As the number of contestants went down, the intervals between battles became longer to give them the same kind of recovery time. The semi finals were held two days later, with the last quarter final having been at the end of the day Ash and Ritchie fought.
Ash tossed a Poké ball from one hand to the other. The question was, were the Rockets going to do an intro, or…?
"Prepare for battle!"
"You'll soon be rattled!"
He facepalmed, catching the Poké ball in his free hand. "Oh, no."
"To collect each badge of our vocation,
To show off in battle across our nation.
To attain a record to be proud of,
To become as known as the stars above. (They looked a bit worried for a moment, but decided the rhyme had been accepted)
Jessie!
James!
Team Rocket, last off on the final fight,
Surrender now, or face a dreadful plight!
All right!" Meowth finished, jumping into the arena and dissolving into nothingness.
"Riolu!" Ash pointed forward.
"On it."
Riolu advanced warily. Meowth was using Faint Attack, that much was obvious, but where was he?
Where would he be coming from…
He spun, blasting out Aura at thin air. The pattern deformed slightly where it hit something, but all that melted away under the blow was a Substitute.
"I ain't seen you on da battlefield before, blue guy. It's generally da mousie I fight."
The voice offered no clue.
"Damn ninja…"
A coin beaned him on the back of the head. "Whatever works, Riolu. Whatever works."
"It's going to take a while to knock me out if all you use is Pay Day."
"Yeah, I know dat."
Riolu spun slowly in place, one eye closed. The aura patterns in the arena were unusually confused right now – probably a result of whatever Meowth was doing.
Wait, got it.
He compressed Aura in his fist to an extremely high density, and rammed it down on the arena floor – producing an Earthquake as the power erupted downwards. The ground jumped with the impact, and several substitutes popped.
Next, he formed an Aura Sphere in each hand, rammed them together and produced a cloud of "tracer" spheres, which went everywhere on random paths. At least one Substitute was hit and destroyed when it dodged into a sphere that had chosen that moment to change course.
His left arm snapped forward, catching a coin out of the air, and he replied with another Aura Sphere along the path the coin had taken. Then he kicked out to the side, and Meowth materialized having taken the hit.
"Not a substitute this time." It wasn't a question.
"How'd ya do dat?"
Riolu's supposedly closed eye widened a little, allowing Meowth to see the red gleam in it. "Foresight."
"Aah, gotcha." Meowth crouched for a moment, and leapt forwards into an attack.
Riolu slapped aside the first of the Fury Swipes, dodged the second, and began giving ground as the tempo of the attacks increased. Meowth's speed was really very high, thanks to all that training, and he was being pressed to keep up.
A hairline swipe to the cheek got through his guard. A cuff on the arm. Meowth taunted him as he barely dodged a sweep-kick to the legs. "What's up? Not wantin' to fight?"
Riolu's expression was perfectly composed – and then Meowth noticed something.
"Eh, is it me or is it a bit cold? Ya look kinda blue – er, dat came out wrong."
"Oh, I know what you mean." Then Riolu launched an uppercut with blurring speed.
The spiral of heated and cooled air clicked over to mix.
"What was that?" The announcer commented knowledgeably, as a blast of spiralling air from nowhere launched Meowth upwards.
Riolu blurred after him, riding the storm, and delivered a stunning trio of Force Palm strikes that rendered Meowth unable to fight on.
Riolu landed, panting. That had taken a lot out of him.
He had about half a second to catch his breath before a Psywave bored in, and he summoned two sets of flickering Shadow Claws to block the attack.
Abra teleported behind him as the attack reached its' target and fired a Psychic, then flashed away again as Riolu reacted.
"Are you on caffeine?" Riolu asked, catching sight of where Abra had gone to this time and charging a Dark Pulse.
No. I don't need to be. I can teleport.
Abra disappeared as the pulse came in and took telekinetic hold of Riolu with a Psychic attack from behind, then blasted him with Psywave until he went limp.
Next please.
Ash frowned. "Hmm… Pikachu?"
"All right." Pikachu leapt into the arena with his cheeks sparking, and launched a powerful lightning bolt at Abra.
The Psychic type teleported out of the line of fire.
"Oh, here we go. It's Saffron gym all over again." Pikachu raised his forepaws and tail to the sky, forming a large planar electric structure. "Shockwave!"
The plane of electricity slammed down on the arena.
Pikachu jumped out of the way as a Signal Beam nearly hit him from behind. Sure enough, Abra was sitting seiza in the sky, having teleported through the attack.
"Right, no more mister nice mouse."
Pikachu snapped a series of thin thundershocks at the sky, targeting small fluffy white clouds. As each was hit they began to change shape, the electrostatic forces Pikachu was sending into them carefully calibrated to have a single precise effect.
Huh. Abra said mildly as the clouds began to flow together, pairs of them charged with opposing polarities and meeting just over the stadium. Rain Dance. Didn't take you for one to know that.
"I still need there to be seed clouds." Pikachu replied, sending up a final pair of shocks that neutralized almost all the charge in the now-large cloud, concentrating it in a small fraction of the miniature droplets.
It took a lot of control to do, but it was worth it. Rain began to fall in the arena and the arena alone.
"Right, now where were we? Ah, yes."
Pikachu slashed a lightning bolt into the cloud overhead. It bounced off and headed groundwards to strike the wet floor, then shot back to the sky again, and repeated the process with increasing speed.
Every time the trail of electricity approached him Abra teleported away, but he was starting to run out of places to go – the ribbon of lightning Pikachu was sustaining was just getting longer and longer.
"Now, as I was saying. Shock Wave."
The ribbon paused for a moment, then played around its' anchor points like a cat's cradle. Abra was hit at least five times by the shifting bolts and fell, paralyzed and severely shocked.
Cubone announced her arrival with a thrown bone, and Pikachu shattered it with a punch rather than dodge – a guess that was borne out, since the areas he could have dodged to erupted in Earth Powers a moment later.
"I am the bone of my club."
She didn't continue the aria, instead throwing bone after bone into the air in curling paths. The first had great, long, sweeping trajectories that blurred past Pikachu in seconds and flew off into the distance. The next ones were slightly slower and on a different path, and the sequence continued without pause until the last one was thrown straight at him.
And all the rest of the Bonemerangs hurtled back into the target area at the same time.
Pikachu jumped – it was about all he could really do, with that many bones coming in – and fended off a blizzard of additional attacks in close quarters. He couldn't change his trajectory in mid air, not with her pressuring him in-close – the momentary lapse in attention that a Quick Attack would take would be an extremely bad idea at this close of a range.
The thud as he hit the ground came as a shock. Wincing, he noticed that the area he'd hit was raised above the rest of the arena.
She must have used an Earthquake… clever of her.
Cubone was pretty much his worst matchup, since she was flat immune to his electrical attacks and knew it. He couldn't even bypass it like he could with enough power for most other Ground types, since she had Lightningrod.
"Fissure!"
Pikachu tried to move out of the way, but she was still on top of him – and, in fact, still hitting him. The white line of the attack connected with him more or less instantly, knocking him out.
Ash frowned for a moment. Who to use…
"Primeape!"
Cubone was knocked backwards by a Mach Punch that blurred in from nowhere, even as Pikachu was removed from the battlefield by the linesman Alakazam.
She backed into the edge barricade and her eyes scanned back and forth under her helmet, looking for any tell-tale that might indicate where the ludicrously fast Pokémon was.
A wash of air… no, he'd already passed it.
A-
WHAM
She went flying, and skidded to a halt as he disappeared again.
"How the hell are you doing that?" she asked. "I can't see you anywhere, but that attack came in from the side!"
Another blow hit her, this time from behind. "They're called saccades. It's when the eye moves from one place to another." Another, sending her up into the air, and even looking down she couldn't see her opponent."The brain doesn't register information during a saccade. Normally it wouldn't work on a trained Pokémon because their trainer would let them know where I was, but I have studied you – you don't listen."
It was true, she fought alone. But if that was a weakness, then…
She took a moment to breathe deeply.
"Abra. Please inform Jessie that I will be wanting guidance."
"He's to your left!"
Cubone turned her head, deliberately not letting her eyes twitch. She was staring at the end of her helmet's nose, and letting her peripheral vision pan across the stadium.
Her thick club snapped up and diverted the next attack, the wash from it sending her staggering. A follow-up blow missed as the agile Fighting type left before it could hit.
"Right! No-left again!"
This time she was quick enough, and parried. The club blow knocked both fighters backwards from the impact, and Primeape recovered with a skid along the floor.
"You have learned the lesson. Good."
"So, this was a test?"
"Not all of it. But some." Primeape flickered into motion again, and the two clashed with an explosion of air pressure.
As Primeape dodged back, Cubone followed him. "There we go. I know your bones now – no more hiding for you."
"Impressive trick."
As the tempo of their blows began to increase, Cubone closed her eyes and let herself be guided entirely by that part of her that resonated with her opponents' skeleton.
It didn't make her reactions much faster, but it meant he couldn't dodge through her saccades like he had been. That trick wouldn't work again, in fact – her team would be ready for it, and would train for it. Such was the arms race between rival trainers.
I have to admit, though, it's certainly exhilarating.
At an unseen signal, both fighters separated.
Cubone shifted her grip on her club, taking a stance, and reinforced the internal spaces as much as she could. Primeape drew back a fist and took a deep breath, focusing.
Then, still perfectly in sync, they charged one another.
Ash dove behind his wall just before the shockwave.
"And that's a double KO." The announcer said, thankful to be of some use for once. "Not exactly the first of these from either of our participants, either. Both must now send out another Pokémon!"
"He's acting like these don't happen all the time." Ash said to himself, thinking. "Pidgeot!"
They really don't. You're just lucky in crazy ways.
Pidgeot circled, watching as Jessie released her Arbok to tunnel underground and hide.
The annoying thing is that now I can't actually attack. But neither can my enemy.
A minute or so passed, neither participant making any sort of move.
"Okay, I can see this becoming an issue."
Far below, Jessie pointed up at her and said something. Pidgeot strained her hearing.
What was that? Surface to air ballistic snake attack? She blinked. Did I hear that right?
With a crash, Arbok came rocketing out of the ground and upwards at high speed.
Oh.
She slipped sideways in the sky, shedding air from beneath her wings to avoid Arbok's trajectory. Though this meant she wasn't in the direct path, it didn't do much about the poison that he began to spit as soon as he had the altitude.
The missed shots splashed off a telekinetic barrier.
With a sigh, the linespokemon funnelled the Gunk Shots off to one side and disposed of them. League battles could be so messy…
A particularly well aimed splash of poisonous goop hit Pidgeot's left wing, throwing her off her flight path as the gelatinous substance gummed her feathers up. The light drizzle still coming down would eventually get them unstuck, but she didn't really have enough time for that.
Particularly as Arbok used her limited manoeuvre options and a form of jet-propulsion from his attacks to vector in and hit her with a Thunder Fang, knocking her into a tailspin.
Ash judged his Pokémons' height, and made the decision to pull Pidgeot out rather than take the chance she could recover from a spin with only one wing usable.
He tossed her Poké ball to a recovered Pikachu, trusting his friend to sort her out, and sent in Muk.
"Ah." Arbok muttered sibilantly – somehow. "This, I admit, is something of a tricky one."
Muk rippled in a kind of shrug, then flowed forwards like a purple tidal wave with a Jolly nature.
Ash watched as the Rockets released their penultimate Pokémon, Victreebel. "Okay, I've sent everyone else out over the course of this tournament, may as well complete the set. Tauros!"
Tauros (also known as "number five", since Ash had enough of them such measures were necessary) snorted and stamped the ground, staring at the plant across from him.
Victreebel's spike-tail-thing lashed, held at the ready.
The bull rolled his eyes again, stamping at the ground harder – and Victreebel promptly fell down a Fissure.
"That was anticlimactic." Ash muttered. "Suppose all those earthquakes were good for something."
Jessie and James glanced at their Poké balls. "We don't have much left, do we?" James muttered.
"Gyarados?" Jessie suggested. "Ash has Tauros and Muk active, but that's it."
"We don't have much choice." James agreed. "At least Gyarados is less likely to fall down a hole."
Speaking of which… Abra levitated Victreebel's Poké ball out of the crevasse.
"Oh, thanks. Right, here goes."
Tauros jumped to the side as soon as Gyarados formed, avoiding a blast of Hyper Beam, and began running around the sea serpent at maximum speed.
"Get in closer!" Ash called. "He can't turn fast enough to track you if you're close!"
"Not a bad delaying tactic," Jessie said, "but not good enough! Thrash!"
The bull went skidding backwards from the tail blow, and smashed into the retaining wall. A blast of incandescent energy followed him, creating a huge explosion.
"Well?" James said, mockingly. "Going to send out your Muk?"
"No thanks. Wild Charge!"
With a bellow, Tauros emerged from the dust and rubble. His coat was marred, there were burns down one side and a horn looked scorched – but he was still on his hooves. And looked very, very angry.
"Ah."
"That may have been a tactical error." Jessie said. "Who knew Tauros could learn Endure?"
Meowth raised his paw, looking sheepish.
Electricity snapped off Tauros' hooves as he charged, enveloping his entire body just as he crashed into the recharging sea serpent.
Both Pokémon collapsed from the titanic impact, unconscious.
The announcer cleared his throat, drawing attention over to him and away from the devastated arena. "Since Ash Ketchum still has one Pokémon able to battle, the victory goes to him. He'll face the other finalist in two days! We don't know who it is yet, but we'll find out this afternoon. And that same battle will also reveal who his opponents will be facing for the third/fourth playoffs."
Umbreon dove through a psywave, it flaring ineffectually from her coat, and charged the Hypno that had been firing psychic attacks at her into the ground.
Not the best choice from Gary's opponent, but then he had been down to his last Pokémon. The psychic type hadn't been able to hit her with a Miracle Eye, despite his best efforts.
"Well, suppose that means I'm fighting Gary." Ash said, as the scoreboard flashed. "We both got a lot further than last time."
"Comes of combining talent with experience." Brock replied seriously. "Both of you did well, last time, for first-timers." The big Pewter man stretched as they got up. "You going to use… them, by the way?"
Ash blinked. "Who?"
"You know. Them."
"No, I clearly don't."
Brock palmed his face. "Oh, for… one of them's in a premier ball, the other's the first thing you technically caught this time, and you're clearly dense if you don't work out what I mean."
"Right, gotcha. Nah, don't think so. Be showing off a bit too much, really. I'll wait until next time – that way, I won't be a first timer with something ridiculous."
AN: Sorry for the delay. Degree issues.
The last three League chapters have been pretty hard to write. There's not much room for character interaction, as much...
