Time for the events of Block D to start! Things are going to get off to an intense start right off the bat given who we're dealing with! We got Sango, Andy, and Marion, all talented and powerful opponents, and Blake's going to be in for a rough time! Hopefully he'll be able to take them down, because if not, he'll never be able to get to Ayame and maybe bring back her memories!
The Nomination Round of the Fourth Pokemon Academy Best Girl Contest has officially ended! Now, the contest can begin in full! This time, we've got a huge number of contestants, a whopping 20 nominations! Now, I'll explain the three step process again for everyone who forgot. First, each person can vote for five girls on the poll I'll post on my profile. Then, starting in August, the five girls who receive the most votes will make it from the Elimination Round to the main competition Semi-Finals. From there, you'll vote on your top three choices of the five listed. That will bring us into our Final Round, which will take place throughout all of September. Only 1 month. 1 vote. Which girl will win out of the three finalists? We'll have to find out! In the meantime, here are our current competitors! Vote!
Nominated: Alcea, Ange, Ayame, Caelia, Callie, Chloe, Cynthia, Dakota, Donoma, Elaina, Gabrielle, Joyce, Kate, Maddi, Misato, Nikita, Rui, Sango, Sylvia, Vic
KedharS: For someone with such a one-track mind, she's surprisingly unpredictable sometimes, which is what makes her so great!
Just a Bad Writer for Fun: Marion's quite the crazy person yes.
Arbiter8991: She's a different kind of genius, but definitely.
Aakareo Kokokuhikari: Willa is quite something. The professor might be a genius, but Willa is the Heisenberg of the chemistry lab.
Guest: Yeah, Marion taking things seriously can be scary, that's for sure.
Pokemon Academy: Beginning of Beginnings
Chapter 1331
"Now that we've gotten a look at all the teams for Block D, we'll get started with the first event!" Leanne declared, gesturing towards the field of snow. "The Snow Throw! Where our teams will pelt each other with snowballs!"
"This is certainly going to be a 'cool' event, don't you think, Darla?" Lila asked, smirking at her partner and chuckling a little at her own joke.
Darla was far less generous. The tanned girl stared dully at Lila and slowly shook her head, not amused by her shenanigans. Lila pouted.
"Try to have a little bit of fun… anyway! This is a very simple event!" Lila said. "Even I can explain it! Our teams here will make snowballs, that is, their pokemon will be making them, and throwing them at the other teams! Every hit on a pokemon is one point! Every hit on a trainer is three points! Trainers can't throw snowballs either! So go wild, and pelt yourselves with snow!"
She turned to Darla, grinning. "How was that? A good enough explanation?" She asked.
"Decent enough," Darla nodded. "…But we'll see if it's that simple when our teams begin the match," she added.
"Yeah, you got it!" Lila cheered.
Blake, Andy, Sango, and Marion all gathered together with their teams on different parts of the field. They had about a minute before the match began, and were all huddled together.
"What do you think they're doing?" Kitty asked curiously. "Deciding on strategies?"
"I'd say that's a safe bet," Julia nodded. "An event like this really needs tactics involved. And since the pokemon can't use their moves to assist, they've got to handle this on the merit of their own abilities, which makes things complicated."
She glanced at the Yellow Team.
"For one thing… Silver can't even throw snowballs in the first place without any hands."
It took a moment for that to sink in.
"Holy crap, you're right!" Reiner gasped. "Silver doesn't have any hands! He's just a floating white blob! What's he supposed to do?!"
"The same could be said for most of Marion's pokemon as well," Alcea noted. "They're fish, after all. Fish are not known for excellence in snowball fighting, is it?"
Another valid point.
"Hey, so… maybe… maybe Blake could win this after all?" Nick asked hopefully.
"We'll have to see," Olivia shrugged. "But it's notable… that spider doesn't have hands, either. And neither does that pointy… whatever it is."
Olivia raised a big problem of her own. Tara was the only pokemon Blake had who could adequately throw snowballs.
"With that in mind, it's possible he might try for a hit and run strategy," Ayame judged.
"What's that mean?" Callie asked.
"It's when a trainer whose pokemon are not well-suited to the Snow Throw rely on evading enemy attacks to prevent them from getting points," Ayame explained. "A fairly common strategy. The only problem is that it takes a good deal of energy to execute, and even if you attempt it, that isn't to suggest that it's foolproof."
"Yeah, I guess not," Cynthia frowned. "After all, just because Blake is making it hard to hit him, doesn't mean that'll apply to the other students. You can't score points just by defending, huh?"
"Exactly," Ayame nodded. "Blake may run around all he wants, but all that will happen is that the other three focus on each other. And unlike in the Goal Roll, there will be no points lost for getting hit by a snowball. Which makes it even easier to collude."
"Oh! You're right!" Cynthia gasped. "Two people could just pelt each other's pokemon with snowballs all they want, and get a ton of points!"
"Yeah, but if they do that, then they won't be able to spend any time defending themselves," Nikita reminded her. "It's not like the Goal Roll where there's only one ball. You can make as many snowballs as you want. So if two people are having their pokemon attack each other, then the other players can just dogpile them and get points for themselves as well."
"I see… yeah, that does make it more complicated…" Cynthia nodded thoughtfully. "I wonder what the best strategy to go with here is…"
She wasn't sure who she wanted to win. She wanted to give Blake all the support he needed, and wanted to see him make up with Ayame, but at the same time, Sango was her friend as well, and she was also doing her best.
This whole thing was just really complicated, and unfortunately, there wasn't a very easy answer. So all she could do was cheer on both of them.
"Give it your all, guys!" She shouted as the match began.
Blake's pokemon separated and they all turned to their rivals, ready to confront the other teams. But the second the clock started, a snowball smacked Blake in the face and knocked him over.
"What the hell?!" Blake wiped snow out of his eyes, only to see more snowballs heading his way. He just barely managed to roll out of the way before they hit the snow where he'd been lying.
"Hiyahoo!" Andy cheered, punching the sky. "That makes three points for us! Way to go, Ace! I knew you could do it!"
"Ambipom!" Ace grinned, swelling with confidence. He began sculpting more snow in his hands, and used his swift tails to throw it at his opponents.
"The Blue Team is already off to a rough start," Lila winced. "Their captain has been hit by a snowball in the first seconds of the event!"
"And that's not all, either," Darla said, nodding to Sango and the Yellow Team.
"Mukuro!" Sango shouted.
"Decidueye!" Mukuro nodded, folding his wing like a bow. He grabbed a large mound of snow and shot it at Blake like an arrow.
"Snivy!" Tara leapt into the air, getting between Blake and the snowball. But the shot was so fast and there was so much snow that the small pokemon was practically buried in it, landing on the ground stunned.
"Tara!" Blake scooped up his dizzy pokemon and leapt to his feet, avoiding more snow arrows coming his way. Ruru and Maria scuttled after him. They were being attacked on two fronts and he needed to be careful.
Luckily, he had a guardian angel on his side.
"Clawz! Open fire!" Marion chortled.
"Clawitzer!"
Everyone turned to see that Marion's Clawitzer was taking aim with his large pincer. It was stuffed to the brim with snow.
He used the pressure of his blasting pincer to send the snow raining down on Sango.
"What the hell?!" The blonde exclaimed as she was smacked in the face with a veritable wall of snow, along with her pokemon. The entire Yellow Team was incapacitated from that shot.
"Yeah! Now that's what I'm talking about! With all those snowballs, that should be, like, a bajillion points!" Marion crowed triumphantly.
"Leanne?" Lila glanced at the professor to see how she judged the move.
Leanne frowned.
"…I'll give that three points for hitting Sango and one point for each pokemon, for a total of six points, but that's it," she replied.
Marion's jaw dropped in disappointment and shock.
"What?! But I loaded like twenty snowballs in there!" She protested.
"The amount of snow isn't relevant," Leanne replied. "The only thing that matters is hitting your opponent with a snowball, regardless of the size."
"But that-blegh!"
Marion had to wipe the snow out of her face, because she'd gotten hit with a snowball herself out of nowhere.
"Hey!" She whirled around to see Maria, who had crouched behind a wall of snow to throw snowballs at her.
"Mareashishishi!" The Mareanie cackled, ducking back down. She had spotted her opportunity and taken it, and Marion couldn't argue with that.
"Well, alright! That's fine!" She giggled. "Good work, Maria! You really did a good job hitting me like that!" She complimented the confused pokemon.
"There's Marion's bad habit again," Sango grumbled, brushing snow off of herself. "That girl just loves passing out the compliments to fish pokemon…"
They still had a long way to go. This match was just getting started. And right now, Andy had taken a commanding lead. While Blake's team had gotten Marion with a lucky shot, things weren't looking good for him given his position.
Andy had molded her team into a snowball-fight-winning machine. Her Rellor would roll up the snowballs using his psychic powers, and then hand them off to Ace, who would fling them with everything he had. This resulted in a situation where Ace could throw snowball after snowball with impunity, leaving him to cower behind a mound of snow.
"Ruru, can you do something?" Blake shouted to his Galvantula. Maria had been able to fling a snowball he'd molded using her tentacles. Hopefully Ruru would be able to do something similar. They needed to slow Andy down!
Ruru considered things for a second, and then nodded. She turned around and used her feelers to gesture to her rear.
"You want me to… put a snowball there?" Blake looked at her web shooter and winced. That seemed really gross.
"Gal!" Ruru nodded insistently.
Blake sighed. He wasn't even sure if this was legal. But it was the best idea they had to work with at the moment.
"Gal!" Ruru leapt out into the fray, and got hit by a couple snowballs for her trouble. But that was fine, because she turned her back to her foe, and fired the snowball out of her web shooter.
And she fired a few webs as well, for good measure.
"Whoa, what the heck?!" Lila exclaimed, seeing the web ball screech across the battlefield. It hit one of Ace's tails and glued it to the snow, throwing the Ambipom off of his balance and making Ace's next shot go wild.
"Is that even legal?" Darla wondered, not sure if Blake should be allowed to do that within the rules or not.
"Time out!" Leanne declared, and the clock paused. This gave everyone a chance to refocus themselves and catch their breath. "We're going to rule on whether or not that attack is legal."
The three of them collaborated with the microphones turned off. Or more accurately, Leanne checked the rulebook while Darla and Lila just waited to see what they would agree to.
In the meantime, the trainers competing in the Pokeathlon were grateful for the break, especially those whose pokemon had gotten stunned from snowballs (so mainly Sango).
"They're going to let that slide, right?" Callie asked, frowning. "They've got to!"
"It seems like a pretty blatant rules violation to me, though," Nikita said, frowning. "I mean, that was basically a spider web attack, right? He can't just do that."
"Well in that case, the Green Team should get their points taken away," Elaina pointed out. "After all, that was basically just a hydro pump from that Clawitzer, only using snow instead of compressed water, don't you think?"
Elaina raised another valid point. That attack had done a lot of damage to Sango's side, and it was practically a pokemon move in its own right.
"It's not quite the same thing, though, is it?" Alcea pointed out. "With Clawitzer, the blast of water was used as a method for delivering the snowball. In this instance, the webbing itself served as part of the attack, not just the snowball."
That was another good point. This situation was getting complicated pretty quickly.
"Ugh, I don't want to have to think about this," Cynthia groaned. "Just give him the point, who even cares?"
"For someone who's going into the final round with me, it would be best if you learned the rules," Ayame scowled. "…With that being said, I agree, I think it should be allowed. And I imagine that the professor has already come to that same conclusion."
And indeed, a few seconds later, Leanne addressed the audience in regards to the little web ball that Blake and Ruru snuck in.
"We've decided that the last attack from the Blue Team's Galvantula is fair," Leanne ruled, surprising a few people in the crowd. "The reason for that is because the Galvantula did not use an attack, but a natural ability of its species. If we were to ban Bug type pokemon from spraying webbing, then we would have to ban several other things that could play a factor, including the natural heat of Fire type pokemon, and the ability of Ghost type pokemon to phase through objects."
"Um, no, we should really ban that last one," Darla pointed out. "I mean, can you imagine how unfair it would be to try and hit a ghost with a snowball?!"
"Totally unfair," Lila agreed. "There's no way that should be allowed!"
"Ah, it's fine, don't worry," Leanne assured them. "The snow here is actually made out of frozen holy water. So it's not possible for a Ghost type pokemon to phase through it!"
Blake glanced down at the winter wonderland at his feet, and questioned why they were doing such a sacrilegious thing. He also wondered just where the school could have gotten that much holy water on such a short notice.
I'd bet that the Empress had something to do with that… but still, I'm not going to question it, not when it serves as an advantage for me. He realized that must have been why Mukuro was unable to evade the snow blast from Marion's team. It was the only conclusion that made sense, anyway. But the important thing was that the professor had ruled in his favor.
"Well, that's how it is then," Andy shrugged. She didn't seem at all disappointed that the professor had ruled the way she did.
And it wasn't difficult to see why, either. After all, she'd used the break to pull the webbing off of her Ambipom anyway, making the judgment essentially worthless. Blake's team had gotten the point, sure, but they hadn't actually crippled Andy's fighting ability.
"Now then, let's start again!" Leanne declared, and the timer started back up.
Ruru was immediately assaulted once more, but this time not just by Ace. Marion's pokemon had gotten in on it, too.
"Basculegion!" Bass roared, lifting up snowballs with his ghostly power.
"If webs are fine, then so is this!" Marion chortled as her fish pokemon flung the snowballs at Ruru as well.
But Ruru showed just why she had such an important spot on Blake's team. She took advantage of her speed to evade the strikes, all while waiting for Blake to make more snowballs.
And Andy wasn't the only one to benefit from the break, either.
"Snivy?" Tara, fully-recovered, stared adamantly at her trainer, ready to be of some use. Blake nodded back to her and grinned.
"Welcome back, buddy," he nodded, handing her a snowball. "Let's see what you can do!"
"Sni!" Tara nodded. She darted out from behind the snow wall as Ruru ducked behind it, trading places with the massive spider. And she was a much smaller target to hit.
"The Blue Team's Snivy has taken the field next!" Lila announced.
"And even the combined efforts of the Red Team and the Green Team apparently aren't enough to pin her down, either!" Darla nodded. "Look at her go!"
Indeed, Tara was smaller than Ruru, and just as light on her feet. She was able to easily evade the attacks of her opponents while looking for an opening to attack.
And there it was, just as Ace went for some more snowballs.
But Tara didn't aim at the monkey. While it would be nice to slow him down, she could leave that to Ruru.
She wanted to do some heavy lifting, and really help her trainer's score rise, and for that, there was only one target she could aim at.
"Snivy!" Tara flung her snowball with all her might, aiming right for Andy.
"That was a fast throw!" Leanne said, amazed. The snowball shot past the Ambipom before the purple pokemon could even react, flying right towards Andy and bursting apart into powder on contact seconds later.
But it didn't hit her. It didn't even come close.
"Not bad, not bad!" Andy grinned. She flicked the snow off the webs of her tennis racket, freshly woven from her Spidops. "But you're going to have to do better than that!"
"A tennis racket!?" Lila protested. "But she's not allowed to use tools!"
"You guys said it yourselves," Andy reminded her, glancing back at the announcer's box. "'As long as it's something natural for your pokemon, it's okay'. And there's nothing more natural for my Silk than making webs… or, in this case, a nice racket for me!"
"It's… within the rules," Leanne acknowledged. "After all, we allowed her to create her own racket in the preliminaries, if you remember."
"Oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about!" Andy cheered, spinning her tennis racket around in her hands. "As long as I've got this, it doesn't matter what comes at me! I can hit away tennis balls coming at any speed, snowballs are nothing!"
Blake scowled. This whole mess just got even more complicated.
Uh-oh, this isn't good! Andy already had a major advantage, and now she's going wild with a tennis racket! With her trump card in hand, is there anything our heroes can do to take her down? How will Blake manage to get to Ayame if he's dealing with an opponent like this? He'll have to do the best he can, and hope it will be enough, otherwise he's going to be in for a really big problem!