The finals continue! The Phantom is in a pretty bad spot, can he pull himself out of it, or will the Commander take a… "commanding" lead over the battle?

KedharS: He's definitely that sort of guy.

Just a Bad Writer for Fun: I'm not sure how I would rank them in terms of power, but I would probably put Keahi and maybe Lana ahead of Blake and Maddi. I think Maddi might beat Blake honestly, Blake really was the underdog for this tournament. Yeah, my order is:

1st/2nd: Alden or Valon, whoever wins the finals, obviously.

3rd: Misato (We have NOT seen everything she is capable of, trust me)

4th: Gerard

5th: Alcea

6th: Raizer

7th/8th Ian or Gabrielle, this would have to be something I would write out to see. I could imagine either winning depending on story needs.

9th: Sylvia (If Sylvia had planning time and was actually devoting enough work into trying to win, she would probably rank in the top 5)

10th: Dokukage

11th: Keahi

12th: Ayame

13th/14th: Maddi or Lana, not sure, but my gut leans Lana.

15th: Darla (using Rayquaza and Dragon Force, she could probably beat Raizer and Alcea if she kept her stamina up)

16th: Blake

Pokemon Academy: Beginning of Beginnings

Chapter 590

"The Phantom is down by two pokemon," Lila said, trying not to sound TOO happy about that. "I wonder what pokemon he's going to use next!"

"Hmm… Dragon types resist Electric type moves, so his Dragapult would be a good option, I think," Darla said.

But that wasn't the decision that the Phantom made.

"Soul, go," Valon said, sending out his Spiritomb. Battering against the stone floating in the air, the ominously-shaped rock landed in the center of the battlefield and began to glow bright purple, green orbs spinning around it. Soon, the Spiritomb shifted and emerged from the rock fully formed, cackling madly.

"So, your Spiritomb?" Alden asked, grinning. "Now that's what I like to see! Smart move there, Phantom! Jaune, ready?"

"That was smart? Why?" Lila asked, confused.

"Not sure," Darla admitted. "Maybe… because of Vikavolt's Dark type moves?"

"I figured that your Vikavolt was a decoy," Valon replied, narrowing his eyes. "You were planning to use that Espeon of yours again, weren't you?"

Alden's smile widened.

"I won't allow you to try that trick again," Valon smirked. "Get used to fighting without those barriers, Commander! Now, Soul, use shadow sneak!"

"Spiritomb!" Soul hissed, his ghastly form sinking down into the keystone and disappearing into the shadows, shooting towards the flying Vikavolt. Soul emerged, striking Jaune from behind.

"Vika!" Jaune growled, turning and swinging his massive jaws at Soul, but he couldn't get a grip on the spectral pokemon, Soul returning to his keystone.

Alden observed the Spiritomb. It wasn't the worst matchup to deal with. While Spiritomb was only weak to Fairy type moves, he suspected that Jaune would be able to handle it pretty well. The advantage was that Spiritomb wasn't a very maneuverable pokemon. That meant Jaune, even though he was normally one of the Commander's slowest pokemon, was actually fast enough to do some serious damage.

But first, let's capitalize on our advantage, Alden decided. "Jaune! Use thunder wave!"

"Vika!" Electricity surged around Jaune's body as he flapped his wings, sending out a pulse of lightning that hit Soul, electrocuting the pokemon.

"Spiritomb!" Soul growled, sparks crackling over the rock he was sealed within, as well as running through his ghostly protrusion as well.

"Just wanted to make sure you weren't going anywhere fast," Alden grinned. "Jaune! Let's show the Phantom what happens when you make the bright decision to send out a pokemon who can't even move! Use zap cannon!"

"Vikavolt!" Jaune nodded, turning and hovering in the air, aiming his long mandibles right towards Soul. Electricity began to surge through him and he generated an orb of lightning between his jaws so dense and thick it was pitch black. It throbbed and grew, aiming directly for the immobile Spiritomb as Jaune prepared to fire.

"You can't be that much of a fool!" Valon scoffed. "Or has your battle mania blinded you to simple tactics?! Soul, use sucker punch!"

"Spiritomb!" Soul lunged forward, shadows surging around his swirling face, and slammed his head into Jaune's mandibles, knocking the pokemon's head down and forcing him to fire his zap cannon down into the stadium instead, the electricity dispersing in a powerful blast. The force of the blow knocked Jaune backwards, the Vikavolt growling angrily.

So that's about how fast it can move in a situation like this, huh? Alden observed. "Okay, nicely done, Jaune! Now it's time for volt switch!"

"Vika!" Jaune nodded, charging at Soul, electricity surging through his body. He released the electricity as a powerful bolt that knocked the Spiritomb backwards as he retreated to his pokeball.

"So that was your plan, then, scouting me out and then switching for a better matchup?" The Phantom said. "You rely on the same tactics too much, you know!"

"Not a problem if they work! Finn, come back out and hit 'em with your hydro pump!" Alden shouted, sending his Swampert back out.

"He's using his Swampert again already?!" Lila sputtered in shock.

"I-I guess so?" Darla said, equally surprised.

"Swampert!" Finn landed on the ground and opened his mouth wide, a blue aura covering his body as Torrent triggered.

"So that's your game? Fine!" Valon growled, seeing where this was going. Soul didn't have the power to knock that Swampert out with a sucker punch or another priority move, and would just end up getting hit afterwards if he tried, because his body was too immobile. And he was way too slow to protect himself or dodge. Which meant the Commander was basically saying he had to take it either way, and if that was the case then it would be the way that would guarantee the Swampert went DOWN. "Soul, use shadow bolt!"

Finn fired a powerful blast of water from his wide mouth, boosted by the power of Torrent. The compressed hose travelled quickly towards the stunned Spiritomb, who was crackling with more than just the leftover static from the thunder wave. No, electricity the color of darkness was beginning to build up in Soul, and when the water blast hit him he released it, sending a powerful bolt of lightning back through the hydro pump as he withstood it.

"SWAMPERT!" Finn's attack had hit, but it was he who took the more serious damage, the shadow bolt zapping him painfully. Compounded with his burns and his previous injuries it was all more than the tough pokemon could withstand, and he fell to his knees, coughing painfully, before losing consciousness entirely.

"Swampert is unable to battle!" Lila announced as Alden recalled his Swampert.

"Spiritomb is the winner," Darla agreed.

"But Darla, why did he send out his Swampert like that?" Lila asked, confused.

"That might have been his plan the whole time," Darla theorized. "Knowing his Swampert didn't have much fight left in him, he sent out his Vikavolt to serve as a pivot. If the Phantom sent out a slower pokemon like Spiritomb, then he could soften it up and then switch back in for Swampert to score one last big hit. Whereas if he'd sent out a pokemon like Dragapult or Gengar he could have then used volt switch to pivot towards a pokemon capable of fighting them."

"Whoa!" Lila marveled. She was as surprised as the persona she was putting on was. "That's some really good thinking!"

"It's the value of the Commander's volt-turn combo," Darla explained. "It lets him make the most out of his pokemon based off of what his opponent chooses to do. He lost Swampert, but his strategy let him get a hit out of him that the big guy might have otherwise not been able to."

"Nicely done, Finn, you went out fighting," Alden congratulated his Swampert. "Now, Jaune, where were we?"

"Vikavolt!" Jaune buzzed, emerging from his pokeball and hovering over the stadium, much to the Phantom's irritation.

"…And that's the best part," Darla slyly added. "He can do the whole strategy all over again."

Lila grinned, her eyes shining excitedly.

"If you thought something like that would press me, you're mistaken," Valon assured the Commander. "Soul and I are more than enough to withstand a little bit of humidity."

Indeed, even after taking that hydro pump to the face, Soul looked basically uninjured.

"That's fine, we've got all night, and a lot more powerful attacks up our sleeve, don't we, Jaune?" Alden asked, grinning at his Vikavolt.

"Vika!" Jaune nodded in agreement.

"That's right! Now, let's start with an agility to boost our speed even more!" Alden ordered.

"Vika!" Jaune growled, and electricity began to crackle through his wings as he soared through the air, picking up speed and going even faster than he had been before. He was still not all that fast of a pokemon, but it was enough to outspeed the Spiritomb, who was basically standing still and watching the Bug type warily, with his only movement being the slow swirl of souls spinning around his spectral shape.

"Fast as you might be, it won't be much help," the Phantom said. "That Swampert of yours was powerful too, and we stopped him all the same. Shadow hold!"

"Spiritomb!" Soul's shadowy aura began to surge and he mixed it with the dark energy swirling around him, turning the shadow sky into tendrils of smoke reaching out and grasping onto Jaune, holding him tightly and suspending him in the air.

"Jaune!" Alden cried.

"That Vikavolt might have been fast, but he's trapped!" Lila gasped.

"Oh, and it's much worse than that," the Phantom laughed. "You see, normally in a situation like this, you'd just order that Vikavolt of yours to escape with a volt switch, return him to his pokeball, isn't that right? Well, that won't work here."

"What? Why not?" Lila asked, confused. "Doesn't, like, volt switch and baton pass and stuff let you switch out even if you're trapped?"

Darla frowned, and shook her head.

"Don't you remember, Lila?" She asked. "The last match that the Phantom had?"

"…Shadow hold… different from other trapping moves, is it?" Alcea mused from where she sat in the stands. She had been the one on the receiving end of it, after all.

"Oh, yeah, that's right," Cynthia gasped, remembering the battle. She glanced back at Alcea for confirmation. "Yeah, he had his Cofagrigus trap your Dhelmise with that move, didn't he? Even though Ghost type pokemon can't be trapped!"

"Still couldn't escape, is it?" Alcea nodded in agreement. "That move… special, is it? Hollander was completely sealed, there was nothing we could do."

"It's cheating, that's what it is!" Kate scowled, kicking the seat in front of her in indignation, much to Blake's chagrin.

Olivia suppressed her smile. That was a particularly pleasant memory for her.

"Now that we've held you down, you can't even use volt switch to get away," the Phantom smirked. "And that means we can take our time, and do this properly! Soul, use shadow panic!"

"Spiritomb!" Soul began to cackle madly, his aura flaring up as he prepared to startle the Vikavolt into confusion.

But then Alden smiled.

"Ricky… you really do underestimate me a little too much, don't you?" He asked. "Jaune! Use volt switch!"

"You can't!" The Phantom snarled. "Your Vikavolt is trapped! Even if you use that move, it won't free you!"

"Let's find out, shall we?" Alden smiled. Jaune began to crackle with electricity, releasing it in a bolt of lightning that struck Soul before he could use his shadow panic. Then… Jaune quickly shed his shell and slipped free of the shadows, leaving a thin wrapping behind, and returned to his pokeball!

"Impossible!" Valon exclaimed.

"What? But how?" Lila asked.

"That… that shouldn't…" Darla didn't know either.

"Nicely done, Jaune! Now, Eifa, come back out!" Alden said, sending his Espeon back out to replace his Vikavolt.

"Espeon!" Eifa said, emerging from her pokeball, still injured but standing proud.

"This… it isn't…" Valon was wracking his brain, trying to figure out how that had happened. It SHOULDN'T have happened. He had tested that move himself, with other pokemon using volt switch! Volt switch, flip turn, u-turn, baton pass, all those moves were completely unable to help the pokemon escape once the shadows took hold of them! "How?!" He demanded.

"Later," Alden smirked. "First, I believe your Spiritomb was in the process of using a move?"

The Phantom realized what was happening a fraction of a second too late to stop it. "Soul! Stop!"

But Soul's aura was already too high. "Spiritomb!" He cackled, releasing the aura of darkness at the Espeon to confuse her.

"Es…!" Eifa humphed, turning her nose up at the move and closing her eyes, her lilac fur taking on a red tinge as her ruby flashed, a crimson aura spreading across her. The shadowy aura struck her, but was repelled by the aura and bounced back towards its user, striking Soul instead.

"Spirit…" Soul gasped, the shadows surging into him, darkness swirling around his vision and obscuring his sight. "SPIRITOMB!" Soul thrashed around wildly, his head flying all sorts of directions even as he remained pinned into place on the ground. His shadow aura flared even wilder, thrashing around madly with him as it grew darker and more violent, taking on red and orange and violet hues that blended together with the black in a sick mixture of colored shadow that made everyone who saw it feel nauseous.

And yes, everyone. Because the aura of the Shadow Pokemon was no longer restricted to being perceived only by those who possessed harmonia, now everyone could take a look at the malevolence oozing off the Spiritomb.

Nobody liked the sight.

"Aaargh!" Maddi cried, curling over in her seat and clutching at her eye, nearly gouging into her face in her fervor to suppress the pain.

"Maddi!" Cynthia cried, turning to her, her face turning pale as she saw the pain crossing over her. Maddi gripped Nikita's chair to tightly with her knuckles were white, and it was practically the only thing keeping her upright.

"Urrgh…" Kitty slumped forward, her tiny hands slipping from the armrests. There was no one seated in front of her like Maddi, so she fell to her knees in the walkway and held her stomach, coughing up bile and then her dinner shortly after.

"Kitty!" Julia cried, springing up out of her chair and kneeling beside her friend.

"Overreact much?" Kate scoffed, unfazed by the admittedly-nauseating sight. "Like, yeah, even I think that's grody, but throwing up?"

Blake was about to turn around and chew her out but Sango's fingernails digging into his wrist convinced him otherwise.

"Hyper mode… it's really disgusting," Ian said, feeling a little sick himself. "But it made Lana's Corviknight easier for me to defeat… it might serve the Commander the same." That was a bit of positivity that was nice to hear, but it didn't do a whole lot to lighten the mood of the people currently feeling sick and nauseous, or their friends.

While people were feeling sick just staring at Soul as it howled in blind rage, the Phantom shared his pokemon's outrage. He hadn't expected that. He'd been totally tricked. The Commander's Vikavolt had somehow managed to slip its way free of the shadows, and he'd replaced it with his Espeon. How could he have gotten so careless?!

…No, no, I wasn't careless. The problem is, that Vikavolt did something that shouldn't have been possible, the Phantom decided. "How did you do it?!" He demanded. "Tell me, Commander! How the hell did you get your pokemon free with just a volt switch?!"

Alden's smirk widened.

"I told you, you underestimate me far too much," Alden said, shaking his head. "First Misadoll, then Gerry, and now you. All of you assuming I don't plan ahead or think things out, that I'm some meathead who charges into battle without a second thought. That's always been your problem. You assume that you're the only smart one, that everyone else is an inferior fool. I suppose that's what happens when you spend most of your life surrounded by inferior fools. But I made some preparations of my own. I saw how Alcea lost to you. That shadow hold move of yours, a terrible move. It restrains movement without any escape. But Jaune needs to escape to serve his role as my pivot. So I searched for a way to let my pokemon slip through with volt switch, even if he was restrained by those shadows. And I found one."

Alden pointed at the skin sleeve of clear scales lying crushed in the center of the battlefield, where Jaune had shed it.

"It's called the shed shell," he shouted over Soul's howls. "It's an item that lets the pokemon who wears it slip free of any move or ability that would trap it! Even, it appears, your Shadow Pokemon's shadow hold."

The Phantom gasped. But that… that wasn't possible!

"I used my brain," Alden grinned. "Now stop being so arrogant as to think you're fighting a fool, and let's get this battle started for real!"

He turned his attention towards the Spiritomb, uncaring about the pain that the pokemon was obviously in. All that mattered to him at the moment was that he had a powerful pokemon that he could take down.

"Eifa! Let's start with a dazzling gleam, that worked well the last time, don't you think?" Alden asked.

"Espeon!" Eifa nodded, her eyes flashing and her ruby glowing bright red. A red aura wrapped around her, intensifying into a blinding light as beams of fairy energy shot out from her body and pierced through the swirling darkness of the shadow sky, turning towards Soul and bombarding his destructive aura.

"SPIRITOMB!" Soul roared, seemingly unfazed by the assault, much to the Commander's surprise.

"No way! But that Fairy type move should have been super effective!" Lila pouted. "You saw how much it did against that Sableye, and Spiritomb is the same type!"

"Spiritomb have better defenses than Sableye," Darla reminded her. "And remember, Espeon had four buffs to her special attack at the time. Not to mention that with the state that Shadow Pokemon is in, he seems a little more…"

"SPIRITOMB!" Soul opened his mouth and sent a massive tornado of shadow energy howling across the battlefield, storming towards Eifa and threatening to swallow her whole. It was nearly the size of the entire battlefield.

"…Powerful," Darla finished, not really picking up on the connection between the Shadow Pokemon's hyper mode and his current power.

"Eifa, use light screen!" Alden ordered.

"Espeon!" Eifa nodded, her ruby flashing and her eyes shining as a barrier of solid red light appeared around her, boosted by the light clay around her neck. The raging maelstrom struck the barrier, pressing against it for a scant few seconds… and then breaking the force field apart and flinging Eifa through the air.

"Eifa!" Alden cried.

"Espe-!" Eifa coughed out, hitting the ground hard. With her prior injuries it was a crippling blow, but not a fatal one. But she was certainly in no state to keep fighting for the moment.

I could have her use morning sun to recover some of her energy, but with the weather being what it is… Alden glanced up at the torrent of shadows swirling overhead, not willing to risk using morning sun when he didn't know what effect the shadow sky would have on it. He sensed it wouldn't go well, like using giga drain on a pokemon with the Liquid Ooze ability.

"Eifa, baton pass!" He ordered instead. Eifa wasn't in a state where she could keep going, so he would switch to a pokemon who could fight better. He'd expected that Spiritomb entering hyper mode would be an easier opponent to deal with since it was basically feral, but apparently it had traded obedience to its trainer for a pretty substantial boost in all of its stats.

Alden smiled. It was just the challenge he was looking for! He recalled Eifa to her pokeball, and sent out his next pokemon to take up the challenge!

Things are really heating up! The Commander is maintaining his lead, and slowly slipping ahead of the Phantom, due to the fact that the Phantom underestimated him pretty badly. But the Phantom's pokemon are starting to get some advantage where they can. The question is, can the Commander keep this momentum up?