"Left!" Ash called. "Speed up – Flame Charge!"
Shaymintwo's feet blazed up, and he surfed around the corner on a curtain of fire.
"Egg Bomb!" Nicola replied, and her Chansey threw one of his Egg Bombs down in front of Shaymintwo.
The Grass-type zipped to the side, losing some momentum but avoiding the direct blast, then took a breath and fired a half-dozen Bullet Seeds as he closed in.
Chansey raised a Reflect shield, deflecting the Grass-type attack, then as Shaymintwo dodged around a rock and got closer he began to look nervous.
"Agility!" Nicola ordered.
Chansey whirled, and ran away.
Very fast.
Shaymintwo followed, accelerating, but then Chansey used Stealth Rock. Some of the rocks around the arena turned out to be his rocks, waiting to be sent in, and Shaymintwo had to skid to a halt and duck before one of the rocks hit him square in the face.
"Agility!" Ash called. "Then Rock Smash – clear out those rocks!"
"I don't have time for this!" Shaymintwo announced, and darted from one Stealth Rock to another. Each one got smashed to pieces, sending fragments all over the place, but by the time he was done Chansey was all the way over on the other side of the stadium.
"Are you fast enough to dodge this?" the Normal-type taunted, flinging an Egg Bomb.
Shaymintwo broke into a sprint again, flames cascading around his feet, and opened fire again – his Bullet Seeds bouncing off Chansey's Reflect.
"Wait!" Ash called. "That's not the only one! There's one behind a rock over – no – there's four of them!"
"Start mixing them up!" Nicola called.
Shaymintwo whirled, skating backwards for a moment, and blasted one of the Chanseys with Bullet Seed. That one burst and vanished, revealing itself to have been a Substitute all along, and the Grass-type smirked slightly before turning around.
"Turn right!" Ash called, and Shaymintwo did a ninety degree turn without any noticeable loss of speed. That put him on a direct course for another of the Chansey, and it threw an Egg Bomb at him before sprinting away.
Professor Oak examined his Pokédex data. "You know, I could swear that both of those Pokémon are meant to be quite slow moving…"
Shaymintwo darted up the side of a rock, pushing off just as he reached the top, and hung in the air for a moment.
That gave him just long enough to spot the Chansey he'd been chasing for the last three minutes, and he used Bullet Seed – managing to get enough hits past the Reflect shield to disperse that Substitute as well.
Flipping over twice, Shaymintwo landed squarely on the rocky ground and looked around.
Nothing.
"I don't see him!" Ash called.
Shaymintwo scowled. "Where's that damn fourth Chansey?"
"Now, Chansey!" Nicola ordered.
"Time for a change of pace!" Chansey called, springing out from hiding, and shot a purple attack straight at Shaymintwo. A set of Reflect screens sprang up as well, trapping Shaymintwo in with the attack, and there was a kind of wet splat as Chansey's Toxic burst inside.
Half-a-dozen Stealth Rocks hovered up as well, ready to repeat the earlier harassment, and Chansey laughed.
Then noticed that Shaymintwo didn't look remotely beaten.
His flowers had gone black, but-
"Teleport!" Ash ordered.
Shaymintwo vanished from inside the shield, and reappeared just in front of Chansey.
"Seed Flare!" he shouted.
"I hate this hedgehog," Chansey groaned, briefly regretting certain life choices.
"Would you use a Pikachu against an Aggron?" Misty mused, later in Ash's match against Nicola.
"I think that depends on the Pikachu," Brock pointed out, as Pikachu jumped clean over an Earthquake before using Iron Tail to bounce himself out of the way of a followup Earth Power. "Most Pikachu? No. That Pikachu?"
"Good point," Misty admitted.
Brock shrugged. "Besides, Aggron doesn't actually have a type resistance to Electrical attacks, despite how it looks… which makes it safer if anything to send out against Pikachu. At least it's not relying on an immunity it doesn't actually have against him…"
"Behind the rock!" Nicola shouted. "Charge up and Hyper Beam him when he comes around to attack!"
"You know what to do, Pikachu!" Ash called.
Aggron thought irritated thoughts about trainers who gave orders without clarifying them.
If the other trainer had said what he wanted Pikachu to do, then Aggron would have had a clue. Instead-
"Thunderbolt!" Pikachu shouted.
The rock between them exploded.
Aggron hadn't been remotely expecting that, and he was only just starting to aim his Hyper Beam when Pikachu darted through the rubble and slid in underneath Aggron's tail.
"Bye!" he said, cheerfully, then hit Aggron extraordinarily hard and Aggron found out what it was like to fly.
He didn't much care for it.
"So… do you ever have this awful feeling of sympathy for the people on the other side of a knock out bracket?" Pikachu asked.
"Keep it up, Zapdos!" Ash called out, and his Electric Pokémon rolled left – dodging away from three simultaneous Ice Beams from Gary's Mega Blastoise. "Thunder!"
Zapdos keened as she exited her roll. Sparks built up on her wingtips, and she swept her wings down in a dramatic gesture which sent over a dozen thunderbolts arcing out at once from wings and tail.
They focused together into a single point, and slammed into Mega Blastoise with a wham that shook the ground.
"Blast her!" Gary ordered. "Smack Down in the big gun, Dragon Pulse in the little ones!"
Ash didn't even need to tell Zapdos what to do, for that one. She kept the electrical aura fizzing over her feathers, and smashed the first Smack Down as soon as it fired before whirling away and sending a continuous stream of little Thundershocks back at Mega Blastoise.
"What's that?" Ash said, turning his attention to Pikachu. "You said something about sympathy?"
"Just wondering what the people on the other side of the bracket are thinking about this," Pikachu explained.
"Spin up a Twister!" Ash called. "Make it so they can't see what's going on – either of them!"
Zapdos complied immediately, whirling up a crackling tornado of Dragon energy before hurling it down at Mega Blastoise. The ground around him was already cracked and torn from the many Electric attacks Zapdos had hurled his way, and some of that was caught up in the Twister – adding to the chaos in the air and making it harder for anyone (Ash included) to tell what was going on.
"Okay, Zapdos!" Ash went on. "Keep it up! I know you can do this!"
"Wash this out of the air!" Gary called. "Hydro Cannon!"
A glare shone through the whirlwind, and then Mega Blastoise used Hydro Cannon.
It exploded almost immediately after leaving the muzzle of his main cannon, spreading out in a massive wave of water, and part of the wave slammed into Zapdos in mid-air. The sheer force of the impact sent her skywards and through a half-flip, as well as the attack clearing all the dust she'd raised into the air to hide her position.
By the time she had control over her flight again, she was in a dive that she immediately had to pull out of – but one that took her very close to Mega Blastoise.
"He's tired, hit him now!" Ash told her. "Full power!"
"Thunder!" Zapdos announced, and the close-range blast of lightning knocked Mega Blastoise off his feet.
"Great work!" Ash called. "Do you want to stay out?"
Zapdos cawed an affirmative, then watched as Gary returned the now-no-longer-Mega Blastoise and switched to his Arcanine.
"Breakneck Blitz!" the other trainer called, striking a pose.
Zapdos tilted her head slightly, trying to work out what the attack would be.
It had the word blitz in it, so maybe it was a lightning attack.
It was not a lightning attack.
"Ouch," Misty said, hands over her ears. "What was that?"
"I think that was a sonic boom!" Brock said.
"What?" Misty asked. "I can't hear you?"
"What?" Brock called.
This went on for some time.
"That thing you did to beat Zapdos was really cool!" Ash told Gary, afterwards. "That was another one of those special Z moves, right?"
"Right," Gary agreed. "That one was based on Extremespeed."
He looked briefly a bit nervous. "Um… is your Zapdos going to be angry?"
"I'm sure she'll understand!" Ash assured him. "And if she's not, just give her dango. She'll probably like you after that!"
"Right," Gary said. "Well, don't lose to some random no-name trainer in the next round, Ash, I'd look bad."
"Actually, I'm going up against Ritchie!" Ash told him. "He looks a lot like me, and he's even got a Pikachu as one of his Pokémon too!"
"Huh, what about that," Gary chuckled. "...on unrelated news, I'm off home as soon as possible. I don't think I want to be in the same town when you're fighting another you."
Later that evening, after handling Team Rocket's latest kidnapping attempt – one which had failed to take into account that locking up a Clefairy with Metronome was a very bad idea – Ash was waiting by the arena for the signal to begin.
"Let's see… he's got a Pikachu, that's Sparky," he said, counting off the Pokémon Ritchie had shown him. "Happy, that's a Butterfree, and Zippo's the Charmander. Then Cruise is the Larvitar, I think?"
He shook his head. "Then I kind of lose the names."
"The Bagon's Booster and Lithium is the Beldum," Pikachu supplied. "And the last one is Spring, who's-"
"That's the one who's the Buneary, yeah," Ash agreed. "Want to go out first, Pikachu?"
"Sure!" the Electric-type agreed, cheeks sparking. "Let's do this!"
"Send out your Pokémon!" the referee said, and Ash boosted Pikachu off his shoulder into the arena.
A few minutes later, mid-battle with Sparky, Pikachu was getting a bit annoyed.
Not because the battle was going badly as such, but more on a point of general principle.
"I didn't even know what Eviolite was before this battle, and I'm already frustrated with it," he said, lining up to hit Sparky with a Sky Uppercut and – contrary to his expectations – not sending his fellow Pikachu skywards.
Sparky's tail glowed in an Iron Tail, matching Pikachu's, and the two exchanged high-speed blows and Quick Attacks for several seconds.
"Well, there's good news!" Ritchie's Pokémon said. "You'll be pleased to hear that Happy doesn't have any Eviolite!"
"That's just one Pokémon on your team, though," Pikachu said, flipping over backwards and using a Thundershock to blast the ground at Sparky's feet.
"Oh, yeah, all the rest of us have it," Sparky agreed.
His tail whipped around again, this time with the Eviolite glowing a brilliant purple colour, and a spectral Raichu tail followed along with his Pikachu one – both Iron Tails landing at the same time and launching Pikachu at least two yards.
Pikachu grinned, the Eviolite thing still annoying but not nearly enough to make him regret the battle, and charged right back in.
"Take this!"
About halfway through the battle, after a back and forth barrage of attacks which had involved Clefairy healing herself twice and a serendipitous Aura Sphere, Ritchie returned Cruise.
"All right, that's three to go!" he said. "Happy, you next!"
The Butterfree appeared with a flash of light.
"Bonjour," Clefairy said, floating slightly off the ground in a cushion of altered gravity.
"Hi," Happy replied, and brought his wings back.
"Boomburst!" Ritchie ordered.
A wave of concussive sound hammered into Clefairy, knocking her entirely out of her gravity zone and into a scorch mark from the earlier fighting.
"Hydro Pump!" Ritchie added, and Happy shot out a stream of high-pressure water. Clefairy flipped upright, wings glowing, and dodged away just before being hit – though it didn't save her from the Future Sight which materialized a few seconds later, and which knocked her right back into the path of another Boomburst.
"Si j'avais été un Papilusion, j'aurais un regret!" Clefairy announced, fingers twitching back and forth as she readied a Metronome, and spun around to launch it. "Et voila!"
Sparkling jaws made of electrical energy flashed out from her hands, biting at Happy's wing, and he flipped out of the way before retaliating with Flamethrower.
That detonated the Poisonpowder he'd spread around the arena with one of his earlier Boombursts.
Clefairy bounced out of the smoke before sliding to a halt, readying for another Metronome. "Allons-y!"
"I have to say, Mr. Ketchum, I think it's a real pity we didn't have you all the way through to the final," Mr. Goodshow said, shaking Ash's hand. "You're full of surprises, and it's been great fun!"
"Thanks, Mr. Goodshow," Ash replied. "Do you say that kind of thing to everyone?"
"I try to have a few words with all the people who make it to the quarter finals, at least," Mr. Goodshow told him. "Though we won't forget you here at the Indigo League any time soon."
"Glad to hear it," Pikachu said, rubbing his face. "Well, I think my cheeks have stopped aching, so that's good news."
"You will?" Ash asked. "That's nice."
"Well, we haven't ever seen a battle before where a Pokémon evolved twice in the same day," the organizer told him. "And I don't think we'll ever again see a battle where it happened to a Bagon, a Larvitar, a Charmander and a Beldum in the same match!"
He chuckled. "I hope we'll see you next year."
"I don't know, actually," Ash admitted. "I was going to head back home and think about where to go next. But my Pokémon journey isn't anything close to done yet!"
"So, how was your vacation?" Ash asked. "Was it good to recharge after the Pokémon League?"
Pikachu looked back at the Pokémon park.
"...let's put it this way," he said. "I met two Pichu, and I met a Pokémon who called himself Victini, and I'm fairly sure your luck has rubbed off on me now. And we should probably go before the place burns down or something."
"It's a mountain," Geodude protested.
"Please don't say that in their earshot," Pikachu requested. "I just imagined the words 'DIY volcano' and now I can't unhear them."
AN:
And that's the end of the Kanto arc, with Pikachu's Vacation slipped in there.
That's not the end of the fic, though, because next up is the Orange Islands!
...jeez, over 50K words in 18 days...