Steven Stone must have an alter ego.
That, in itself, could not be any further from logic but May could muster no better explanation in reasonable justification of how the man was able to swing from one extreme to another in behavior so quickly, it rivalled the speed at which Claydol barreled straight at her. Swamped with Claydol's pursuit and Aggron's onslaught, she clenched both hands tightly into Altaria's mane and channeled muscular tension through her limbs, which wrapped around said Pokemon's body for security in flight, and felt it tense up in immediate response.
Emitting a shrill cry of hostile intent, Altaria spewed frost from its opened beak as it beamed a powerful streak of light so blindingly white, it appeared eerily bluish in underlying tint to the naked eye against a background of silvery-grey steel walls. Ice Beam shot through the air, solidifying airborne water particles adrift in its rampageous path into sleet and disintegrating into a flurry of ice crystals when it struck its target.
But that, and there, was the difference between a Pokemon fresh to battle and another already ravaged from battles previously fought.
While Altaria's attack had left Claydol shaken in its icy wake, it would make any lesser Trainer weep desperate, salty tears to witness the sheer ease, and speed, with which the latter bounced back from having suffered what should have been a debilitating blow to its perceived Ground-type disposition.
However, May found herself with little allowance for such folly of action as Claydol, at its Trainer's behest, hurtled anew towards her, slicing through thin air with speed and precision previously unimaginable of its hefty frame. Caught off guard, and decidedly vulnerable in momentary lapse of concentration amidst ensuing battle, she had neither the luxury of time nor calm of mind to muster reaction of any sort before its entire mass collided painfully into her and an unsuspecting Altaria from the side in a bone-shattering Body Slam.
The ferocity, with which Claydol smashed into the hapless pair, knocked the living daylights out of Altaria while dislodging its rider completely.
Facial features tensing and leanness of frame stiffening in newly-registered horror, Steven could do little else but gape as May, flung from impact off her Pokemon's back, flailed about with outstretched limbs in desperate hopes of attracting Altaria's attention shortly before succumbing to the inevitable pull of gravity with a sharp cry.
Meanwhile, the fine line, which he drew between duty and heart, blurred beneath his stoic exterior.
Champion Steven simply watched as Altaria, alerted to its Trainer's predicament, overcame its disorientation to dive headlong into the emptiness below in belated pursuit.
Steven Stone, friend and mentor, dashed across the arena, jumped over the edge and reached out a despairing hand for her plummeting self, as if Altaria never existed in the first place.
Champion as well as mentoring friend Steven Stone managed a half-hearted step forward, neck craned and body tilted in curious survey of the battlefield at the same time water ballooned around it, rapidly filling the empty space as it would a moat. Tossing and heaving, waves swelled, seemingly from nowhere, to massive volumes along the octagonal perimeter of the arena with May erupting from its depths astride a beautifully-glimmering Milotic.
In a manner reminiscent of a rainbow materializing into form and color against the gloom of sky, she and a softly-trilling Milotic curved through the air in a graceful arc, showering the battle arena below in cascades of water droplets and introducing onto it a new opponent in seemingly solo opposition to Claydol and Aggron.
Not before yet another flare of white light fanned across the area, receding in intensity to reveal one of the smallest Pokemon ever in existence.
Appearing no bigger than a thumb, Roselia twirled extending sprigs of flora while directly behind it, Milotic fiercely tossed its horned head back in a double show of dominance. From inside its Pokeball, Altaria unfurled battered-looking wings in a brief stand of its own before languishing in the throes of fatigue once more.
Approaching the edge of the arena, May slid off Milotic's back to step firmly onto concrete once more, eyes narrowed and jaw set in a surly smirk at the inevitability of facing off against Steven Stone in a dual battle. Soaking wet from her underwater sojourn and appearing none too pleased about it, she tilted her chin towards him in confrontational response to the inscrutable smile that he directed in her way.
Slipping and sliding inside water-laden sneakers, her toes curled bracingly into the spongy bottoms in grim anticipation of incoming attack, which physically manifested in the aggressive form of Aggron directly charging Roselia in offense.
With an earth-splitting roar that shook the structure to its very core, Aggron swung heavily around in a pivot and took a vicious swipe at Roselia's feet with its tail, the reinforced steel of the appendage catching the latter by the tapered tips of its spindly legs and sending it flying off its feet in the direction of an awaiting Claydol.
Spinning from the impact, like vanes to a windmill in blowing wind, Roselia struggled to regain its bearings. Barely doing so in the nick of time, it managed to shield itself behind a wall of concentrated foliage from a psychic discharge just as Claydol sent it hurtling over. The same wall of vegetation unraveled to form a quivering mass of colorful leaves around Roselia's tiny frame as it readied itself in counterattack.
Magical Leaf...
Aglow in arresting shades of scarlet and indigo, they shivered in that deceptively alluring way known to precede ruthlessness before tearing, with near matchless speed, straight towards its unmoving target. After all, both Pokemon and Trainer saw absolutely no need for expending precious energy dodging attacks that were innately designed to bypass all accuracy fluctuations with full guarantee of striking when they could simply sit back and do completely nothing in acceptance.
Erecting a screen of near transparent amber light directly in front of itself, Claydol barely flinched in recoil when the first barrage of glowingly colorful leaves struck, contrary to presumptuous belief, to shockingly little effect. At least, Altaria had managed considerable damage from its previous engagement through an icy onslaught. Magical Leaf, however, thoroughly lost its threatening factor once stripped of devastating energy by means of R
With its many eyes blinking in complete awareness along the circumference of its spherical head, where they had been on lookout for sneak attacks the whole time, it did not come as a surprise to catch Milotic right in the middle of one. Spiraling further back in an attempt at increased distance between itself and its opponent, Claydol extended its floating rectangle of protective light all the way around the entirety of its top-like body just as the enemy lashed out fiercely in a move akin to Aggron's.
Aqua Tail clashed against Iron Tail in an electrifying explosion that engulfed all four Pokemon on the battlefield, drawing both Trainers' attention to its smoking midst. While hardly anything showed through the thick dust while it had yet to settle, splashing noises ensued to increasing volume and intensity, painting the illusion of Aggron likely wrestling a struggling Milotic onto land until yet another psychic blast from Claydol cleared the air, literally, to open Steven's and May's eyes to the reality that was Aggron being physically dragged by Milotic into water instead.
Just when Claydol thought itself free of attack to aid its teammate, it found itself suddenly surrounded by a vortex of flower petals in an ambush.
Being small and unassuming to the point of inconspicuousness, Roselia had escaped the fray to no one's knowledge, cleverly cloaked under the extending chaos of battle while Milotic kept their opponents occupied, lying low in wait for the ripe time to strike.
Choking on its roar as Milotic tightened its serpentine length around the muscled bulk of its struggling body, Aggron fiercely tore at its exposed flesh with steel-reinforced claws to little fruition against its armor of hardened scaling. Thrashing about with its lower limbs in increasingly frenzied attempts at pulling free as Milotic steadily inched its way closer to the platform's edge, Aggron slammed the length of its tail against the floor so forcefully that it shattered a part of it, taking a sizeable chunk of concrete along with its inevitable plunge into the water.
Squinting hard at the churning mess of strife and struggle beneath the water surface, May scarcely recognized the writhing figures of Aggron and Milotic as each fought to upstage one another's attempt at wrestling the other into submission underwater.
Meanwhile, Roselia busied itself with its unrelenting distraction of Claydol by bombarding the latter with flurries of Petal Blizzard, mostly in hopes of stalling its attendance to its teammate's aid.
Through the frenzied splashing and flower petals whirling around in dogged pursuit of their intended target, May swung between stealing glimpses of Steven's face and directing her Pokemon in battle. Inscrutability, glaring flintiness to unsmiling eyes, contrasted her furtive eye motions with biting coldness, briefly cracking only to tease at the first sign of a smirk since his radical change in behavior prior to engaging her in battle.
The manner in which he had appeared to her not too long ago, bent over at her fidgeting feet with a tangle of sorry-looking shoelaces between his fingers, still shook her to recall it.
In hindsight, she ought to have paid attention to the underlying meaning behind his obviously layered actions rather than inwardly indulge in her girlish tendencies over the picture of elegance he still presented despite kneeling, slightly hunched over around his shoulders and back, over the top of her sneakers.
Had he knotted her unravelling shoelaces tighter then only in grim forewarning of nerves unraveling as well in very near future?
Nerves unravelling, that's all very fine. Hers, she understood. But over what exactly?
Over their ongoing battle? Over her Roselia being forced into retreat the moment his Claydol swopped its dodging for offense? Over Aggron putting up a fight against her Milotic's suffocating confines despite being disadvantaged by its environment and disposition?
Over herself being confronted with so much happening at once?
Did it matter?
Nerves were unravelling fast and she needed to take out one of them just as quickly.
Steven watched, with unnerving calmness, as the visibly troubled water surface submitted to one last heaving thrust from beneath the fiercely tossing waves before its inevitable eruption seconds later. Such was the magnitude of power with which Milotic expelled Aggron from the watery depths, it sent shockwaves reverberating throughout the area.
Encasing itself in a box of translucent golden light, Claydol endured what would have been a fatal onslaught while in prolonged levitation above the sodden ravages of battle. Unfortunately, what failed to do it in did its poor teammate in.
The ferocity of Milotic's Hydro Pump lasted long, and powerfully, enough to throw a severely weakened Aggron against the side of the elevated platform and keep the bulk of its barely moving body pinned to the spot until sheer power drove its first hairline crack into the concrete, splintering it widely apart from the edge to trap a faint Aggron in it.
However, in her preoccupation with the underwater tussle between Steven's now fallen Aggron and her Milotic, May had completely neglected to consider the state of her other surviving Pokemon where it still remained in the heat of battle. While the previous fray had left the entirety of the battle arena as well as those standing on it only few water droplets away from being drenched, it had also left Roselia wide open to attack by an advancing Claydol. Recognizing a golden opportunity in battle when its many wandering eyes zoomed in on one, it wasted no time in abandoning its defensive stance in favor of pure, unadulterated offense, swamping its tiny opponent with a barrage of psychic discharges, one after another in swift succession with little sign of prior fatigue.
If this wasn't proof of Steven's continued play at dodging confrontation and passivity in battle turning out to have been a drawn-out bid for time, nothing would be.
Spying activity nearby, Claydol sent Milotic diving back into the water headfirst with a wave of psychic energy when the latter had briefly surfaced in attempted aid of its visibly weary teammate, swiveling around immediately after to defend itself against yet another onslaught of Magical Leaf.
Crushing Roselia's barrier of flower petals and leaves as though they amounted to nothing more than harmless manifestations of Mother Nature, Claydol and, by extension in battle, Steven Stone simmered in silent triumph at the oddly captivating sight of shriveled flora, interspersed with wilted leaf, showering down on the defeated figures of May Maple and Roselia.