Willa's used some strange drugs to improve her harmonia capabilities! Will Marion ever be able to catch a break? How many fish can she possibly have left, anyway? We've entered the climax of the fight, where Marion's forced to give it everything she has! Can she defeat Willa and her incredibly powerful Slowbro? Or will the pharmacist prove her superiority through her pokemon's strange capabilities and her own drugs? The battle comes to a conclusion with this chapter!
KedharS: Yep, she really doesn't care about stuff like that.
Gyvarius: No, Blake will be tortured for a little longer unfortunately.
RKS Legacy: I thought it was a creative way to implement the move.
Guest: Thanks, but it's fine.
Hyphenman: I don't know how effective the pills will be, but Marion's certainly worried. We'll have to see if there are any side-effects.
Pokemon Academy: Beginning of Beginnings
Chapter 1206
"Pelletier! Use psychic!" Willa shouted. Her harmonia was going wild and she focused her powers on her Slowbro, causing his strength to boost considerably.
"Whoa, she's so strong now!" Keya gasped. He was the only other person who could sense the change in Willa. The others had a good impression that something was different now, but none of them could tell how serious it was like Keya could.
"I wonder what was in those pills?" Donoma mused. They'd certainly had Marion spooked.
Pelletier began to spin on his tail, his body glowing blue. Then a blue light appeared around Solo, holding the school of Wishiwashi in place with his psychic powers.
"Wishiwashi?!" Solo cried, flailing helplessly against the Slowbro's psychic power. Their body was having a difficult time maintaining its connection and soon they degraded into a roiling mass of fish pokemon trying to break free.
Marion's head throbbed with pain as she felt the psychic energies bombard her. But she had to hold on, she couldn't give in here.
Luckily, Solo wasn't the only pokemon she had to fight with!
"Harry! Use dark pulse!" She shouted to her Overqwil. It felt odd, giving him orders like that. Harry was a physical attacker, and yet she'd primarily been relying on his special attacking moves, which were far from his specialty.
Well, what could she do? That Slowbro's physical defenses were too high!
"Overqwil!" Harry, safely back in the water, inflated his body up and fired a blast of dark energy at the Slowbro, hitting him directly.
"Slooooow!" Pelletier cried, stumbling back. His psychic hold over Solo was broken and the Wishiwashi quickly reformed into a massive fish, hovering over the battlefield with the power of their flippers. And they were angry.
"I know what you're feeling, Solo!" Marion nodded to her school of pokemon. They were united under a common thought- payback!
"Wishiwashi!" Solo swam at max speed towards Pelletier, preparing another beat up barrage. But Willa knew what was coming and she wasn't about to let it happen. Pelletier had more ways to attack than just with his psychic powers.
"Your fish work together quite well," she mused, narrowing her eyes. "But we'll have to break them apart. Pelletier!"
She didn't give her order verbally. Because of her harmonia, she didn't have to. She focused her thoughts and bonded with her Slowbro, letting him know what she wanted him to attack with. Pelletier glanced back and nodded, preparing to strike.
As Solo approached, the fish began to pick up speed, and started fragmenting until they formed their wall of Wishiwashi again. That was the moment Pelletier had been waiting for. His eyes flashed with blue light.
"Wishiwashi?!" Solo wailed. Marion felt her entire body seize up, like she was paralyzed. But this was even worse. She couldn't move at all.
"What did you do?!" Marion cried, struggling to make her fingers twitch. She couldn't even do that much.
"I stopped your pokemon in their tracks," Willa smirked. "Using a move called disable."
"Oh, that's not good," Alden winced. "Disable is a pretty dangerous move."
"What's it do?" Giselle asked.
"It's a move that stops a pokemon from using the last move it used," Ian explained. "And for those Wishiwashi, that move was beat up. So now if they try to use beat up again, their bodies will freeze up like that."
For a normal pokemon, that wouldn't be such a big deal. But Solo wasn't a normal pokemon. They were, in fact, 251 different pokemon all working together as one mass.
So to be frozen like this, even temporarily, was a huge danger. After all, they were only strong when they were working as a collective; even their beat up attacks barely left a scratch on Pelletier because they were using a solo Wishiwashi's mediocre attack stat.
If Pelletier didn't let them reform, then they were sitting ducks.
"Time to go bowling," Willa sneered. "Shadow ball!"
"Slowbro!" Pelletier opened his mouth and fired a blast of ghostly energy at the wall of Wishiwashi. The effect was instantaneous. The shadow ball struck the center of the school and exploded, sending the fish flying everywhere.
"No! Solo!" Marion cried, feeling her body shaken by the attack. With their Schooling broken, there was nothing Solo could do to fight back. She whipped her head around and turned to Harry. "Quick, Harry, use dark pulse again! We need to distract him!"
Marion was desperate to buy time. Solo needed time to reform, and the only one she could count on was her Overqwil.
Harry was as reliable as always.
"Overqwil!" Harry puffed himself up and fired a blast of dark energy at Pelletier again, hitting the Slowbro before he could continue his attack. But Pelletier had taken enough dark pulses by this point that the attack was just a mild inconvenience.
"That won't be enough!" Willa snarled, her harmonia flaring up. She boosted her Slowbro's power, giving him the strength to shrug off the dark pulse, and he turned his focus elsewhere.
Towards the Wishiwashi, who were trying to reform in the river.
There was a reason that Willa had focused on splitting up the school of Wishiwashi, and it wasn't just because it weakened their attacking power.
Willa had been paying attention to Marion's explanation of how a school of Wishiwashi worked. And honestly, it was just common sense. The group of fish amassed around a single pokemon to control them, a head of the school. It was the only way that you could make such a large group of pokemon listen and obey orders from their trainer. Maybe it was a psychic bond, maybe it was something else, but the Wishiwashi had a leader, and they were following his orders.
And if Willa could find that leader, then she could take down the whole lot of 'em.
That's where she was fortunate to have access to Ayame's eyes. The girl had spent her life training pokemon for Pokeathlons, she knew the skills and condition of pokemon from just a glance. And not only that, she had a pokemon that behaved rather similarly to Wishiwashi herself, her Falinks. A group of pokemon guided by a single leader. Because of that, Ayame knew exactly how to spot the head of the pack, and that meant Willa did too.
"There you are," she whispered, smiling gleefully. "Pelletier! You know the one! Target him with your psyshock!"
It was a rather potent move. Pelletier began to spin, building up psychic energy in his shell. But he didn't release it as a beam or a blast of aura or whatnot. The psychic energy took the form of an electrical current, and he released a powerful bolt of lightning at the river.
"That's not good!" Raizer shouted, realizing what was about to happen a fraction of a second before everyone else did.
It wasn't an Electric type move. But then, it didn't need to be in order to cause massive damage to the pokemon in the water. The psyshock was more selective than most Electric type moves, targeting a single Wishiwashi; the one that all the fish were trying to coalesce around.
"WISHIWASHI!" Solo wailed in pain. The tiny fish began to thrash in the water as he was electrocuted with psychic energy, breaking apart the other fish. They weren't safe from the effects, either. The entire river was being zapped, and even if the move wasn't super-effective, it didn't really need to be to cause massive damage to the school of Wishiwashi.
Marion screamed herself, feeling her body getting electrocuted. She stumbled back, her head spinning, and clutched her chest. It felt like her heart had stopped!
A throbbing pain in her skull helped her regain focus and she could feel right away that the last blow from Pelletier had been crippling. Wishiwashi only had the strength to maintain a school when their health was at a certain level; once the leader had taken enough damage, they lost the ability to form a psychic link and they became just a school of fish again.
Which meant there was nothing she could do.
"Now finish them!" Willa shouted. "Surf!"
"Slowbro!" The river itself rose up at Pelletier's command, washing over Marion's side of the field. Harry wasn't safe from it, and even if her Wishiwashi may have resisted the attack, in their present state they didn't have nearly the strength to endure it. The riverbank was covered in the flopping and unconscious bodies of her school of pokemon, and Marion had no other choice but to call them back to their Dive Ball.
"This is insane," Chloe mumbled, shaking her head in disbelief. She felt numb. That Slowbro was insanely powerful, it had taken out all the pokemon Marion had lost so far! How could the fishing enthusiast hope to beat something with that much power? And if that wasn't bad enough, it seemed like he could tank whatever she threw back at it in response.
"Marion, are you-" Ian didn't get a chance to finish his question because Marion snapped her head back and gave him a grin filled with self-assurance.
"You don't have to worry about me, Ian!" She chirped. Even losing so many pokemon didn't break her spirit. "I've got this well in hand!" She dug inside her bag and pulled out her next Dive Ball. "And I've got more fishy friends to fight with!"
With a snap of her wrist, she flung the ball into the air.
"Lucy, come on out!" She cheered.
"Veluza!" The next pokemon to come out of Marion's Dive Balls was another fish (of course) and this was another one nobody was familiar with.
"What pokemon is that?" Chloe asked curiously.
"This is Lucy, my Veluza," Marion said. "She's got great power for dealing with that Slowbro, seeing as she's a Water/Psychic type herself!"
"I see," Willa nodded. "But if you think that'll be enough to stop us, you have no idea! Pelletier, use shadow ball!"
"Slowbro!" Pelletier opened his mouth and fired a shadow ball at Lucy the second the fish landed in the water.
Marion clicked her tongue, waggling her finger from side to side. "Not a chance! Come on, Lucy! You can dodge that easily!"
"Veluza!" Lucy leapt out of the water, moving at incredible speed. She easily evaded the shadow ball and spread her fins wide, gliding through the sky.
"Veluza are shaped so sharply for a reason," Marion said proudly. "It's so they can move at top speed through the water and hunt their prey! And their aerodynamic shape also allows them to get to great heights when they jump into the air, just like this!"
The pokemon seemed to resemble a glider, or a long knife being flung through the air. She folded her fins to the side and turned towards Pelletier, aiming at him like a bullet.
"And while we're at it, you know what to do, Harry!" Marion had given the order enough times she didn't even have to think about it.
"Overqwil!" Harry inflated himself and fired another dark pulse, providing some covering fire for the Veluza's attack.
"Those are getting annoying," Willa growled. "Light screen!"
"Slowbro!" Harry's eyes flashed blue and a barrier of blue light appeared around his body, deflecting the dark pulse.
"That's not good," Ian winced. "That Slowbro has the defensive stats of a Cloyster and he's already boosted it with iron defense. Add a light screen on top of that and it'll be incredibly hard for Marion's attacks to get through and land some damage!"
"That's the idea!" Willa cackled. "So come on! Let's see just how strong that fish really is, shall we?" She was confident that Pelletier's high defense stat would render him quite immune to whatever the Veluza had to throw at him.
Marion smiled.
"Psychic fangs!"
"Veluza!" Lucy opened her mouth wide, and bit down hard on Pelletier's arm. The Slowbro cried out in pain, the light screen around him shattering as he wobbled back.
"Urgh! What sort of move is that?" Willa spat, feeling her arm flare up. The attack had hurt more than she'd thought, and it wasn't even super effective!
"Psychic fangs is a powerful Psychic type move that allows the user to bite through their foes defenses," Marion said. "Your light screen is gone, and you know what that means, don't you?"
Pelletier swatted at Lucy, trying to knock her off, but the Veluza had already ripped herself free of the Slowbro, leaving a lasting reminder of her presence in the blood gashes on his arm. She retreated back to the water and waited for her partner to strike.
And boy did Harry strike.
A spray of acid landed on Pelletier, and began to eat away at the shell that covered him. Willa could feel her skin start to burn.
"What did you do?!" She shouted, swatting at the stinging sensation to try and get rid of it, but of course it had no effect.
"Acid spray of course," Marion smiled. "Your Slowbro is really tough, even if special defense isn't his specialty! I know all about using harmonia to pump up a pokemon's natural capabilities, and if there's no way I can break through your physical defenses, well, I can always attack your ability to defend in the first place!"
"Ah, so that's it," Donoma smiled. "Acid spray is quite a good move in this situation. It wears down the target's special defense stat drastically using a special type of acid. Now those dark pulses will hit even harder!"
"And don't forget Lucy," Marion smiled. "It's your turn to be on the end of a psychic attack!"
"Veluza!" Lucy began to glow purple, and a barrage of psychic energy assaulted Pelletier, lifting him up into the air. The Slowbro thrashed around, badly hurt by the effects of the psychic due to his reduction in special defense, even if he did resist the move's type. Which left him the perfect target for Harry's next attack.
"Overqwil!" Harry fired a blast of dark energy at the Slowbro, hoping to knock him out for good. But Willa wasn't about to let that happen.
"Pelletier!" She shouted. "Use imprison!"
"Slowbro!" Pelletier began to glow blue, and a blue aura appeared around Lucy, as well. Her psychic hold over the Slowbro disappeared and Pelletier fell to the ground. His shell shielded him from taking damage from the fall, and the dark pulse sailed harmlessly over his head.
"With imprison, any moves your Veluza shares with Pelletier are sealed away from you," Willa said. "No psychic. And if you know any moves like surf, that's off the table as well!" She smiled triumphantly. "Sorry, but it looks like it won't be that easy!"
"I see," Marion nodded. "How do you feel about focus energy, then?"
Willa blinked in confusion. "Huh?"
"Veluza!" Lucy swam in a circle through the water, tightening her focus.
"With focus energy, our ability to score critical hits is boosted!" Marion said. "Even with that iron defense of yours, if a critical hit goes through? Your Slowbro is done for!"
Willa bit her lip. She was probably right about that. She'd used her harmonia to buff Pelletier considerably, and her drugs had done the rest of the work, but as strong as her Slowbro was, he was still one pokemon. He could only withstand so much abuse.
She shook her head. This was no time for getting cold feet! She had to press on! Her drug had been useful so far, now was the time she needed its power the most!
"Well, it won't happen!" She snarled. "I don't care how fast that fish is! We'll attack the whole river if we have to! Pelletier, use psyshock again!"
"That's what I was afraid of," Ian winced. Veluza might have resisted Psychic type attacks, but it was obvious at a glance that the pokemon was no great tank. How many hits could it afford to take? Two? Three? From a special attack stat as high as that one?
And like they had just seen, just because psyshock wasn't an Electric type move that didn't make the impact any less shocking. The entire river would get zapped again. Harry would be fine because he was a Dark type, but the Veluza?
Marion didn't seem fazed, though.
"You'll never catch her," she promised with a smile. "When it comes to speed, in the water Veluza are dominating."
"We'll see!" Willa shouted. "Pelletier!"
"Slowbro!" Pelletier unleashed the psychic lightning, dropping powerful bolts down on the river. And just like before, Lucy leapt out of the water to evade the attack.
But she couldn't evade it completely. A bolt of lightning struck her head-on, and Willa's chest surged with triumph.
Then something happened that shocked everyone.
The parts of Lucy's scales that the lightning had struck just… slid away. Not just the scales, either. Entire sections of Lucy's body slipped off of her, whole slabs of meat, revealing the bony skeleton beneath them.
"Oh my god!" Chloe gasped. "I'm going to be sick!"
"I-I can't believe it…" Even Donoma was taken aback at what she just saw. It was one thing to have a pokemon battle, but… to KILL an opponent's pokemon?!"
"She just… no way…" Ian breathed. "Willa just… murdered Marion's pokemon?"
"Th-That's… I didn't mean…" Even Willa hadn't expected that. She'd done some bad things in her experiments, but she'd never crossed THAT line.
A wave of nausea rolled over the audience as they witnessed Lucy's flesh slough off.
But Marion just laughed.
"You all are hilarious! Don't worry! Lucy's just fine!"
"…WHAT?!"
"Veluza!" Lucy roared triumphantly, startling everyone, Willa included.
"It can still move in that state?!" Giselle exclaimed.
"Oh, you betcha!" Marion grinned. "Veluza have a special characteristic! They have incredible regenerative powers, it takes a LOT of damage to take 'em down for good! In fact, their regenerative abilities are so strong, they use it for hunting! When they're swimming, they can toss away the useless chunks of meat on their body to massively increase their speed and power! It's called 'fillet away', and it's their signature attack!"
"So it's kind of like belly drum," Alden noted.
"Sorta? Dunno, never heard of it," Marion shrugged. "But take a look!"
Without the excess meat on her bones, Lucy looked very threatening. Her body resembled one large, jagged sword, her sharp fins shining as she soared through the sky.
"And now for our attack," Marion giggled. "Just take a look at her Sharpness ability! It boosts the power of all cutting moves… like night slash!"
"Veluza!" Lucy began to spin through the air like a drill, and a black aura appeared on the tips of her fins. Soon she turned into a tornado of dark energy as she drilled towards the stunned Slowbro.
But Marion wasn't done there.
"Now, Harry!" She shouted to her Overqwil. "We've got to stop him from dodging! Barb barrage!"
It might not have been necessary due to Lucy's massive boost in speed. But Marion wasn't about to take any chances.
"Overqwil!" Harry inflated again, filling his quills with poisonous venom. He fired them out in a barrage that rained down upon Pelletier and new ones quickly regrew, and he fired those as well.
With the rain of toxic spikes coming down on him, Pelletier was pinned down. He couldn't dodge Lucy's incoming assault even if he tried. All Willa could do was focus her harmonia and give him the order to protect himself.
"Slowbro!" Pelletier focused his power on hardening his shell, trying desperately to withstand the incoming assault. Even with his massive defense stat, he feared what that sword-shaped pokemon could do.
"That won't work against a critical hit, though," Alden smiled.
Between focus energy and night slash's improved critical hit rate, the chances of this attack being a critical hit were pretty good.
But Marion wasn't one to settle for pretty good. So she focused her harmonia into Lucy, pumping up her attacking stat even more. With the air of harmonia, this attack WOULD be a critical hit, and Pelletier WOULD fall.
She was certain of it, no matter HOW many pills Willa shoveled down her throat!
Lucy collided with Pelletier, a spinning tornado of dark death. She drilled into the shell, smashing through it, and slicing into Pelletier with everything she had.
"SLOWBROOOOOO!" Pelletier stumbled back, overwhelmed by the destructive attack as it broke through his defenses, and collapsed to the ground.
It was over.
Whew! That was a tough one! Marion had to pull out all sorts of fish friends to stand a chance against Willa and her team of drugged-up pokemon, but in the end it was all worth it! Sure, it wasn't the fairest pokemon battle in the world, and it wouldn't have flown at the academy, but this isn't a place for rules, it's a battlefield where survival is the most important thing of all. And with that, the second wave of attacks on the clearing is dealt with!