Sabrina wasted no time once the mental signal from the refereeing Alakazam reached us. The PokéBall that hung suspended in the air from the late-teens girl's mental prowess – slowly rotating around its own axis yet rock steady otherwise in a testament to the Gym Leader's psychic power that Espeon would've been hard pressed to match – stopped for a second before shooting down into the sunken arena between us. It hit the ground in a flash of red before retreating neatly to her belt.
That alone was more useful than all my own Aura tricks combined.
The released Pokémon was easily recognized as a Kadabra, and not just because Sabrina was well known for her preference for the species. Leaner than standard, the perpetual half-lidded expression of something that considered every living creature around it deeply beneath its notice shone through clearly as it looked around, a single bent spoon balanced in one hand. The star on its forehead caught the pale light of the Gym's overhead panels. It didn't warm up. It didn't move. It simply stood there and regarded me with the kind of bored contempt usually reserved for stepping in something unpleasant.
I glanced at the audience and met Bill's gaze as he looked up again. Rolling my eyes, I nonetheless picked the PokéBall he wanted and tossed it into the pit.
Shocked gasps and fearful shuffling filled the Gym as the humongous boulder of a Shelgon that was Behemoth materialized. Contrary to how exuberant she'd have been as a Bagon if I'd used her in a Gym battle, as a Shelgon, she merely glared around grumpily, growling with a low frequency that shook the stone as the audience clambered to get the best picture.
They all fell silent and sat down at her displeasure. Betty grunted in satisfaction, finally greeting the suddenly sweating Kabara with an unimpressed snort, the whole battlefield shaking as she took a step forwards.
How Betty didn't count under the 'too strong for the challenged Badge' category, I'd never understand. While it was, of course, a nebulous standard, the Shelgon wasn't far from what would show up at the Indigo Conference six months later – in strength, if not training, yet. I wondered if it was Bill pulling more strings to show me off. Behemoth was the main reason he'd been interested in being my sponsor in the first place, and presumably why he invited so many reporters or whatever the audience was. It would be a shame if they didn't get to see the main event, I supposed.
Or maybe Sabrina just wasn't that impressed with the Titan Shelgon and didn't think of her as that much of a threat.
"The infamous Behemoth," Sabrina intoned, unfazed by the sight that would've inspired myths a mere hundred years before. "The two of you have been widely talked about at the battle courts." I narrowed my eyes at the implication.
I'd done my research on Sabrina. Everyone did, or everyone should, anyway, and it seemed she had returned the favor. I had a vague recollection of anime Sabrina being like a haunted house, horror psycho, but that didn't seem to be the case. On the other hand, it mostly seemed like a toss-up between people thinking she was an emotionless weirdo and others thinking she was hot.
Terribly uncultured not to realize that it was probably both.
Psychics who Trained Psychic-Types had a natural advantage that went beyond type matching. They could communicate directly, feel what their Pokémon felt, and give commands faster than speech. The half-second I spent opening my mouth and forming words was half a second her Pokémon had to form their attacks before mine even knew what to do.
The Alakazam at the far end of the sunken battlefield raised one of its spoons.
'Begin.'
"Betty, Dragon Dance."
I'd thought about it. Sabrina was fast; her Pokémon were fast, her orders were fast, and standing still long enough to set up was begging to be interrupted. But Kadabra's biggest threat was Psychic-Type moves, and Betty had exactly zero Psychic-Type weaknesses to exploit. On top of that, anything Kadabra threw at her physically was going to bounce off that shell like rain off a window.
I was sure Sabrina had more powerful Pokémon waiting for us than Kadabara, so for the last two weeks, getting a working version of Dragon Dance had been our focus. If she could buff her speed enough to catch her prey, there was literally nothing Sabrina could do to stop us.
The logic held. The problem was that Betty didn't particularly care about logic.
BOOM!
BOOM!
The ground shook as Betty slowly tilted sideways until her legs left the ground, and then tilted back to slam into the arena, thick tiles splintering into pieces. With a grumble, she did the same on the other side, shattering the floor again. I couldn't see it from my angle, but I knew by experience that Betty's yellow eyes were slowly gaining a greenish-blue hue that intensified the longer the Dragon Dance – Dragon Sway? Dragon Waddle? Dancing was a strong word – was allowed to continue.
Kadabra hadn't moved.
"She's charging," I said, mostly to myself.
Sabrina said nothing in response, but that wasn't surprising to anyone.
The spoon bent.
"Betty-
The Psychic hit her like a truck, and I actually felt the shockwave from thirty feet away, a pressure behind my eyes that made my vision blur for half a second. Betty didn't move. The attack washed over her, visible as a ripple in the air, and she rocked.
She didn't stop dancing.
I exhaled slowly. Between the foot-thick armor of near-steel-hard bone and the sheer physical bulk of a Titan Shelgon, it was going to take more than that. Moving her with Psychic wasn't impossible, but it was going to take more than just blasting her straight on.
The second hit came faster, and the third immediately after. Betty staggered between the second and third, one stubby leg sliding outward, and for a moment, I was worried. Then she planted, and a faint shimmer made the air around her waver while a deep thrumming echoed off the walls around her as the Dragon Dance activated properly.
"Headbutt."
She didn't need to be told twice.
The first step was slow and lumbering, but the second came faster, and then the next faster than that. Even with the 'stat' boosting move, she wasn't fast, but in a couple of seconds, she had built up a decent pace, barreling down at the Psychic-Type like a freight train.
Kadabra did something sensible in the face of the rushing building coming its way.
Kadabra vanished.
Not dodged. Vanished. Teleported. Mid-lunge, the space it occupied simply stopped containing a Kadabra, and Betty's nine feet and nine-ish thousand pounds of boosted, Dragon-Danced Shelgon hit the arena wall instead.
The wall lost.
A Betty-shaped crater punched into the stone, dust and chunks of masonry raining down, and I heard at least one of the reporters yelp as they nearly fell off their bench. Betty pulled herself free with a grinding scrape that took another chunk of wall with it, turned, and found that Kadabra had reappeared calmly at the center of the arena, bent spoon still balanced in one hand, expression entirely unchanged.
"Again," I said, more to test the Kadabra than because I expected a different result.
Betty charged, and Kadabra Teleported, and Betty went through the far wall instead of into it, the impact so complete that her entire front half disappeared into the stonework before she wrenched herself back out, trailing gravel and dust and what had previously been load-bearing masonry.
I stared at the hole.
"Hm." I'd expected better from the structural integrity of Saffron Gym. Too much brain, not enough brawn, perhaps.
"Rock Tomb," I called, looking up at Sabrina. The woman's eyes were glowing blue, and I watched the Kadabra more closely when it briefly appeared in a distortion of space and a flash of blue light. The Psychic-Type's own eyes were glowing the same color as they widened, the bipedal Pokémon barely managing to Teleport away before a spire rose from the ground beneath it and clipped its leg.
Kadabra reappeared to Betty's left. The vulpine humanoid panted heavily as blood trickled down its thigh, spoon clutched in both hands, but it still rallied and sent its strongest wave of psychic power rolling into her. Betty slid sideways a foot, roaring deafeningly when Kadabra violated space once more to escape the retaliatory Rock Tomb.
"SHEOOO!"
Behemoth roared and stomped furiously, steam blowing from her nostrils
"Keep it up with the Rock Tombs-Hey!"
She ignored me and charged again. Kadabra's eyes flicked with triumph beneath its sweat-soaked bangs, the repeated Teleporting clearly taking a lot out of it. The air around it shimmered with the buildup of-
Betty opened her mouth.
I raised an arm across my face instinctively against the blinding glow of the Dragon Breath as it blanketed the arena, the whole sunken pit buried underneath the torrent of kinetic flames as they ripped their way towards the Psychic-Type with terrifying speed.
Kadabra Teleported.
Into the Dragon Breath.
I didn't know whether it had misjudged the spread, or whether the sheer speed of the move outpaced its ability to pick a safe arrival point, or maybe it was an 'eye of the storm' kind of thing. Didn't matter. One second, it was mid-Teleport, and the next, it was inside a wall of Dragon Breath with its eyes squeezed shut, a translucent barrier shining brighter and brighter around it as the blue flames ate away at it. The second-stage evolution held up admirably well against the unrelenting force, but it could only last for so long.
Betty, after all, was already moving through her own attack.
I saw her shape inside the blaze, a dense shadow charging through the blue-green fire as if it was a mere smokescreen, and the impact when she connected with Kadabra was less a sound and more a physical event. The far wall, already intimately familiar with Betty's presence, received another visit that I was fairly certain shook it down to the foundations.
BOOM!
When the Dragon Breath cleared, Kadabra was embedded in the rubble and not moving.
The Alakazam referee's spoon rose.
'Kadabra is unable to battle. The first round goes to the challenger, Periwinkle!'
I looked at the wall. Then at the other wall. Then at the first wall again.
Betty extracted herself from the wreckage with the specific satisfaction of something that had been wanting to do exactly that since the beginning, turned, and stared at me as if to confirm that yes, that was what she'd been going for all along, and no, she didn't need me to tell her.
"Well," I said slowly. "If it works, it works, I guess." That being said, her acting without orders might be a problem. It hadn't been a problem at the courts, but it was definitely worth keeping an eye on.
Her eyes narrowed at my tone, picking up on the subtext, but that was for later.
The next PokéBall floated up from Sabrina's belt and drifted down to the arena floor, cracking open to reveal another bipedal, yellow figure. I recognized it as well, even though it was a much less popular choice than the Abra line.
Large, triangular eyes twitched alongside a bulbous nose as droopy-looking, half-lidded eyes gazed around at the destruction the battlefield had suffered from the first battle, a five-fingered hand lifting a gold pendulum to polish it against the ruff of white fur around its neck. Judging it suitably clean, it let its focus drop, dangling from a string, gently swaying in a nonexistent breeze.
I knew what Hypno was, even if I'd only ever faced the lower evolution Drowzee – other than Pertrel's prick of a Psychic-Type. That's also why I knew what it was doing before it had even fully materialized.
Hypno's pendulum swung in a lazy arc, almost seeming to leave afterimages in its wake, and even from where I was standing, I could feel the edges of something pulling at the back of my thoughts, like a half-remembered dream before I blinked it away and looked at Betty.
Betty's eyes had already glazed slightly at the edges, the accumulated Dragon-Type energy enhancing her body, fading bit by bit as she lost her concentration. The Dragon Breath had already sapped much of the Dragon Dance, as she still struggled with using the power for other things at the same time. Yet, in the face of Hypno, it was draining like I'd pulled the drain from the bathtub.
'Begin!' Alakazam called.
"BETTY!" I snapped loudly enough that a few of the spectators jumped in their seats, wiping away the drool that had started to fall after they made the mistake of looking at the pendulum for too long. "Eyes on me!"
The Shelgon's gaze jerked to me, the glaze retreating. But it would come back. Hypno was already exerting passive pressure without a direct command, the pendulum swinging, and Betty's Dragon Dance was damn near gone.
I had maybe ten seconds before that became a serious problem.
"Dragon Breath, wide!"
Betty inhaled again, squeezing her eyes shut against the foreign intrusion even as she swayed somewhat on her feet. The following blue-green column of draconic energy was broad enough to catch Hypno even if the Psychic-Type moved sideways. Hypno did move sideways, fast enough to avoid the worst of it, but the edges caught it, and the Psychic-Type stumbled, pendulum swinging off rhythm.
Betty's eyes cleared completely in the gap.
"Again, keep it on-"
Hypno's eyes opened fully, and this time I felt it even with my Distorted nature dampening the effect.
Not a gentle pull. A shove. Like the whole world narrowed down on Hypno and its pendulum
Betty stopped.
Not flinched. Stopped. Mid-inhale, every muscle locked, her eyes going fully white at the edges, and she stood there as if something had reached into her skull and turned off the lights.
I had the PokéBall in my hand before I'd made the conscious decision.
"Betty, return!" Turning to Alakazam, I spoke before the Pokémon could get any ideas. "I'm using my substitution!"
I didn't wait to see if she'd shake it off on her own. Betty was stubborn enough to do so eventually, but eventually was too long when Hypno was standing fifteen feet away and winding up. It was the worst-case scenario I'd been dreading coming in. For a Psychic-Type Trainer, Sabrina didn't use mental manipulation like Hypnosis that often, but her Hypno was noted for its Dream Eater.
Betty could shrug off mountain rattling blows, but she was much more vulnerable mentally.
"Good call," said the Gym Leader softly, sending the reporters into another frenzy of snapping lenses. You'd think they'd never heard Sabrina talk before.
I looked down at the remaining PokéBalls on my belt and did the math.
Honedge was a Ghost-type. Immune to Normal- and Fighting-Type moves, which wasn't much help, but super effective against Psychic-Types.
More importantly, the Honedge line was noted for its own skill in mental manipulation. We hadn't trained it, but the sword would be my best bet at resisting.
"Your turn."
The Honedge materialized slowly, as he always did, the blue iris within his eye flickering as it oriented itself. The blade hung in the air, sheath held below him by the tasseled ribbon hand. He regarded the Hypno with the blank stare that only something that was supposed to be inanimate could – plus Siren, but she was a fish.
Hypno looked back.
I had no idea what Sabrina was going to do. Hypnosis was damn near useless. It would technically work, but it would just take too long. Psychic-Type attacks wouldn't do anything serious either. She'd lost one of her main advantages entirely. I tried to read something from her expression and got the same immaculate blankness that had been there since we started.
I'd been wrong. She hadn't been testing with the Kadabra exchange.
She was testing now.
The second PokéBall was already rising from her belt before I'd finished the thought.
"Honedge-"
A flash of red.
'Gym Leader Sabrina uses her substitution!'
Hypno returned – just like that. Gone between blinks, Sabrina had made her read and acted on it in the same movement while telepathically sending word to Alakazam, keeping the Hypno on the back burner as a constant threat to shut Betty down.
The Espeon that replaced it was nothing like mine.
Even after evolution, my Espeon was much smaller than the average for the species, though her fur was a tad longer. Sabrina's was large and mature, deliberate, the gem on its forehead catching the light in a way that felt less decorative and more like a warning. The forked tail moved with the kind of slow, precisely calibrated confidence that said everything about how many battles this particular Espeon had ended.
I didn't give the command immediately, trying to read something from the matchup. Sabrina had admittedly thrown me off with the copycat switch, though in hindsight I should've seen it coming. Hypno was the Gym Leader's best answer to Betty without pulling out something actually strong, and even just as a looming threat, it was doing its job.
What Espeon could bring that Hypno couldn't was speed and raw Psychic output that didn't need to be channeled through a pendulum. While it didn't have an Alakazam's intellect and metaphysical understanding of the world that allowed it to pull off some insane things with a minimum of power, Espeon was, generally, quite possibly stronger in terms of raw strength.
"Shadow Sneak, keep moving after."
Honedge flickered, the shadow it cast stretching as it vanished into it, slipping across the floor toward Espeon. Sabrina's Espeon moved, a fluid sidestep that was almost too casual, and the sword cleaved through the air as it ascended. The follow-through brought Honedge back to corporeal form six feet to Espeon's left, blade swinging around to catch the feline.
Espeon wasn't there. It was already gone again before Honedge had even moved, and I watched with apprehension as it strolled around the left side as Honedge spun right, unable to see the feline before its jewel glowed with a multicolored light, a beam of twisting energy lashing out and sending Honedge flying across the arena and smashing him against the wall.
It wasn't reacting, or even truly predicting.
No, it fully knew where and what Honedge would do, as fast as the strategies formed in my mind.
It was seeing the future.
Of course it was. It was a Psychic, and not just any Psychic, but one noted for its predictive abilities. Not in the vague, passive way, my own Espeon was still developing, but in the way that a Gym Leader's fully trained Espeon was.
The Shadow Claw that followed hit nothing. Neither did the one after. Nor the Slash.
Espeon drifted around them like smoke, gem gleaming as Psybeams rattled off one after another. Honedge did his best, blade cloaked in Distortion as he twisted and turned, cleaving a Psybeam in half and blocking another with his sheath.
The third hit him dead center and sent him to the stone floor with a clang! Even downed, though, the Steel/Ghost-Type was a trooper, sinking into the ground and shadow before the flurry of incoming Psybeams could pound him.
I needed to change something.
"Shadow Mist!"
Sabrina and Espeon tilted their heads the same way at the same time, the Psychic bond between them evidently going a lot deeper than I thought. It was more than just telepathic communication. If I wasn't mistaken, it was a full-blown mindmeld, with thoughts and ideas flowing freely between the two brains-that-were-one.
Good.
The Shadow Ball formed as normal, if a little slower than Honedge was capable of, and grew large in front of Honedge's eye. At the last moment, the forked tip of Espeon's tail quivered, and the eyes of the two psychics widened.
The Shadow Ball exploded.
In a burst of blackish purple fog, Distortion flooded the battlefield, not unlike how Betty's Dragon Breath had done earlier. Only, instead of ripping up the floor tiles and cracking the walls, the gaseous energy lingered over the arena like a thin layer of mist at dawn. It wasn't thick enough to be obscuring, or powerful enough to be directly harmful to Espeon, but it didn't need to be.
I'd gotten the idea from the Pokémon Tower. It wasn't even a fraction of the lingering Distortion that had allowed even Ghosts weaker than Honedge to form attacks using the surrounding energy, and even as I watched, it was dissipating. Still, it was a step in the right direction.
A knock-off Ghost Terrain.
Espeon mewled unhappily from within a bubble of psychic energy, a Light Screen and Reflect wrapping around the feline to keep the creeping Distortion out. Up above, Sabrina had one eye squeezed shut, a faint vein visible on her temple. The glow in their eyes held steady against my amateurish technique, but it didn't look pleasant.
"Shadow Sneak again!"
The pool of darkness that was Honedge was much faster, shooting forwards across the floor in the twilight created by the lingering Shadow Ball. He emerged like a wraith behind the shielded cat, blade wrought with shadow as it carved through the barriers like they weren't even there.
A mistake.
The arena floor lit up – no warning, no sound, no extreme effort of will. The ruined barriers dropped as Espeon glowed with power, a large circle around it doing the same. A dozen thin lines of Psychic energy carved the surface in a grid pattern that I hadn't seen coming, and suddenly, the space Honedge was occupying wasn't the sneak attack it had been but a trap, the Psychic pressure so precisely focused it was functioning less like an attack and more like a wall closing in from every direction.
Motherfucker. That's what I got for pitting my own prototype against an actual Psychic Terrain.
Three, four, five of the strands frayed and lost their cohesion due to the Shadow Mist, psychic power lashing out wildly as Espeon lost control of them. However, that still left too many. Two fell apart against the edge of Honedge's blade, another destroyed by a sloppy Shadow Ball.
The last four wrapped around my ghost, tightening around his hilt and binding his arm. By the time a Shadow Claw had weakened them enough that Honedge could pull himself free, Espeon had already moved, a space cleared of the Shadow Mist by the flailing of what I recognized as the weirdest use of Psybeams I'd ever seen.
My hands tightened around the railing, mind whirling furiously. While Espeon was running circles around Hoendge, the Shadow Mist gave too much of a speed boost to rely on Espeon's future predictions. So she was constraining him, limiting his movement and forcing him to burn energy in a constant cycle, too occupied to attack.
It was working, too.
The next grid came faster, feeding off the lingering power, and the one after that faster still. Honedge was spending more time throwing off the Psychic constraints than attacking, and even Ghost typing had limits when the volume of Psychic pressure got high enough. Distortion wasn't Denial, resistance wasn't immunity. The Psychic's eyes were closed as the tendrils bound the sword again and again, trying to chain him.
The Shadow Claw wavered. The movements were a half-beat slower.
Espeon still hadn't moved after getting away the first time.
I watched Honedge fight for another thirty seconds before I accepted what I was seeing.
"Come back," I said, and recalled Honedge before he spent itself completely against a wall he simply couldn't break.
It hurt, but sometimes we had to admit defeat before nearly dying.
'The challenger forfeits his Honedge, bringing the score to 1-1, with no substitutions left!'
The math wasn't mathing the way I wanted it to any longer. I took a deep breath, pushing down the pulsing rage.
Calm. Think.
Betty had used a Dragon Dance and one hit to drop Kadabra, but she wasn't at full strength going back in after the Hypnosis. She'd be groggy for at least a few seconds even without another hit. Hypno was still fresh. Espeon tried to appear casual as it banished the last Distortion with blasts of telekinesis, but since I had one of my own, I saw the signs of concealed heavy breathing.
"Betty." I re-released her, and the Shelgon hit the arena floor with her usual seismic introduction, the groove she'd left earlier widening slightly as she dipped and scraped the ground. She blinked tiredly and shook her head within her shell. The Dragon Dance buff was gone, but her eyes were clearing quickly, and her attention was directed straight at our foe.
Espeon straightened up with a serious look on its face, the nonchalant attitude gone.
'Begin!'
"Flamethrower." I opened the match.
Betty inhaled, and the orange-red sea of fire that came out was almost as large as the earlier Dragon Breath. There was just enough leftover space for Espeon to dodge, but not fully. The Psychic-Type moved fast, fast enough that the core of the attack missed, but the edge of the billowing flames caught it, and for the second time, Sabrina's Espeon made a sound.
A short, bitten-off sound, but a sound.
"Again, don't stop!"
She didn't. The next Flamethrower was even stronger, Betty pouring heat into the arena, driving Espeon back across the field. The gem on Espeon's forehead shone like a star, the Psychic output going to defense instead of offense. It leapt far, far further than it should've been capable of, seemingly flying across the arena to try and seek shelter near the unending fire dispenser that Betty had become. However, a slight adjustment left it caught in the flames and forced backwards, curled into a ball under its protective shields.
It took over a minute of sustained pressure, but a stamina contest with Betty could only have one outcome. It put up one hell of a fight, almost slipping away when Betty had to take a breath for a second Flamethrower, but when Espeon's Lightscreen finally buckled, and the red beam of light swallowed it up, I let out a huge sigh of relief.
I felt bad about talking shit about Espeon's technical capabilities before the fight. I clearly didn't know what I was talking about. That Psychic Terrain had been incredible and might even have taken down Sol.
The Alakazam raised its left spoon.
'Espeon is unable to battle. 2-1 in favor of the challenger, Gym Leader Sabrina to release!'
Sabrina recalled her Pokémon, rubbing her temples while her PokéBalls moved on their own. Seemed like Shadow Mist had given her a headache.
Good.
Despite that, her PokéBall was already opening, releasing the exact figure I imagined it would.
Hypno.
Betty went completely still before it had even fully materialized.
"Betty-"
"SHEEEEEE!"
The pendulum hadn't even twitched before she was charging across the arena, tongues of dragon fire licking at the floor as she roared her fury.
'Begin!'
I sent a mental thank-you to the Alakazam for not just giving me a false start and having us reset, since there was no way Betty was going to listen to me. To be fair, though, Sabrina had been playing a little loose with that herself.
"Betty! BETTY, STOP!"
No reaction. The Shelgon bore down on the nonplussed Hypno like a startlingly fast freight train.
The pendulum swung to the left side.
"Dragon Breath, now, before-!"
Hypno's pendulum halted and slowly dropped, swinging to the right.
Betty's eyes flickered, and she wobbled. Rather than stop, it only made her angrier, roaring another challenge as she fought against the mental attack.
"BETTY!"
The pendulum swung left, a soft, comfortable blue glow emanating from it.
BOOOOOM!
A trench was carved in the floor as her legs gave out, and she dropped to the ground, skidding across the ground until she came to a rest at Hypno's feet.
"You fucking moron," I moaned as the loud snores made their way up to me, the debris and detritus knocked loose by her rampaging jumping around from the bone-rattling vibrations.
As Hypno started glowing with Psychic energy, preparing what I could only assume was Dream Eater, I had no choice but to recall the snoring Titan.
'The challenger forfeits his Shelgon, making the score 2-2! Challenger to release.'
I drummed my fingers across my PokéBalls, trying desperately to figure out how to proceed. I hadn't wanted to use either Herc or Sol. Close-range specialists rarely did super well against Psychic-Types, even if they weren't legitimate Fighting-Types. Aurora the Vulpix would just be outmatched, even if she might get a hit or two in with Ice Shard, and Zorua had barely stopped being afraid long enough to train with us.
That left one.
"Behold the beauty, Siren!"
The ball bounced off the stone, the bedazzled Feebas materializing mid-air and dropping two feet to the arena floor, tail slapping the cracked stone as she landed. She was minuscule next to the indent Betty had occupied, and the Hypno who had already beaten a Titan Shelgon regarded her with the same half-lidded eyes, pendulum swinging lazily.
I didn't let it start with its garbage.
'Begin!"
"Ice Bullets, don't stop moving!"
Siren understood with less than half a second's delay, her natural struggles ruthlessly trained out of her. The rapid-fire projectiles came out in a stream, frozen solid, each one faster than the last. Their bullets shattered against a Barrier in a puff of glittering dust, unable to get through, but they weren't meant to. Hypno could dodge one Ice Bullet. It could probably dodge ten. It couldn't dodge thirty-eight and had to defend, interrupting that goddamn pendulum.
It worked for longer than I expected. Hypno moved well for something that looked barely awake, slowly shuffling to try and get an opening. The pendulum glowed blue, a field of the same hue appearing around Siren as she struggled against the telekinetic use of Psychic with her levitation, but Hypno had to abandon that idea to shield against a steaming Scald that followed up the Bullets.
Yet, even Hypno had to dodge eventually, and when it committed to going left on the forty-first shot, the forty-second caught it in the arm, and the forty-third caught it in the chest. The lumpy humanoid stumbled, a wet crack! telling me something snapped.
The pendulum swung wide. Stopped.
"Now, Scald-"
The Psychic move came in the gap. Not telekinesis like the last time, but a wall of Psychic energy, uncontrolled, wasteful, but powerful, the kind Siren didn't have the strength or typing to shrug off. It hit her clean and lifted her off the arena floor. She tumbled through the air before smacking into the wall beneath me with a wet smack! and dropped to the floor.
I held my breath until she stirred weakly on the ground. She wasn't built to take hits like that, but Siren had been a fighter since day one.
"Ice Beam."
Making full use of her prone position, Siren fired before even bothering to get off the ground, actually catching the psychics off guard. One shot, with sniper-like aim, and Hypno took it in the chest and staggered, a sheet of ice spreading across its pecs.
The pendulum dropped.
Two more, and the Psychic-Type went to one knee, one hand raised to catch the Ice-Type moves on a weak Barrier.
Siren swayed as she slowly rose, a little blood trickling from her mouth. The Psychic hit had done real work, and she had already used a lot of her energy for the bullet storm. Hypno technically had taken more damage, but it could handle more. That being said, the Barrier flickered on the third – admittedly weak – Ice Beam, so it was close to running dry as well.
So it was a race.
Siren was heaving for air in between each attack, the Bullets growing less and less solid as she was forced to switch to Water Bullets to preserve energy. Meanwhile, Hypno seemed to be recovering, if anything, the light trembling of its hand steading. Seeing the less solid attacks, it switched to a Light Screen to preserve its own reserves, the clumps of water breaking apart on contact with the barrier and accomplishing little more than splashing Hypno-
-until a trio of rock-hard Ice Bullets ripped through it and smacked it in the forehead. The Psychic-Type tilted backwards, eyes rolling into the back of its skull.
It dropped.
"YES!" I cheered, even as Siren herself sagged to the ground, panting heavily after digging so deep, before coughing up a splatter of blood across the ruined floor. I wasted no time in recalling her, not bothering to ask her first. I knew she'd say no, but I also knew that she'd go down like a sack of potatoes from a slight breeze. "Well done. I'm so proud of you."
The spoon rose.
'Both Hypno and Feebas are unable to battle, making the score 3-3! Gym Leader Sabrina is to release first.'
I blinked as Sabrina shot her Alakazam a look I could've sworn was annoyed, but it was gone in an instant while her fourth and last PokéBall moved down to the arena and deposited my last foe.
An 'ooh!' erupted from the crowd that had me scowling at the audience for the lack of a similar response to Siren.
Who cared that Sabrina's fourth Pokémon was renowned for its beauty? Siren blew it clean out of the water.
A pure white 'dress' billowed in a nonexistent breeze, the skirt hovering an inch over the ground as it bopped slightly. Green hair-like extension curled around its elegant face, a blood red horn protruding from its chest like it had been stabbed from behind.
I studied the Gardevoir as it twirled un-Gardevoir-esque under the attention with a thrilling chirp. It had been a while since I'd seen the species – all the way back on Sevii – but I felt like it was a young specimen. Something about its movements gave it away, a certain amount of unfamiliarity despite the inherent grace.
Still, even a young Gardevoir was a serious threat. I didn't really have many Pokémon left to choose from either.
"Sol."
The Arcanine materialized, the audience murmuring in appreciation again. Sol rolled his shoulders and snorted, tail swaying.
Gardevoir's Psychic pressure ticked up slightly, a physical weight settling on my shoulders despite not being the target as she tried to intimidate the Arcanine.
Sol yawned and lay down.
"No, up!" He whined piteously, but stood regardless.
'The final battle is about to begin,' Alakazam intoned solemnly. 'Are both Trainers ready?'
We nodded.
'Then begin!'
"Extreme Speed!"
BOOOOM!
The room shook again as the monstrous canine hurled through the space Gardevoir had occupied milliseconds before and smashed into the wall. Pulling his head out of the rock where it had gotten stuck, Sol shook off the impact and turned around, confusedly trying to find his opponent.
"Sol, dodge!" I yelled, and the Arcanine jumped to the side right in time, a curved blade of Psychic energy taking an inch of fur with it as it left a slash in the wall.
A flurry of Psycho Cuts trailed the dog as he sprinted around the edge of the room, Gardevoir windmilling her arms and throwing cut after cut. Every time I tried to have Sol break off and rush towards the Psychic-Type, it just Teleported away and let us crash into the walls before peppering us with more slashes. One of them caught Sol across the flank, another on the handles, as the rest grew closer and closer thanks to the new limp.
It was Kadabra all over again. Fortunately, I had access to the same answer.
"Flamethrower, exhaust it! Rush through it with Bite," I kept the last part quiet, finally having the chance to show Sabrina how annoying it was when you had no idea what your opponent was thinking.
With a deep breath, Sol landed from his last jump and twisted around, letting the Psycho Cuts – which Gardevoir had thrown ahead to anticipate his movements – tear gashes into the stone floor. Opening his mouth with a deep 'woof!', the arena disappeared under his thick, white-tinted fire, the almost viscous flames writhing and undulating like waves in a storm as they poured towards Gardevoir. The stone melted into slag, sweat instantly breaking out on my forehead as the temperature exploded.
And then it decreased.
Sol's charge as he prepared to follow up on my order slowed to a trot and then a complete stop as his avalanche of flames… moved. They'd already been moving forward, but as we watched, they started to get drawn inwards towards where Gardevoir had last been, sucked towards her like a black hole.
Which was not an awful comparison.
As the flames vanished, Gardevoir herself became visible again. The graceful Pokémon hovered two feet above the floor, surrounded by an aura of pink that shimmered like starlight. She held her hands above her, head tilted back, and eyes closed as if praising some distant deity.
And in between those hands, a sphere of violently rotating pink spun like a centrifuge. Distortions were visible in space itself as the sphere drew in the flames and swallowed them, smothered them. Before long, the battlefield was clear, the rubble strewn around, slowly being drawn across the room to the pseudo-black hole.
And she wasn't done. With a loud, drawn-out cry, the sphere spun faster, a howling sound ringing in my ear.
My breath hitched.
For a fraction of a second, pink bled silver. Psychic power dimmed to be replaced with something else, and I could've sworn that a trick of the ethereal light made it look like Gardevoir held the full moon above her head.
My jaw slackened, Vulpix's PokéBall at my waist shaking.
Fairy-Type. It had to be. Nothing else could be so beau-
SLAM!
-and then Sol hammered into Gardevoir at Mach speeds, with zero care given for the first sign of the elusive typing we'd seen, and drove her frail body into the wall.
BOOM!
When the dust cleared, Sol was standing over a crumpled heap of dirty white that used to be a Gardevoir, his own legs shaking slightly from the Double Edge, smoke drifting from his coat. He leaned down to sniff at the Psychic-Type but got nothing in response.
The Alakazam's spoon rose for a final time.
'Gardevoir is unable to battle. The score is 3-4 in favor of the challenger. The challenger wins!'
The arena was quiet for a moment before Bill began to clap, and all the others quickly followed.
I let out a deep sigh while recalling Sol, leaning against the railing and trying to steady my heart. While the battle had been everything I imagined 4+ Badge Gym battles would be – screw you, Erika – the last part really got me.
"Well done."
"FU-!" I yelped, fist stopping as it brushed against Sabrina's nose when the woman materialized behind me. Her eyes crossed as she looked at the hand, but she didn't seem concerned about almost getting punched. "You fought well," she said, nodding to me. "I warned Moon-Soother that the last attack was too slow, too experimental, but she insisted."
"That power…" I trailed off, not knowing how to phrase it.
"The Gardevoir line is near unrivaled when it comes to spatial manipulation," Sabrina explained. "Moves like Teleport and Gravity come naturally to them." I waited for her to get to the part I was actually interested in, but she didn't, and I couldn't really blame her for that.
"Here," she said instead, holding out a TM for me. "It is customary to present victors with a TM, in this case, Psybeam. I know you have an Espeon of your own, and as you saw, it can be used to great effect."
"You can say that again," I snorted, taking the TM, "that Psychic Terrain was amazing."
"Thank you." She nodded with the tiniest bit of smugness in her voice. "It was hard work, but worth it. My stronger Pokémon have been having a lot of fun with it." I somehow doubted anyone involved with Sabrina had 'a lot of fun'. She held out her other hand. "Your Badge. It is well earned."
I took the Marsh Badge from her, looking at the plain golden circle with another, protruding circle in the middle like a belly button. "Thanks."
Truthfully, now that the battle adrenaline was settling, it didn't feel as good as I'd thought. Great battle, but the Badge itself…
Eh. Maybe it was the lack of historical weight, but.
Eh.
I looked around as Bill and his entourage surrounded us. Yet, despite them supposedly being there for my match, not a single one of them seemed particularly interested in actually talking to me, focused instead completely on Bill as he held their attention after a brief pat on my back.
"Uh, Sabrina," I started, trying to figure out how to phrase it. "I know you guys are not a PokéMart-"
"You want," Sabrina tilted her head again, her mind brushing mine. "...tea?"
"Don't do that," I reminded her, for once thankful that Honedge and Espeon were in their balls, "and no, uh, Teleport, and if you had any tips for Espeon. She's my first Psychic-Type-"
"A TM, not tea." Sabrina nodded, seemingly ignoring the rest of my words, "That makes sense."
I waited a little, but she just stared at me. "...right. Exactly. Bill will pay you, of course."
"Hmm?" The man in question looked over at us from where he'd been dictating to a couple of his reporters who were furiously scribbling his words down. "Oh! Sure, sure. Suppose that's the least I can do after such a fine showing, innit?"
"Indeed," a new voice said, though I could've sworn the elegant, female tone was somewhat familiar. The crowd parted at the approach, shuffling somewhat nervously yet excitedly – as if they couldn't decide whether it was a Milotic or a Gyarados coming through – at the sight of the new figure. "A well-fought battle."
She was beautiful, in a severe way. Tall too, which was my first impression when I caught sight of her, not just for a woman, but for a human, poking up over Bill's vultures with ease. Her messy, shoulder-length blue hair was easily visible, alongside the slanted, predatory eyes that I could've sworn had an ever so slightly slitted pupil-
Wait a minute.
"Will you fuck off!?" I threw out my arms in frustration as Clair Blackthorn smirked at me, crossing her arms over her chest and puffing her chest out. "I told you she's not for sale! Hey, Sabrina, this lady broke into your Gym!"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Clair said smugly. There was a slight raspy edge to her voice, as if she'd spent too long inhaling smoke – which, as a Dragon Trainer, she probably had. "I am here by invitation." She jutted a thumb at Bill, who seemed entirely immune to my glare switching targets to him.
"Peri, mate, this here is Clair Blackthorn, Gym Leader of Blackthorn, ain't that something?" Clair closed her eyes briefly, nostrils flaring at Bill's semi-condescending tone before she got herself under control. In Bill's defense, that was just how he talked. "She's paid me good money to be here!"
How hard would it be to have Bill write me into his will and then arrange an 'accident'? Could I get Walter in on it? 'World Famous Billionaire, Vanished at Sea!'
I'd done my best to calm down a little, but surely there had to be limits to the not-murdering.
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This was an exhausting chapter. Can't wait til I start doing 6-on-6 battles.
On the other hand, I quite like the chapter – for pure fighting, which is not my favorite – and I hope you did too. The Sol vs Gardevoir could've been longer, but I liked the Fairy thing, and it seemed natural to have Sol take advantage of it.
Thank you for reading.