At the start of Ash's next match, the referee reminded them that they could use six Pokémon each in the quarter-finals and onwards.
Ash had known that, but it was nice for the reminder, and he locked eyes with Ritchie for a moment.
Then neither trainer went for their Pokéballs. Instead, both pointed forwards. "Pikachu/Sparky!"
Both Electric-types jumped into the stadium proper, cheeks sparking, and Ash's Pikachu opened fire with a Shock Wave attack.
Sparky absorbed it with a brrzt of electricity into his cheeks, and Pikachu flicked his tail for a moment. It would have been nice if Sparky had lacked Lightningrod, but it was worth checking.
Then again, he had other options.
Pikachu charged forwards, slamming down an electric curtain between the two of them, and broke through his own brief visual shield with his paws shaping an Aura Sphere. Sparky retaliated, ears glowing for a moment, and a Confusion attack hit with enough force to disrupt the Aura Sphere – meaning that when Pikachu tried to ram it into Sparky, he just ended up tackling his opponent instead.
Undeterred, Pikachu flipped into the air and used Iron Tail. Sparky tried to deflect that one with a burst of psychokinetic energy as well, but Pikachu's Iron Tail was too fast, and the blow sent him rolling and bouncing across the arena.
The moment Pikachu landed, he darted towards his opponent, aiming to catch Sparky before he got up. The other Electric-type saw him coming, though, and held out a paw to launch a psychic push that tripped Pikachu up and slowed him down.
Now upright again, Sparky swung his tail at Pikachu for a Slam attack, and that met Pikachu's Iron Tail with a whack. Pikachu followed up with a Force Palm, but Sparky darted away, then Pikachu charged up briefly and blew a hole in the ground to catch Sparky with the spray.
"Battling like this is weird," Sparky said, shaking the dirt off himself, then kicked out at Pikachu and missed. Pikachu responded with a Force Palm, and that missed as well, then Sparky used Quick Attack and hit Pikachu's Iron Tail coming the other way.
The impact was enough to stun Sparky, for a moment, and Pikachu whirled. He charged up a proper Aura Sphere, a full-size one, then jumped over it and slammed it towards Sparky with his Iron Tail.
That meant Sparky didn't have time to respond with a Confusion attack, and the other Pikachu jumped over it instead. That made the sphere miss, and Sparky charged in to close range before alternating tail slaps with bursts of psychic energy and Slams.
Pikachu responded with Iron Tail attacks, Force Palm strikes, and flashes of distracting electricity, accompanied by a Counter Shield that surrounded them both with a tooth-grating hum, then after a few seconds he pushed Sparky away. "Hey, guess what."
"What?" Sparky replied, then frowned and looked up. "Wait-"
Pikachu cancelled the Counter Shield that had surrounded them, and revealed his 'missed' Aura Sphere was on the way down after a high curving three-quarter-turn. Ritchie hadn't been able to shout a warning, and apparently wasn't up to telepathic communications instead, and it was too close for Sparky to react.
It hit Sparky with a wham, digging out a crater, and Pikachu dusted his paws off.
Then frowned, because Sparky wasn't done yet.
"Hey, watch this," Sparky replied, then darted out of the crater in a charge. "Endeavour!"
The blast of energy from the attack hurled them both backwards, and they were caught by their trainers.
Though, unfortunately, the wrong trainers.
"Shall I take care of Sparky for now?" Ash called. "We can swap back after the battle."
"Sounds good to me," Ritchie agreed, taking his first actual Pokéball, and Ash did the same. "Cid!"
"Riolu!"
The Kirlia and the Riolu began with an exchange of martial arts.
Riolu noticed quickly that Cid's style seemed to revolve around physical psychic attacks, using the direct contact to apply low powered psychic Confusion attacks directly without having to face the opponent's mental defences.
This meant he had to avoid directly blocking entirely and focus on redirecting the attacks, otherwise the effects would quickly build up.
His own attacks, on the other hand, were rebuffed by a telekinetic force field that exerted pressure on anything close enough to Cid's body.
The overall result was incredibly aggravating to fight – it meant, in fact, that it was almost like being consistently overpowered by a Pokémon with much less actual strength.
"This is very annoying," he said, as another strike got deflected.
"Thank you," Cid replied.
"It wasn't-" Riolu said, then stopped himself. "Actually I guess that is a compliment."
Finally he decided to fall back, jumping with a push of Aura to gain distance and throwing a quick Aura Sphere. It missed, of course, curving a little off course and detonating behind Cid.
"You are surprisingly good."
That won him a shrug. "I got a mental training package from one of the Gallade in Almia. You're good as well, but I expected you would be."
Riolu blinked. "Um. Now I think I've been rude or something…?"
Cid focused, compressed air as if he was going to use it for a Psycho Cut, and separated it from his hand. Then he took the resultant object and whirled it as a spear.
Riolu glanced back at Ash. "Now do you see the worth of all that Bokken training?"
"Yeah, fine. You win."
With a sound not entirely unlike smashing glass, Riolu created a Bone Rush staff a bit longer than the length of his arm and gripped it in his right paw. Then, summoning his Shadow Claws, he honed it once – twice – three times. A quick check showed that it had a small amount of Ghost energy clinging to the surface.
"That should be enough."
The two charged one another and began to fight again, this time with weapons instead of bare paws.
Ash noticed that the crowd had gone quiet. Apparently this was something outside their normal experience.
Presumably, that meant that the Rockets hadn't properly shown off yet…
Closing one eye, he watched the fireworks display that Aura sight revealed. Both Pokémon were using the elemental effects of their respective weapons to probe at the defences of the other, and the tempo was only increasing.
In fact, pretty soon it was going to…
Lavender and bright opal lights erupted into visibility around the battling Pokémon, as the energy reached the point anyone could see it.
"Whoa!" the commentator gasped, softly.
Riolu currently had a slight advantage, but that was starting to change – his Ghost typing of the short staff he'd made had been very much ad hoc, and it was beginning to degrade with time. Cid's strikes with his weapon were being stopped less and less firmly, meaning he was losing the type advantage, and once that happened it was going to make a lot of things happen very fast.
With a cry, he locked staff with spear-shaft and pushed both weapons out of the way, then brought his off hand around with a rippling violet coating.
The Dark Pulse at such short range was too much for the already tired Kirlia, and he collapsed.
"Nagi!"
"Pidgeot!"
Ash looked at the Spearow. "Nagi?"
"Naginata. A kind of spear, as in Spearow," Ritchie replied, as the two Flying types began to gain height. "I do my best with nicknames."
"Huh. You learn something new every day…"
Pidgeot and Nagi had already ascended to a height of a good few hundred feet, and the little Spearow displayed no concern whatsoever at the size of his opponent.
"So. We shall fight?"
Pidgeot's trajectory dipped slightly – a nod. "That's why we're here, after all."
"Then let us make a good show. Work Up."
As she circled slowly, Pidgeot watched a construct of wind form around Nagi. By the time it had finished, he was enveloped in wings of air similar to the ones she used at her highest speeds, for greater manoeuvrability. They were big enough that he was more like a Fearow, by size at least.
"And they weigh nothing, of course, so if you're careful it can put you up to Mach one thanks to the greater driving force…" Pidgeot swept her wings forward, then back with a massive gust of wind. "But I can do it without concentrating on air control."
She shot away, about half a mile in six seconds, then swept back around and in with her wings ready to strike him. Just as she reached him, though, Nagi moved his own wings sharply.
There was a crack as they moved, and he was no longer there. Her stiff wings hit nothing, spoiling her Wing Attack, and it took her a moment to stabilize again.
"What was that? That's far too fast!"
Nagi looked at her, watching her bank around. "I have trained to move my wings as fast as possible. That was the tips breaking the sound barrier."
She revised her estimate of his speed up, for a moment, then reconsidered. "But hang on. You can't do that for very long at a time, the sound barrier break would dispel the wings of air. You're not doing it the way I am so you can't tolerate that."
"Correct. But it makes me very manoeuvrable over short distances."
She gritted her beak (which was quite difficult), frowned for a moment, then moved away again. She could predict his maximum speed with that ability… and then if she was careful, aim an area effect attack to catch him for certain.
"I can barely see them," Ash muttered.
Allow me. Set up. Light screen, concave.
Two pairs of light screens formed above Ash's box, each pair focused on and showing one of the Flying types at about the size of an outstretched hand.
"Good thing they retracted the roof all the way for this, we'd never have the angle for it otherwise…"
Pidgeot turned, this time two miles distant and about a mile up, and came back in. She was building up speed very fast…
Ash saw the conical cloud form and break around her, and covered his ears.
Most of the audience didn't have the same warning, watching as she closed in on Nagi… and then launched her Razor Wind, which came boring in on him.
And he created a similar attack from thin air – or, rather, from nowhere – and countered it.
The crowd had barely begun to react when the sonic boom arrived.
She circled him, now more than a little indignant. "How?"
"Mirror move."
Pidgeot considered cursing. That was very, very annoying. And it also meant that the same thing would happen with more or less whatever she tried except physical attacks – and physical attacks would just miss thanks to that dodge move of his.
Okay, she needed a new plan.
How did this work, again?
Nagi watched as she took off again, this time straight up. And faster still. By the looks of things, she was using a tailwind formed from her air control to increase her height faster.
It was good to know the key point of his strategy was taking effect. Picador, then Matador. Taunt, goad, then let the opponent make a big mistake and capitalize on it.
In this case, he thought, as she reached an apex so high he could only see her by squinting… she was going to try a Brave Bird attack. The kind of speed she could manage like that would, if she knew her air control as well as it looked, actually cause her to go into dynamic equilibrium and become more unstable in flight. A useful trait for catching an evading target.
But he would be able to counter her expectations by flying at her and hence through the narrowed window she had to react. With that missed, she would be startled, and either crash or injure herself as she dropped subsonic.
He watched her approach and raised his wings of air, ready for the evade.
Three seconds… two… one-
Then something hit him from the side, grabbing his wing and trapping him.
The diving Pidgeot passed through him and melted like a dream.
A Double Team? But then where was-? How?
"'aint attack,"She mumbled around the Spearow wing. "S'w it once from a P'dgey."
Nagi surrendered. There wasn't much else he could do, not held in the beak of a Pokémon weighing so much more than him.
"Butterfree!" Ash said, sending the Bug-type out for the second time in the League.
"Happy!" Ritchie responded, throwing the Pokéball he already had ready.
"Wow," Sparky said, impressed. "That's, what, four times that's happened now?"
"Yeah, it's weird," Ash said.
Out on the field, the two Butterfree faced one another, and Ash's Butterfree began by spreading his wings.
Glowing balls of light formed on them, ready for Psybeam attacks, and Butterfree did an aerial shrug. "I haven't quite worked out how to do a Rock attack yet."
Happy started flying in a kind of evasion pattern, one that was sort of familiar to Butterfree but not really familiar enough. It was like the ones Butterfree himself used, but it seemed like Happy was flying in straight lines too much – both for too much of the dance, and also for too long each time.
Well, it just made aiming easier.
Butterfree opened fire – and Happy dodged, sidling away from the attack as if he'd planned it all along.
And Butterfree had missed the point he was aiming for. Something wasn't right…
Butterfree fired off the rest of his Psybeams all at once, in a grid, and watched as they all missed their point of aim somehow. Then he used Sunny Day, and followed it up with a wide area Solarbeam like the one he'd used against Mr. Mime.
What had been a wide, flat beam when it flashed out from Butterfree's wings lensed crazily all over the place, which confirmed Butterfree's suspicions – Happy was using his powders, like Stun Spore and Sleep Powder, and manipulating them psychically to make them refract light.
It meant Butterfree couldn't actually target Happy properly… at least, not using his eyes. Or his psychic powers, either, because of how much psychic static Happy's own powers were throwing out.
But he had other options.
"Supersonic," Butterfree announced, echolocating a rough position, then flapped his wings hard and zipped in for an Aerial Ace.
One. Two. Three. Happy was looking a lot worse for wear after the third, but he flapped his slightly tattered wings and bored in on an attack of his own.
Butterfree was in better shape, so he was going to win this. He sped up, accepting the clash, and if Happy wanted to match him Aerial Ace for Aerial Ace, he was game.
Then Happy's wings lit up purple with Venoshock.
"Now that's just not fair," Butterfree muttered, just before impact.
Though, in hindsight, flying straight through a cloud of powder moves could have gone worse… and that was the main thing he was thinking about as he passed out.
Instead of a Pokéball, Ash took Dexter's projector.
"Watch out," he said. "I'm not sure what your counterpart is, but be careful."
Then he threw the little golden-yellow triangle out onto the field.
"That's… not a Pokéball," the referee objected, then blinked. "Huh?"
"Huh?" the commentator echoed.
Stand by, ready. Set up.
I was beginning to wonder if you'd ever use me.
"That's incredible!" the commentator said, as Dexter floated out into the middle of the field. "That's a synthetic Pokémon! I've only ever seen one on Doctor Akihabara's CyberMon show before!"
"CyberMon?" Ash asked.
"I've seen a few episodes, if it helps," Sparky contributed. "It's kinda a reality TV show, kinda embedded reporting. Solving problems inside computers, that sort of thing. He's got a troubleshooting group who are pretty good at their jobs, I guess."
Ash nodded. "Thanks…"
Then he saw the Pokémon Ritchie had sent out.
"Eevee, get ready!" Ritchie called, and Ash tried not to snort.
Of course it'd be a Pokémon without a nickname.
"Oh, hi!" the Eevee said, curvetting and bouncing around as he walked a circle around Dexter. "You're interesting. I've never seen a Pokémon like you before!"
Thank you, Dexter said. Tracing… Adaptability copied. How useful.
"That sounds like the name of my Ability!" Eevee realized. "Is that one of your abilities too?"
In a way, Dexter replied. His form shattered into a cloud of polygons, then reformed into a simple blue-and-pink octahedron. Analyzing.
"...oh, what's that?" Eevee said. "Is that a new Form I haven't seen before? What are you doing?"
The octahedron quivered, then reformed into a hexagonal flower with three glowing outer petals. Tri Attack.
Eevee yelped, jumping away as the three-element blast hit the arena floor and blew a divot out of it. "Okay! Okay, sorry, I forgot this was a fight! Um, Dig!"
He dug quickly into the ground, leaving a small hill.
Dexter powered down, his tri-attack cannon switching to an octahedral shape, and slowly lowered himself to the ground. A drill emerged, and plunged an inch or so into the ground.
Scanning.
A low rumble pulsed out from the drill.
Processing… inversion complete.
Quick as a flash, the drill retracted and Dexter switched back to attack form. A Solarbean knifed into the ground and cut a trench, and Eevee burrowed out of the side less than a second later.
And promptly fell in.
"Hey!" Eevee complained, looking around in confusion. "Where'd the ground go?"
Ice Beam, Dexter answered, which wasn't an answer but sort of a hint.
Eevee got hit on his flank by the beam, shook it off, then sprang out of the trench and began to run as fast as he could… jump.
Dexter kept firing, but he couldn't quite get the angle consistently right as Eevee's bouncy curvetting running style kept throwing him off.
Then he got a warning, which brought itself to his attention in the same way as strained muscles but more precisely: capacitors at twenty percent.
With regret, Dexter ceased fire and returned to his default bird-form, levitating higher to avoid attack while his capacitors recharged.
Eevee noticed the change and ran over to underneath him, before jumping up frantically. "Er, tackle! Take Down! Bite! Shadow Ball? Baton Pass? Return?"
What are you even doing? Dexter asked. They can't reach me up here.
His capacitors were quickly recharging, so not long to go.
Come to think of it, Shadow Ball doesn't even affect me.
"Bounce!" Eevee cheered, soaring up to Dexter's height with a powerful kick of his hind legs.
It wasn't a normal move for Eevee to learn, but then again his normal way of running around probably helped with that.
"Um, I think that's all of them… let's find out! Last Resort!"
WHAM.
Ash called a time out and walked over to the crater, extracting Dexter's projector from the hole. "This is what happens when you underestimate an adorable little Eevee, Dexter. You all right?"
Never better, Dexter beeped. Please restore my pride from the most recent backup.
Pikachu came running back over during the break, and Sparky left, and Ash counted in his head.
He still had Riolu and Pidgeot, and Ritchie still had Happy and Eevee. Depending on the way that shook out, either of them could win a battle of their remaining Pokémon… but that wasn't really how they were going to do it.
Ash wouldn't mind losing to Ritchie, not really. And he didn't think that Ritchie would mind losing to him.
So it was down to their last Pokémon, winner takes all.
"So, you ready?" Ash called. "One last battle!"
"Yeah!" Ritchie agreed. "We're having a resurgence and we'll ride it to victory!"
"Sure!" Ash replied, in a way that said he wasn't. "On three. One, two…"
"Zippo/Charizard!"
There was only one way the last match could have worked out, really.
Zippo looked up at Ash's much bigger Pokémon, and gulped, then set his stance anyway.
He was a brave Pokémon.
"Come on, Zippo!" Ritchie shouted. "Ancientpower!"
Zippo dodged away from an opening Flamethrower, slapped the ground with his tail, and brought up a piece of rock from the gash Dexter had left. The rock lit up with a white glow, and he slapped it at Charizard with a quick tail slap.
Charizard was just a little too big to dodge away from it, but he got close, and the projectile hit him on the wingtip.
"Ow!" he bellowed.
"Calm down, Charizard!" Ash called urgently. "Don't make mistakes! Think how you'd feel being beaten by a Charmander!"
Zippo threw another Ancientpower rock, and Charizard just blew it to bits with a jet of flame. The rock wasn't the only thing that was glowing, though.
"Wow," Ash said, wincing, as Zippo evolved to Charmeleon. "I know I've said it before, but when that happens it's really annoying."
"Unless it's happening to us," Pikachu replied. "Well, mostly to you, or to us-the-team, not to me."
"Yeah, and now I feel sorry for all the people I beat that way," Ash said.
Zippo charged in, one arm crackling with the electrical energy for a Thunder Punch. He countered a Flamethrower with a gout of Dragonbreath, and leapt at Charizard as he took off.
The punch connected, but more importantly it meant that Zippo came along for the ride as Charizard rose into the air.
The Flying-type shook his leg, hard. "Get off!"
"Not a chance! Have you seen how high up we are?"
"Of course I have, I'm the reason we're this high! I'm driving, so – aah!"
Zippo had charged another Thunderpunch, which discharged straight into Charizard, and followed that up a moment later by opening his other clawed hand and slamming the glowing Ancientpower rock he was carrying into Charizard's leg.
The Flying-type slapped at Ritchie's Pokemon with his wing, trying to get Zippo to let go, but it was too much of a twist and he just got tasered again for his trouble.
"Get off get off get off!" Charizard roared, and blasted his own flank in flame to try and blow Zippo clear.
This was actually really painful! In fact, it was enough to-
Charizard realized something.
Looking down for a moment, just to make sure he was still inside the stadium's limits even though he was much higher up than that, he twisted his tail so that his tail flame was just underneath Zippo.
Zippo punched him again, and Charizard's Blaze activated with a dull whumph. His tail flame became huge and blue, surrounding Zippo completely in flames, and the shock was enough to make his grip loosen.
Charizard kicked his leg again, and this time it worked. Zippo fell free.
The Charmeleon tried grabbing for Charizard's tail, but didn't quite make it. Then he looked down, gulped, and turned to look up at Charizard.
The Flying-type was already diving down, ready to catch Zippo, but being rescued from a crash would count as a loss.
And Zippo didn't want to let that be the end of it.
His own tail flame flared up, more strongly now, and he began to glow.
"That's new," Ash said, shading his eyes.
"Little bit, yeah," Pikachu said. "Chain evolution is not bad, but I don't think it makes the top five."
"…huh?" Ash asked. "There's an actual list?"
Yes, Dexter confirmed. Time travel is involved in one and three, and an alternate dimension at four.
Above the arena, Zippo finished evolving, flared his new wings out, and… piled straight into the floor, because he'd finished evolving too late and hadn't had time to actually stop.
Ash's Charizard landed next to Zippo, arms folded, and raised an eyebrow at Ritchie.
Ritchie visibly mulled it over, then raised his hand. "Yeah, I concede. And, uh… I'd like to thank my opponent, because he saved me a lot of time with Zippo!"
AN:
This was a fun one to write. If I had to characterize it, I'd say it's a "distorted mirror" match - there's similarities and differences. I tried to construct the remainder of Ritchie's team with that in mind - so Eevee is a pure Normal type with a great deal of adaptability, like Dexter, whereas Nagi is almost as fast as Pidgeot over only very short distances, and much more agile.
Dynamic Equilibrium is a real concept in aviation, and used to make very fast fighters still very manoeuvrable. It means they have "twitchy handling".
The thing with the sonic booms from the wings is taken from the story "Higher flier".
I did refactor this one more significantly than earlier parts of the League.