The battle between Dokukage and Keahi continues! Will Dokukage be able to overcome the threat of the Shadow Pokemon?
KedharS: The ones at the very top do.
Aquahaze675: Those questions are all very important details that we do not know yet. Eventually, we will know everything about Ryoko. When (heh) the time is right.
Pokemon Academy: Beginning of Beginnings
Chapter 513
"You think that we'll fall to something like that?" K asked, narrowing his eyes. "Kaho, use shadow storm again to tear through all of them."
"Doublade," the two swords trilled in unison. They began spinning, whipping up another tornado to bash Ame with.
"Ame, stun spore," Dokukage ordered. "Then, agility."
"Masquerain," the swarm of Masquerain nodded, flapping their wings and sending a cloud of pollen up into the air. The golden spores were drawn in by the winds that the Doublade were conjuring, settling down on them and causing them to slow down, the two swords freezing up as they were paralyzed. Ame began to move even faster, their speed rising higher.
"Now that they're handicapped, use quiver dance," Dokukage ordered next.
Loud buzzing filled the air, and Ame began to twirl through the sky, his speed and special stats rising as his movements were reflected by the swarm.
Kaho finally released the tornado, smashing through the duplicates with the destructive power of the shadowy clouds, piercing the copies with blades of darkness.
"Ame, dodge with agility," Dokukage ordered. "Then, use quiver dance again."
Ame nodded, increasing his speed even more, spinning and boosting his special attack and special defense as he turned into an energetic blur, dancing out of the range of the tornado.
"Dokukage's Masquerain isn't even trying to attack," Lila said, her voice carrying a tone of awe. "All he's doing is raising his stats."
"He's winning though," Dakota noted. "What do you think, Aki? What's his plan? Is he going to max out Masquerain's attacking power to make up for the Shadow Pokemon's resilience?"
Akira didn't answer her. He had a pretty good idea about what Dokukage was planning to do.
"Look at that thing, it's moving so fast that I can barely see it!" Cynthia said, squinting at the Masquerain dancing across the battlefield, using yet another quiver dance.
"That's enough out of you," K glowered. "Kaho, use shadow mist!"
"Doublade!" A black fog oozed out of the Doublade's tassels, seeping towards Ame, wrapping around the fast pokemon. Ame tried to move out of the way of the mist, but it was spreading too quickly, and soon enough she was enveloped in a cloud of shadowy fog.
"Now that your evasion has weakened, we can get you with shadow hold," K ordered. Shadows erupted from the mist and wrapped around Ame's small body and large wings, squeezing them tightly and keeping Ame trapped in the air, pinning him in place.
"Masquerain!" Ame buzzed, trying to flap his wings and break free from the shadows holding him down, to no avail.
"You've raised your special defenses quite a lot," K mused. "But Masquerain are too fragile to endure much. And now that we've trapped you, you can't switch back out like the cowardly ninja you are. Which means it's time to do some real damage, Kaho. Use your shadow end to get rid of that pesky insect."
"Doublade." Kaho began coating their blades in a stinking aura of miasma, and pointed the tips of their swords at Ame. They shot forward like missiles headed straight for the pinned bug.
"Ame, bubblebeam," Dokukage ordered without blinking. Ame opened his tiny mouth and began spitting a tide of bubbles at the approaching swords, a cloud of exploding bubbles barraging the Doublade as they sliced through them, even though they didn't seem to take that much damage from the attack.
The swords pierced Ame… and then they didn't, much to K's shock. Where Ame had been was now a log of wood, both swords slicing the wood into three pieces, the wood falling out of the sky.
"We can always run," Dokukage said. "Or more accurately…"
The pieces of wood hit the ground and disappeared in a puff of smoke, and in its place appeared a pokemon that was quite clearly NOT Masquerain. It had a sleek, silver body so thin it was hard to see clearly, the only touch of color on the pokemon being the bright pink head, shaped like a ski mask, with the bug's beady little eyes poking out. The ghostly pokemon shot forward, the trails of membrane sliding off its skin flapping behind it.
"Whoa!" Lila gasped, seeing the pokemon turn into a streak across the ground as it put distance between itself and the hovering swords. "That's Dokukage's third pokemon!? It's even faster!"
"After hiding behind a substitute, Dokukage's Masquerain must have used baton pass," Akira observed. "Passing on the speed and special boosts it had picked up onto his next pokemon, his Accelgor."
"Look at how fast that pokemon is!" Cynthia gasped. "I can barely even see it! Yeah, go little guy, take 'em down!"
"Dokukage specializes in baton pass," Callie said. "He uses his pokemon to boost their status with moves like agility and swords dance, and then pass them onto the next pokemon like a baton. By doing that, his pokemon can get stronger and stronger over time, until they reach the point where there's nothing that the opponent can do."
"That sounds really frightening," Julia said, a little unnerved, which was rare.
"Is… is that a good thing?" Sango asked.
"Obviously it's a good thing," Cynthia said, sitting back down. "Moves like swords dance or agility can greatly increase a pokemon's attacking power or speed. Now imagine if one pokemon used their time in battle to stack a bunch of boosts to whatever while they took abuse from the pokemon. Their strength would get really good, but by the time they could start doing real damage they might faint! Now, imagine, if before fainting they could pass those benefits onto the next pokemon out? That way, you could bring in a pokemon with full health and stamina to receive the massive buffs to their stats, and let them sweep up the opponent's team. Is that about right, Callie?"
"Exactly," Callie said, nodding.
"That's so cool!" Nick said, his eyes shining with excitement.
"Just the kind of technique you'd expect from a ninja," Cynthia said, nodding in agreement.
"Um, Nicky, I'm learning from Dokukage myself," Callie said, smiling at her boyfriend. "He's been showing me how to use baton pass in battle, too."
"Really? Awesome!" Nick complimented her, Callie blushing and squirming in her seat.
"Kagerou, use water shuriken," Dokukage ordered.
"Accel!" Dokukage's Accelgor, Kagerou, generated massive disks of water at the tips of the thin membranes coming off his tightly wrapped body, the membrane flinging the spinning blades at the swords in a barrage.
"Doub!" Kaho tried to deflect the spinning shuriken, but the disks were moving too fast to respond to, hitting them on all sides and doing serious damage.
"Kaho!" K shouted, unable to believe that the Shadow Pokemon seemed to be taking so much damage from the Accelgor.
"We passed on the boosts from Ame's agility and quiver dances," Dokukage stated. "Kagerou's speed and special stats are quite high. Now, Kagerou, double team!"
Kagerou ran across the ground, skillfully avoiding the spikes laid down across it. As he ran, copies of himself sprang into being, until the ground was covered with a swarm of them.
"Now, water shuriken."
Paralyzed, Kaho wasn't even close to capable of keeping up with the bug pokemon's blitz-fast speed. Kaho was pelted by a barrage of shuriken from all directions, the spinning blades of water carving chunks out of the Shadow Pokemon's health. The swords fell from the sky and landed on the spikes, knocked unconscious by the Accelgor's swift assault.
"Wh-whoa," Lila stuttered, surprised. "K-Keahi's Doublade is unable to battle! The first pokemon lost in the match!"
K was stunned, unable to believe that a Shadow Pokemon had been so effortlessly defeated, like it was just some normal pokemon! It just wasn't possible!
"How… this can't…" K wasn't even recalling his Doublade, he was so shocked.
"Our techniques have trained our pokemon to be able to take down any pokemon, no matter how strong," Dokukage calmly explained. "Through teamwork. We shinobi are not solitary beings. We work together to train our pokemon, and train them to work in unison with each other. No matter how powerful of a pokemon you might have… we will work together to raise our pokemon to be even stronger."
"Wow, seriously?" Lila said, almost as stunned as K. "That's… wow, I don't even know what to say to that, I have no idea, honestly."
"He's exaggerating," Akira said. "…Probably. But with enough boosts stacked up, it's certainly within the realm of possibility that he could sweep entire teams, even if the enemies are Shadow Pokemon. Madison already showed us that Shadow Pokemon are capable of being defeated, difficult a task as that might be."
"That… is unbelievable…" K spat, recalling his Doublade. "I won't acknowledge something like that! Such tricks… Paka'a! Show him what real strength looks like!"
K threw out his second pokeball, a Corvisquire flying out, coasting easily over the spikes. The black pokemon's spiky plumage was burning with a shadowy miasma that named it a Shadow Pokemon, and it flew right for Kagerou.
"Water shuriken," Dokukage ordered. He tensed, seeing the Corvisquire for the threat that it was. There was a certain move he was quite wary of.
"Accelgor," Kagerou nodded, creating massive blades of water that spun around him. With a fling of his membranes the blades were sent spinning at the flying pokemon, but K didn't give a damn about something like that.
"Shadow storm, Paka," K ordered. Paka spread his wings and flapped, creating a massive tornado that tore across the battlefield, sweeping up spikes as it raged ahead. The shuriken were swallowed by the pillar of shadows, and the tornado continued on, swallowing Kagerou.
Another log appeared, Kagerou reappearing a distance away from the tornado, panting.
"Now, recover," Dokukage ordered. "And focus your defenses as well. Use acid armor."
Kagerou began to glow, restoring his health back up to full. As his skin began to moisten, boosting his physical defenses as well, K smirked.
"Paka, use taunt!"
"That's not good," Akira noted.
"Huh? Why? What's happening?" Dakota asked. "Taunt, right? But… Oh!"
Dakota arrived at the same realization that Akira did, but Lila was still in the dark.
"What?" She asked her co-announcers. "What's he doing?"
"Corvi!" Paka glared, his eyes piercing Kagerou, incensing the ninja.
"Hey! That's no fair!" Cynthia pouted.
"Taunt… that means it can't use any status moves, right?" Sango asked.
"Exactly," Callie said, nodding. "The worst move for Dokukage. He can't raise any of Kagerou's stats, he can't use substitute, or baton pass, he's got to fight with Kagerou's skills as they are. Which isn't that big of a problem, considering how many boosts the pokemon has on it already… but it's still not a good thing."
"You didn't expect me to keep using shadow moves only, now did you?" K asked. He turned to his Corvisquire and called "Paka, use agility!"
"Cor!" The black bird nodded, flapping his wings to increase his speed.
But it wasn't even close to as fast as a maximum speed Accelgor. Dokukage didn't respond to K's taunts. He glanced at Kagerou. "Go."
In a flash, Kagerou was gone. He may not have been able to boost his speed any further, but his speed was already at the maximum anyway. So even if he couldn't defend with substitute any longer, attacking was still well within his ability to do.
"Accel!" Kagerou fired more shuriken at the bird, the disks moving so fast they could barely be seen. But Paka was no longer as slow as he had been, and this time, rather than try to counter it with a big move, simply evaded the attacks effortlessly, turning and flying straight towards Kagerou.
"Now use shadow storm," K ordered. Once more, the tornado began to whirl, barreling straight for Kagerou as the pokemon tried to outrun it. Just before it swallowed him, however, he somehow began moving even faster!
"Aw, yeah!" Cynthia cheered. "I love watching this guy move!"
Kagerou disappeared from sight, his quick attack so fast he couldn't be noticed, not even by the watchful eyes of the Corvisquire. He struck the pokemon in the side of his beak, knocking him off course, but not hurting the bird in the slightest.
"Running around like that is annoying, so we'll finish this off in one fell swoop. Shadow mist!" K ordered. With a flap of his wings Paka whipped the shadowy aura surrounding him into a fog that engulfed Kagerou, swirling around him in a dense cloud. Shadows shot out of the cloud, grabbing the pokemon and immobilizing him as K followed the shadow mist with a shadow hold, as he did against Dokukage's Masquerain.
"Kagerou!" Dokukage shouted, startling the announcers and some of the audience as he saw Kagerou pinned, the pokemon's eyes closed as he remained totally motionless.
"Must feel bad, huh?" K smirked. "You thought you were so tough with your special ninja moves, but in the end, the shadows are still enough to defeat someone like you."
"This really isn't good," Lila cried. "It looks like Accelgor is pinned!"
"And not only that, but the Corvisquire line is specially equipped for dealing with this exact strategy," Akira said, the warning in his voice causing Dakota to flinch. That didn't sound like a good thing.
"What, a… what do you mean by that, Aki?" Dakota asked.
"Last time, Dokukage's Masquerain was able to escape from the shadow hold using substitute, and then switch out using baton pass," Akira said. "Which is probably why Keahi didn't try to do it again. If that Accelgor knows baton pass, then he would just keep switching between them to free his pokemon up. But now that his Accelgor has been taunted…"
"So he can only attack!" Lila gasped. "Which means he can't get away!"
"That's real bad then," Dakota said. "All those boosts going to waste."
"Even worse," Akira said, shaking his head. "The Corviknight line… has a special move for this exact instance. Assuming, of course, that he…"
"We'll finish you with a real display of power," K said. "Before, you escaped with the use of substitute. Not this time! Paka, use psych up!"
Paka began glowing with light, absorbing the light from Kagerou, his stats rising to incredibly high levels as Kagerou remained motionless.
"Whoa! Shoot!" Lila gasped. She remembered the uses of psych up that had occurred during the battle royale. "That… that's REALLY not good!"
"All those stat boosts," Dakota gasped, turning pale.
As expected, he knew that one… Akira expression darkened. Which means his next move…
"I didn't expect this to be such a boon," K smirked. "I was actually planning to save this for the Commander, if I fought against him. But this works even better. All that time and effort you spent in boosting your pokemon, now it's all mine. And now, we'll finish you. Paka, use power trip!"
"Corvisquire!" Paka crowed, dark aura coursing around him, blending in with the shadowy miasma as he flew at high speed towards the immobilized Accelgor.
"Power trip? That's a move?" Dakota asked, confused. "Isn't that just, like, Akira being Akira?"
Akira answered that with a glare.
"Power trip is a weak move. It starts with a base power of only 20," he explained. "But it increases in power by 20 for each positive stat boost that the user has accumulated. All of them."
"P-Positive stat boosts?" Dakota repeated, her face turning stark white. "But… but that would mean… you mean…"
"All the agilities and quiver dances, even the acid armor, all of Dokukage's Accelgor's stats have been copied," Akira reminded her. "And now power trip's strength will rise to an unbelievable level."
"No way, all of them?" Lila asked, beginning to count on her fingers. "But that's… that's… lots!"
"6 boosts to speed, 3 boosts to special attack and 3 boosts to special defense, and 2 boosts to physical defense," Akira kindly informed her. "For a total of 14 positive stat boosts. Which means power trip's base power will increase by 14 x 20, or 280, for a total power of-"
"300?!" Lila sputtered. "That much power is unreal!"
"So that's it, then," Dakota said, turning to look at the battlefield. "Look, even his Accelgor has resigned himself."
Unable to escape, Kagerou was standing perfectly still as he had been since the shadows had captured him, eyes closed in resignation.
"Now, finish it," K ordered.
"No, not the ninja!" Cynthia wailed as Paka soared through the sky, his body coursing with dark power. He slammed into Kagerou, smashing through the shadows and knocking him into the ground, pounding him across the battlefield so hard torn membrane flew everywhere and the dirt was carved up like a massive trawl had been drawn across it.
Paka flew back, staring coldly down at Kagerou, who was still lying on the ground, unmoving.
Kagerou's eyes snapped open, and his body began glowing with a bright light so blinding that everyone had to shield their eyes.
"Unleash energy," Dokukage ordered.
"Accelgor!" Kagerou nodded, releasing a massive explosion of power from his body that blew away the shadows and engulfed Paka in the radius of its blast. When the light cleared, Paka was laying motionless on the ground while Kagerou stood over him, the bird having been knocked unconscious by whatever it was that the bug had just done.
"What… what was that?" Lila asked, confused. "I mean… it looked like Dokukage's Accelgor had been knocked out, right? But no? And how did it use that much power and knock out a Shadow Pokemon in one hit?! Akira, tell me what happened, right now!"
"Yeah, Aki! What's going on?!" Dakota demanded.
Akira had no more of an idea than the other two, shrugging his shoulders.
"How?!" K demanded. "How?! There's no way you could have used an attack strong enough to take out a Shadow Pokemon like that! Not after the amount of damage you just took!"
"I didn't, but you did," Dokukage answered plainly. "I simply had Kagerou prepare a bide."
"Bide?!" K sputtered. "Fucking bide?! No way! Absolutely not possible!"
"Very possible," Dokukage disagreed. "When you grabbed Kagerou in your shadows, that's when he decided that it was time to use bide, to wait for your move. Whatever that would end up being."
"But how is that fucking bug still alive?!" K demanded.
"I knew that Kagerou is a very fragile pokemon," Dokukage replied. "And I knew that I would be facing Shadow Pokemon this match, and I knew that Shadow Pokemon are unmatched in destructive power compared to other pokemon. So if I wanted to maintain my baton pass chain, I would need to be able to keep going even in the event I was caught off-guard by an attack with a massive amount of power that would take him out before I had a chance to react. So I gave him a little item."
The focus sash wrapped around Kagerou's throat, hidden by his membrane, crumbled away.
"Then, you simply used a move strong enough to completely defeat your own pokemon, and I released the force of that move back at you. It is as simple as that," Dokukage calmly replied. "Or did you think that shinobi lack patience as well?"
"…Whoa…" Lila murmured. Dokukage had now defeated two Shadow Pokemon without losing any, even if his Accelgor was probably not going to be of much use after this. "Corvisquire… is unable to battle, so that's… two down… Keahi is on his last pokemon…"
She could have been putting a little bit more emotion into her voice, but she was still stunned. Dakota and Akira were stunned, as well. Dokukage wasn't very notorious for fighting. But clearly that didn't mean he wasn't a monster at it.
"Cynthia, isn't that your-" Sango turned to Cynthia, her voice trailing off as she saw the look of smug satisfaction on Cynthia's face.
"Theatricality and deception are powerful agents of the shinobi," Cynthia declared. "Even Shadow Pokemon are useless against them."
"Whatever, Zubatman," Sango scoffed, rolling her eyes.
Wow. The Phantom made Shadow Pokemon seem undefeatable, but look at Dokukage globe-trotting all over them! Will K be able to turn this around? Or will Dokukage continue his merciless domination of this fight with his shinobi techniques? Things might be turning around!