Rafe's Medicham was defeated! That's not good! If he loses all of his pokemon, will that mean he becomes possessed by Samarra too? Things are really heating up in this battle, and we've reached the climax! Will the sibling duo be able to defeat Mason and his final maid pokemon? Or will his team finish sweeping them up? The battle comes to a conclusion in this chapter!

KedharS: That tends to be the case.

Hyphenman: It would be very bad if Ian's theory proves to be correct. Which probably means it will be.

Pokemon Academy: Beginning of Beginnings

Chapter 1197

"No way… Rafe lost…" Ian was shocked. Rafe was such a powerful trainer, there was no way all his pokemon were defeated. And yet the results spoke for themselves. He wasn't able to use his Delphox or his Swoobat, and his Oranguru, Malamar, Xatu, and Medicham had all fallen. This was the end, now Callie was the only trainer left on their side with pokemon!

"This isn't good," Donoma said, biting her lip. She wasn't the only one feeling anxious. They were all wondering about Ian's little theory from earlier.

If Rafe lost the battle… then didn't that mean he was possessed by Samarra now?

Callie stared at her brother. Her mouth was wide open with shock and her eyes bulged out as she saw the expression on his face.

He seemed completely nonchalant.

"Well, what can you do?" Rafe shrugged, smiling good-naturedly as he recalled Charon to his pokeball.

"How are you so cool about this?!" Callie exclaimed, even when she already knew the answer. The reason he was so cool about this was because nothing ever bothered Rafe, he just wasn't that type of person.

"Oh? What's the issue?" Rafe asked, raising his eyebrow.

"What's the-? What's the issue?!" She screamed. "The issue is the fact that Charon just fainted! Now we're down to just me and Jaina fighting Mason's last two pokemon! That's a huge fucking issue you absolutely moron!"

Rafe blinked. "Well, why don't I just use my next pokemon, then? You don't have to fight him all by yourself you know."

"Yes, I do have to fight him all by myself, because you don't have a- wait, WHAT?!" Callie's mouth opened even wider if that were even possible. It looked like she was able to fit an entire pokeball through the hole.

"YOU HAVE ANOTHER POKEMON?!"

Rafe removed his fingers from his ears. "Well… yeah? Why do you think I'm not panicking? Pay attention Callie, geez."

Mason's face darkened. Rafe had another pokemon? That wasn't something he'd heard about, or any of Samarra's other friends, for that matter.

"Seriously? Rafe has a hidden seventh pokemon?" Ian's eyes widened and he couldn't help the giddy smile that spread across his face. A seventh pokemon… something he'd been keeping as a trump card! He had to pay attention, Rafe might choose to use that pokemon against him!

"I've been keeping it on reserve," Rafe explained. "Since you always give me trouble about my Psychic/Flying types."

"I don't always give- whatever! Just send it out already!" Callie muttered. She felt like she was going to die of shame after calling out her brother like that over a misunderstanding, she'd gotten so worked up for no reason.

"Sounds like a plan," Rafe grinned. "Plato!"

Rafe threw a pokeball into the air, and a surprising pokemon emerged.

"Braviary!" The bird pokemon squawked, flapping his wings and taking to the sky. It was a very familiar pokemon, but at the same time, it wasn't. This Braviary was different from the common ones people normally encountered.

For a second, Callie thought it was a shiny. His feathers lacked the ostentatious red, white, blue, and gold patterns of Braviary, instead being colored a more gentle white a gray. But there were other differences besides just color. Plato's plumage was fluffier than the striking feathers of most Braviary, seeming more cottony, like the wings of an Altaria. Most telling of all, however, were the colored feathers on his crest. They were purple and mint green in a ripple-like pattern, and gave Callie an odd feeling. She could just sense psychic energy coming off the pokemon. How strange.

"There's something odd about that pokemon," Alden said, putting words to the thoughts of everyone watching the fight. "It looks like a Braviary, but it's not like any I've ever seen before. Is it a regional variant? But from where?"

A startled cry and a thud got everyone's attention, and all heads turned to spot the most unlikely of culprits.

Ange had fallen to her knees. Her face was white with shock and her eyes bulged out of her skull. The cry had come from her.

"Impossible…" She whispered, her entire body shaking. "How… how? How could… how could that pokemon be here!?"

"What? You recognize it?" Donoma asked, raising her eyebrow. That was a very curious response. While she had traveled back to Agate Village with Ange, the nature of the girl was a complete mystery to her. The only thing she knew was that the cold woman hadn't said a word the entire trip.

And now she was more expressive than she'd been even in her battle with Mirar. It made Donoma feel intrigued.

"That pokemon… is a Braviary… but it shouldn't exist…" Ange shivered, and her eyes started to water. "That pokemon… was already… supposed to be dead…"

She couldn't stop the tears from coming out. She broke down crying, to everyone's confusion. She didn't care; none of that mattered anymore.

Hisuian Braviary were supposed to be extinct. She thought she'd never see one again. But there it was, soaring proudly in the sky in defiance of the dictate of history.

Ange remembered her own experience of flying on the back of a Braviary just like that one. A time that had long-since past.

"How…?" She whispered. "How did you survive?"

"Survive?" Alden asked, narrowing his eyes. "What do you mean by that?"

Ange sniffled and stood back up, finally feeling strength in her legs again. She wiped the tears from her eyes. "That Braviary… is a relic of the past. Hundreds of years ago in the region that's now called Sinnoh, there existed several species of pokemon that have since gone extinct. Psychic type Braviary are one of them. My own Zoroark is also a pokemon that should have gone extinct, but…"

Ange's circumstances were slightly different. She seriously doubted that Rafe had traveled through time like her. That was all she was willing to share with the others, though.

Donoma blinked, stroking her chin thoughtfully. "So… what you're saying is that Rafe has a pokemon that absolutely shouldn't exist? How fascinating!"

"They were extinct," Ange mumbled, shaking her head. She was still having trouble accepting that this wasn't just a dream. And she was also having trouble keeping a smile from overwhelming her face. She started shedding tears of joy once more. "I don't believe it… how could something like that… even be possible?"

Callie looked at her brother, stunned. Rafe had done a lot of strange things over the years, but this was the first time she'd ever seen him use a pokemon that was supposed to be extinct. She wasn't quite sure what to make of it, honestly.

"Rafe… where did you catch that pokemon?" She asked curiously.

"Uh… where did I catch him…?" Rafe wondered, tapping his chin. He smiled sheepishly at his little sister. "Sorry Callie, I don't really remember."

Callie's eye twitched. She sighed.

"Damn it. Fine, whatever. It was dumb thinking I could get a straight answer out of you anyway," she muttered, shaking her head. Classic Rafe. "Let's just focus on the battle."

"Yes, let's," Mason growled. He didn't care that Rafe was using some ancient extinct pokemon. The only thing that mattered was defeating Rafe in battle. And that bird would go down as easily as his Xatu did, especially when he had Maika to rely on! "Maika, use blizzard!"

"Froslass!" Maika raised her arms and summoned a massive wave of ice and snow that billowed across the battlefield towards the two pokemon.

"Oh, no you don't!" Callie snapped. "Jaina! Wide guard!"

"Mienshao!" Jaina swung her arm and created a wide barrier of golden light that protected the two pokemon from the effects of the blizzard.

"Thank you little sister," Rafe smiled. "Now let me repay the favor! Plato, use tailwind!"

"Braviary!" Plato squawked, flapping his wings. He summoned a massive gust of wind that boosted the speed of the pokemon on their side of the battlefield, and Jaina immediately leapt into action, charging at Tohru.

"Remember Jaina, she's going to defend with mystical fire again," Callie warned. "We've got to be more strategic about our strikes!"

They couldn't just rely on a flurry of blows with their acrobatics. If they wanted to minimize the damage they would take, then they needed to use bigger moves that didn't make as much contact with their opponent.

And Callie had just the one.

"Use blaze kick!" She ordered. What was good for the goose was good for the gander. Charon had managed to get through Tohru's mystical fire with a fire punch of his own. It stood to reason that Jaina would be able to do the same by lighting her leg on fire, no?

Well, they were going to put that idea into practice. Jaina leapt into the air and turned her body into a roundhouse kick, the tip of her foot burning brightly. Even as Tohru created a curtain of rainbow-colored fire that surrounded her body, she couldn't put up a big enough shield fast enough to fully block the attack. Jaina's foot connected with the Hatterene's chest and she was sent flying backwards.

"Oh, no you don't!" Mason snarled. "How dare you hurt one of my maids?! Maika, use ice beam on her, now!"

"Froslass!" Maika raised her hands and opened her mouth, firing a beam of icy energy at Jaina and hitting her in the back. But she could only aim at one target at a time.

"Be careful," Rafe grinned. "You don't know what my boy is capable of. Plato!"

"Braviary!" Plato tucked in his wings and dive-bombed towards the Froslass, carried forward by the momentum from tailwind. When he'd gotten about halfway to the pokemon he spread his wings open again, but this time something was different. The feathers on Plato's wings, as Callie had noted before, were supposed to be snow white on the back. But these were not. Instead, they were glowing the same purplish-mint pattern as the plumes on Plato's head.

To Callie's surprise, Plato seemed to pick up speed, even though spreading his wings should have increased the drag on his body like a parachute. But no, he was definitely moving faster. His body started to blur as he got closer to Maika, and he slammed his wing into the Froslass' side with all his might.

"FROSLASS!" Jaina cried in pain as she was knocked back by the attack. She turned and tried to fire a shadow ball at the soaring Braviary, but her attack missed him by a mile.

"What was with that speed?" Ian asked, stunned. "I've never seen an attack like that before!"

"It's esper wing," Ange answered. "It's the signature move of Hisuian Braviary. It has 80 base power and a heightened chance of scoring a critical hit, due to the user's psychic abilities allowing it to hone in on its foes' weak points."

She smirked. "It also boosts speed by one stage."

"An 80 base power move that boosts speed?!" Chloe exclaimed, her jaw dropping in shock.

"That's really powerful," Alden said, taken aback. The moves he knew that boosted speed while dealing damage were moves like flame charge, which were much lower on the power scale than that. That was comparable to a dark pulse or a shadow ball in terms of raw power!"

"I can't believe a pokemon capable of power like that could have gone extinct," Chloe mused. She really wanted one, it looked so cool! But as she said that, a shadow crossed Ange's face.

"The reason they went extinct was due to human beings," she snarled.

"Wh-What?" Chloe mumbled, stepping back. She felt an ominous aura emanating from Ange.

"When human settlers came to the Hisui Region, the habitable areas began to experience overpopulation," Ange growled. "There just weren't enough settlements in the southern parts of the region to inhabit. So they continued pressing north, into the habitats of Braviary and other species of pokemon. Before then, the cold had been too daunting for any settlements to last long, but as technology improved the people found it easier to warp the environment to suit their needs. They drove several of the existing species to extinction. Without the Hisuian Sneasel that were their primary source of food, the Braviary populations migrated elsewhere, causing the few that remained to die off due to lack of viable mates."

Every word from her lips was filled with ire and hatred. No one said anything in response, they just turned their attention back to the battle at hand.

Whatever was going on with Ange, it really wasn't any of their business, was it?

Callie, on the other hand, didn't give a damn about history or extinction or any of that. She was too busy reaping the rewards of the change in their fortune.

Sending out Plato had caused the entire dynamic of the battle to shift. Now Mason was on the defensive, and his maid pokemon were weakening against the Braviary's ferocious attacks.

Mason wasn't a fool, and Samarra wasn't either. She could tell they were on their last legs.

"We're going to lose," she screamed at Mason. "Why are you this useless? Even with all the power I've given you, you still can't defeat those two?"

"I'm trying my hardest!" Mason shouted back. "But it's not like I could have predicted an ancient pokemon like that coming out of nowhere!"

Samarra had to admit… he wasn't wrong. At the end of the day, the problem was simply a lack of resources. Callie had used three pokemon in this battle, and Rafe had used five. Comparatively, Mason had only used six.

There was simply no way for a trainer of his caliber to overwhelm that numbers advantage. It was just too difficult for six pokemon to defeat eight. She supposed she should applaud him for being able to fight as well as he had, given the circumstances.

"…Very well then," Samarra said, accepting this match as lost. "As my friend, I will have you do one final favor for me, before you're defeated."

"Anything," Mason said eagerly. Like his maids, he was eager to serve.

"Concentrate your attacks on that bird," Samarra ordered. "I want it defeated. I don't care about the girl. But that man is a very powerful trainer, if we can defeat him here, then he will be an excellent friend to me."

That was her goal. Just as Ian had guessed, if Mason was able to defeat one of the Crawford siblings, then even if he lost the overall match, it wouldn't matter, the one he defeated would still become Samarra's friend.

Samarra recognized that this was the strategy she should have employed from the start. But she had been too arrogant, riding the high of Mason's prior victory over Chloe, and she'd gotten greedy. She'd thought that she could defeat both Rafe AND Callie, and get two friends for the price of one battle, when really she should have been prioritizing defeating the stronger of the two in order to bolster the strength of her friend group.

Well, making friends was a learning process. Sometimes you screwed up.

"Tohru! Maika!" Mason shouted. He used Samarra's harmonia to convey the change in his plans. "Use shadow ball and ice beam!"

"Hatterene!" Tohru nodded, opening her mouth and creating an orb of ghostly energy that she fired at Plato.

"Froslass!" Maika did the same with her ice beam, aiming right for the avian pokemon.

"They're doubling up on him!" Ian shouted.

"Makes sense, that's what I'd do," Donoma nodded. "Err, I mean, oh no! How mean! That's not fair!" She quickly corrected herself.

Ian bit his lip. It looked like his theory was proven true after all. Mason had sensed that his pokemon didn't have the strength left to beat both of them, so he was trying to take out the stronger trainer with super-effective attacks to help Samarra.

"Oh, no you don't!" Callie snapped. "I'm the only one that gets to pick on my big brother! Jaina! Use ally switch!"

"Mienshao!" Jaina began to glow and Plato started glowing as well. Using her mental powers, Jaina teleported to where Plato was, while at the same time sending him off to safety. She appeared just in time to brace herself for the incoming attacks.

"Thanks for the assist, little sis," Rafe winked to Callie. "I knew I could win you over when it came to tag battles."

"Whatever!" Callie spat, her face heating up. "This is just what a good tag partner does, don't read into it! Besides, Jaina can take it! She's calmed her mind, after all!"

With the boost to her special defense, Jaina was able to withstand the powerful attacks from the two pokemon. It helped that neither was super-effective. She landed in the grass, panting, weakened from the blows but still conscious.

Meanwhile, Plato was already preparing his counterattack.

"Ominous wind!" Rafe ordered.

"Braviary!" Plato flapped his wings and sent waves of shadows rolling across the battlefield. The ghostly winds struck both pokemon and filled them with haunting spiritual energy, causing Mason to shiver as well. He stepped back, trembling.

"This is… too much…" He gasped out. "Tohru… Maika…"

"Go, Jaina!" Callie shouted, using the opportunity her brother had provided to press their attack.

With her speed from agility and the boost from the tailwind to cross the distance between herself and Maika in a flash. She leapt at the stunned Froslass and lifted her leg, flames burning across her foot. She brought it down on the Froslass' head and Maika wailed in pain, while Mason shrieked. It felt like his head was being set on fire.

"Nice work, sis," Rafe nodded. "Plato! Finish off that Hatterene now!"

"Braviary!" Plato flew towards Tohru at his maximum speed. The Hatterene's eyes flashed and she fired a moonblast at the bird pokemon, but Plato was far too fast to be hit by a move like that. He did a barrel roll to evade and came crashing down on Tohru, filling his claws with ghostly energy. He hit her with a powerful shadow claw and the slender pokemon crumpled, falling to the ground.

Both of Mason's pokemon had been knocked unconscious by the Crawford siblings' combination attack. Mason collapsed seconds later, and Callie was soon to follow.

The battle was over. And now that the adrenaline rush was gone, the pain from her injuries was swift to return.

Nice! They managed to win, without either trainer getting possessed by Samarra! It's a good thing Rafe had that trump card up his sleeve, a Hisuian Braviary! What an excellent pokemon to use! Now where did he get it…? I bet Ange's going to have a lot of questions after this. But for now, we need to make sure Callie's okay!