Vibrava's signature trait, Desert Prince, works together with four moves that have the word "Sand" in their name, and Sand Attack happens to be one of them.
Whenever Vibrava lands a Sand Attack, the move never fails to leave the target with the Blindness status. A Pokemon suffering from Blindness doesn't only take a sixty percent drop in move accuracy, the worse part, exactly as the name suggests, is that the victim loses its sight for a short while.
That spinning stunt Vibrava had shown off in front of Dodrio earlier wasn't meant to impress anyone with its flying skill. While twisting through the air, it had used its feet to kick sand off the ground, releasing Sand Attack in the process.
Drawing on experience from past battles, Dodrio guessed right away that the enemy meant to strike at its Trainer, so it threw every bit of its defense into blocking that attack. It would rather take a heavy hit itself than let its Trainer come to harm.
What it never expected was that Vibrava's entire showy display amounted to nothing more than closing the distance and flinging a handful of sand in its face. It was like trading a hundred blows with a rival only to learn the whole point had been to spit at them in the end. Could anything be more absurd than that?
Was this Vibrava only here to torment people for fun?
And yet that was exactly what it did. After throwing the sand, it flew off without a backward glance, showing no interest in finishing Dodrio off while it was blind.
Vibrava: "You have a Trainer giving you orders right now. Mine is still five kilometers away. Why would I bother fighting you?"
Meanwhile, Dodrio's Trainer wore a bitter smile.
There was no doubt left. He had lost his shot at first place in this race.
Dodrio was Blinded now and could no longer keep up its sprint; first it needed to clear the sand from all six eyes spread across its three heads. On top of that, his Hawlucha and Machoke had already been knocked out of the fight by the other contestants ganging up on them.
If he gave the Trainers behind him five more seconds, they would close the gap and blast him, the man who had actually been leading the pack, right off his feet.
Never mind Dodrio being blind for the moment. Even if his last standing Pokemon were at full strength, there would be no surviving a pile-on like that.
He didn't think there was anything wrong with his strategy. He just felt unbelievably unlucky this time. Whose Vibrava was this, anyway, and why did it have to be so irritating?
A Trainer who would raise such an obnoxious Pokemon probably wasn't much of a decent person either!
With that thought, he reluctantly pulled out a Survival Firework.
This was a small item handed to every contestant by the event's host, Layered Peaks Gym. Setting one off in the middle of the field meant forfeiting the match, and once it was lit, no other Trainer nearby was allowed to keep attacking that contestant.
Of course, that didn't make things completely safe. The competition was still essentially one huge free for all. Even someone who had already withdrawn could still get caught and hurt by a stray area of effect move.
That was exactly why this cross country race produced so many serious injuries every year.
Layered Peaks Gym, and Gilbert himself, had faced more than one complaint questioning whether the qualifying standards for this challenge made any sense.
But Elite Gilbert refused to budge on the matter. He believed most modern Trainers had little experience with large, chaotic battles, and lacked both the survival instinct and the will needed to fight through that kind of chaos and win. In his view, Layered Peaks Gym was one of the few places left that could still teach Trainers that lesson properly.
This was already Dodrio's Trainer's third time entering the cross country race, so he knew exactly what to watch for. If a Trainer wanted to drop out, they had to light the firework before the main fight caught up to them. Once the other competitors saw that someone had given up, they would stop chasing that person and turn their attention to whoever still posed a real threat. That way, the central battle near the narrow pass would not keep drifting toward him, and his odds of getting hit by a stray attack would drop as well.
Since Dodrio had no real flying ability, staff riding Flying-type Pokemon arrived to carry him out of the arena. Before he left, he glanced back at the chaos behind him and spotted the same yellow-green shape that had blinded Dodrio, still weaving freely through the battlefield.
It seemed that whenever any contestant pulled ahead of the pack, Vibrava would suddenly strike from some awkward angle, and that Trainer would be eliminated before they knew what had hit them.
This kind of fighting style was honestly about as dirty as it gets.
The other Trainers on the field had caught on too. None of them were foolish, and after watching two or three contestants get knocked out one after another, someone finally swore out loud.
"What the heck, which Camper is using this thing just to mess with people from the sidelines? Could you at least try something that isn't completely shameless?"
Charizard's Trainer spoke up right away with an observation of his own. "Something's off here. This Vibrava doesn't seem to belong to any of the contestants in this race."
"What do you mean by that?"
"If it belonged to someone, then after taking down two contestants, its Trainer should have used the opening to push for the narrow pass. Instead, it keeps attacking anyone who gets close to the pass. Doesn't that mean its Trainer hasn't even arrived yet, and wants to hold all of us back here?"
A cold chill ran through everyone listening.
If Charizard's Trainer was right, it proved something important: this Vibrava could fight entirely on its own, with no Trainer anywhere nearby.
That wasn't something to take lightly. Even though most Pokemon are roughly as intelligent as humans, and some are even smarter, they still rely on a human partner to direct them in battle. Differences in how their minds work and how their brains are built mean humans are simply better suited to strategy. In plainer terms, humans are better than Pokemon at fighting dirty.
Most Pokemon without enough natural battle talent fall back on instinct, fighting the way a wild Pokemon would, the moment they lose their Trainer's guidance. Even when they can carry out a few tactics their Trainer taught them beforehand, they tend to follow those tactics rigidly, without adapting.
But this Vibrava's approach was different. It was flexible, varied, and clearly aimed at getting the best result with the least wasted effort. That went far beyond simply following a memorized tactic.
It meant Vibrava was genuinely thinking through its own strategy as it fought!
A Pokemon capable of battle sense like that had to have extraordinary talent, the kind you would expect from an Elite Four member at the very least. Hand this thing six Poke Balls of its own, and it would have the nerve to enter the Norlandia Conference itself!
Vibrava: "Why so surprised? There are six more of us on the team just as impressive as I am!"
Wait, no, make that five. Big sister Aqua definitely doesn't count.