Ash tossed a Poké ball into the arena. "Ivysaur!"
"And Ash leads in with his Ivysaur, which is the only Pokémon he has used in all his matches so far. How will this go?"
His opponent smirked, and threw a Poké ball straight into the water. With an eruption of slightly salty water, a Gyarados appeared.
"Dean, meanwhile, has sent out a Gyarados! We haven't seen this Pokémon before from him, probably because the Grass and Rock fields aren't especially good for Water types like this!"
Ivysaur looked up from his platform at the frankly enormous Water/Flying type. "Ash… can I get a raincheck here?"
"Come on, give it a go! Use something your, I don't know, Electric type ancestors knew!"
"I don't have any Electric type ancestors! Or at least, not that I know of."
"Rock type?"
"And how do you expect me to hit him with an Ancientpower?"
The Gyarados had been gradually moving deeper into the water. Now it leapt out, with a great roar, and went flying high into the air.
Ivysaur tapped the platform – it wobbled slightly. "Oh, this is going to be embarrassing…"
Gyarados cannoned back into the pool with a great Splash, sending water everywhere – and the floating platform out of the arena entirely, Ivysaur still on it and hence losing by ring out.
Ash raised his hand. "Point of order. What counts as ring out here?"
"Anything that lands or would have landed in the audience, basically." The referee replied, pointing to where Ivysaur was held in the psychic grip of an Alakazam.
"Okay, so going what must have been a hundred metres into the air doesn't. Good to know…" Ash sighed. "Pikachu?"
"On it, Ash."
Pikachu hurried into the arena, stopping at the edge of the pool itself before launching an enormous Thunderbolt at it. The Gyarados promptly rose to the surface, twitching.
"Damn, forgot you had that." Dean muttered, digging through his bag for something. "Aha. Cloyster!"
Ash blinked. "Er, what?"
"Withdraw!"
The Cloyster shut its' shell tightly. Pikachu wandered over and zapped it.
Then he frowned. "Shouldn't something have happened by now?"
"Dexter?" Ash asked, holding up the scanner.
Calcium Carbonate, the material forming the base of the shells of Bivalve Pokémon, is non conductive.
"Well, that's new. Okay, Pikachu. You know what to do."
"I certainly do!" Pikachu cricked his clawed hand-paws, and drew one back. "Force palm!"
The impact sent Cloyster skidding across the arena, and its' shell opened for a moment before shutting again. Pikachu followed, palm glowing blue, and delivered another palm strike. He tried to send electricity in before the shell closed again, but failed. "Damn! I'm no good at these reaction time games!"
"Just electrify the water and do it in there!"
"Oh, yeah, good plan." Pikachu bodily lifted the Cloyster, winced as his spine gave a sort of creeeak noise, and threw it into the water before anything too permanent happened.
"Now, as I was saying…"
The electrified water paralyzed Cloyster for a few seconds more, and Pikachu pried the shell open between bolts of electricity.
"Done! What's next?"
"By the looks of this guy, another water type." Ash muttered.
"That's where you're wrong! Diglett, get him!"
"Dig." The little mole Pokémon appeared in front of Pikachu, who kicked at it.
"Lett." Without any discernable actual movement, it was behind him. As he spun, it fired a mud-slap at him.
"Ugh. That's really annoying…" Pikachu muttered as he cleaned his face off. "And why isn't it actually saying anything?"
"Dig."
A Magnitude 6 sent Pikachu stumbling. The security Alakazam's eyes glowed as it isolated the ground from the stands, and the ground shook only within the stadium.
Most of the water that had survived the Splash drained away through fissures that opened up in the ground. Pikachu eyed the instability, and decided on a course of action.
Tapping his Light Ball, he jumped into the air and hovered there.
"What are you going to do now?"
"Lett." It disappeared underground again, and came back out with an enormous globe of mud.
"Oh, come on." Pikachu flared his electric aura, and went floating away from the Mud Bomb. "Ash? How am I supposed to catch this mole if he keeps moving around at the speed of light?"
"Hmm… it sounds impossible… Pikachu, get back over here! Squirtle, you handle this!"
"My enemy moves at the speed of light. They can be anywhere… so I have to attack everywhere! Scald!"
Squirtle pushed out a bubble of superheated water in all directions, and there was a sudden BANG from the direction of one of Diglett's holes.
Confused, Squirtle walked over to it, and found a thoroughly concussed Diglett. "Okay, what just happened?"
Diglett must have run into the water at the speed of light – or very fast, anyway.
"This means I win, right? I'm not actually sure."
"And Ash Ketchum is through to the fourth round, which will be on the Ice field for him!"
"Suppose that means yes."
"And his opponent, Eric!"
A large, beefy man strode to the opposing side of the arena. By the looks of him, he'd walked straight over the mountains to get here.
"Ice field… nice Pokémon for it." He said. "Dewgong!"
Ash thought for a second. "Pikachu!"
"On it!"
Pikachu had to dodge almost immediately, as an Aurora Beam swept out between two of the pillars that marked the Ice field and barely missed him.
He looked at the frost scarring on the pillars, and winced. "This is a powerful Dewgong…"
A fast one, as well, as it skidded over the ice like it was born to it. Which it was.
Pikachu caught sight of some juice around its' mouth, as he dived from one cover to another. "I hate Wacan berries. They're just not fair."
With a gesture, he created a Shockwave in planar form above the arena and brought it down, but Dewgong was fast-reacting enough to spray a fine coating of Brine above a random ice pillar, causing it to discharge there instead of maintaining planar form.
This Dewgong thinks entirely too fast for my liking… Pikachu thought to himself, skidding around a corner on a cushion of electricity, before switching polarity and anchoring himself to the ground.
It began to hail. Pikachu shot an annoyed look at the sky, and charged himself to try to repel the stinging ice. It worked, to a point – at least now the points weren't painful.
Okay, what else is an Ice/Water type weak to?
Idea.
Pikachu created a pair of Double Team images and sent them charging alongside him against the Dewgong. It reacted by exhaling a blast of icy cold air, eliminating the doubles and slowing Pikachu with ice build-up.
Just after being hit by the attack, Pikachu slammed his palm into the ice, breaking it up with a Force Palm, and causing the heavier Dewgong to slump slightly into the ice.
Focusing with the moment thus gained, he counteracted the buildup with an Agility, and lunged forward with his other palm holding a charged, if fluctuating, Aura Sphere.
Panicking, the Dewgong released a Sheer Cold, which froze Pikachu in place instantly. The Aura Sphere, on the other hand, kept going and hit Dewgong, sending it sliding backwards and into a pillar. Which then fell on it.
The announcer hesitated for a moment, then on the signal of the referee declared that both Pokémon had been incapacitated at the same time, and both should send out their seconds.
Ash asked for, and got, a break to retrieve and defrost Pikachu. That done, he exchanged a glance with Riolu.
"You want to do this?"
Riolu nodded gravely. "I do. Don't worry, Ash, I won't fail you."
"Never even crossed my mind." Ash smiled gently for a moment, before gathering himself and strengthening it to a smirk.
"Riolu!"
"Onix!" the Hiker replied, then frowned and checked a small guidebook about Sinnoh. "Wait, that's a Riolu? How'd you get one of those, kid, they're rare – not to mention from a long way off!"
Ash gave a half-shrug. "Luck, I guess."
Riolu closed his eyes, feeling his Aura flow as it left his body and began to interact with the aura of the outside world. It was quite impressive, this Ice field, actually – it was so often used for these battles that the area itself had acquired a taste of the glacial. It reminded him of another life, when he had visited the high mountains of Sinnoh.
Presumably the other three arenas had the same attribute, but this was the most incongruous.
Mind you, the enormous rock snake was interfering with the feng shui.
Riolu jumped over a thrown rock, studied a second for a moment and detonated it with a tiny pulse of Aura on its' most critical structural point, landed and set off running. As with a water battlefield, he was using his little pads of Aura to maintain traction rather than skidding out.
Fortunately, the Onix had replaced the Hail with a Sandstorm, and his airslip trick, while not up to deflecting large hailstones, could manage the sand.
So, really, this was a weather condition having no effect at all.
Barrier. Barrier. Barrier.
The wind finally subsided in Ash's box. Coughing, he tried to get the sand out of his hair. "Took you long enough…"
I established shields sufficient for the hail. I did not expect more than one weather condition in the same battle.
"Yeah, yeah, I understand. It's just a bit startling to get a face full of desert. Pleh, I think I swallowed some…"
Riolu skidded around the tail swipe of the Onix, and delivered a Force Palm to one of its' larger segments. The impact made it flinch back, but it was clearly a very tough example – it didn't go down, and released an Earthquake that finished what Pikachu had started.
Running up the edge of an ice floe, Riolu jumped into the air again – earning a near miss from a ballistic hunk of ice for his troubles – and finished Onix off with a second Force Palm to the forehead.
Slightly altering his Aura walking technique, he flipped once in his air time from the recoil and landed on the icy water. "Right, next?"
The hiker returned his Onix, and got a positively evil grin. "Haunter!"
Riolu heard the words, and as the Poké ball flew began isolating a fragment of his Aura from all his emotions. Null structure… self propagating…
"Dark Pulse."
The Haunter barely had time to look annoyed before the pulse hit, and it dispersed into an irritated cloud of slightly darker air.
"Huh. Didn't know they could learn that." Eric said aggreably. "You're certainly a smart one, Ash Ketchum. Or your Pokémon are, anyway."
"Hey!" Ash shouted back, with a few little signs of laughter in his voice. "That's hardly a fair thing to do! Either just praise them, or them and me, but don't give me false hope!"
Brock checked the schedule. "Your next match is tomorrow evening. About five. Looks like the rest of today and most of tomorrow are free."
He noticed that Ash was a little subdued. "What is it?"
"Ah, just that this is how far I got last time. Remember – Ritchie beat me."
"I do, and I know you lost for a number of reasons, few of them your fault." Brock frowned, and checked the schedule again. "Wow, it looks like if you and he both win your next matches, you'll face each other as your entry into the matches with full teams."
"You mean he's here as well?" Ash asked, then frowned. "Wonder where I can find him…"
He took out one of his Poké balls. "Hey, Pidgeot? Up for a fly?"
"Hello, I'm Ritchie Getem. Nice to meet you."
Ash smiled. "Ash Ketchum, the same. You're in the League too?"
"Yeah! Actually, now I think about it I do recognize you. You're that trainer they were calling the Gym Destroyer on the TV commentary, right?"
Ash blushed. "I didn't know they were calling me that." He paused. "Though I have to admit it's pretty accurate…"
Ritchie grinned, and at that point Ash noticed something… off about him.
"Ritchie, is it me or is there a Pokémon hiding behind your torso?"
The Pokémon in question made a small, frightened sound and ducked back from where it was peeping. Ritchie sighed. "Calm down, Cid, you can feel he's friendly just like I can."
Ash glanced surreptitiously at Pikachu, who shrugged. "Beats me."
"Oh, come on." Ritchie gently lifted the Pokémon in question, a Kirlia, onto his shoulder. "I should introduce you. Cid here joined me about a year ago, said he recognized a great deal of untapped psychic potential in me. We've been working together to draw it out, and he says that eventually we'll be able to go and sort out some problems in his homeland of Almia."
Riolu, Pikachu and Ash looked between one another. Ash eventually spoke up. "Ritchie, mind if my Pokémon and I have a chat for a second?"
"Not at all, go ahead."
"Okay, what the hell, guys? That sure as Suicune wasn't what he was like last time."
Riolu covered one eye and looked between the two trainers. "And you say you were uncannily similar then as well?"
"Yes, and I have no idea what could have changed him."
"Dexter, can you hack Ritchie's capture records? I have a suspicion, and I want to know when he picked up a Ralts or Kirlia."
One moment… got it. Captured on the… same day you hatched. That can't be a coincidence.
Riolu nodded, dropping his Sight. "Thought so. You're Destiny-entangled. For some reason, the two of you live lives that correspond on as many details as possible. In the original timeline, you had no idea of your Aura potential so he didn't of his Psychic. You caught similar Pokémon. Now, you're both empowered and have, again, similar Pokémon – his Kirlia is my shadow in that sense. I would guess it'll eventually break with the increasingly bizarre things you do all the time, Ash, but I know so little about it I can't say. It's almost theoretical."
"That is just strange. Can we break it early?"
"Would you want to? It's an external force, but part of your lives as well. I'd say just let things take their course."
"I suppose so." Ash said, before shrugging and heading back over. "Sorry about that. Anyway, I noticed that we're in the same block, and we'll be in the same last 8 match. I just wanted to wish you good luck."
"Does that mean you're saying you hope I win?" Ritchie asked, grinning.
"Only your next match. Better if you get finally defeated by me, because that'll mean you were only beaten by the winner!" Ash replied, with a cocky grin.
"Such a lucky situation!" Ritchie said pompously with a snigger. "That the gods would deliver me a quarter final opponent I can defeat in a truly spectacular way, showing off how arrogant he has become."
"Oh, did they change your slot?" Ash asked with fake curiosity.
The two kept it up for a few more minutes before finally agreeing to call it a no-score draw, and parted ways to prepare for their next matches.
Ash's next opponent, Torren, slammed his fists together with an almighty bang.
"I have seen your Pokémon fight, and they have good Ki. They are tough! I will prove that I am tougher!"
Ash frowned, then shrugged. "Whatever you say. Didn't I see you at the P1 grand prix?"
"Yes. I was defeated by the one you faced in the finals." Torren took up his first Poké ball. "But enough talk! Machoke!"
Ash threw his own. "You know, I feel kind of bad about this…"
The Machoke landed in a crouch, Focusing his Energy to the optimal concentration for martial arts. Placing his hands on the floor and rising to a starter's crouch, he readied himself to launch across the stadium in a Mach Punch…
Then he saw his opponent.
Butterfree floated gently about ten feet above the stadium floor on slight air currents. "Well, that was all very impressive, but I'm up here."
Not one to give up, Machoke punched at Butterfree so fast that the air from his attack made a bullet – a Vacuum Wave.
The butterfly took the hit, and barely flinched. "That's it?" He began to circle in a set of loops in the sky, gradually accelerating. "You're not going to make much of an impression with Fighting type moves."
Machoke's fist caught fire.
"…that is a substantial improvement." Butterfree slipped sideways in the air as the first Fire Punch came in, dancing around the fist as it overextended and exploiting the thermals to rise much higher into the air.
"Machoke, use Flamethrower!"
Butterfree's eyes bugged out, at least as much as they were able to do with being made up of ommatidia. "Oh, that can't be normal or safe."
Machoke rubbed the palms of his hands together, vigorously enough that after a second or so a bright glow appeared. Snapping his claws over it produced a spark, which lit it, and he blew a great tongue of flame from the kindled fire in his hands at Butterfree.
Riolu took notes. "…ignite with spark…"
With a backflip and dive, Butterfree evaded the subsequent shots of flame. "Okay, enough is enough. Psybeam!"
The coruscating beam of psychic force hit Machoke in the chest, sending him staggering backwards and breaking the stance he was using to project fire.
Butterfree flashed past, the wake from his wings sharpening and cutting small gashes in Machoke's arms and chest, before dousing the Fighting type in Sleep Powder and finishing him off with Dream Eater, recovering the energy he'd lost in dodging the fire as he did so.
"Most impressive." Torren said, retrieving his Pokémon. "Are you truly a Butterfree, or a martial artist at heart dreaming he is a Butterfree?"
"Was that supposed to make sense?" Butterfree asked Ash uncertainly. Ash shrugged.
"I think it's a Koan. They're supposed not to."
Torren threw a second Pokémon into the arena. "Face Zen!"
A Mr. Mime materialized. Immediately upon doing so, he sat down seiza and began to glow.
Butterfree fired a Bug Buzz at his opponent experimentally, producing a beautiful flare as the energy deflected off a Light Screen – and very little else.
"Oh, brilliant. A Barrier warrior. I don't like these."
Mr. Mime's eye glinted for a second, and a thunderbolt speared down from the sky, clipping Butterfree's rear right wing.
"Gah! Okay, how… right. They can learn that." Butterfree shattered his form into a dozen Double Teams, which began evasion manoeuvres.
Offence… defence… weaknesses… right. A defence can't be strong everywhere. The attacker has the advantage of selecting where to attack, the defender an advantage that the same amount of energy is stronger blocking.
There's three types of shield this could be. Point of impact, bubble, plane. Let's see which this is.
He built up a bit more height, then his doubles took up positions with him in an orbit around the Mr. Mime. In unison, they began an Air Cutter and dove. Razor wakes forming from their wings, they went shooting around the Psychic type in a circle and soared up again.
Where the wakes, both real and fake, reached a distance of two feet from the Mr. Mime they were deflected by a flare of light.
Not plane then…
That left point of impact and bubble. Both were defeatable, but by different means.
Let's try POI first.
The main weakness of this shield type was that it had a "minimum cost" for each point of attack. Against a strong attack, it worked fine, since the attacker was using more energy on the attack than the defender.
"Sunny Day!" Butterfree pushed out what clouds there were, and intensified the evening sunlight bathing him as he soared near the top of the arena.
"And now… Solarbeam!"
The Solarbeam was nowhere near as focused as the ones he normally used. In fact, it was spread over the entirety of Mr. Mime's surface and the area around him.
It was present for just a moment, then a fireworks display of shield dazzle outshone it, and Butterfree knew he'd guessed right.
The point of impact shield didn't work well against area attacks. It was far too energetically costly to defend the entire surface. In fact, when this one fell barely twenty seconds later, Mr. Mime was too tired to fight.
"I can see that you are too skilled in the art of aerial combat to defeat one who is tied to the ground. In that case, you will face my master of Kendo. Scyther!"
The two Bug types opened their fight by circling warily in the air, neither wanting to make the first move.
Butterfree felt the Sunny Day expire, and didn't bother to sustain it. Keeping it up in the evening was tiring anyway, and against a Scyther the move he used with it most often was effectively useless.
Scyther finally attacked with an Air Slash, the bigger brother of Butterfree's Air Cutter. Butterfree slipped around it with an Aerial Ace, and the two began jousting in the skies.
"He's really got good at that." Ash commented absently, as the action continued to climb. Both Pokémon were enhanced by some kind of move, either the Butterfly Dance or a Swords Dance, and they were leaving trails in the darkening sky.
"I suppose he's had a lot of time to practice. I-wow!"
Apparently something else had happened, as now every time the points of light met they produced a shower of sparks.
Set up. Analyzing… I think it's their wakes meeting. They're still getting faster, by the way.
"I can explain."
Ash looked around with a start, to see Butterfree on the ground next to him. "Er, hang on. Shouldn't you be, well, up there?"
"Substitute. It's provoking him into going for an all-out charge to finish the fight. Kendo masters are suckers for that."
"So how's that going to end without the Substitute just falling apart and him realizing the mistake?"
"Iron defence. In the second before it evaporates, it's going to feel like hitting a brick wall."
Torren finally spotted the butterfly and called up a warning, but Scyther was too far up to hear him. A final explosive burst of light lit up the dusk, and the Mantis Pokémon fell out of the sky in a daze.
"And that's me three for zero. Not bad for my debut, I think."
AN: Destiny Entanglement is a concept from the Charlie Stross books, while Machoke's method of using Flamethrower is based off Dustfinger from Inkheart.
Butterfree is fun. His sweeping this match is a little bit based on Lulu from Petty's Nuzlocke, who completely steamrollered Bruno for no loss.
