Author's Note: Does it seem like Isaac isn't taking this as seriously as he could be? In some ways yes, and that's absolutely on purpose. He over prepared and stressed himself out for months for Mewtwo. He even took an international trip to catch a unique ghost-type that suited him. Now his goal isn't just to win, but to show off specific pokemon, and that part he's taking seriously. It's like the Pendulum season of Yu-Gi-Oh, tournament battling is as much about showmanship as it is about battle prowess. I…may semi-skip past the next 6v6 with a summary, because 6v6 fights are long and exhausting to write when they're not sweeps. Which I refuse to let Isaac do in this tournament even with his over preparation.

Anyways, I'm going to try to get not onto a strict schedule but at least onto a semi-regular rotation of a chapter of Curiosity, a chapter of something else, a chapter of Curiosity, and then put some time into my original work every month. But starting my first year teaching soon might mean it takes a bit to hit that stride.

Chapter 26: Creed Part 2 (Royal Rumble)

"Hey Gary! I know we both brought them, want to show the crowd how royalty fights?" I called across the arena.

He froze, his hand hovering over one pokeball, a thoughtful look replaced his concerned one from before. After a moment he nodded and looked up at me, the fire back in his eyes.

"You're on, Beech!"

For a second I wondered if he was doing a play on words with how my name came out slightly similar to a curse, but he looked sincere so I discarded it.

I took out Cleo's Moon Ball that we'd transferred her to as a nidorina, she'd always enjoyed the aesthetic.

Gary took out a Safari Ball, huh that answered where he'd caught his nidos for me.

"Go, Nidoking!"

"Rise and shine, Nidoqueen!"

Only the Elite Four or Champion would use nicknames when sending pokemon out in tournaments like this, some of their pokemon had a brand almost as distinct as the trainers. Lance's charizard and dragonite had their own line of plushies and merchandise differentiating them from the rest of their species based on the small variations they had, a scar here, the exact shade of their scales there, things like that.

"Looks like we're in for a royal rumble, folks! This is the first tournament appearance of Isaac Beech's starter, a nidoqueen! And we all remember Gary Oak's nidoking from a brutal fight that secured him his victory against Melissa earlier in the tournament!"

With a heavy thud both royal pokemon appeared and slammed into the ground in hero landings.

Well, glad I am not the only one with a flair for the dramatic, I thought to myself, I then glanced over and saw Gary's cheerleading squad cheering from his personal box. In fact I might have been the more reserved of the two of us.

"Earthquake!"

"Earth Power!"

We both quickly called out our opening super-effective attacks.

The nidoking lifted a powerful leg and slammed it into the ground creating a shaking fissure lancing towards Cleo, but she was not idle, she had gathered glowing Ground-type energy into her paws and slammed those into the ground, sending a glowing wave of rippling earth to meet the fissure.

The moves perfectly canceled each other out, meeting dead in the middle of the arena.

However, they'd cracked the edges of the artificial ponds and churned up the grass and stone. The arena was now a mess of torn up earth with water seeping into all the cracks. That would make for interesting future bouts.

"Ice Beam!" I called out and Cleo quickly called up the blue-white frosty light in her maw and shot a freezing lance out at her still recovering opponent.

The nidoking had overcommitted to his Earthquake and had not been ready for it to end early when the moves met in the center.

The Ice Beam hit him dead in the center of his forehead and if it weren't for the trade off of Sheer Force I was convinced it would have frozen him solid. Even with that he went down like a sack of bricks with the world's worst brain freeze.

Mouth hanging open in disbelief Gary returned his nidoking.

"Wow! What an upset! After a terrifying initial clash, the nidoqueen puts down her opposite with a single hit!"

In all honesty it was a lucky strike to a weak point while he was exposed, but I would take the win.

"That is two to one in Isaac Beech's favor! Gary has also already revealed one extra pokemon. What will his fourth choice be?"

I winced as a blastoise took the field with a resounding thump. Yes, that would be a problem. I had answers, Cleo herself even was one of the best answers, but man was it going to be a tank to power through. And to make matters worse, Gary Oak certainly had money to throw at Technical Machines, even more than I did. Though admittedly, most of my disposable income and gym winnings had gone to evolution materials.

"Thunderbolt!"

"Iron Defense!"

We two trainers called our commands out simultaneously and Gary got incredibly lucky, which I supposed made up for my incredible luck on his nidoking going head first into that Ice Beam.

The steel-type energy of Iron Defense combined with the blastoise's position on the ground accidentally grounded the electricity of Cleo's Thunderbolt that slammed into him.

"Uh…can one of our commentators tell us why that didn't work?"

"Shell Smash!" I was too distracted by Gary's blastoise boosting itself through the roof practically for free to listen to Professor Oak talk about how Gary totally saw the Thunderbolt coming and did the Iron Defense thing on purpose.

Now the damn thing was as fast as Cleo, and apparently was built to abuse Shell Smash and physical attacks. Not what I had been expecting at all.

"Disrupt his footing with Earth Power and rain Thunderbolt into any openings!" I called out, we were on the back foot now.

"Waterfall!" Damnit, the blastoise was now using the momentum boost of Waterfall to jump over sections of roiling earth.

"Defensive Dig!" She didn't really have the offensive mastery of the skill to use it, especially with how I focused on her Special Attack, but I had drilled Cleo in evasive utilization of the move relentlessly.

She popped out behind the blastoise and hammered the back of his shell with lightning. Staggering it immensely.

"Avalanche!"

Oh. That wasn't good.

Icy energy encircled the giant turtle, freezing the moisture from his dissipating Waterfall attack into brittle chunks.

Then he and the chunks rocketed at Cleo, hammering into her and sending her tumbling back into the cracked and draining pool of water behind them.

Cleo was on her last legs, the blastoise had only taken the one hit and had stamina to still go for days, I needed her to go out on her own terms forcing Gary's hand.

So when the blastoise rushed back in with a Waterfall into an Avalanche combo once more, I waited. I waited until the last second and called out a move, "Shotgun Toxic!"

It wouldn't be as potent, but a wide blast of the move Toxic at point blank range…

Yes, I saw Gary do the calculations too as the purple goo splashed across the blastoise's face and body right before he crashed into Cleo and knocked her out. I returned her mid-air as she was flying backwards. She'd done a damn good job.

With a defeated sigh, Gary returned his pokemon as well, the poison already causing it to sag and stagger a little.

"You're tricky, Beech!" Gary called out across the stadium as we both readied our next picks.

"You're not making it easy, Oak!" I called back, "Seems to me you're never more than a second behind my tricks!" It really was impressive, Gary had always come off as cocky in the recordings I saw of his fights, but his hair thin victory against Melissa at the end of the preliminaries must have kicked him in the pants enough that he was all in and serious now.

I had plenty of options left at this point. Though they were both my other revealed ancient pokemon and Artagnan at this point. With Estella as a final back-up.

Could Artagnan sweep the eevee and two other pokemon? I grinned, it was worth a try.

"Sorry about this, Gary. But we've got another big show for you, en garde, Artagnan!" I called out, throwing his Safari Ball out across the field.

Growling, Gary sent back out the Luxury Ball I now knew held his eevee.

The optics of this fight were just as bad as the first one with Hannibal. A glowering, massive rocky scyther evolution, versus a cute little eevee.

"Who's that pokemon?!" The announcer called out.

And I let Professor Oak educate the crowd as Gary looked on warily.

"That my friends…is a recently rediscovered ancient evolution of scyther, likely the standard evolution before the Iron Age of humanity spread steel across the world. There are previously dubiously validated records from ancient Sinnoh about this rock-type evolution for scyther. It's called kleavor. You are looking at what is currently a one of a kind pokemon, as far as trained pokemon go, if young Isaac's reports on his discovery are anything to go by."

"Amazing! Let's see what it can do!"

We both immediately had our pokemon boosting, but I wasn't going to let Gary get off another Baton Pass, I had gone for Agility, while Gary had gone for Work Up, which meant his next pokemon was a physical attacker, interesting.

Before the eevee could get off the next move, Artagnan had blitzed in with a vicious Sharpness boosted Stone Axe. Knowing that unless it was a final pokemon he was to build up those shards around the field.

"Oh! And the eevee is down before it can pass itself along to another pokemon! What will Gary try next?"

It turns out I had been very wrong in some of my assessments of what Gary would bring. Because the arcanine came out next.

That made the Work Up make a lot of sense. That arcanine with a boost probably could have burnt Artagnan down in one go.

Now it would have to work for it, with my kleavor having his speed boosted to near equivalency when not using a priority move.

Not that I needed a full priority to get the first hit, the chips of obsidian from Stone Axe honed in on the appearing arcanine and slammed into it, doing more damage than they would have to a different pokemon.

Gary cursed before he pivoted to the attack, "Flame Charge!"

Ah, he had definitely realized he was going to need to boost his speed just a little bit to maintain the advantage. Or he had calculated the maximum speed off of scyther or scizor.

It wasn't a completely one sided fight, however I had Artagnan use Stone Axe defensively to soften the blows of the fire-type attacks while also getting in chip damage from the shards and occasionally a full swipe with his other ax.

Gary, it appeared, was out of his hard counters and powerhouses. This arcanine was newly evolved it seemed and almost exclusively had speed going for it.

Artagnan at this point was used to his new body and fighting style. Typically utilizing bukijutsu style opening blitz attacks to one shot or the guard-counter methods I had him using here.

The arcanine went down and a grimacing Gary sent out his final pokemon.

His scyther.

"Oh buddy…" I muttered under my breath with sympathy.

Artagnan grinned evilly at the scyther which just gaped at coming face to face with an ancestral evolution.

Gary tried to put up a good fight, I will give him that. He tried to have his scyther use Brick Break and Steel Wing to counteract my kleavor's stone axes. It even worked in prolonging the battle far longer than it normally would have gone on.

But eventually more power, experience, and a type advantage won out. Artagnan hammered the scyther into the back wall with a brutal swipe, I didn't sense a lick of rock-type energy either, so it must have been a purely physical Slash.

"The winner is Isaac Beech!"

Not necessarily an upset, Gary and I were both highly favored it appeared from the cheering crowd.

Returning my pokemon I walked over and shook the hand of a conflicted looking Gary Oak. His confidence had been shaken by his last few matches. But there was also something else in those eyes, an excited fire that hadn't been there early on in the preliminaries. Gary had been pushed to his limit by multiple people here. He'd experienced challenges in a way he never had before. Previously Giovanni wielding Mewtwo was the only thing that had ever given him pause, and he had been able to write that off as some weird kind of cheating from the gym leader.