Author's Note: I think I'm going to speed through this a bit to the big fights so that I can get back to what I have the most fun writing, which is the investigation and mystery stuff. I love writing a good battle of course, I just definitely feel the drag when I try to write a full six v six.
Ash and co will be off to the Orange Islands and then Johto after this so they will only be occasional guest stars now! Mewtwo and the Anti-Team Rocket campaign will continue after the Conference and then upon resolution we'll have a small time skip of about a competition season.
Chapter 23: The Indigo Connection
Mewtwo hovered behind me as I frowned at the two Dark Balls we'd recovered from the Rocket Warehouse on Five Island. They were about ready to be packaged up and transported. They apparently contained an aerodactyl and a dragonair. Both corrupted with the Shadow Pokemon corruption.
They were to be transferred to a Professor Willow. A pokemon pharmacology specialist who would try to discover a cure. All the Dark Balls would be transferred to him actually. Including the scizor that Artagnan had taken out.
"A vile process. One I…approve of the seeming determination your…League has shown in trying to cure." Mewtwo's begrudging approval was a rather large step actually.
"However, I find this method too passive for my tastes. Furthermore, I have…questions of my own about Team Rocket's variety of experiments. I would seek your…" He obviously didn't want to use the word 'aid' here and was searching for another alternative.
"Your assistance on the human side of this investigation."
Huh, I hadn't expected that. "You want to hit some more of their labs with me?"
"Indeed…I would like to find more of their cloning and shadow experiment labs. These two experiments existing in conjunction is something I find…concerning."
I froze, he made an extremely solid point. If these two experiments combined…and they gained DNA from other legendaries too. Images of Shadow Lugia, Ho-oh, and Mewtwo flashed before my mind. I winced. Yeah, that could be bad.
"I'll follow up with League intel and my own personal investigations. Things are going to get very busy for me shortly, so it might be a month before we can hit anything. If you keep scouting things out though we might be able to hit the ground running." I glanced down at his feet floating two inches above the ground, "So to speak."
"Droll." I could feel him mentally rolling his eyes almost.
I shook my head as he left. I also needed to finish my report on the Grampa Canyon Underworld for my thesis introduction. I slipped my right hand under my vest and thumbed the League deputy badge sewn into the underneath. I was juggling a lot of balls in the air at the moment.
After the Conference I also needed a second trip into the Underworld so that my thesis could reach some actual conclusions.
And if I wanted to run a fossil/ancient pokemon themed gym I needed a broader pool of ancient pokemon to pull from. And a weaker aerodactyl than Hannibal.
Cleo had borrowed back up from where she'd dug a bunch of pit traps for the Rocket Grunts underground and lumbered on over to me. She playfully bumped my shoulder with her own. Or attempted to, she was only about four and a half feet tall, so her shoulder bumped my elbow. I reached up and scratched her behind the ear like she had always enjoyed.
"You can always tell when I'm over thinking and worrying can't you girl?" She cooed and nodded, "Couldn't have asked for a better friend to do all this with."
She nodded again then pointed her nose towards my tool belt. I chuckled and clicked the pokeblock dispenser to pop one out. She liked the drier ones, and I think only twenty percent of that preference was that they were blue like she was.
A week later and the Indigo Plateau Conference had begun. My first preliminary match was about to start on the Rock Field. I had decided to give my less experienced team members a place to shine here in the preliminaries, and save my stronger members for the later rounds. I would likely reveal my ancient pokemon as well, in order of how common knowledge of them was. That means I would probably reveal the kabutops and omastar duo of Axel and Grauben on the Water Field whenever I drew that, and Hannibal and Artagnan in the top sixteen at some point.
That said I was making sure to always have two of my stronger members in my team of six to pick in case we unexpectedly came across a trainer in our seeding that was a strong contender for that top sixteen.
To that end I planned to start with my rhyhorn, Alberich, hoping to finally push him over the top to evolution. I had brought Lyle, my krokorok recently acquired at the Desert Resort. Rum Tum, the Galarian meowth I planned to hopefully evolve into a perrserker soon. He'd make a solid pivot for Shahrazad to U-turn into if I could get him to that level. Finally I had Alexei, my piloswine who I wanted to get some practice in with Ancient Power so that he could eventually master it and evolve.
Cleo and Estella were on my belt as emergency options for this field. But I didn't think I would need them when my opponent was announced as some guy named Leroy.
He sent out a raticate and I grinned, game on.
"Oh! And that's the battle! Isaac's special meowth has taken out Leroy's ferocious ursaring with a wily use of Taunt stopping it from boosting itself and letting the meowth wear it down with Metal C-what's this? Wow, what a treat for the crowd! The meowth is evolving!"
And indeed, Rum Tum was glowing brightly as he gained both height and mass. Eventually it died down to reveal a ferocious looking metallic bipedal cat with a fearsome maw of razor sharp teeth.
"Perrser-ker!" He cried out and thrust a paw into the air.
"And there we go folks! The end of the match that heralds the first official competitive use of the ancient pokemon kabutops and omastar! These have been heavily restricted due to a low rate of usable fossils being discovered for resurrection at the Silph Company affiliated Cinnabar Labs! And what a showing it was! Michelle's dewgong and persian barely stood a chance!"
I was starting to feel like I had over prepared for the Conference by way of adequately preparing for Mewtwo and Team Rocket. Hopefully I would come up against Gary, Ash, Ritchie, Assunta, or one of the trainers from New Island soon.
I solidly won my next round on the Ice Stage just using Brinker and Alexei. Their environmental advantage had been too much for my opponent to overcome.
My final preliminary bout however, did give me my wish. On the Grass Stage I would be battling against Assunta, one of the top eight for last year's conference.
She even had a rhydon I was hoping to match against Alberich to hopefully trigger that evolution, studies had shown that same species competition could be a very impactful trigger for strength based evolutions. Though she was more likely to use her venomoth and ivysaur on the Grass Stage so I'd likely be working uphill environmentally.
I'd been hoping to give Lyle some more experience here but it was looking like things might be too hard for him from this point forward. I was most worried about her ivysaur going into this match, and Rum Tum's steel-typing would be perfect for stopping both the ivysaur and the venomoth's poison. Thus he would be my opener. Then hopefully I could bait out the rhydon and use Alberich and hopefully push him over the top and win, but if I didn't I still had a third slot left to wrap it up. Cleo would do nicely, she hadn't seen any use yet and she was my starter.
Things started out swimmingly, Rum Tum cut right through the ivysaur as if he were a weed whacker. His newly evolved body was making all of his hits harder and all the hits he took much less damaging. Especially with the ivysaur being primarily a physical attacker. Vine Whips, Razor Leafs, they all bounced right off.
The venomoth however, ended up being far stronger than I imagined. It immediately got off a Quiver Dance and things began going downhill from there.
"Air Slash!" Assunta called out and before Rum Tum's Metal Claw could land he got caught in the face by the blade of air and flinched back, allowing for a follow up of, "Psychic!"
The purple energy surrounded him and sent him spinning through the air and slamming into the arena wall.
I wasn't the only person that winced in sympathy there. Rum Tum couldn't take many more of those and his defenses for special attacks were quite low and he didn't have a single super-effective move, so I decided to return him and give Alberich a chance to shine.
"Good job, Rum Tum! Get back here!" I held out my hand and the beam of red shot out and pulled him back in as I put away the Premier Ball that Samson Oak had caught him in and pulled out Alberich's Safari Ball.
Upon reflection I had caught a significant number of my heavy hitters in the Safari Zone. That had been a great trip.
"Alright Alberich, let's get ready to rock!" That was a code for the strategy we'd open with. Stealth Rocks and then Protect and from there artillery with Rock Throw and an alternated Protect.
"Rhyyy!" He cried out as he thumped into the field and shot shards of rock out to hover around the arena. We'd practiced tirelessly to get a quick opening Stealth Rocks upon release. It was paying amazing dividends.
"Che!" Assunta clicked her tongue in annoyance, "Psychic again!" She called out and the purple energy this time washed over the white shell of Protect.
"Predictable…" I said under my breath, "Shotgun!" I called out watching as her venomoth zoomed out of the way of the first Rock Throw thanks to its boosted speed. However, Alberich in a move reminiscent of the Rock Slide I'd been attempting to teach him, sent out a spread of three other smaller Rock Throw projectiles behind the first. One of them clipped the venomoth's wing and sent it spiraling down towards the grassy field.
"Follow up!" I called out and even as he sent out another burst Assunta made her counter-play, "Catch them with Psychic and send them back!"
The purple glow surrounded Alberich's projectiles and they looped around in the air, admittedly losing some of their momentum and fired back at Alberich.
This wasn't worth protecting against, "Take the hit and set up your next shot!" Rock Head as an ability traditionally meant that you took no recoil damage from moves like Take Down and Double Edge. But it could be leveraged defensively like this to reduce damage from weaker physical projectiles similar to what I had Estella do with Skull Bash.
Alberich leaned his skull into the attack and his own projectiles shattered upon it, doing only minimal damage as he set up his next shotgun blast of Rock Throws.
Before the psychic glow had faded from the shards he was releasing his next blast, not giving the venomoth enough time to regather its focus.
Two of the three hit it dead center and it spun down to the ground unconscious.
And then Alberich began to glow, I grinned as the announcer shouted out, "That is two evolutions here at this Conference for Isaac! He must have pushed his pokemon to the very edge of their younger forms in preparation! What a show! And what will Assunta pick next to combat this new rhydon?"
"Don!" Alberich shouted out as he now stood on two feet. Glancing down at his new upright posture he gave a few practice punches then looked up at me with a happy smile and turned a vicious toothy grin over at Assunta. Challenging her.
She was scowling and took the bait.
"I'll counter with my own experienced Rhydon!" She called out, releasing her own hulking beast. Who immediately glowed with Rock Polish.
Uh oh.
It looked like we had taken two diametrically opposed directions with our rhydon.
"Drill Run!" She called out and I knew we had a problem. We had to disrupt that speed somehow, but we didn't have time to set up our Bulldoze properly, so we'd have to buy some time.
Luckily, we'd bought time at the very beginning of the match with the venomoth.
The Stealth Rocks were already rocketing in at the opposing rhydon.
"Charge up a Bulldoze, release on impact!" I called out and Alberich lifted up a single leg that glowed a muddy ochre color.
Assunta realized what was happening a moment too late as her eyes widened in shock following the trail of the rock shards. She'd been hoping the Rock Polish would let her outpace them I'd wager, meaning she wasn't used to Stealth Rocks at all.
"Now!" I called out as they slammed into her rhydon and mine slammed his foot into the ground as the momentum of the charging rhino pokemon slowed just enough to make the Bulldoze go off point blank.
The ground rippled and churned, not near as much as an Earthquake, and only in a small cone in front of Alberich, but it was enough to toss the enemy rhydon into the air and partially embed it into the loose and now tilled loamy soil.
"Take Down!" I called out and as our opponent scrambled to stand up Alberich pushed his feet off of the ground and burst forth in blinding white light and just as the rhydon was pushing itself up off of the ground it got slammed straight in the face by the people's elbow, courtesy of Alberich of course.
The…pokemon's elbow in this case? Regardless, its bell was rung by an elbow to the temple. Not a traditional Take Down, but Alberich was still getting used to his bipedal form.
The crowd oohed in sympathy.
Obviously this rhydon's ability was NOT Rock Head. Perhaps Lightning Rod or even the rare ability Reckless, because those two hits along with the Stealth Rocks were all it took to knock them out.
"Oh! What an upset! With a sneaky bit of strategy and impeccable timing, Isaac's newly evolved rhydon has knocked out Assunta's seasoned veteran! Assunta, one of last year's top eight, has been eliminated by Pokemon Tech graduate and season rookie, Isaac Beech!"
The crowd went wild as she returned her rhydon, looking shaken.
I smirked, now that we were out of the preliminaries, it was time to let the ancient pokemon shine.