely resulting in extreme pain, fast weakening and possible decaying, but our flesh is already filled with my own power seems to absorb it. There's the for me normal ache of that kind of energy hurting our flesh, but at this point it feels more annoying than painful.
I shake of her grip and bite into he left arm, but she uses miracle eye and psychic to get us off and launch us into the first seat row, or what has remained of it. Drak growls. "Stop throwing us around, it's worse for the furniture than for us."
'Would it even matter for the furniture? It's a mess anyway.'
'Maybe it stops her. It's worth a try.'
The Gardevoir looks at us puzzled. "Does it not hurt?"
I tilt my head. "Getting thrown around? Could be worse."
The psychic type glares at us. "Your body should be nothing but bare bones! You're..."
We interrupt her by leaping on the stage and snapping at her throat, but she takes a few steps back. Next an arc of electricity connects our bodies and we slightly bow down and cough. 'I told you not to anger her.'
'It's not my fault! She's insane.'
The Gardevoir steps closer while we twitch and grabs one of the red scales on the right side of our chest before her eyes start glowing and we get thrown backwards. Pain runs through our chest. She grins and holds up the scale. "Defense weakens, red scales."
POV Drakke?
'She will suffer. No holding back!'
We extend our grasp around our core and let the power fill our body. Power. We grin while pain starts twisting our vision and hatred completely fills our minds. Our wounds rip open and we leave a trail of blood as we walk closer to Rika who switches between looking slightly scared and relaxed. "The poison works."
We jump forward and bite and hold her right arm while we shake our right head. "No, that's nothing your pathetic attack induced."
Her eyes start glowing, but there is no further impact. We bite into her stomach and pull on a long flesh string before she slams onto our head and pulls her arm out of our grasp. She takes several steps back and takes a few deep breaths while she presses her left hand onto the wound on her stomach. "You changed?"
We grit our teeth. "No escape."
We run forward, but our prey sidesteps and evades our tackle. A thorn enters our left side, but we absorb the shadow energy and respond by extending a dark pulse. The psychic type flinches and tries to distant herself from us.
'No escape.'
We follow and tackle her to the ground while the pulse envelops her. We bite and further rip open her stomach wound while her resistance fades away. "I give up."
We growl. "No escape."
We feel a concentration of shadow energy beneath her organs, so we dig into them before taking a bite of the power. An ice beam interrupts our feasting before we can devour all of the energy and our body collapses. Darkness. We drift away.
End of chapter 25. Grand final for the contest, huh? I hope you enjoyed it.