"And, finally, I'd like to remind our competitors that they can use six Pokémon each in this and any subsequent matches. Of course, neither of them needed three Pokémon in their last match, so we'll see what happens."

Ash and Ritchie locked eyes for a moment.

Then, instead of reaching for Poké balls, both pointed forwards. "Pikachu/Sparky!"

The two Pikachu jumped into the stadium, cheeks sparking, and began an intricate electrical duel.

Ash's Pikachu had the advantage in power, thanks to his Light Ball and his Raichu-mix cheeks, but Sparky was no stranger to fighting powerful Electric Pokémon and took a more defensive stance.

Every time a bolt approached too close to him, he exerted enough same polarity electric charge to make it veer off and moved away. This didn't make the attack miss completely, but it reduced the potential of it enough to let him absorb it in his Lightningrod without overloading it.

Pikachu stopped attacking after a few minutes, having thoroughly tested how much Sparky could take at once, and closed his eyes to concentrate.

Little sparks of electricity drifted away from him to the borders of the stadium, then began to lengthen into lines stretching up to form a dome.

With a snap, the dome formed completely and solidified. Sparky got an apprehensive look on his face. "Er, what is this?"

Pikachu grinned. "Shock wave. Iota version."

"How many have you made?" Sparky looked around, feeling the walls in his electrical sense. They were strong enough to prevent him getting through easily.

"Enough." With a grand gesture, the dome began to shrink, the side away from Sparky first. Pikachu looked back as he walked towards the edge. "Nice fight. We should try it again some time." With that, he left Sparky alone, and the dome accelerated.

"Oh, no, you don't!" Sparky ground out. "Light Screen."

A "tunnel" of shields formed. Sparky ran through it where it intersected the dome, lightning sleeting through it and injuring him but not to the point that it was incapacitating.

As soon as he was out, Sparky used Rain Dance – hoping to prevent any more of those enormous electrical constructs – and turned to spot Pikachu.

Who charged him bodily with an Aura-boosted Volt Tackle.

Both Pikachu rolled to a stop at the other side of the arena from where Sparky had escaped, Pikachu clearly in much better shape. Sparky was covered in scorch marks and looked down for the count – but he did indeed slowly rise again, pushing himself up with his front legs.

"Got a new trick for you." He said, as he began to walk forwards again.

"Oh?"

Surging into a charge, Sparky clipped Pikachu and delivered his attack. "Endeavour."

The blast of energy released by that attack sent both hurtling backwards, and they were caught by their trainers – though, unfortunately, the wrong trainers.

Ash shrugged. "Shall I take care of Sparky for now? We can return them after the battle."

"Sounds good to me. Cid!"

"Riolu!"


The Kirlia and the Riolu began with an exchange of martial arts.

Riolu noticed that Cid's style seemed to revolve around physical psychic attacks, using the direct contact to apply low powered psychic Confusion attacks directly without having to face the opponents' mental defences.

This meant he had to avoid directly blocking entirely and focus on redirecting the attacks, otherwise the effects would quickly build up.

His own attacks, on the other hand, were rebuffed by a telekinetic force field that exerted pressure on anything close enough to Cid's body.

The overall result was incredibly aggravating to fight – it meant, in fact, that it was almost like being consistently overpowered by a Pokémon with much less actual strength.

Finally he decided to fall back, jumping with a push of Aura to gain distance and throwing a quick Aura Sphere. It missed, of course, curving a little off course and detonating behind Cid.

"You are surprisingly good."

"I got a mental training package from one of the Gallade in Almia."

Cid focused, compressed air as if for a Psycho Cut, and separated it from his hand. Then he took the resultant object and whirled it as a spear.

Riolu glanced back at Ash. "Now do you see the worth of all that Bokken training?"

"Yeah, fine. You win."

With a sound not entirely unlike smashing glass, Riolu created a Bone Rush staff a bit longer than the length of his arm and gripped it in his right paw. Then, summoning his Shadow Claws, he honed it once. A quick check showed that it had a small amount of Ghost energy clinging to the surface.

"That should be enough."

The two charged one another and began to fight again, this time with weapons instead of bare paws.


Ash noticed that the crowd had gone quiet. Apparently this was something outside their normal experience.

Presumably means that the Rockets haven't shown off yet…

Closing one eye, he watched the fireworks display that Aura sight revealed. Both Pokémon were using the elemental effects of their respective weapons to probe at the other's defences, and the tempo was only increasing.

In fact, pretty soon it should…

Lavender and bright opal lights erupted into visibility around the battling Pokémon, as the energy reached the point anyone could see it.

This time there was a sound – a kind of low gasp.


Riolu currently had a slight advantage, but that was starting to change – his Ghost typing of the bokken had been very much ad hoc, and it was beginning to degrade with time. Cid's strikes with his weapon were being stopped less and less firmly, indicating that they wouldn't be solid to one another much longer.

With a cry, he locked blade with spear-shaft and pushed both weapons out of the way, then brought his off hand around with a rippling violet coating.

The Dark Pulse at such short range was too much for the already tired Kirlia, and he collapsed.


"Nagi!"

"Pidgeot!"

Ash looked at the Spearow. "Nagi?"

"Naginata. A kind of spear, as in Spearow." Ritchie replied, as the two Flying types began to gain height.

"Huh. You learn something new every day…"


Pidgeot and Nagi had by this point ascended to a height of a good few hundred feet. The little Spearow displayed no fear at the size of his opponent.

"So. We shall fight?"

Pidgeot's trajectory dipped slightly – a nod. "It seems so."

"Then let us make a good show. Work Up."

As she circled slowly, Pidgeot watched a construct of wind form around Nagi. By the time it had finished, he was enveloped in wings of air similar to the ones she used at her highest speeds, for greater manoeuvrability. So large were they that he was more like a Fearow.

"And they weigh nothing, of course, so if you're careful it can put you up to Mach one thanks to the greater driving force." Pidgeot swept her wings forward, then back with a massive gust of wind. "But I can do it without concentrating on air control."

She shot away, about half a mile in six seconds, then swept back around and in with her wings ready to buffet. Just as she reached him, Nagi moved his own wings sharply.

There was a crack as they moved, and he was no longer there. Her stiff wings hit nothing, and it took her a moment to stabilize again.

"What was that? That's far too fast!"

"I have trained to move my wings as fast as possible. That was the tips breaking the sound barrier."

She revised her estimate of his speed up, for a moment. "But hang on. You can't do that for very long at a time, the sound barrier break would dispel the wings of air."

"Correct. But it makes me very manoeuvrable over short distances."

She gritted her beak, frowned for a moment, then moved away again. She could predict his maximum speed with that ability… and then if she was careful, aim an area effect attack to catch him for certain.


"I can barely see them." Ash muttered.

Allow me. Set up. Light screen, concave.

Two pairs of light screens formed above Ash's box, each pair focused on and showing one of the Flying types at about the size of an outstretched hand.

"Good thing they retracted the roof all the way for this, we'd never have the angle for it otherwise."

Pidgeot turned, this time two miles distant and about a mile up, and came back in. She was building up speed very fast…

Ash saw the conical cloud form and break around her, and covered his ears.

Most of the audience didn't have the same warning, watching as she closed in on Nagi – and then launched her Razor Wind, which came boring in on him.

And he created a similar attack from thin air (or, rather, from nowhere) and countered it.

The crowd had barely begun to react when the sonic boom arrived.


She circled him, now more than a little indignant. "How?"

"Mirror move."

Pidgeot considered cursing. That was very, very annoying. And it also meant that the same thing would happen with more or less whatever she tried except physical attacks – and physical attacks would just miss thanks to that dodge move of his.

Okay, plan. How did she do this…?


Nagi watched as she took off again, this time straight up. And faster still. By the looks of things, she was using a tailwind formed from her air control to increase her height faster.

It was good to know the key point of his strategy was taking effect. Picadore, Matador. Taunt, goad, then let the opponent make a big mistake and capitalize on it.

In this case, he thought, as she reached an apex so high he could only see her by squinting, she was going to try a Brave Bird attack. The kind of speed she could manage like that would, if she knew her air control as well as it looked, actually cause her to go into dynamic equilibrium and become more unstable in flight. A useful trait for catching an evading target.

But he would be able to counter her expectations by flying at her and hence through the narrowed window she had to react. With that missed, she would be startled, and either crash or injure herself as she dropped subsonic.

He watched her approach and raised his wings of air, ready for the evade. Three seconds… two… one-

Then something hit him from the side, grabbing his wing and trapping him.

The diving Pidgeot passed through him and melted like a dream. A Double Team? But then where was-? How?

"'aint attack." She mumbled around the Spearow wing. "S'w it once from a P'dgey."

Nagi surrendered. There wasn't much else he could do, not held in the beak of a Pokémon weighing so much more than him.


"Butterfree!" Ash said, sending the Bug out for the second time in the League. Given how the battles so far had gone, he expected…

"Happy!"

The two Butterfree faced one another.

Ash's Butterfree began by spreading his wings, forming psychic balls on them for Psybeam. "It may not be effective, but as far as I know we're not strong enough for a Rock attack."

Happy started flying in a form of evasion pattern that Butterfree didn't recognize. It was like the ones he used himself, but the constant-trajectory bits were longer.

Just gave him more tracking time. He fired off the first couple of Psybeams – and Happy dodged them, sidling away from the attack as if he'd planned it all along.

Something wasn't right…

Butterfree abandoned the psybeams to use Sunny Day, and then a wide area Solarbeam. As he had half-expected, it lensed crazily all over the place, revealing Happy was using his powders and manipulating them psychically to produce refractance effects.

He knew the counter for one of those. With a quick shiver he used Supersonic to echolocate a rough location for his opponent, then dove in with Aerial Ace.

One-two-three, and Happy was looking a lot worse for wear. But he flapped his slightly tattered wings, and dove in on an attack of his own.

Butterfree spread his wide. He could manage this. Just use an Aerial Ace again – he was the less injured one.

"Venoshock."

Now that just wasn't fair. Though I admit that blithely flying through a cloud of powders was rather asking for it.

Butterfree passed out as he fell.


"Eevee!"

Ash paused for a moment. He didn't have a parallel to an Eevee, did he?

Oh, yeah. This Eevee wasn't nicknamed, so…

"Dexter!" he shouted, throwing the projector.

"Er, that's not a Poké…" the referee trailed off.


Stand by, ready. Set up.

Finally. I was wondering if you'd ever use me.

The Porygon slid forwards as he formed, the crowd murmuring at the sight. Synthetic Pokémon were still a fairly new thing, and most had only ever seen them on the "CyberMon" show Doctor Akihabara had been releasing as a kind of reality TV show coupled with embedded reporting from a warzone.

"Oh, hello!" The Eevee said, curvetting around as he walked circles around Dexter. "You're interesting."

Thank you. Tracing… Normalize copied. How useful.

"That sounds like the name of my ability. Is that one of your abilities too?"

Kind of. Dexter's form shattered into a new shape, this one a simple octahedron. Analyzing.

"Uuh… what are you doing?"

The octahedron quivered, and formed into a hexagonal flower with three glowing outer petals. Tri Attack.

Eevee yelped and jumped away, the three-element blast hitting the arena floor and blasting a small divot out of it. "Okay, sorry! I forgot this was a fight."

He dug quickly into the ground, leaving a small hill.

Dexter powered down, and shifted to octahedral form again before slowly lowering to the ground. A drill emerged and plunged an inch or so into it.

Scanning. A low rumble pulsed out from the drill. Processing… inversion complete.

Quick as a flash, the drill retracted and Dexter shifted back into attack form. A Solarbeam knifed into the ground and cut a trench, into which Eevee burrowed less than a second later. And promptly fell in.

"Hey, where'd the ground go?" he asked, looking around in confusion.

Ice Beam.

Eevee got hit on his flank by the beam, but shook it off, jumped out of the trench and began to run as fast as he could. Dexter kept firing but was unable to lead his target enough, the Eevee's bouncy curvetting running style throwing him off.

A message brought itself to his attention: Power usage exceeding generation. Capacitors at 20 percent.

It was the same problem as before. With regret, he ceased fire and returned to default configuration of his facets, levitating higher to avoid attack.

Eevee noticed the change and ran over to under him, before jumping up frantically. "Er, tackle! Take Down! Bite! Shadow Ball? Baton Pass? Return?"

Why are you doing all those strange attacks? They can't reach me up here. Dexter checked his energy storage and saw it was quickly rising back to nominal. Just a few seconds to go.

Come to that, Shadow Ball doesn't even affect me.

"Bounce!"

Eevee came soaring up to Dexter's height with a powerful kick of his back legs.

It wasn't a move Eevee usually learned, but Dexter supposed that all that bouncing around he did even when moving normally might have helped.

"Uhh… I think that's all of them. Trump Card!"

WHAM.


Ash called a time out and walked over to the crater, extracting Dexter's projector from it. "This is what happens when you underestimate adorable little Eevee, Dexter. You alright?"

Never better. Do make sure to restore my pride from backups, though.


Both trainers counted in their heads. One draw, near the beginning – Ash spotted Pikachu running back over from the other side of the stadium in the time out, and checked Sparky was okay before sending him on his way – and two Pokémon knocked out each.

They were having a gentleman's agreement of a battle, so the one who won the final clash of two Pokémon would win, and the other concede. Much nicer than having all their teams beaten up.

"So, you ready?" Ash asked.

"Yes!" Ritchie replied. "We're having something of a resurgence over here, so we'll ride it to victory!"

"Whatever you might happen to think. On three. One, two…"

"Zippo!"

"Charizard!"


The tiny little Charmander looked up at Ash's monster, and gulped. But he was a gutsy thing, and set his stance nevertheless.

"Come on, Zippo!" Ritchie shouted. "Ancientpower!"

Zippo nodded to himself. He could do that. Dodging away from a Flamethrower, he picked up a piece of rock and focused on it. After a few flickers, it began to give off a white glow, and he batted it with a quick movement of his tail.

The projectile hit Charizard's wingtip – he was just too big to dodge easily, but he'd nearly managed it – and made him bellow in pain and rage.

"Calm down, Charizard." Ash said urgently. "You can't make mistakes, think how embarrassing it would be!"

Zippo threw another Ancientpower rock, and this one Charizard just melted with an enormous gout of flame. The rock wasn't the only thing that was glowing, though.


"Wow." Ash said, as Zippo evolved to Charmeleon. "I know I've said it before, but being on the other side to normal of that is really annoying. And makes me feel sorry for all the people I beat with that kind of lucky bonus."


Zippo charged in, one clawed arm crackling with the electricity of a Thunder Punch. He countered a Flamethrower with a gout of Dragonbreath, and leapt at Charizard as he took off – hitting him, but more importantly grabbing onto his right leg and being carried into the sky.

Charizard shook the leg frantically. "Get off!"

"No chance! Have you seen how high up we are?"

"Of course I have, I'm the reason we're this high! I'm driving, and I say-Gaah!"

Zippo had charged another Thunderpunch, letting it instantly ground into Charizard. He followed this by opening his other hand, and slamming the glowing Ancientpower rock contained within into Charizard's leg. The dragon attempted a wing buffet to blow his unwelcome passenger off, but the contortions involved were too much and he got tasered again for his trouble.

"Get off get off get off!" Charizard roared, and bathed his own side in flame. This was seriously hurting him. In fact, it was…

He got an evil grin, moving his tail flame underneath Zippo. Normally it wouldn't do anything, but if there was one good side to being this hurt it was that it was finally enough for his Ability to activate.

His flame went blue with a dull whump as Blaze triggered, startling Zippo – the experience of being inside a fire as big as he was more than enough even if it didn't do much damage, making him lose his grip.

As Zippo fell – they'd left the stadium in their wrestle – he saw Charizard having reversed to dive and catch him. Being caught would, of course, count as a loss, since his opponent had saved him from severe injury.

No. He refused to let that be the end of it. And as that dedication filled him, so did a hotter flame.


Ash shook his head in disbelief. "That's new."

Pikachu shrugged. "Chain evolutions? Not bad, but not weird enough to make the top five."

His trainer glanced over. "Wait, there's an actual list?"

Yes. Currently time travel is involved in numbers one and three, whereas an alternate dimension comes in at four.


Zippo felt the fires recede, and his new wings flared out to brake his fall.

Pity they'd turned up too late. With an almighty crash, he piled straight into the floor at thirty miles an hour next to Dexter's crater.

Ritchie raised his hand. "I concede. And I'd like to thank my opponent on being an excellent opponent, a great trainer, and on saving me quite a lot of time with Zippo."

A laugh ran around the stands.


AN: This was a fun one to write. If I had to characterize it, I'd say it's a "distorted mirror" match - there's similarities and differences. I tried to construct the remainder of Ritchie's team with that in mind - so Eevee is a pure Normal type with a great deal of adaptability, like Dexter, whereas Nagi is almost as fast as Pidgeot over only very short distances, and much more agile.

Dynamic Equilibrium is a real concept in aviation, and used to make very fast fighters still very manoeuvrable. It means they have "twitchy handling".

The thing with the sonic booms from the wings is taken from the story "Higher flier".

Sorry there weren't more chapters, I know this is a fairly small one for me. Next update should clear the League.