"Staravia — go!"
After a long moment of deliberation, the green-haired Trainer had arrived at the same strategy he had used all along: counter the type.
Nova's scan placed this Staravia at Level 25. Ability: Intimidate.
It made sense, actually. A Level 25 Flying-type with Intimidate was a solid pick for street-level battling. Drop the opponent's Attack the moment you entered, then follow up from a height advantage — that formula had clearly worked well for him in this circuit. The confidence wasn't entirely without foundation.
The problem was that Sprigatito's current move pool had nothing that cleanly threatened a Flying-type. By every reasonable measure, this was an unfavourable matchup.
Nova was ready to call her back and send out Growlithe.
Then Intimidate triggered, and he looked at Sprigatito.
She was not intimidated. She was, if anything, more interested than she had been a moment ago. Her eyes had sharpened and her tail had gone still in that particular way that meant she had locked onto something and was not planning to let go.
Nova lowered his hand and let her fight.
An uphill battle was still training. Sometimes it was the best kind.
What uphill battle? her posture seemed to say. Watch.
"Staravia — Wing Attack!"
"Sucker Punch, again."
The green-haired Trainer had drawn his own conclusion from the Slugma round: Slugma had been too slow, which was why Sprigatito had gone first. Staravia was fast. Wing Attack would connect before anything the cat could throw.
He was wrong about how the move worked.
Sucker Punch was a priority move. It didn't win because of Speed — it struck first as long as the opponent had committed to an attacking move that turn. Staravia's wings were already spreading when Sprigatito launched herself off the ground, both forepaws coated in dark energy.
Two hits landed clean. Staravia lost its bearings mid-flight and dropped, Wing Attack slamming uselessly into the arena floor rather than its target.
Nova saw the opening before Staravia had finished falling.
"Sprigatito — Mimic!"
Mimic was a Normal-type move with a specific function: it copied the opponent's last used move, letting the user execute that same technique. A move that should, by rights, belong only to winged Pokémon was suddenly available to a small green cat.
Under Protean, Normal-type energy shifted into the light, buoyant Flying-type energy that powered Wing Attack. Sprigatito flung herself at the still-falling Staravia with the same aerial momentum the move carried.
A cat with no wings executed Wing Attack.
The green-haired Trainer watched this happen.
"If you keep pulling things like that, I'm lodging a formal complaint."
Nova hadn't used Mimic for the damage. Wing Attack's base power wasn't what he was after. What he wanted was the movement — Flying-type energy gave Sprigatito a fast, fluid approach that closed distance in a way her ground-based movement couldn't match.
Height was everything for a bird. The moment a Flying-type was forced into close-range ground fighting, its advantages disappeared. Wings were built for speed and reach, not for grappling. Outside of Pokémon built to handle both — Steel-types like Corviknight or Skarmory that could absorb and dish out hits at any range — a Flying-type caught in a close-quarters brawl was at a serious disadvantage.
The Mimic-powered Wing Attack connected. Staravia had barely registered the hit when Sprigatito was already on top of it.
"Bite."
She sank her fangs into the wing nearest to her, Dark-type energy flowing through the hold. Double Magician activated — she released, repositioned in an instant, and clamped down again at the base of Staravia's neck.
It was methodical. Staravia lurched upward half a metre trying to get airborne and was dragged back down.
At a loss for anything better, the green-haired Trainer reached for a move he almost never used.
"Staravia — Double Team!"
Staravia flickered, splitting into three identical copies spread across the field.
It would have been a reasonable play under different circumstances. Against a Pokémon already biting down on the real one, it changed nothing. All three copies existed, but only one had Sprigatito's jaws around its neck, and that was the one that mattered.
Nova watched the green-haired Trainer run out of ideas.
"Petal Blizzard — finish it."
Staravia had taken sustained Dark-type damage throughout the round. Even resisting Grass-type moves, it had nothing left to absorb a double Petal Blizzard. The storm of condensed petals hit twice, and Staravia went down.
Two to zero.
Nova looked across the field. "You can still forfeit — forfeiting counts as half a loss. It's the better outcome."
He meant it practically. Sprigatito had gotten what she needed from this battle, and as far as he was concerned the match had run its course.
The green-haired Trainer heard it as mockery.
"Keep pushing it, kid. Don't think I won't make this personal."
He wasn't backing down. Losing two to zero in front of a crowd that already didn't like him was bad enough. And there was still a calculation he was running: the cat had battled twice, she had to be running low. The kid only had two Pokémon, and the second one — the exhausted-looking Growlithe sitting on the sideline — looked like it had already spent everything it had for the day. One strong Pokémon could still turn this around.
He threw his last Poké Ball.
A Corphish materialized on the field.
Level 23.
Nova looked at it, then laughed — short and genuine.
"You've been hard-countering types all match, and you close with a Water-type?"
Corphish against a Grass-type. He had handed away the type advantage entirely on his final Pokémon. Nova had no idea what reasoning had produced that choice, but he wasn't going to question it.
He decided to end it methodically. A slower finish would teach Sprigatito something more useful than a quick knockout.
Sprigatito moved first. A Leech Seed arced across the field and wrapped itself around Corphish before it had taken a single step.
The match, functionally, was over.
Corphish tried Bubble Beam. It tried Water Gun. The low-power Water moves washed over the Grass-type cat like a light rain — barely an inconvenience — and every point of damage it managed to land was siphoned straight back by the Leech Seed pulsing steadily at its base.
The harder Corphish pushed, the faster the seed drained it.
Three minutes later, Corphish collapsed.
Nova collected Sprigatito from the field and scratched behind her ears. She was thoroughly pleased with herself and not bothering to conceal it.
Across the arena, the green-haired Trainer stood very still.
Somewhere in Harmony City's future, a Crawdaunt would carry itself with the quiet authority of a Pokémon that had seen real battles and come out harder for it. But on a quiet afternoon by the river, long before any of that, a small Corphish would remember a patch of sunlight, a green cat, and three minutes of complete and utter helplessness that nothing in its later career would quite manage to wash away.