Ayame's taken out two of Maddi's pokemon back to back with the overwhelming power of her Troops! Falinks is a very strong pokemon and Maddi's in a very tough position with only two pokemon left. Will she be able to pull a trick out of her hat to turn the tables on Ayame? Or will our tomboy heroine be able to trash Maddi completely? Things are coming to a close faster than anticipated, and if Maddi doesn't step up her game her life is in jeopardy! Remember to review!

KedharS: Oh yeah, big time.

Hyphenman: Yep, that's the danger of this one. Unlike the other fights, Maddi's not at risk of becoming Samarra's friend. She's fighting with her life on the line here.

Pokemon Academy: Beginning of Beginnings

Chapter 1214

Maddi felt the pain fade away, but she would have given anything to keep it. The fact that she couldn't feel the sting of Troops' horns anymore meant that her body was no longer connected to Violet's through harmonia.

In other words, Violet had fainted.

She had two pokemon left. Just two, against Ayame's last three.

Maddi sucked in air through her teeth and recalled Violet to her pokeball. She only had one more shot at this. And if she wanted to defeat those Falinks, then she needed to take care of the massive buff they'd gotten from using no retreat.

She only had one pokemon suited for the job.

"Mist, go!" Maddi shouted, sending her Seadra back out. She winced as she felt the sharp stones cutting into her skin.

"Seadra!" Mist hissed, glaring at Troops. He was in the water, which made it difficult for them to reach; even better, he was much faster than the Falinks when he was swimming, meaning he'd be difficult to hit the way Violet had been.

Maddi had been hoping to save Mist for dealing with Snows, but she needed to turn things around here, or it wouldn't matter when Ayame sent out her Glalie; she'd already be doomed. So she focused her harmonia and gave Mist as much strength as she could.

"Mist, use bubblebeam!" Maddi ordered.

"Seadra!" Mist flexed his snout and fired a stream of bubbles at the Falinks, who scattered to avoid the attack.

"A few bubbles won't ruin us," Ayame snorted.

"Maybe not, but you're going to have a hard time catching Mist in the water," Maddi said. "He's not like Violet with her base 25 speed."

"We might have some difficulty," Ayame admitted. "But there's a lot we're still capable of, isn't that right, Troops?"

"Falinks!" The Troops cheered as one, gathering together in a line. They began to glow.

"Oh?" Maddi was surprised by that maneuver of theirs. She wasn't sure what they were going to attempt next. An attack to get closer, perhaps? The footholds in the water they'd placed before were still there, Mist would have to be careful to stay away from them. But for now, he had the advantage. So were they planning on-

"Focus blast!" Ayame roared, her hair standing on end.

"FALINKS!" Troops put all their energy into a single orb of light. They fired the compressed sphere of fighting energy at Mist, and the blast traveled like a bullet towards the Seadra.

"Mist, dive under the water!" Maddi snapped. Her quick thinking saved her Seadra, and he was already submerging as she gave the order, following her thoughts thanks to her harmonia. Mist ducked beneath the water and the focus blast struck the spot where he'd been seconds later, exploding and sending a massive wave up into the air.

Mist was nowhere to be seen. He'd been able to escape! Maddi couldn't see him right now but she could follow him with her harmonia, and knew that his health hadn't changed. She focused her thoughts and it was like… she could see through her pokemon's eyes.

It was a fascinating thing, sharing a bond with your pokemon. Maddi felt like she was really swimming, following her pokemon's vision through the dark waters. The sun was shining above the surface, filling the river with a pale glow and giving her just enough visibility to-

"Enough of this!" Ayame spat. "Troops! Fall in and use rock slide! We'll bury the river in boulders completely!"

Now if Ayame was sharing her intelligence with Samarra and Wes, she would have known how stupid of a suggestion that was. After all, her Falinks were ripping the stones up out of the riverbank itself; flinging them back in was like trying to stop a sinking ship by throwing the water back out into the ocean. Regardless of where the rocks ended up, the overall depth of the water wasn't likely to change very much. Ayame was way more impulsive than that, however, and was prone to speaking her mind, so she'd made a little oopsie on that front.

But the boulders still made for decent projectiles. The rocks rained down on Mist, and the Seadra was forced to swiftly evade them under the water.

"Agility!" Maddi shouted, even though she knew her voice couldn't reach Mist while he was underwater. She was still getting used to the intricacies of her power; so even though she knew intellectually that a nonverbal command would be suitable (and in most cases, preferred) she was still compelled to declare her orders. It was instinctive to her, from all her years as a pokemon trainer without this awesome power.

Maybe this was the reason that all those harmonia users gave out so many orders; maybe they were just used to it.

Or maybe they liked the sound of their own voice. From Maddi's point of view, ones like Marion were certainly annoying enough for that to be the case.

Whatever the reason though, he actions were still effective. Mist was able to easily navigate the flow of the wide river, evading the falling stones. Then he erupted from the water, spewing a quick burst at the Falinks.

"Falinks!" One of the supporting Troops raised their shield, deflecting the water. Apparently, Maddi would need to try much harder.

Well, we've held off for this long, we might as well just go through with it, she decided. After all, Ayame had to know what was coming.

"Mist, use clear smog!" Maddi ordered.

"Seadra!" Mist flexed his snout and spat out a cloud of white smoke, covering the river and the river bank in a dense cloud of smog.

"Urgh, this again?" Ayame coughed. She was breathing in the toxic air from six sets of lungs, which couldn't be good for her running. Her own breaths weren't enough to displace it.

Maddi was coughing too. After all, her own pokemon weren't immune to the effects of the clear smog, that boost to Mist's speed would go to waste with this move.

But if it meant that Ayame's Troops were weakened, it was a sacrifice she was willing to make.

When the smoke cleared, Mist had sunk beneath the river again, and the Troops were all looking much weaker.

"What do you think?" Maddi smirked. "Not so strong without your buffs, now are you?"

"We're still strong enough to win," Ayame snarled. Her eyes flashed. "With harmonia, it's as if we've used no retreat dozens of times!"

"…Maybe," Maddi nodded absentmindedly, as if she hadn't been using her harmonia herself. "But then, you aren't using it dozens of times, are you? In fact… you can only use it once."

Ayame's eye twitched and Maddi smirked triumphantly. Yes, it was exactly as she'd imagined.

"No retreat is a pretty powerful move, isn't it?" Maddi mused. "There's almost no downside to using it. All of your Falinks' stats get a boost, and what? The cost is that you can't switch them out? Why would you even need to, if they can boost their stats like that, I wonder? You could just keep using that attack again and again. People do the same with moves like swords dance and iron defense, after all, boosting their stats to the max."

Ayame remained silent, making a face like she was chewing on a lemon.

"It's because that's not how the move works, isn't it?" Maddi pressed. "No retreat doesn't just let you keep boosting your stats. If it did, Falinks would be pretty much unstoppable. Just imagine, being able to keep sharply raising your stats? The only common moves that raise all of a pokemon's stats are things like ancientpower, silver wind, ominous wind, and those moves are all incredibly unlikely to work that way. What, it's a 10% chance that your stats will raise from using one of those moves? I can't imagine how lucky someone would have to be to get the omniboost from those to trigger more than once in a battle!"

Across town Dokukage froze to sneeze. He looked back towards the others, relieved that he was far enough ahead that no one had seen or heard him. He was a ninja, after all, having his sinuses under control was part of the expectation.

Meanwhile, Maddi continued to make her point. "Comparatively, a move like no retreat just lets you do it. For free. No chances, no real penalties, nothing. So why don't you just keep doing it then, if it's so easy to execute? Because it isn't, is it? The drawback of no retreat isn't just that your pokemon can no longer switch out- it's the fact that the move only works once per battle, isn't that right?"

Maddi's assessment was mainly speculation, she didn't have nearly enough experience with the move to say for sure. But the shadow on Ayame's face confirmed that she was right on the money, at least for her, anyway.

Ayame just seethed.

"You're right," she growled through gritted teeth. "No retreat only works the one time. Afterwards, Troops can't use the move anymore."

Maddi beamed. She felt like Cynthia right there, proudly declaring her superiority. Or maybe more like the Commander. Ugh. Did she really have to choose one of them?

…Whatever. Didn't matter. The point was that she was right!

"So now that your stats have been reset back to normal, it would appear your Troops are more vulnerable than ever!" Maddi declared. "Now Mist, hit 'em with your surf attack!"

"Seadra!" Like Violet before him, Mist turned the river to his advantage. He rose up from beneath the surface and carried the water with him, summoning a giant wave that he rode in order to wash away his opponents.

"Troops!" Ayame shouted. "Use iron defense!"

Hiromi blinked. Iron defense…? But didn't that…?

Ayame's mother couldn't consider herself an expert on pokemon battles. Even Ayame was more experienced in that regard. But she'd dealt with enough Rock and Steel type pokemon as a Pokemon Ranger that she knew about iron defense. It raised a pokemon's physical defenses, right? So why use it in the face of a special attack?

Maddi was curious about that as well but didn't say a word. She was fine with letting Ayame make a mistake like that, it was no skin off her nose.

The waves crashed down on the riverbank, smashing into Troops and scattering their phalanx formation like bowling pins. The little round pokemon rolled about in the grass before hopping to their feet, brandishing their shiny shields, newly-polished from the buffing move.

Ayame didn't seem that fazed for a girl who was just on the receiving end of a tidal wave. She just glared.

Then she smiled. It wasn't one of the smiles Maddi was used to seeing, the cheery ones full of love that Ayame would wear whenever she was around her boyfriend. This smile was full of malice and it made Maddi shiver.

"I know what you're probably thinking," Ayame said slowly. "'Why would she use iron defense when she's on the receiving end of a special attack? Wouldn't she want to use something like protect, in order to make sure her pokemon were safe from the damage completely?' Isn't that right?"

Maddi was unnerved by how accurate that was. She scowled. "Maybe, so what?" She asked cautiously. Ayame smirked.

"We weren't trying to protect ourselves, that's why! This was part of our strategy to win! Now Troops, use rock slide again!"

"Falinks!" Troops flung more boulders into the water and Mist evaded them again. It was an odd strategy, Maddi thought. It wasn't as if Ayame was trying to pin them in. She could follow the positions the rocks landed in, and they were completely random.

So what was she trying to accomplish?

Then she saw it. A flash of gold and red, mixed in with the rocks. Maddi's eyes shot to the riverbank and realized that one of the Falinks was missing.

The Troops had turned one of their own into a projectile and flung them right at Mist!

"Watch out, Mist!" She shouted, pumping up her pokemon's speed with harmonia. "He's coming right towards you!"

Unlike the rocks that fell without guidance, the Falinks was aiming for Mist. They'd arranged themselves to be standing on one of the rocks thrown by their compatriots, and when the angle was right, they leapt off and onto the fleeing Seadra.

"Body press!" Ayame shouted.

"Falinks!" The small round pokemon twisted their body and angled their shields down towards Mist. They fell like a meteor with more speed than Maddi had expected. She quickly gave the order for her Seadra to dive, but at this point it didn't matter.

When the pokemon hit the water it was like a meteor strike. The force of the blast broke through the surface and sent up an even bigger wave than when the focus blast had struck, and this time Mist wasn't able to dodge.

The Seadra was flung into the air, and his body scraped against the sharp stealth rocks hovering overhead.

"SEADRA!" Mist wailed in pain.

"Body press is quite a potent move," Ayame said as her Falinks returned to join the rest of the Troops. "It doesn't deal damage with a pokemon's attack stat, it uses their base defense instead. Under normal circumstances, I keep my Troops on a very special regiment to make sure their stats are balanced properly. Each of them has a specialty, in fact."

Maddi blinked this was news to her.

"…You can do that?" She asked.

"The average trainer couldn't," Ayame replied with a shrug. "But my skills at training pokemon are far from average, as I'm sure you know. So yes, I made sure that each of my Troops excelled in something special."

She turned and took stock of her team of six.

"There are five performance stats that every pokemon has," Ayame stated. "This is how pokemon who compete in Pokeathlons are tested. Those stats are Speed, Power, Skill, Stamina, and Jump. The different Pokeathlon events test those stats in different ways, and as a Pokeathlete, I train up my pokemon's conditions so that they can do their best. But my Troops are special. They each have their own fields they excel in."

She gestured to the one that had just smacked into Mist with a body press. They were the fifth Falinks in the formation.

"This is Cinco. They're the one who specializes in the Stamina performance stat," Ayame explained. "And not only that, but their physical defense is slightly higher than the rest. You see, as my Troops are six different individuals, their total stats are distributed between the six of them; if you think that makes them weaker, then think again. United as they are, it's as if they all have a united stat total. But that's not all. Ses specializes in Jumping," she said, gesturing to the last Falinks in the line. "They also have the highest special defense. Then there's Cuatro, who specializes in special attack, and Skill. Tres is for Power, and has the highest attack, and Dos has Speed. And of course, Uno, the brass? As the one in charge, their stats are equal to the highest of all the other pokemon, so-"

"I get it," Maddi cut her off. "Your pokemon are specially trained, and they're really tough. Trust me, I felt that one."

She was still sore from the beating Mist had taken. More importantly, her Seadra was currently marooned on the rocks. She focused her harmonia and gave Mist the power to leap off the stones and back into the water.

"I don't think you DO get it," Ayame snapped. "So let me show you! Ses! Use body press yourself!"

This time a different Falinks leapt into action. And Maddi was stunned. When Ayame said that one of her Falinks was better at jumping than the others, she wasn't playing around. This one leapt at the perfect angle, arching their jump to aim right at Mist.

But Maddi wasn't going to be caught that easily.

"Mist, dodge their attack with agility!" She ordered.

"Seadra!" Mist swiftly evaded the Falinks, who slammed into the water and sent up another burst from the river. If he kept this up, he'd be able to dodge the attacks no problem.

Ayame grinned, her eyes flashing with harmonia. "You'll need more than that!" She spat. "Troops! Use iron defense again!"

"Not a chance!" Maddi shouted back.

The Falinks had gathered together and were shining their shields, increasing their defensive power. But Maddi was having none of that. Mist emerged from the water once more and flexed his snout, sending out another cloud of clear smog. The two girls began coughing again as their pokemon took in lungfulls of the stuff. (Which was impressive, as Mist had gills)

"Keep… hack… buffing your pokemon's defenses," Maddi coughed. "I'll just… hrrgak… keep using clear smog."

"I know you will," Ayame said. She smirked. "It's the only way we could get your Seadra to slow down, after all."

Maddi blinked as the weight of those words sunk in. "Mist!" She shouted, realizing what Ayame was saying. "Watch out, you've gotta-"

She didn't have time to get out her warning. She could see, hazily, through the cloud of smoke, through both her own eyes and Mist's. A round object was barreling towards her. It was Uno, the brass, with their horn extended.

"We needed your Seadra to slow down!" Ayame repeated. "And using clear smog was the perfect way to do it! Now, Troops! Finish him off with close combat!"

"Falinks!" The first of the Falinks hit, their horn digging deep into Mist's chest. The Seadra cried out in pain as he fell back into the water and Maddi screamed, clutching her breast. The pain was severe, it nearly knocked her out then and there.

But that was just the first attack.

Dos was next, angling their horn at Mist and driving it deep into one of his fins. Maddi could feel the tear in the membrane and nearly passed out from the pain once again.

Then came Tres. Then Cuatro. Then Cinco. And finally Ses. All six Troops struck Mist with their horns, unleashing an unstoppable barrage of power that pushed the Seadra further and further down into the water. Maddi coughed and choked, it felt like she was drowning. But no matter how much she swatted at the air, she couldn't get it back into her lungs.

And then all of a sudden, it was gone. The pain disappeared like it had never been there in the first place. And the answer was plain to see.

As the Troops floundered about in the water, helping each other back to the riverbank, Mist drifted up to the surface. Blood filled the river and Maddi felt like she was going to throw up. Her head was killing her, and her own blood trickled down her nose.

Another one of her pokemon had been defeated by Troops. That made three.

And that meant she only had one pokemon left.

If Maddi was going to beat Ayame… Vee was the only hope she had left.

Yikes. Maddi's been pressed pretty far. Ayame's Falinks is quite a monster, even without the buff from no retreat. Mist tried as hard as he could but he was only able to get a few hits in. Hopefully Vee will do better. He's Maddi's trump card, after all, so hopefully he'll be able to turn this situation around. If not, well… things might get very bad for our little type specialist very soon.