The battle between Keahi and Dokukage has reached its climax! Keahi has sent out his final pokemon, his Metagross! A pokemon with more power than anything Dokukage has at his disposal, and if that wasn't enough, his Metagross has also stolen all the stat buffs from Dokukage's team! This is a really bad situation to find himself in, now Dokukage has to face off against a nearly maxed-out pokemon, with just his pluck and quick wits! Is this the end? Can he figure out some strategy? Or will his team be swept away by this monster of a Metagross? The battle ends with this chapter!

KedharS: As a ninja, he would never accept their help regardless. No matter how much he really wants it.

Venoms Cross 2: It will certainly be difficult. I don't know if there's much he can do either. Hopefully he can get lucky.

Epifanio Therion: Yep, Keahi's team is pretty powerful. Which is why a situation like this is so dangerous, but somehow, Dokukage has been able to match him pretty well!

Arbiter8991: I think there's a good chance he wins, yeah.

Hyphenman: I will say, beating a Metagross at full health with nearly max stats would take an absurd amount of luck and strategy.

Tambry96bj: That Metagross has the advantage for sure.

Pokemon Academy: Beginning of Beginnings

Chapter 1161

Dokukage felt his heart skip in his chest. The world around him slowed down until he couldn't see anything but what was right in front of him. It was like the Metagross had frozen in midair, staring down at him, and he knew that the moment he took his next breath it could be his last.

So that was your trump card, Keahi, he realized. Psych up. It was a move he was quite familiar with. Many times, trainers would fight him anticipating that the best way to overcome his baton pass strategy was to let him exhaust himself stacking up buffs, and then stealing them all with the move psych up and forcing him into a tough spot.

But Dokukage wasn't going to allow himself to be overwhelmed by pressure.

"Venomark!" He shouted. "Use protect!"

Time sped up again to normal and he was back in the center of the battle.

"Scolipede!" Venomark nodded, creating a barrier of violet light around her body to shield her from attacks. The reason for that was to avoid what was certain to come next.

"Metagross!" Kane surged towards Venomark, their body covered in shadows. They weren't even going to bother with bullet punch anymore, now that they were at maximum speed they would destroy Dokukage and Venomark with pure power. It was a good thing Dokukage had been so quick with his thoughts, because if he'd been a little slower Venomark would have been done for. As it was, though, Kane bounced right off the barrier, unable to break through. The shadows danced helplessly in front of Venomark, who panted, exhausted and terrified.

"Venomark, baton pass," Dokukage ordered. He knew his Scolipede would have no chance against that Metagross, not after how much power they'd just acquired.

None of his pokemon would. Which only left one choice.

"Ame, come back out!" He said, sending his Masquerain back out.

Keahi snorted. "So that's how it is, Dokukage? Didn't you already try her before? Back then, Kane didn't have nearly the power that they do now, do you really think that's going to work?"

"Shut up, okay?!" Dokukage screamed. "Do you have any idea how fucking crazy this fucking shit is?! You don't do you!?"

Keahi was taken aback.

"I've been fighting for so damn long, you have no idea!" Dokukage continued his screed. "I've been hanging on all this time, trying to keep my cool, keep from letting on that I'm TOTALLY FUCKING OUT OF MY LEAGUE, DEALING WITH SHIT LIKE THIS, AND IT ALMOST WORKED!"

He took a second to catch his breath, but his nerves weren't any calmer. "And what ends up happening?! I try my hardest to set up a good baton pass chain, even though I'm against an absolute fucking monster of a Shadow Pokemon, and when I finally get my pokemon's stats where I want them I find myself forced to confront a Metagross that steals all my hard work?! This is ridiculous! Nobody has to deal with shit like this but me!"

Dokukage finished his tirade, wiping the sweat from his forehead. It felt good to get that off of his chest, he'd been keeping his feelings bottled up for too damn long.

Keahi was still processing what had just happened. Then, he laughed.

"Ha… so that's it… ha!" He was shaking with disbelief. "It's exactly like I thought! All this time, there's been no 'great strategist', you've just been panicking behind that mask! Trying to pretend like you're not completely fucking overwhelmed and at your wits' end!"

"So what if I am, huh?!" Dokukage exclaimed. "You don't think I've earned the right to freak out a little, having to face shit like this?!"

"Not at all, by all means, freak out as much as you like," Keahi smirked. He was relishing his feeling of triumph at having gotten Dokukage to admit how challenged he really was. "But it won't change what's going to happen. You're going to lose, Dokukage, and it's going to be your own fault. Because you just weren't good enough to overcome my own strategy."

"Careful," Samarra warned him. She was surprised by Dokukage's outburst of an admission as well, but she was more cautious. "This could all be a trick. Some scheme to lure you into a sense of ease, and then strike when you least expect it."

Keahi rolled his eyes at that suggestion. "There's no way that's the case," he assured her. "Dokukage was never some great strategist. I've been telling you the whole time, he's just some loser who's good at pretending he knows what he's doing. But now that I've taken everything from him, his true colors are coming out."

He felt vindicated, seeing Dokukage panic like that. Now was the moment he'd been waiting for, when he could finally prove to the world what a loser Dokukage was. Keahi had never been as humiliated as he had that day in the Phantom Cup. Dokukage defeated him in the very first round, without losing a single pokemon.

Keahi would make the ninja pay for that humiliation, and it was going to hurt.

"Kane," he roared, "use bullet punch!"

"Ame, quick attack," Dokukage ordered.

Kane surged towards Ame, but even with all the speed they'd stolen from Dokukage's pokemon, they still weren't fast enough to keep up with a Masquerain who was also at top speed. The Metagross was like a missile trying to hit a leaf in the wind, Ame allowed them to get in close, but with her evasive maneuvers the metal pokemon just couldn't seem to land a blow.

Once they were close enough, Dokukage gave his next order.

"Ame, use haze!" He shouted.

"Masquerain!" Ame opened her small mouth and spit out a cloud of black smoke right into Kane's face as the Metagross charged after her. The smoke spread across the battlefield, engulfing both participants in a dense fog.

"What is this?!" Keahi coughed, looking around through the thick grey smoke.

"This is haze," Dokukage said. He suddenly sounded completely calm, which unnerved Keahi more than he cared to admit.

"Haze is a special move," Dokukage continued as the smoke cleared, revealing Kane and Ame. They were still chasing one another through the sky, but this time they were moving far slower. "You can think of it as similar to the mist move that Ame used earlier. Mist creates a special fog that prevents my pokemon's stats from dropping, much like your Metagross' Clear Body ability, but haze… haze has another use altogether."

"Another use?!" Keahi spat. He was completely confused. Not only was Kane moving far slower than they should have been, but Dokukage was acting like a completely different person, as if his earlier breakdown had just been an act.

Which, of course, it was.

Oh, Dokukage had certainly freaked out, there was no denying that. The emotions he'd expressed were real. But that was part of being a shinobi. By letting his real feelings out, Keahi had believed him completely, never knowing that it had all been part of Dokukage's plan.

"The effect of haze… is that it completely resets all stat gains that any pokemon has obtained," Dokukage revealed.

Keahi was stunned.

"This is why I warned you," Samarra said. She could barely keep the growl out of her own voice. "That boy is a skilled trainer, he is not to be underestimated."

"Did you think that I've never had someone try to steal my status boosts with psych up?" Dokukage asked. "Did you really think I didn't have a PLAN for something like that? You used the exact same strategy against me in our last match, with your Corvisquire. Or Corviknight? I really can't remember. But either way, it was something I was prepared for. Whereas you didn't anticipate it at all, did you, Keahi? No, I doubt you did. After all, I took special care not to use this move the last time. And now… well, now here we are."

"But… but you can't!" Keahi shouted. "Clear Body prevents stat drops!" He was desperate at this point, trying to pretend like what he was seeing with his own eyes wasn't true.

"That's right, it does," Dokukage agreed. "But haze isn't a stat-dropping move. It simply resets your stats to what they were… meaning that it gets around your clear body."

Actually, Dokukage had no idea whether that would work or not. He'd never tried to use haze on a pokemon with Clear Body before. It was good thing it worked, or that would have been the end of the match then and there.

"You… you expected this… and you still threw away your pokemon's stat boosts?!" Keahi was still trying to make sense of it.

"Of course. My strategy is reliable to a degree," Dokukage admitted, "but against a pokemon like yours, I would prefer you not get any more boosts than need be."

"RRrrraaagh!" Keahi had lost any sense of reason at this point, shouting in fury. "Kane! Enough of this! Use shadow break!"

"Metagross!" Kane bellowed, covering their body in shadows as they shot towards Ame.

"Ame, dodge with agility," Dokukage ordered. With a boost to her speed Ame was more than capable of evading the strike. Dokukage felt his chest swell with confidence at her performance. "You can continue if you like," he said. "Steal our speed boost. We'll just reset it again, and we'll be right back where we started. As long as Ame is with me, it doesn't matter what you can copy from us. You can't steal the hard work we've put into developing our tactics, and you can't steal the strategies honed for years in our village!"

Keahi had nothing to say to that. He could only order his Metagross to attack again.

"Ame, use tailwind," Dokukage ordered. A powerful gust of wind surged across the field, pushing against the charging Metagross. Unlike agility, this boost to speed wasn't something that could be stolen with psych up. Ame danced through the sky, staying just out of reach of Kane's assault, which was exactly where Dokukage wanted her.

"You think you're so clever, do you?" Keahi glowered at Dokukage. "But no matter how fast your little bug is, she still can't escape from our psychic powers. Kane, use psychic to grab that pesky little fly, now!"

"Metagross!" Kane bellowed, the X on their face glowing blue. They tried to pin down Ame, but suddenly the sky was filled with dozens of Masquerain wherever the Metagross looked, and they couldn't get a lock on the real one.

"Ame, we'll deal with that pesky light screen next," Dokukage said. "Use defog!"

"Masquerain!" Ame flapped her wings, sending another gust of wind across the battlefield. This one was specially-designed, blowing away the barriers surrounding Kane like a light fog.

Keahi didn't care about that. It didn't matter anymore whether or not Kane had a boost to their stats. His Metagross was at full health, and it could certainly take down a Masquerain, along with the rest of Dokukage's pokemon.

He didn't need to worry.

"Kane, use bullet punch!" He ordered. Kane shot forward at top speed, plowing through the fake Masquerain and approaching where they assumed the real one was. But that was just another copy. The real Ame was well on the other side of the battlefield.

"You spent all your time trying to overcome our baton pass strategy, but you failed to understand the essence of our tactics," Dokukage said. He was on a roll, it felt great to be confident about his victory for once! "I know it seems like that's all my team is good for, but we have a lot more going for us than just that. Ame, use stun spore!"

"Masquerain!" Ame flapped her wings, sending a cloud of spores towards the Metagross to paralyze them. With the few duplicates remaining doing the same, the stun spore formed a massive cloud that Kane had no chance of dodging, and no way to know which bit of dust was real.

"Meta!" Kane felt their body slow down as the stun spore set in, paralyzing them. Even with Clear Body, there was no fighting THIS reduction in speed.

"A ninja has numerous backup plans," Dokukage revealed. "Here's one of ours. Ame, use ominous wind, now!"

"Masquerain!" Now it was Ame's turn to send a wave of shadows across the battlefield. The ghostly wind struck the stunned Metagross and hit Kane directly, causing the pokemon to let out a gasp of pain from the attack.

"Ghost moves now?!" Keahi was about to give another order when something shocking happened. Ame surged with power, moving faster and stronger than before.

"Oh!" Dokukage gasped. Ame was a vital part of his team, not just for quiver dance, or her use of haze and mist. She also knew ominous wind and silver wind, moves that had a small chance of raising all of her stats at once.

And it seemed that was exactly what happened now.

"Ame, use ominous wind again!" Dokukage ordered, eager to capitalize on the unexpected boon. Even if Keahi stole the bonuses with psych up once more, that would be fine. He could just disperse them with haze again.

In the meantime, he needed to do whatever he could to wear down that pokemon's health, so he could defeat it. The Metagross was almost-uninjured, which was a bad place to be in if you had a team as weak as Dokukage's.

The second ominous wind struck with even more power than the first, and Kane was pushed back, the Metagross groaning in pain.

And then a second miracle occurred.

"Masquerain?!" Ame gasped in disbelief as her power surged once again. It seemed, by some strange bit of fortune, that ominous wind had triggered a second time, now boosting all of Ame's stats by an additional level. Combined with her agility from earlier and the tailwind, she was almost back at max speed!

Conversely, Kane was in a tough situation. Against a foe as fast as that Masquerain, it was bad to be paralyzed. But Keahi could see an advantage. He needed to make Dokukage use haze once again, because having to deal with two ominous wind boosts was ridiculous. Kane had entered this fight at a major advantage, having more health than all of Dokukage's pokemon put together, but if they had to put up with this ridiculousness then that advantage would be pointless!

"Psych up, Kane!" He shouted.

But his pokemon did nothing. The Metagross just twitched, completely paralyzed.

Dokukage seized the opportunity and ordered a third ominous wind.

Ame sent another blast of ghostly energy at Kane, and THIS one really hurt. The Metagross screamed, and fell out of the sky, beset upon by the super-effective attack released from the double-boosted Masquerain.

When ominous wind boosted Ame's stats for a third time, Keahi wasn't even surprised anymore.

Dokukage stared dumbly for a few seconds before regaining his composure.

"Indeed, a true shinobi always plans ahead. By saving ominous wind until the end, I could ensure that my Masquerain was able to amass enough power to defeat even a pokemon as strong as your Metagross," he stated.

"OH, BULLSHIT!" Keahi screamed. "There is NO fucking way! This is ridiculous!"

Even Samarra could tell this was complete garbage.

"Impossible…" she growled. "Losing… to ridiculous luck like this?"

"Who's losing?!" Keahi spat. "Kane! Use psych up! It's our only chance!"

"We won't let that happen!" Dokukage shouted. With Ame's speed, she could easily move faster than the Metagross, no matter what the metal pokemon tried to do. "Ame! Use ominous wind and finish it off, now!"

With all the damage the Metagross had taken from the consecutive ominous wind attacks, each stronger than the last, Keahi's advantage had completely disappeared. His pokemon was as weak as any of Dokukage's at this point.

No matter what he tried, there was just no stopping it. He didn't have the speed. He'd been overwhelmed completely.

What stung the most was that it wasn't due to some clever strategy of his opponent's. He was defeated by sheer fucking luck.

The ominous wind struck before Kane could move to copy Ame's stat boosts. The ghostly wind smashed into the Metagross, striking them with incredible power that overwhelmed their defenses completely. There was nothing they could do but lose consciousness.

And to add insult to injury, Ame's stats rose. Once again.

That sight was burned into Keahi's eyes as he collapsed to the ground, overwhelmed by an unbelievable loss as Samarra's connection was ripped away. He screamed as he lost consciousness, refusing to believe he could lose like that to the end.

And frankly, Dokukage found it a little hard to believe himself.

His foe defeated, and no one around to see him lose his composure, Dokukage sank down to the grass and let out a long sigh, exhausted. He flopped back, ignoring the soaking ground, and screamed at the sky.

"I can't believe it…" He mumbled, relief and fatigue washing over him. "There's no fucking way that actually happened, no fucking way…"

Right now, he didn't care who saw him break his character. He'd just escaped from one of the most stressful fights of his life by the skin of his teeth, and somehow managed to come out of it looking like he knew what the fuck he was doing.

It didn't matter that he'd actually used his brain in that fight, or come up with some incredible moves in the heat of the moment. As far as he was concerned, that match came down purely to his luck, and his ability to bullshit.

Which was just fine with him.

Wow. Dokukage ended last chapter completely overwhelmed, and about to lose. Thanks to some quick thinking he was able to nullify Keahi's advantage, but it really did come down to some absurd fucking luck in the end. And, well… it's Dokukage. Someone's definitely smiling on him, that's for sure. Sometimes, that's just how battles go. You get absurdly lucky, and completely trash a superior opponent.