Pre-chapter A/N; Since everyone is asking for one of these, here's a breakdown of the character names before we get into things
Broly - Kleavor
Quicksilver - Pidgeot (dead)
Kisame - Milotic
Igneel - Charizard
Kenpachi - Tyranitar
Ino - Gardevoir
Snorlax - Snorlax
Tsunade - Clefable
Gai - Hakomo-o
Magnezone - Magnezone
Hashirama- Trevenant
Special thanks to the folks on pa-atreon for making this possible. Now without further ado let's get into it.
Igneel appeared on the floor with a roar that caused total pandemonium. The trainers closest to me began scurrying away, and the two guard Machamps that had been stationed at the entrance began rushing at us. Igneel didn't spend more than a second bathing them in a sea of flames before rushing through those same flames to get them in melee. They didn't even get a second's respite before Igneel had finished with them. The Pidgeot that had been about to fight flew straight at Igneel, but a quick iron tail to the skull sent it into the sweet bliss of unconsciousness.
The Haunter thought to use the flying type's distraction to entrap Igneel in the fumes that made up its body, but it was quickly blown apart in a mini-hurricane. All this happened in a few seconds, but I could already see the rocket's begin to react. A Muk appeared from someone's ball, but Igneel flew a bit into the air before evaporating the garbage pokemon with his flames and nearly suffocating everyone stuck on the ground. Not me, though. Ino was by my side and had been on time to use the right kind of shield to prevent fumes from leaking through. We couldn't stay in the shield indefinitely, but we'd probably survive on rebreathed air for the next few minutes.
I turned to the tinted glass that seperated us from the spectators and prepared to make my invasion.
Of course, that's when shit had to start getting real. One of the fighters turned to me with a snarl on his face. He had been on the other end of the room so he'd been mostly unaffected by the beginning of the battle. At his side appeared a Bisharp, massive and angry. I smiled at the steel type. With Igneel's firepower, the pokemon was barely a threat, but when he released his next pokemon I was forced to reevaluate this. I might not have described it very well, but the room we occupied was massive. Much larger than the average gym hall, with a special cage for battlers to stay in. It was fucking big, but became a lot less large when my opponent released a massive raging Gyrados. In a year of being a trainer, I'd only ever actually fought against the massive sea serpents twice, and each time had been in sanctioned battles with barriers. Now, without any of that and faced with the full force of the pokemon's immense aura and desire for destruction, it was all I could do to resist fainting or running in fright. It was magnificent, and I had the perfect opponent for it. Kisame appeared with a calm whine, settling all my nerves in the way only she could. You see, Kisame had never been a small pokemon. Easily thrice as long as I was tall, but when compared to the Gyrados in front of us, her size became a whole lot less spectacular. I mean she had a tendency to roll up on herself, but even with that, they shouldn't have been that different in terms of size. She was a bit smaller than the average size the pokedex claimed her species was capable of reaching, but this Gyrados had to be much larger than normal for the disparity to make sense.
I felt a small mental poke and nodded at Ino as she drew me out of my thoughts.
"Make sure Igneel and Kisame aren't disturbed" was all I said to Snorlax as I sent him out of his ball. He nodded and ran straight into the mass of pokemon that were being organised into some sort of attack on my person. Igneel then dove straight at the Bisharp, shining like the sun, and Kisame drew all the water helpfully kept in the room's pool for water type battles towards her and surrounded herself in a water prison. It proved to be the right move, as the Gyrados lashed out with a Dragon breath to start things off. It washed against the water with no impact, and she moved her position before he could capitalise on whatever advantage he'd gained by attacking first. Multiple tendrils of water lashed out from her prison and crashed against Gyrados' scales, doing close to no damage and leaving her in position for a counterattack. It chose to try crashing down on her with a thunder fang building between its jaws. With mobility beyond the rest of her species, Kisame evacuated her position with incredible speed. Water prison proved its utility again as it gave her the ability to retreat while attacking, this time turning the tendrils of water into blades of ice. They had a similar effect to her first attack when they hit the serpent's scale. That is, to say they did nothing.
It wasn't done with her, but we had the initiative and were keen to keep things that way. Dragon Pulse, I commanded and watched the air in the arena bend around the attack. It made to connect with devastating power, but a quick protect nullified the attack in its entirety.
"If you think you'll win this, you have something coming. I've seen all your battles. There's absolutely nothing you can do to surprise me or my pokemon" My opponent said from across the field with a disdainful scoff as my attack was blocked. Fuck. I guess being such a media personality wasn't always the best thing. He was still an idiot though. He'd gotten to see my battles and felt opposing me was the wise action to take?
"Doesn't matter how many tsunamis you've seen. When one comes, you run and hide." I said with my best impression of an arrogant huff, turning my nose up at him and enjoying the way his cheeks reddened. Now, time to end this. Igneel gave up on chasing the fleeing Bisharp and banked hard. His flame aura intensified, as he added aerial ace to the blanket of moves he was using simultaneously. We were quickly approaching the limits of his multitasking ability but luckily, he only had to keep the move on for a few seconds. When he crashed into the unsuspecting Gyrados' skull, I smiled at the sound and resulting shockwave that nearly threw me off my feet. The Gyrados crashed instantly, knocked out, and the Bisharp's escape was cut off as it found itself entangled in a series of watery tendrils. Igneel took the opportunity to fly straight at his now stationary opponent, flames wrapped around his fist. "Jetburn fist" I shouted as he crashed into the Bisharp with his overpowered fire punch. It fell into unconsciousness just as quickly as its compatriot had, and I smiled at my opponent in pity as he fell to his knees.
"And now you know despair. Worry not, though, you are not the first, and will not be the last to fall before me" My inner weeb practically jumped for joy at the sheer power of cool in those words.
I looked for snorlax in the crowd of pokemon and found him doing what he did best, lashing out with ferocious strength and brutality. He punched through one Zubat and kicked a Nidorino straight into the wall before turning on the spot and unleashing a hyperbeam in the form of a wave at all the pokemon trying to surround him. I just smiled and left him to it before Ino grabbed on to me and telekinetically floated to the tinted glass. If Oak's device worked as it ought, there should be no means of escape for the rocket backers. Ino shattered the glass with psychic power and I was faced with the elites of Indigo. Rich men and women, all with more than enough money to live without limits, and here they sat, prepared to watch pokemon brutality and contributing to Rocket's pocket. The scum of the earth, and of course I had to recognise one of them.
"Mr. Silph?" I asked, doing what I was sure was my best impression of a confused fish.
"Donnell, my boy. I guess it's time to surrender" He said in reply, letting out a nervous laugh. I wasn't fooled by it though, there was an intelligence to his eyes, he was working on a way to get out of this. If I hadn't been paying such close attention to him, I wouldn't have noticed it in time. My instincts screamed at me in warning. It took all I could do to dive into Ino, mentally screaming at her to teleport the fuck out of there. We just barely made it to the ground to see a massive beam of light pass through the space we'd occupied a few seconds earlier. Fuck. I watched in a shocked state of awe as fucking Mewtwo floated out of the viewing room, fixing me with a look of disdain that seemed to fit perfectly on his face, those flowing orbs making hit clear that I'd find no mercy from him. Good. I wouldn't be needing any. Months ago, I'd fought Mewtwo. I'd pulled out my entire team and been forced to still surrender to spare their lives. Now? We wouldn't be the ones surrendering. When I got time to myself and got to go over the battle again, I realised that the Mewtwo Giovanni could call upon was a mere shadow of the strength it had possessed in the anime. Fantastically powerful, don't get me wrong, but not on the level of a natural phenomenon like a Legendary pokemon. It was more like Lance's Dragonite than Moltres.
I couldn;t hold back against it, so it was time to pull out the big guns. I moved my hands, unleashing all my pokemon from their balls in a coordinated manoeuvre I'd practised religiously. My entire team stood arrayed before me, with the exception of Magnezone and Tsunade of course, I still had a carry limit.
"Let's go" was all I said, coordinating the rest of my plan with them through aura. I was confident in Ino's mental abilities, but I wouldn't be surprised if Mewtwo could do some bullshit that let him tap into that connection, It was just the sort of hax powers that would exist only to fuck with me to an illogical extreme. Fuck my life, man.
Enough whining though, time to make a psychic pay for the sins of his father. I had a bone to pick with Giovanni, after all. He was the idiot who set this all into motion and ruined my plans of becoming champion. Yes, ruined. No way was I going to become champion after fighting the league so publically. Igneel growled and flew right up at the floating psychic. I saw it raise its hand, and the next thing I knew, my fire dragon was crashing back into the ground like he'd been swatted by the hand of God himself. Ino jumped behind me, stretching her psychic influence across the whole battlefield. Kenpachi and Hashirama stood together, preparing a combination move of some sort and Kisame herself just floated forwards, straight at out opponent. He tried to swat her down with Gravity, but she just shrugged the move off. After all, she wasn't the one moving. All he was doing was making it a tiny bit harder to control her water shell. With him distracted, Broly kicked off the ground, sweeping right at the psychic legendary. It twisted in the air, moving out of the way of Broly's attacks, at the same time creating a shield that Kisame's attacks broke against.
The earth beneath my feet began to vibrate, before shattering under the influence of Kenpachi's earthquake. From the cracks in the ground, plants began to appear. The beginnings of a veritable forest. I see, Kenpachi had softened the ground to make it easier for Hashirama to use his ultimate move in this concrete wasteland. Of course, I didn't see the point of a forest in this battle, considering the rest of us were not immune to the pollen from the second half of the technique. But since I'd told him to let loose and do what felt right, I could not fault his actions.
Mewtwo moved, avoiding the trees as they began to cover the 'skyline'. When the forest was done growing, the psychic legendary just shot me the most disappointed look he could manage. I just smiled in reply, thankful that he couldn't make it into my head without dedicating time and effort. I'd trained my mental resistance with Ino on a daily basis. She couldn't even make it into my head without me letting her these days, and Mewtwo could not be so much more powerful than she was.
Igneel barreled through the space Mewtwo had occupied, but he simply seemed to phase through the genetically engineered pokemon. The psybeam that crashed into his back was enough to make me wince in sympathy. I wasn't deeply connected to any of my pokemon with aura, having learned my lesson with Gai's rampage, but I could still feel echoes of what they felt. Mewtwo, tired of remaining on the defensive flew straight at me, but he was face to face with Gai in a second. The Kommo-o had been hidden, searching for the right moment to attack, and as his fist was blocked with a shield, I knew he'd done it. His other fist swept right past Mewtwo's defences, and made devastating contact with the pokemon's face. A perfect hit! That was easy, almost too easy. And I was proven right when the attack didn't even budge the psychic. Fuck. He just turned to Gai and stretched fingers out, slamming him back into the ground with force aplenty. Kisame's attempts to entrap him in water whips didn't work as he moved, using the forest his advantage. Snorlax's roar of victory told me he was done with the grunts so things would be getting a bit easier here. Kenpachi was standing still, waiting in front of me for the seemingly inevitable legendary pokemon. This was a bit harder than expected, but altogether not out of our abilities. I just had to make sure the rich bastards didn't somehow escape while I was distracted.
XXXXXX- THE SINNOH ELITE
Garchomp's mega evolution was every bit as breathtaking as we all expected it to be. Not like there was much breathing going on when the evolution took place though. We'd all collectively watched with bated breath, all our strongest pokemon around us. We were ready for the explosion we knew would be coming.
When the light of evolution died down, we were looking at a pokemon as different as it was the same. For every thing it shared with its lesser counterpart, mega Garchomp had something to set it apart. It's whole body was more angular, if I cou;d use that word. Everything just seemed that little bit sharper on its new form. Its claws and fins, terrifying in their own right, had fused into massive scythes that looked sharp and strong enough to cleave a Snorlax in twain. From its abdomen came a new set of spikes to add to the ones already around its body. In conclusion, Mega Garchomp was a mean bad motherfucker, and from the roar it let out, an angry one as well.
It turned to its trainer as she began walking towards it. Lucian had done his best to try to convince her to stay farther away from the pokemon, but I could tell that his efforts were half hearted at best. After all, if the champion killed herself from her own carelessness, then she'd be doing us all a favour. We respected her, but that didn't mean we'd ever be happy to have her as champion.
HEr Dragon roared as she approached, but that did nothing to slow her down, it even made her speed up her approach. I resisted the urge to facepalm as her first words reached my ears. "Behave yourself, Garchomp. You're embarrassing me." The scary part was that her chiding succeeded in calming the dragon. She criticised an enraged dragon and got it to calm down. What the fuck is she?
"Ok, now that we've settled that. Will you help us stretch our wings" She spoke, after spending a few minutes running her hands across her pokemon's body. It was clear that she was addressing us, and while I felt the temptation to just say no, the trainer in me could not allow such a challenge go unanswered. That sentiment was clearly shared by the rest of the elite as we turned to each other, coming to an agreement without words.
"Prepare yourself, Champion. You will now be faced with the awesome teamwork of the elite four" Lucian said, spreading his hands wide and leaning back like some villain from a television show. At the same time, he had Bronzong connect all our minds and we began to plan.
"Ground rules?" She asked with a smirk, ignoring the melodrama of Lucian's declaration.
"Two pokemon each. We remain in a state of emergency, and League policy states that we cannot have more than half of our teams incapacitated from training at any time," I said, stepping into the discussion in the real world, while criticising Flint's harebrained scheme in the mental one. It took a special kind of mind to adequately split focus between both realms. Lucian and I were the only ones of the four capable of doing it with any degree of competence, so it often fell to us to distract our adversaries whenever situations like this popped up, which, admittedly, wasn't very often.
"I agree. Let's go," was all the Champion said before the massive dragon flew right at Volcarona. I'd seen this coming. The dragon was passable in long range, but its true strength lay in close combat engagements. Those scythes looked to have nothing but bad intentions for whoever managed to get within their range. Thankfully, Infernape intervened before the dragon could get very far. The fire monkey jumped straight at our shared adversary, enhanced with the power of bulk up and swords dance, and started wailing on him with powerful punches, each more devastating than the last. Not like one would be able to tell from just watching the Garchomp continue his pursuit, entirely ignoring the monkey clinging onto him. The only reason I even knew the attacks were powerful was because I'd gotten the pleasure of watching Flint try out that combination before. Let's just say Heracross now had a healthy appreciation for the Infernape line.
I watched with bated breath as they got closer to my ace, her attack yet to be fully prepared. My worries proved unfounded as the dragon was halted in its tracks, the blue glow of psychic surrounding it. It fought against even that move, but its struggles were pointless. A single explosive spark flew from between Volcarona's wings and hit both pokemon, or only one pokemon if everything went according to plan. The sky was covered in bright light and my ears heard nothing. It was silent, the kind of silence that accompanied loss of hearing.
When the light died, I was met with something that should not have been a surprise. Garchomp floated in the sky, untouched. A powerful attack like that and it just shrugged it off. Fuck, but we can't stop now. Maintain the tempo, I thought to myself as Mega Steelix crashed right into it. Bronzong and Mr. Mime had added their psychic power to the steel type's own strength to allow it to jump that high. When they collided, Mega Garchomp was forced to move for the first time in this battle, and we had the initiative. Both pokemon crashed into the ground, but Garchomp had been able to wrestle his way out from underneath his assailant and was able to land relatively intact. But it was on the ground now, and the second part of the plan started to kick in.
Bronzong's eyes took on a bright blue glow as he raised his hands. I could see the air around Garchomp warp under the influence of increased gravity. The gravity itself was only able to slow him down, but that was enough for what was coming. Rhyperior strode into the gravity field with a smile that looked especially cruel on its stony face. Espeon's eyes glowed to show that she was doing her bit to protect Rhyperior from the influence of her comrade's move. The old elite pokemon was keen on revenge. When both pokemon met in the middle, Garchomp struck first, but Rhyperior just endured the attack and lashed out with the force of one of its drill arms. Even Mega Garchomp was sent reeling from the force of the blow. The crafty pokemon had found a way to imbue the shifting and quaking force from earthquake into its fists for increased striking power. Even a durable monster like Garchomp couldn't just shrug that off.
Rhyperior moved in and landed another vicious haymaker. Garchomp took the attack even better and struck with a counter almost instantly, but Rhyperior just calmly moved out of the way of the slower attack and punched Garchomp into the ground once more. The attacks were devastating. When Garchomp stood once more, Rhyperior moved in with two punches to the midsection, each one creating massive shockwaves. I was barely able to keep my footing but Garchomp did not share my problem. It took a third punch to put the pseudo-legendary down and Rhyperior calmly waited in a ready position for Garchomp to get up. It took us a while to realize that he wasn't going to be getting back on his feet on his own. Rhyperior walked on over to him and stretched a hand to pick up the Ground type Dragon. That was the moment he struck. Hyperbeam. The blue beam of concentrated energy sailed right over Rhyperior's shoulder and I would have been able to count the attack as a missed last ditch effort if I didn't notice the trajectory. It was heading right for Bronzong.
No one had expected Bronzong to be attacked from such a distance, so Espeon was the only one in range to protect him from the attack. She ended her defence of Rhyperior and stepped in front of Bronzong, using protect to stop the attack from interfering with the Bronze pokemon's concentration. It was the right move. With all the information available, it was the right move. But now, knowing what came next, I had to admit that it would have been better for Bronzong to end his attack and defend himself. Perhaps Garchomp would have been slowed down for a few seconds by the absence of intense gravity. Instead of that, Rhyperior was beset with the gravity field without protection and nearly went down just from the force. It wouldn't have been that bad if Garchomp didn't choose that moment to stop holding back. One of his scythes went for Rhyperior's knee and sent the powerful rock type crashing to the floor.
Garchomp rose like an avenging angel, and even if Espeon had since returned her protection to Rhyperior, it was too little and much too late. Garchomp had seized the initiative and, like a Growlithe with a bone, was extremely unwilling to let go of it. He wailed on Rhyperior with punches and slashes, each powerful enough to tear through steel. Eventually, when it became clear that Rhyperior was only seconds away from being knocked out, Bertha returned him to his ball to avoid further brutality. Now that he stood alone and unmolested under the gravity field, the monster started walking. He didn't even attempt to snipe Bronzong from range. He just walked out of the gravity field. He probably knew that the move needed a fixed epicentre and that if Bronzong wanted to move it, he had to end the move and use it again, giving him more than enough time to escape. Moments like this served to remind me of the kind of genius Cynthia Shirona was. After I stopped underestimating her, all her actions started to show the signs of a keen mind.
The moment he left the gravity field, Steelix sent a tail crashing right at his midsection, a giant, powerful attack that hit nothing but air. Mamoswine's charge was similarly avoided and we were now playing a completely different game with the powerful pokemon. No longer content to just sit and take our attack, flexing his incredible durability, he was now putting more effort in avoiding attacks and trying to counter. 'Why?', I thought to myself as he avoided a flamethrower from Volcarona with all the ease of a fly dodging the swats of an irritated grandma. It was ridiculous but that's what I focused my mind on figuring out. Something told me that the answer to that question would be key for winning this engagement. Sure, there wasn't anything officially at stake. But beyond that? When one looked underneath the underneath? This was Cynthia's opportunity to establish the pecking order. The Champion chose the order of the elites and Cynthia had so far shown little respect for Gerald's chosen order. Sometimes ignoring Lucian in favour of Flint, and other times seeking my impute instead of Bertha's.
She'd been taunting us with a revamping of the elite order and I was honestly looking forward to it. As number four, I had nowhere to go but up. To do that though, I had to put on a more impressive showing than what I was presently doing.
"Galvantula," I shouted with a wide grin. "Light it up!," her enthusiastic warbles were music to my ears as she prepared to unleash the electricity she'd been gathering since the fight began. She hadn't gotten the chance to show it against Garchomp in their 1v1, but after Volcarona, she was my most powerful long range attacker. I watched with a smile as the hair on my arms began to stand from the static in the air.
Volcarona had done her part beautifully. Her earlier attack on Mega Garchomp had gathered the necessary clouds, and now they were being supercharged with electrons. This was our magnum opus. Volcarona could generate enough power to dry up an ocean, but she'd always had that power. We hadn't worked from it, but for Galvantula, I'd been there every step of the way and this move was the culmination of years of teamwork, and blood, sweat, and tears. Enough of that sentimentality though, it was time to trigger it.
The skies darkened even further and I raised a single hand to the heavens for maximum drama. "Prepare yourself, Champion. You've yet to see my full power" My smile was bright and smug. This move had been years of work and had been in the pipeline for even longer.
When it was finally ready, evidenced by the flashes of lightning I could see in the storm clouds, I brought my hand down as a cue for Galvantula.
She didn't disappoint. A blinding bolt of lightning. Easily as wide as Garchomp was tall crashed right into the pokemon as he was dodging a hit from Mamoswine. It had no chance to even prepare itself as the rest of the elite four had kept it on its toes. The lightning struck with all the force of nature. Mega Garchomp went down and my smile could have split the heavens in that moment, but in the next, it was gone like it was never even there.
The fucker got back up. It fucking got back up. How the fuck? What the fuck? That was lightning. Genuine lightning. Hotter than the surface of the sun. That attack should have been fatal against any other pokemon. The only reason I'd seen fit to use it here was because of Garchomp's innate resistance and his power. Even with that, it was a one-hit knockout. It should have been. All my calculations were precise. No pokemon should have been able to take that attack and get up. Not to talk of still continuing to move.
He was slow, slower than even under the gravity field, but his steps were sure. He got to his feet and smiled right at me. A nasty, brutal thing. Unsightly.
"Beautiful attack, Aaron," Cynthia complimented, but I could barely even hear her. "It would have actually taken down Garchomp, but we can clearly see that Mega Garchomp is just a touch above that." I fell to my knees in despair.
"I think I'll end the exhibition there. We've got a good look at Mega Garchomp, haven't we?"
A/N; A day late, but hopefully not disappointing. Yes, Garchomp is still the strongest pokemon in the verse. But I'm trying to build one where even the strongest pokemon can be taken out with the right combination of prep and power. That clearly didn't work here, but an electric-type attack against a ground type pokemon was never going to end well.
Thanks for reading. We're about halfway through chapter 54 on the pa-atreon page. Feel free to join me there if you feel like supporting my work. Same username as up here. The link's on my profile.