Narrator pow:
"Hey, Engie, can I ask you something?" Dawn asked, as they were finished with the light breakfast in the late morning while their respective pokemon played with eachother near the table.
"You can always tell a Texan, but you can't tell em' much."
"Erm, okay I guess." Dawn paused, seeing that she distracted him from observing Aron and Magnemite play together around the partially finished meal composed of iron tools for the first to eat and the second to play with. "Do you guys have a tradition of carrying pokemon in compressed marbles instead of pokeballs?"
"Hehe, no." Engineer responded, taking out five bakugans he had with himself. "Because these creatures are not pokemon. Those are bakugans for you." He added, kicking the two with his fingers as they rolled to her over the table.
"... A what?"
"I'll explain it in technical terms." Engineer responded, taking a shot from his glass of water before beginning the explaination. "Pokemons are majorly friendly creatures who fight in real life combat in the real world. Bakugans on the contrary are entierly living weapons of yes-no owner-based loyalty system who are used in turn-based strategy battle taken in space between dimensions while the time in real world freezes."
"... Really? That sounds weird."
"Exacly what I said when the Grandpa of current GRN Team's Engineer when he shared this revelation with the rest of Badlands."
"GRN Team?" Dawn asked again, even more confused about the whole sitiation. "Who are these guys?"
"One of six teams currently exising in Badlands Region." Engineer explained, passing an iron crowbar to Aron for a bonus meal, which he demanded with puppy eyes. "There is a RED Team, BLU Team to which me and Volos belong to. BRN Team, SLV Team who wad made by fusion of WHT and GRY Teams, DRK Team and already mentioned GRN Team. All of the team's acronyms are based on pokemon gym types those teams used back in the early years when they formed. Fire for RED, Ground and Normal for BRN, Fairy for WHT, Steel for GRY, Dark and Ghost for DRK, Water for BLU and Flying with Bug and Grass for GRN. But od course over short time the type restriction disappeared completley."
"Oh, I see." Dawn said, getting the whole load of information into her head. "May I see how does bakugan battle work?"
"Sure thing, pardner! You have Stinglash and these two I pass to ya' for yourself." Engineer responded as Dawn suddenly realised a dark card with six colourful circles on it was in her pocket. "Oh, the cards needed to play always come as soon as one decided to have his first brawl. And as a man of engineering I can say only that I can't explain that phenomenon." He added, taking out his own card. "So let's get down to this, shall we?"
"Kill. Me." Scout growled in his mind as his class entered the 'boring' part. But then again, what could be expected from a near adult who tries learning to write (Reading went suprisingly easy, making him additionally sorrow at the first sign of trouble.) while everyone else glued their eyes towards the teacher who explained basics of pokemon biology. Nedless to say, Scout came to the school late enough to only exchange names with the others just as the lesson began given that he did it on purpouse as to not present them his Eevee.
In the end, it looked something like this: The whole class learnes basics about pokemon while Scout was some basics of being a word-capable person, which still gave his efforts a lot of effort.
"Gate card, set!" Dawn and Engineer shouted, throwing their gate cards against eachother, both of them landing and ecpanding with aquamarine lightning on their edges.
Dawn - 3/3. Engineer - 3/3
"Let's start with basics." Engie said, taking one of his bakugans and throwing him into her gate card with evident lack of intention to win. "Same as pokeballs, but the return is automatic." He added while Aquos Siege rised from the ground, spinning his lance like wind spins the falling leaf.
"I kind of know that already." Dawn responded, looking up at the condifent eyes of the blue knight.
"Something you don't know however is that bakugans have clear numbers as their power levels which dictate the win in a short ammount of time, so no juggling out can help ya' in this one!" Engineer responded with joyous tone before pointing at her. "Now do the trick yourself, this is a stale turn-based strategy after all."
"Okay, here it goes." Dawn sighed before she threw her Stinglash onto the gate card, where it turned from the ball form into a real one.
Stinglash - 330g. Siege - 330g
"Oh look, you placed a standard atribute gate card." Engie smiled, as the field automatically turned into a floating ocean.
Stinglash - 330g = 430g. Siege - 330g = 430g
"Well, may aswell wait for your move. Privelage of gate card owner." He added, sending her a positive nod.
"Alright... I think this one will work." Dawn responded, taking one of the cards and turning it around between the fingers. "Abyss Ruler!" She shouted out of curiosity as the water below Stinglash erupted with testy-shaped darkened water pulses.
Stinglash - 430g = 530g
"Now that's just... Dynamite." Engineer said to himself, passively observing as Stinglash grabbed Siege's lance and threw it aside before gra bing his legs with pincers and crushing them before slamming his body onto the gate card where he pturned back into the Ball form and rolled back in jumps all the way back to Engie.
Engineer - 2/3
"Whoa... Only the strongest water type pokemon have those kinds of moves." Dawn said with partial astonishment as she jumped to catch her returning Stinglash. "But why you didn't try to use your own move?"
"Oh, y'know, some people can get eaisly discouraged." Engineer responded, throwing his second bakugan onto his own gate card. "Especially when faced with the challange they aren't exacly able to win." He added, throwing additional gate card to the left of his original one while Aquos Lasermann rised on the first one. "You may want to grab your electronics and check him out." He added while Dawn nodded silently and looked onto her pokedex's screen.
"Mhm, three hundered and fiveteen. Stinglash has twenty less, and the other two are even lower by additional fourteen. I need to play defensively." Dawn thought as she read the informations from her pokedex and analysed her team. "Let's do this! Nyah!" She panted as she threw one of her bakugan onto Engineer's second gate card, where the marble revealed itself to be Aquos Juggernoid.
"Onto my gate card? I guess you can get something this way." Engie chuckled lightly as he picked his last bakugan available. "But It's time to show you the tactical priority of Aquos!" He added with sudden rise of engagement as he threw the blue orb towards Juggernoid, which resulted in the latter having to face off against rather motivated Robotallion.
Juggernoid - 290g. Robotallion - 380g
"Whay you will do now, lady?" He asked her, scratching his head as a response to her confident smile.
"I can do this!" She responded, throwing her bakugan onto the other gate card, resulting in a fight between her Terroclaw and his Lasermann taking place alongside the one between Juggernoid and Robotallion.
Terroclaw - 290g. Lasermann - 350g
"Gate card open, Quartet Battle." Engineer said calmly as his second gate card activated and pulled Dawn's Stinglash into it with intentional combat ready stance.
(Juggernoid - 290g, Stinglash - 330g) - 620g
"You know that you'll lose your Robotallion at this rate?" Dawn asked him, making a confident smile on her own.
"That's the neat part, I won't." Engineer responded before taking out one of his cards. "Ability activate, Water Tornado." He said with relative lack of emotions as the powerful vortex surrounded his Robotallion.
(Juggernoid - 290g = 190g, Stinglash - 330g = 230g) - 620g = 420g. Robotallion - 380g = 480g
"What?" Dawn asked, suprised by the turn of events.
"And to finish it off, I'll do this!" Engineer added, looking back at his domestic gate card where Lasermann managed to stop himself from waiting for Terroclaw to give up and gave his brawler a thumb up. "Gate card open! Energy Merge!" He added, while Lasermann extended his shoulder cannons which then sucked up the transfered energy coming from her weakened Terroclaw.
Terroclaw - 290g = 190g. Lasermann - 350g = 450g
"I think I know where this is going..." Dawn sighed, looking with growing resignation all her bakugan were knocked out one by one, Stinglash being the last one to stand as he have Robotallion at least a bit of resistance before the opposing humanoidal robot decided to use fists instead of water blasts from his chest.
Dawn - 0/3
"Yup, I just lost..." She added with sad face as the battlefield thinned out back into reality as the time flew back to normal.
"Hey now, don't beat up yourself about it." Engineer responded, walking up to her alongside Aron who jumped onto her lap and tried to snuggle her. "I needed twelve whole battles to even come close to winning, and I'm sure that the same we can both say in regard to pokemon."
"Really?"
"Of course kid! You still do better than Scout and his reckless charges."
"Mrrrr..." Aron purred in a sweet manner as Dawn grabbed him in the arms and stood up.
"Do I now? But he seems so..." Dawn was about to disagree, but she was interrupted by Scout falling flat on the floor, nearly ripping out the doors in the process. "... Cool."
"Seems is key word right there." Engineer said with shit eating grin as he walked up to wheezing Scout and picked him up by the head before effortlessly throwing him across the room all the way to the sofa where the latter landed like a ragdoll, falling onto the floor and becoming asleep in a instant.
"... How did it even work?" Dawn asked, disturbed by the sudden showcase of power.
"Badlands are a bit... Diffrent region to say at least. This stuff is just our way of living so be prepared for more of this nonsence." Engineer responded, taking out a bpttle of the beer he usually carried with himself on the Rancho Relax taunt in one hand while the other one swinged a vintage-looking wrench in the air. "Anyways, are you suitable for non-puppeter combat when under protection of adult?"
