Here's another chapter! The battle finally begins! Who will win? Elaina? Or Akira? Now, the finals!
Tambry96bj: School began at the beginning of August, it's now the end of September, so about two months.
KedharS: Interesting choices.
Hellraiserphoenix: Interesting shipping choices. Which do you like more? Elaina x Blake or Sango x Blake? Let the shipping wars begin.
Duskzilla: At least I don't take 20 chapters to finish a battle.
Deadly Ice 88: Well, you're about to see it, I hope it turns out to be worth it.
Pokemonking0924: Yup that's pretty much it. Fear is a great motivator to get people to focus power in a centralized system.
Pokemon Academy: Beginning of Beginnings
Chapter 88
"This matchup is sure to be exciting!" Darla began the commentary to liven up the tone. "Let's see where our two finalists will be fighting!"
The roulette wheel pulled to a stop on an image of a crescent moon.
"Dark Stage 3! Shadow Chasm Field!" The battlefield emerged from the ground, a stony field lined with a large group of rocky outcroppings made of shining black stone jutting out into the air, casting the entire field in massive shadows.
"I'll take the first move," Elaina declared. "Noctre! The darkness is no stranger to you!"
"As usual, Elaina's leading with her Noivern!" Lila announced.
"What's Akira's response?" Darla wondered.
"As I expected. Lilia, come out!" Akira shouted, tossing a pokeball into the air, which his Cradily emerged from.
"And it's a standard lead for Akira as well, it seems," Darla said, nodding to Lila. "This match has begun strong on both fronts!"
"Indeed, quite an interesting matchup," Kanone said, nodding.
"Noctre! Start things off with a hurricane!" Elaina shouted, the wind swirling around her body as Noctre flapped his wings, summoning a massive tornado. He sent the spout of wind toward Lilia, the Cradily remaining motionless.
"Lilia, use stockpile and endure the hit," Akira ordered. Lilia began focusing energy into her body, her defensive stats increasing as the hurricane collided with her. The wind shook Lilia's body, her hair shaking in time with the fierce winds, her tendrils flying about haphazardly.
"Whoa, those are some fierce winds!" Lila cried.
"Should have expected as much from Elaina," Darla agreed. "But look at that!"
"What's going on?!" Lila gasped. "I can't see very well, but it looks like Cradily is completely unfazed by the attack!"
"It's odd," Darla agreed, staring at the unshaken pokemon swaying in the wind.
"Not really," Kanone said. "It's quite expected, honestly. Good move on Akira's part."
"Huh?" Darla gasped, confused.
"What do you mean?" Lila asked.
"It's all part of Cradily's ability, suction cups. It allows Cradily to remain steadfastly rooted in place. But that's not all, look." Kanone pointed at Lilia, specifically how her head and vines were swinging with the wind.
"Strong winds might blow down houses but leave reeds and trees intact," Kanone explained. "If a pokemon resists against the wind, it will surely be blown away. Instead, Cradily's loose body moves with the wind, letting it be blown and struck, but since she isn't resisting it but letting the current move her, the damage is minimized."
"So strong wind attacks won't affect her!" Lila gasped.
"That's some strategy!" Darla agreed.
"If wind won't work, then we'll burn you to cinders! Noctre, use flamethrower!"
"Noivern!" Noctre shouted, opening his mouth, crimson flames curling forth and bathing the shadowy battlefield in an orange clow.
"Lilia, block it with rock tomb!"
Lilia's tendrils stuck out and sharp black stones shot out from the ground to form a defensive barrier around her, the flames striking the rocks with minimal effect.
Noctre continued with the attack, the temperature of the rocks rising and rising.
"More power, Noctre!" Elaina shouted, her harmonia flaring up as she gave more strength to her Noivern, the size and intensity of the flames increasing.
So it's starting… Akira frowned as he could feel the pressure emanating from the battlefield. Lilia… can you hold out?
"Cra…" Lilia winced, the heat beginning to singe her.
"Lilia, push forward!" Akira ordered.
"Cradily!" Lilia growled, narrowing her eyes. Her tendrils flared out and she sent a pulse through the ground, more stones erupting out and pushing other stones forward, the fire getting forced back toward Noctre.
"A burst of power from Cradily is deflecting Noivern's flames!" Lila said.
"But that might not be enough!" Darla reminded her.
The stones collided with Noctre, knocking the bat pokemon out of the sky.
"Noivern!" Noctre growled, flipping over in the air and landing on his feet, glaring through the darkness at the Cradily.
"Lilia, use sludge bomb," Akira ordered. Lilia fired a massive sphere of sludge at the Noivern, but Noctre deflected the attack with a powerful blast of wind conjured with a swing of his wing. The poison hit the ground and began melting the stone, Noctre flapping his wings and taking to the sky, flying toward Lilia. Noctre opened his mouth and released sonic pulses, flying through the air with his echolocation.
"Noivern's ears let it fly even if it can't see in the darkness," Darla cheered.
"That might be so, but we aren't helpless in the dark, either," Akira countered. "Cradily lived on the bottom of the ocean floor, inky blackness like this is nothing for their eyes!"
Lilia nodded in agreement, energy surging through her as she prepared to attack, tracking after Noctre's movements with her eyes.
"Stone edge," Akira ordered. Stones ripped themselves out of the ground and flew toward Noctre, the attacks almost imperceptible in the shadows. Fortunately for Noctre and Elaina, they weren't relying on their eyes to guide them.
Noctre's sonic waves sensed the position of the rocks as they flew towards him. Guided by echolocation, he maneuvered through the flying rocks and closed the distance between him and Lilia, landing in front of the ancient pokemon. Noctre opened his mouth again, draconic energy crackling in front of him.
"That's dragon pulse!" Darla cheered.
Noctre released a blast of draconic energy in a condensed beam, but the attack missed Lilia by a mile.
"What?!" Elaina gasped. A wave of dizziness came over her as she couldn't bring herself to focus properly.
"You were relying on your hearing to guide you, so you missed an attack on your eyes," Akira explained. "Lilia's confuse ray struck you without you even realizing it."
Hm. Normally, a harmonia user keeps enough of themselves separate from their pokemon, so if their pokemon becomes confused they can shake them out of it by synchronizing with them again. But this girl… she has no control over her powers, and so she's lost to the ability completely. Kanone continued observing Elaina as she struggled to remain standing from the confusion. I wonder if she can really win with brute force this way?
Noctre began thrashing, trying desperately to land blows on the Cradily. But between the confusion distorting his perceptions and Lilia's flexible body moving her extremities out of the way, it was like trying to strike water.
"Incredible!" Lila gasped. "Elaina can't land a single hit!"
"Good play," Darla noted. "All that power is pointless if it can't connect!"
"Lilia, use another stone edge!" Akira ordered. Large stones ripped out of the ground and hovered over the disoriented Noctre, raining down on him in a sharp barrage.
Elaina clutched her arms and back as the force of the stones shook her body, Noctre letting out a whimper of pain.
"Now, finish it with rock tomb."
Lilia sent a shockwave through the ground, stones rising up and wrapping around Noctre, trapping him a cocoon of rock. The rock tomb then exploded in a blast of power.
Elaina cried out in pain as she fell to her knees, coughing, the backlash from her harmonia wracking her body and causing her to nearly pass out from the pain like her Noivern.
"Whoa…" Darla said.
"No way…" Lila gasped. "For the first time in this tournament…"
"Elaina was the first one to lose one of her pokemon!" Darla finished. The crowd erupted into cheers at this revelation, Elaina rising to her feet and calling back the unconscious Noctre.
Clearly, he knew what he was doing, Elaina scowled behind her mask. That Akira… but I'm not going to just sit back and let him take the lead so easily!
"Mukuro, go!" Elaina sent out her Decidueye, the owl pokemon spreading his wings and flying silently into the air.
"Elaina's next pokemon is her Decidueye!" Lila noted.
"That's a really good choice for this battlefield!" Darla explained. "Owls fly silently and can see in the darkness to aid their hunting!"
I've linked my senses with Mukuro's, so now I can see where you are perfectly, Elaina smiled, staring through the darkness at Lilia's outline, preparing to strike.
"Lilia, move back closer to the light," Akira ordered. Lilia scooted back toward the edge of the battlefield, where the shadows were less dense and the terrain was more open. The battlefield wasn't uniformly covered in darkness, letting Lilia take some advantage by giving Akira the ability to make out where their enemy was as well.
Lilia and Akira kept their eyes on the darkness, waiting to see what would come from it. Lilia began to grow concerned. Even though her eyes were perfectly adapted to the dark, she couldn't see the owl pokemon at all, not like when she'd been able to easily follow Noctre's movements previously. Where could the bird pokemon be?
Suddenly, her thoughts were interrupted by a spectral arrow piercing her in the side. She whirled her head to face the direction where it had come from, but couldn't see anything. There wasn't a single sign of the Decidueye anywhere.
"Akira's completely pinned down by Decidueye's silent hunting!" Lila said worriedly. "Cradily can only sit and wait for the attacks to come!"
"It's strange though," Darla said. "You'd think Cradily could see, right?"
"Where could Decidueye be hiding, I wonder?" Kanone asked. His words caused Akira to realize exactly what was going on.
"Lilia! He's hiding in the shadows!" Akira shouted. "He's attacking from below!"
Lilia's eyes slid down to see Mukuro emerge from the shadows at her feet, arrow knocked and ready. Mukuro released the arrow as Lilia scurried to the side, the arrow grazing the side of her head. The arrow tilted in the air and whirled around, shooting back toward her, striking the top of Lilia's torso.
"Cra!" Lilia cried in pain, swinging her tendrils at Mukuro who quickly fluttered out of the way.
"Lilia, use a spray of acid to cover the ground," Akira ordered. Lilia fired waves of acid out of her mouth, coating the ground at her feet in a steaming corrosive substance. If Mukuro tried to emerge around her, he would be in a very bad position.
"Mukuro, blow her away," Elaina ordered. Ghostly winds swirled around Mukuro's body, ominous lights emanating from the center of the darkness. A powerful wave of ghostly energy shook Lilia's body, the wind causing minimal harm but the ghostly energy surging into her caused some critical injuries.
"It seems that the added ghostly punch was just what Elaina needed for her wind attacks to do some serious damage!" Darla noted.
"Cradily took a few burns from earlier against Noivern, too, so she's on her last ropes," Lila added.
"Lilia, use swallow to restore some of your energy," Akira ordered. Lilia swallowed the built up energy into her body, recovering some of her injuries. But this was an opportunity that Elaina took full advantage of.
"Now, Mukuro! Her defenses have weakened!"
Mukuro nodded and faded away into the darkness, reappearing over Lilia's head. He raised his wing and formed it into a fist, spectral energy surging around him. Mukuro drove his fist down onto the top of Lilia's head with a powerful phantom force attack, driving the pokemon's head into the ground.
"Cradily!" Lilia wailed, the sting of the acid eating into her.
"Sacrificing your maneuverability for defense was a critical error!" Elaina shouted. "Mukuro!"
Mukuro flew back into the air, pulling back the string on his feathered bow and crafting three spectral arrows in his clutches. He fired the arrows, two ghostly shafts digging into Lilia's body and the third striking her shadow, pinning her in place.
"Your suction cups were how you kept my attacks from blowing you away? If that's what you'd like, then I'll be happy to keep you pinned down for good!"
Mukuro landed on the ground a good enough distance away from Lilia, holding up one of his wings and forming another arrow that he prepared to shoot at the ancient pokemon.
"Lilia, use stone edge," Akira ordered. Stones erupted from the ground and flew toward Mukuro. Mukuro released the arrow and shattered one of the stones, flapping his wings and taking to the sky to avoid the others. Disappearing into the darkness, Lilia was unable to follow Mukuro's movements, the remaining stones falling to the ground helplessly.
"If we can't follow his movements, then we'll need to pin him down," Akira suggested. "Lilia, use stealth rock." The stones from before were reinvigorated with new energy, hovering up into the air and floating unseen around the battlefield.
Mukuro, we're going to have to evade. Be careful, we don't want those stones closing in on us!
Mukuro nodded in the darkness, Elaina sensing the agreement and preparing to move through the darkness.
"Lilia, use ingrain to begin restoring your strength," Akira ordered, "then-"
An arrow pierced through the darkness, hitting Lilia just below the neck. Lilia coughed out in pain, slumping over.
"With our eyes, we can easily shoot our arrows through the darkness, even with all the obstacles you raised," Elaina boasted. "And believe me, I've fought against stealth rock more than enough to know how to maneuver through it!"
Gerard smirked, nodding in agreement.
Ghostly chains had guided the arrow through the field of stones, sending pulses of ghostly energy into Lilia through the shaft, the ancient pokemon losing consciousness.
"Return, Lilia," Akira said, recalling the pokemon. "You did the best you could. At least we've set up stealth rock."
"With that, Elaina has evened things out between the two of them!" Lila announced.
"Losing a strong rock pokemon is going to be a major blow to Akira's gameplan," Darla said, frowning. "But he still managed to knock out Elaina's Noivern!"
"Yes, but that's nothing to be happy about," Kanone said.
"Huh?" Lila said, turning to look at him.
"What do you mean by that?" Darla asked.
"For a harmonia user, a lead of one or two pokemon isn't a major issue. With a strong enough force, you can overcome a disadvantage like that with just a little bit of control over the tempo for a total sweep." Kanone explained. He chuckled. "Heck, even Akira demonstrated that in his quarter-finals match with that Gyarados of his. That's something Elaina should be far more concerned with than having lost a single pokemon."
"What are you waiting for?" Elaina shouted out across the battlefield. "Send out your next pokemon!"
Well, now's as good a time as any, Akira sighed, reaching into his pocket and withdrawing a cell phone. He typed in a number on the keypad and held it up to his ear.
A soft ring of flute sounds caught Elaina's ear, and she glanced down at the small black bag at her waist.
My phone? But who…
Elaina reached into her purse and withdrew her phone. It wasn't a number registered, an unknown caller. She glanced up to see a close-up of Akira's face on the monitors, and he was pointing at his phone.
"Wha?" Elaina gaped in shock, flipping her phone open and answering it with an angry "what?!"
"What's wrong, Elaina?" Akira's voice rang out in her ear.
"Where did you get my number? And why are you calling me in the middle of the battle?!" Elaina demanded.
"I happen to know a girl with a real knack for disregarding the privacy of others," Akira explained. "She found out quite a bit out about you, Elaina. So I thought I'd call, rather than shouting out a bunch of personal stuff at you from across the battlefield."
"I'm not particularly interested in what you have to say," Elaina snarled.
"I'm only trying to talk, Elaina," Akira said, ignoring Elaina's anger. "See… I heard a lot about your situation. You were found on a small island in the Alola Region. A small girl, in front of a shrine in the Ruins of Abundance. All alone in the middle of the desert. That was when you were about five years old, right? That's the first record of you we could track down. The authorities couldn't find any family of yours on the island, and so they brought you to an orphanage known as the Aether House. If it wasn't for your clothes, they wouldn't even have known your name."
"What's the point of this?" Elaina demanded. "Are you just trying to bring up painful memories for me? Is that what you're after?!"
"I'm trying to get to understand you better, Elaina," Akira said. "Because it's pretty damn clear that you need help. After I read what I read… you've been through some incredibly rough stuff. Isolated and alone. Sure, at first people would take you in, but then it would all go wrong. Your powers manifested and suddenly no one wanted you anymore. You'd be sent from family to family, until your secret came out. Alone and isolated, with no one willing to get close to you, right?!"
"Of course!" Elaina shouted back into her phone, memories stinging her cheeks as she cried. "Enough!" She tried to force herself to drop the phone, but her hands were shaking and she couldn't find the strength to ignore him.
"And then one day you just disappeared. It all just became too much. You couldn't stand the whispers or the looks of fear from those around you, so you ran away with your pokemon into the night, never to be seen again. I get it."
"You don't know a damn thing!" Elaina snarled back. "You think because you read some file you know my whole story? That you understand the pain I've been through?"
She threw back her head and laughed bitterly.
"You can't imagine what it's like to run away knowing everyone would be happier you were gone. The pain of being completely alone in this world, with no one willing to get close to you out of fear of what you might do to them. The fear of knowing you can't even control yourself enough to be around someone you care for…"
Her voice broke, echoing into a snarl just above a whisper.
"So what do you know about me?"
"I only know what I've read. Anything else… you're right, I couldn't begin to guess. So I can only work with what I know. And what I know… what you've been through… it really must have been awful. That's all I can say." Akira's voice was harsh but burned with conviction. "That's why I'm trying to help. So you won't have to be on your own."
"Help," she spat, laughing. "You're all the same, you and Blake, you're so desperate to 'help' me, all for your own smug satisfaction. You have no idea what it's like to be me, and still you think you can help me!"
"You're right, I don't know what it's like to be you," Akira agreed. "But you don't know what it's like to be me, either. You haven't seen a wonderful, sweet girl forcing herself to smile through the pain of her most recent beatings! You don't understand what it's like to see the light in the eyes of a girl you loved slowly grow dimmer and dimmer while you're powerless to do a damn thing!"
Akira swallowed, forcing his frustration down to keep his emotions in check.
"You haven't had to be the one left behind with nothing but your guilt when your dearest friend took her own life, all because you weren't able to do anything to help her!"
Elaina took a step back, shaken by Akira's words, her hand dropping to her side, ignoring her phone. Akira asked her to let him help her again, but his words never reached her ears.
The battle begins. Will Akira be able to beat Elaina? Will he be able to break through to her? Or will Elaina destroy everything that gets in her way? We'll have to see for ourselves!