After looking back at what happened between Alden and Vic, it's clear how much their pokemon mean to each other, especially Eifa. They had a really sweet relationship, once upon a time. Now, though, things are in a difficult position, due in part to Alden's complete denseness to how Vic's felt all these years. And it seems like she's finally gotten fed up. Will she defeat him in order to make him become hers forever? Remember to review!

KedharS: Well, you never know. It could happen.

Hyphenman: There was definitely a lot of wholesomeness, that's for sure. And yes. The Name Rater detail should have made sense to everyone. Surprised no one guessed it before.

Pokemon Academy: Beginning of Beginnings

Chapter 1115

Eifa stood adamantly against Vic's accusations, her eyes blazing with conviction. She growled at the trainer who had hatched her.

"Eifa is fighting you because she's in agreement with me," Alden declared. "We're going to defeat you and Samarra, and bring you back."

"I can see why you think I'm possessed," Vic said softly. "But this is the real me. These feelings of mine, this is how I've always felt. For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to make you mine, Alden, and now I finally have a chance. I've never been able to defeat you before, but…"

She clenched her hand over her chest. Finally, she was at the point where she could win. And she would do whatever she could with Samarra's help to make him hers.

"Whatever!" Vic spat, refusing to acknowledge how much Eifa's resistance stung. It wasn't like she LIKED hurting Alden's pokemon, but she had to. Because if she didn't then there was no way that he would become hers. And besides… he liked pokemon battles, didn't he? Much more than he liked her, that was for sure.

"Sunny, go!" She ordered. Sunny flew towards Eifa, and flapped her wings hard. A blade of wind sliced into Eifa, badly injuring her, but she held on regardless.

"Excellent work, Eifa," Alden applauded his Espeon. She was on her last legs, but she still refused to fall. "Now, you know what move to use."

Espeon glanced back at him, realizing what he was saying. She nodded and closed her eyes, and a red aura began to glow around her as her ruby started shining.

Vic didn't know what Alden was planning, but she wasn't going to stand for it. She turned to Sunny, who shot forward like a bullet and slammed into Eifa with a powerful wing attack, sending her rolling across the battlefield.

This time, Eifa didn't get back up. The red aura around her body faded away and she finally lost consciousness.

"Return, Eifa," Alden said, recalling Eifa to her pokeball. She'd done an amazing job, and he was proud of how hard she'd fought. He turned and looked up at Vic. "Eifa did well. It's thanks to her that I'm going to defeat you," he promised.

Eifa, asleep in her pokeball, dreamt of Vic. Vic's face had been the first thing she'd seen when she hatched from that egg, and she could still remember it vividly to this day. She remembered Vic, and remembered that the girl's smiling face had made her think that she was a happy and cheerful person inside, because Vic's smile had been brighter than anything she'd ever seen.

Vic had smiled a few times since then. And some of her smiles had even captured that brightness in Eifa's eyes.

But she wasn't smiling now. Eifa couldn't see any trace of that girl. She wanted to keep fighting, to bring the Vic from those days back, but she didn't have the strength to keep going. So she would have to rely on her comrades to finish the job that they'd started.

Alden didn't possess harmonia, he lacked the power to connect with the pokemon he cared about. But he still treasured his pokemon regardless, and he could still sense what Eifa must be feeling. He hoped that he would prove himself worthy of the faith his Espeon placed in him.

There's no way I can lose to Vic, he reminded himself, reaching for his next pokeball. "Jaune, come back out!"

"Vikavolt!" Jaune buzzed, emerging fom his pokeball and flying into the air.

Vic could tell that Alden was in a tough situation. He'd lost two of his strongest pokemon already, Finn and Eifa. They were among the best of his pokemon for standing tough and not backing down, and they'd both fainted. But this battle was far from over.

"It must sting, losing two of your best pokemon like that," Vic said, using harsh words to hide the doubts she was feeling. Samarra was doing a superb job of suppressing her doubts quite well, but those feelings were still leaking out here and there. "So tell me, are you finally starting to realize where you stand?" Vic asked.

Alden blinked. "Now why would I do something like that?" He asked curiously. "After all, for all the battles we've had, you've never been able to defeat me," he reminded her. "Not even once."

"That may be true," Vic spat, "but that was the old me! Do you still refuse to believe the truth of your own eyes? After everything I've done, after how far I've come, do you seriously think that means nothing, Alden?"

"I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean," Alden admitted.

"The Battle Frontier!" Vic's emotions were so tenuously-balanced on a razor's edge that she couldn't keep her voice contained. "All the hard work and sacrifice I've put forward towards your goal, to create a place where people can enjoy battles for what they are, you more than anyone should know how hard I've worked to realize that dream!"

Rui winced. Of course her daughter was motivated by something like that. After all the difficulties that had plagued her due to growing up in the Orre Region, this must have been something serious for her to deal with. Having grown up in the harshness of this region herself, she could understand how difficult things had been for her daughter, and why the Commander's Battle Frontier was an enticing dream for her.

"I've worked so hard," Vic repeated, her voice cracking slightly. It was like the real her was about to break out from under Samarra's control, and yet the woman held a tight grip on her subject. "But you don't care about that, do you? You brought in Anabel, without even talking to me about it, and then you brought in Chloe as well, for what? Administrative work? Reviewing our capabilities? I could have done something like that," she cried. "Why won't you trust me more?!"

All she'd wanted was for Alden to rely on her. But he focused his efforts on pleasing other people, people that didn't need it nearly as badly as she did.

Alden stared at her, slightly confused. He didn't push the issue. "I understand what you're saying, but those people are useful," he reminded her. "Their help will allow us to keep the Battle Frontier going strong."

His words were like a knife in Vic's heart. Because she couldn't reject them out of hand. She knew that he only had the interest of the Battle Frontier in mind when he approved those two to work for it, but that was precisely the point.

He wasn't thinking about her. Not just because the Battle Frontier was a more important project, but because he NEVER thought about her.

Alden sighed. "It seems we won't get anywhere at this rate, I'm afraid," he said. "Unfortunately, battling it out seems to be the only way to get through to you."

"You should have figured that out by now!" Vic snapped. "And once I win, you'll become MY precious little pawn! My loyal soldier, ready to follow any orders I give…"

Her heart swelled at the thought. "Sunny! Use morning sun to recover some of your health!" The Togekiss hadn't taken a lot of damage, but some of Eifa's moves had hurt. This was a good way to restore some of her health, now that using light screen to block Jaune's Electric type moves was no longer a viable strategy.

"Toge," Sunny nodded, settling down and beginning to restore her health through the healing power of the sunlight.

Alden wasn't about to let that stand. Eifa had worked so hard to lower her health, and he refused to allow that hard work to be in vain.

"Tracey, use agility," he ordered. Tracey nodded and hopped forward, picking up speed as she dashed around the battlefield. Vic and her pokemon were quick to respond.

"Gastrodon!" Theo bellowed, and the ground beneath Tracey's feet began to heat up and erupt all around her. It was fortunate that she was quick, because it enabled her to easily evade the eruptions and press forward, getting closer and closer to where Sunny was resting.

"Now, pyro ball!" Alden shouted.

"Cinderace!" With a cry, Tracey pulled back her foot and kicked a massive fireball with everything she had. The burning orb sailed towards the Togekiss and hit her in the back just as she took to the sky, but failed to stop the bird pokemon from taking off. Sunny flew into the air and circled the battlefield, flapping her wings and firing blades of air at the Cinderace.

Tracey's speed had allowed her to evade the earth powers, but the air slashes were a different story. Those were flung with much more force and speed, and she took some deep cuts before she was able to shrug them off. Jumping back, she prepared another pyro ball, but if she wanted to hit an airborne target she would need time and space to prepare and aim.

The problem was, with the ground erupting like it was, that wasn't something that she could control easily.

"Jaune!" Alden called to his Vikavolt. "You need to keep Theo occupied for a while! It's time for that move!"

"Vika," Jaune nodded. Even if Alden didn't use the name of the move he was asking his pokemon to use, everyone knew what it was at this point. And Vic knew that her best chance was to just let it happen. If she tried a light screen or reflect, then Tracey would just take it. As long as the Cinderace was out on the field, protective screens meant nothing.

Instead, she focused her harmonia to aid Theo's special defense, and hoped that it would be enough together with her prior boosts.

"Vikavolt!" Jaune fired an energy ball at the Gastrodon, using his long mandibles as a track like a bullet down the barrel of a gun. Theo didn't have nearly the speed needed to evade such an attack, and took the blow head-on.

Vic winced, feeling the powerful energy explode right in her face. But she shrugged it off, knowing that even though Theo had taken a lot of damage from that last blow, he was still more than capable of fighting back.

"Theo!" She shouted. "Use hydro pump!"

"Gastrodon!" Theo opened his mouth wide and fired a compressed blast of water at Jaune, strong enough to knock him out of the sky.

But there was no way that the Vikavolt would allow such an attack to hit.

"Vika!" Jaune zigzagged from side to side, creating several copies of himself. The hydro pump smashed through the first one, and then dozens more before it hit the wall and stopped, but no damage had been done to Theo's actual target; the Vikavolt flew forward, aiming for Sunny.

"Now, thunderbolt!" Alden ordered his pokemon.

"Vikavolt!" Jaune build up a current of electricity between his mandibles, and squeezed them together to release the electric discharge in a bolt of lightning aimed straight at Sunny.

"Sunny, evasive maneuvers now!" Vic shouted. Sunny flapped her wings, desperate to dodge the electricity, and with aid from Vic's harmonia she almost managed to pull it off.

Almost.

The bolt still clipped one of her wings and she winced in pain, but Vic refused to let that be the end of things. Gathering her energy she directed it towards her pokemon and Sunny flew forward, building up a blue aura across her body.

"Aura sphere," Vic ordered.

Sunny turned towards Tracey and fired an aura sphere at her just as Tracey kicked the pyro ball in her direction. The two attacks collided in an explosion of fire and light, and the shockwave forced Alden to shield his eyes.

"Very close," he congratulated Vic. "But close won't be enough to stop Tracey!"

"Oh, don't worry, I have more where that came from," Vic promised. "Aura sphere again, Sunny, meanwhile, Theo, use ancientpower to keep that bug occupied!"

"Togekiss!" Sunny nodded, preparing another sphere of energy to fire at Tracey.

"Gastrodon!" At the same time, Theo compressed the energy around him into a solid mass, forming glowing stones that he started flinging at the Vikavolt.

Aura sphere in particular was a good move, Alden had to give Vic props for that one. Tracey couldn't respond with sucker punch to try and stop the attack, because the aura sphere would follow Tracey regardless. And when it struck, it would hit for even MORE damage, once Tracey became a Dark type from her ability.

But there was another way to nullify the attack, a far easier way to avoid it.

"Tracey, shadow ball," Alden ordered.

Tracey held her hands together and began to sculpt ghostly energy, forming an orb of spiritual power that she kicked at Sunny. Because of her Libero ability she immediately turned into a Ghost type pokemon, and the aura sphere sailed harmlessly through her.

The same couldn't be said about the shadow ball; even with Sunny's speed, the attack scored a direct hit.

That wasn't to say it was strong, though. Tracey didn't have much in the way of special attack, and Sunny was a very bulky pokemon. She shrugged off the damage from the attack relatively easily, while Vic regarded it with the irritation of a pebble thrown at her face.

"Is that supposed to be a joke?" She seethed. "Well, here's a joke that I'm sure you'll appreciate! Sunny, use ancientpower as well!"

That was a serious attempt. Jaune was already having a hard enough time evading the rocks from Theo's attacks.

But Sunny was just faster. She added more energy stones to the barrage, and this time, Jaune wasn't quick enough to avoid them. He took a hit to the wing, which was enough to slow him down so that he was buried under an entire avalanche. It wasn't enough to knock him out, of course, but it still did serious damage to the Bug type pokemon.

"Jaune!" Alden shouted. "Are you alright?"

"Vika…" Jaune panted. He flapped his wings and flew into the air, injured but intact. He still had a lot left in the tank, and was already building up energy in preparation for striking back.

Alden sighed in relief. He knew how much damage a good ancientpower could do, and it was a good thing Jaune had withstood it.

This action didn't go unnoticed by Vic, whose lips curled up into a smirk.

"I see, so that's how it is, you ARE feeling pressured!" Vic crowed. Seeing him sweat was delicious to her, it made her feel that all her hard work up until this point was finally paying off. That was exactly what she wanted to see. "That's just great! And it's going to get even better!"

She felt her body surging with power. Sunny flew higher into the air, her body glowing white as her strength increased.

"Oh, no!" Rui gasped. "Not again!"

"I'm afraid so," Anabel said, nodding. "She got ancientpower's omni-boost again."

"But how is that possible?!" Rui demanded. She didn't know muc about pokemon and their moves, but a boost to all of a pokemon's stats just seemed unfair. "I thought… isn't ancientpower like, super-difficult to get the boost off of?"

"Vic's Togekiss has Serene Grace for her ability," Alden answered simply. "It allows her to double the probability of any secondary effect from a move occurring. Whether that's the flinching chance of air slash as we saw with Tracey earlier, or the boost from ancientpower. It's a very strong move."

"That's right, it is," Vic smirked. "But I'm surprised you're so aware of what my team is capable of. Well, either way, it won't help you very much. Now that we've got such an impressive boost, it's time for the next move in our repertoire, Sunny, use thunder wave!"

Tracey had stolen the safeguard from Vic's side of the field when she'd used court change, but that veil had been lifted long ago. Now Alden's pokemon could be afflicted with status conditions, but this one in particular had a very specific target it was aiming for, and everyone knew it.

"That won't work," Alden promised. Sunny built up the electric current through her body and directed it towards Tracey, but it never got there because Jaune got in the way. As an Electric type pokemon he was immune to being paralyzed, and shrugged off the shockwave without even flinching, even using some of the electricity to prepare his own attack.

"Discharge," Alden ordered. Jaune released the electricity in a shockwave of his own, though it had no effect on Theo and Tracey was too far away for it to hit her. The discharged electricity was for one purpose only, and that was hitting the airborne Togekiss.

And it worked perfectly. Even with her speed, there was nowhere in the sky that she could escape from the shockwave, so she focused on enduring it instead.

The electrical current made Vic's body go tingly, and she winced as she felt herself start to shake. But with a shiver she pushed past it, knowing that even though Sunny had gotten hurt from the attack, she wasn't defeated. Not even close.

"Don't think I'm going to back down," she swore, glaring at Alden. "You haven't even begun to see what we're capable of!"

Alden had been pushing against her, and she was ready to start pushing back. She'd already taken out two of his pokemon. So what if she couldn't take advantage of one of her most devastating combos, thunder wave + air slash with Serene Grace? She was more than capable of taking down the Commander's pokemon!

"Togekiss!" Sunny shouted, flying towards Jaune and Tracey. She flapped her wings and held them wide, summoning massive stones of energy that she flung towards the two pokemon, but mainly at Jaune. The stones were much faster than the ones that had struck him before.

"Jaune, use double team to evade the attack!" Alden ordered. If he was hit by that, it would hurt a lot, he was certain of that. And he couldn't risk Vic getting another boost.

"Vikavolt!" Jaune nodded, flapping his wings and trying to escape the attack by making several copies of himself to take the hit.

Vic expected that, though. "Rain dance!" She ordered her Gastrodon. Theo roared, and clouds of rain gathered overhead, filling the battlefield with a torrential downpour. While normally the change in the weather would be advantageous for Jaune and his thunders, in the current situation it was very bad. Because when the rain fell upon his copies, they passed through the illusionous duplicates.

Only the real Vikavolt was soaked from the rain, and it took Sunny a fraction of a second to notice that. With a cry, she turned and directed the stones that had been hovering in wait all at once towards the real Vikavolt, hitting Jaune from multiple sides and knocking him out of the sky.

Jaune, badly injured, plummeted to the ground, and as he fell, Vic's confidence soared. Sunny received another massive boost to all her stats. Now, if she could take out another one of Alden's pokemon, it would give her a commanding lead!

Uh-oh, this isn't good! Vic's taken the upper hand! The rain dance has limited Tracey's Fire type moves, and while it might be helpful for Jaune, the Vikavolt's taken some serious hits from Sunny's ancientpower, and Sunny has grown stronger as well, reaching the point where she'll be able to defeat her opponents even easier! Hopefully, Alden has some way of getting back into this, or this is going to be bad for him!