630 CH11 (625), Battles Galore (2)

The time until 2:45 p.m. passed by rather swiftly and I once more found myself on the battlefield, this time for my quarterfinal battle against Janine. As usual, the referee did his thing before he began the countdown, which ended with Janine and I simultaneously releasing our Pokemon.

"Step up, Marie" Janine shouted as her Azumarill appeared on her side of the field, and it actually summoned a pair of Aqua Rings as soon as it made its appearance. I certainly could appreciate them having prepared an opening routine, and naturally, they were not the only ones.

"Set up the field Gaara," I instructed as I released my Gabite, and unlike Azumarill's appearance, Gaara elicited a lot of excitement from the crowd since Gabite were not Pokemon one got to see all that often. Not only was Gaara a dragon, but he also belonged to an apex/pseudo-legendary species predominantly "native" to Sinnoh/the southern continent.

General excitement aside, Gaara immediately whipped up a Sandstorm, which would allow him to maximize his Sand Control talent, though Janine reacted pretty swiftly to Gaara's opening move. "Rain Dance, don't let it do what it wants," she ordered which had her Azurmarill try and change the weather to rain instead.

Unfortunately for them, Gaara had mastered Sandstorm, which as Azumarill was learning firsthand, meant that unless the other party was as strong as him and had mastered their weather move as well as he had or was sufficiently stronger than him to brute force the process, they would not even be able to neutralize his Sandstorm much less replace it with their own weather phenomenon.

Nonetheless, while Azumarill futilely tried to get rid of the Sandstorm, I gave my next order to make use of the opening that presented itself. "DD," I instructed which had Gaara boost his strength and speed using Dragon Dance. Boosting those two could only help against the water fairy and he would probably need help since around half of his trained-up moves were of the dragon type, including his two advanced moves, which were unfortunately useless against Azumarill.

The other half pretty much consisted of ground moves, which thankfully did regular damage. Honestly, the only moves not part of those two types at a proficient level were Slash and Flamethrower, with the latter being pretty useless against Azumarill, especially if it had Thick Fat, though I had other uses for Flamethrower that could come in handy.

Anyway, I swiftly followed up with another order just as Janine gave up on Rain Dance. "Sand Tomb, trap it," I declared, and Gaara created a large quicksand pit/area with Azumarill close to the center of it. "Marie, Bounce, get out of there," Janine smartly instructed, though I had no plans to let that play out if I could interrupt it.

"Earthquake," I quickly ordered, which had Gaara stomp his foot. Due to the Sand Tomb, or rather the loose sand, Azumarill had a harder time initiating its Bounce, and that delay led to the Earthquake hitting it before it could get out of the quicksand. Maybe if Azumarill had trained Bounce on a beach, it might have been able to escape, but as things stood, it got hurt by Earthquake. Its Bounce attempt got interrupted in the process and it fell over, allowing the quicksand to drag it further in.

"Hydro Pump, soak the whole place, then get out of there," Janine ordered, and I had to admit that it was not a bad idea. Sadly for her, we were not going to allow that. Azumarill was currently in the perfect position for Gaara to end this and I could feel his excitement and anticipation.

"Sand Burial, Gaara finish it," Gaara let out an excited roar as he stomped his foot again, but this time the earth did not begin to quake. No, it was the sand inside the Sand Tomb that began to churn before it started to rise up and surround Azumarill, who had started to shoot out its Hydro Pump. Azumaril changed its target and tried to keep the sand at bay, but unfortunately for it, that was not the only sand that surged over to cover it.

The sand created by the ongoing Sandstorm joined in as well and helped replace any wet clumped-up sand, which got dragged along by the dry sand anyway. Janine could only watch as her Azumarill got swallowed up by the sand wave/surge and within a moment everyone got to see a large ball/egg of sand where Azumarill used to be.

Now, there were two ways we could end this battle. The first one involved Gaara using his Sand Control to compress the sand egg/ball. This technique was obviously inspired by Gaara's namesake. The second one was for Gaara to use Flamethrower to glass the sand. This method first caused damage due to the molten sand/glass, then caused continued damage until the molten glass cooled down/hardened, which pretty much immobilized the Pokemon until it managed to break out of the glass marble or was let out.

Frankly, out of the two methods, the glass one was quite a bit more dangerous for the target, and unlike what one would think, at least if one has watched the anime, the glass method had a much higher lethality as well, though it was also "slower" than the regular simple Sand Burial. Unfortunately, Gaara could only truly control the lethality of the first method, so we could not use the glass one in an official battle, or any battle where we did not aim to actually kill the opponent for that matter.

That was why, when Azumarill began to struggle within the sand egg, causing obvious depressions, which had me wonder if it had Huge Power as its ability since that was impressive, Gaara began to compress the egg, causing Azumarill to cry out in panic and pain. I watched as Janine looked a bit torn before she resolutely raised her hand.

"I'm withdrawing Marie from the fight," she declared, probably seeing no real way out of the situation they found themselves in. Gaara loosened his "sand grip" when she did that, even before I could go ahead and order the same, though he smartly did not dismiss the sand egg until the referee called the fight.

Only once he was declared the winner did Gaara allow the sand to fall away, and Janine recalled her Pokemon as soon as Azumarill became visible. I followed suit as well to give my second choice for this match the chance to fight as well.

Honestly, I was pretty confident that Janine would go with her Bellossom next since it was her strongest Pokemon and starter. That was the choice most people would go with after all, so I would have an easy, or at least easier time dealing with Bellossom if I chose to send out Igneel/Charizard, but I was not going to do that.

I had long decided to use Jean/Espeon for the next battle and I was going to stick to that decision. While Bellossom actually had the stage advantage, neither had a type advantage over the other, and I was confident that Jean would win her fight against Bellossom.

Anyway, the referee gave the signal and we released our second Pokemon. "Don't Mind the crowd and aim for a Swift win," I said my opening line/instruction as I released Jean. Janine on the other hand took me a bit by surprise by releasing a Pokemon I had not been expecting. "It's up to you now Grand," she said as she actually called out her Granbull instead of her Bellossom.

It appeared that Janine had expected me to expect her to use her Bellossom and had assumed that I would be using my Charizard against it, so she went with the Pokemon she felt would have the highest chance against my dragon, which was her fairy dog even if it was slightly weaker than her ace. She was right in a sense since her Granbull did have the highest chance out of her Pokemon against Igneel, but I was not the only one who got caught off guard by the opponent's choice of Pokemon.

I saw Janine's surprised face when I released an Espeon instead of the Dragonzard she was expecting. Still, surprise match-up or not, that did not stop the Pokemon that had been called out from making their move. Jean swiftly followed my order and used Calm Mind to get a boost in, and luckily she managed to do that as quickly as she did since Granbull actually performed a Taunt moments after it appeared on the battlefield.

Had she been late by just a second, Jean's Calm Mind would have been interrupted. As things stood she would be unable to do anything aside from using "offensive" moves for a while. That did not stop Jean from executing the second step of our opening, so a bunch of pink stars headed for Granbull. The color change was caused by Jean's Psionate ability which turned the normal type move to a psychic one, aligning it with Jean's typing.

While Janine and Granbull dealt with the pink-homing projectiles, I gave out another order, "SS, then rush in and hit IT." That had Jean release another set of pink starts, but this time they did not head towards Granbull. Instead, they began to circle Jean, forming a flowing star shield around her, not affected by Taunt at all since it was still considered an "offensive" move.

With the shield in place, Jean used Quick Attack to close in on Granbull, causing the stars of her shield to crash into it as soon as she made it to Granbull's side, before using the distraction/pain caused by her shield, to perform a jump to deliver an Iron Tail on Granbull's head. "Grand, Dodge," Janine yelled out the moment she saw Jean jump.

Her Granbull heeding her command moved its body, causing Jean's Iron Tail to miss its target. Instead of Granbull's head, she hit its shoulder, making it cry out in pain and stumble back a few steps. Nonetheless, it escaped the concussion we were planning to gift it. "Grand Crunch, finish it while it's in biting distance," Janine quickly ordered her Pokemon. Granbull tried to follow through, but there was no way we would let that happen.

"HV," I immediately called out and Jean released a psychic-type Hyper Voice as Granbull's head closed in. While the dark energy in its maw saved it from the damage the converted Hyper Voice could cause, the same was not true for the absurdly loud sound Jean released, which made it flinch back in pain and grab its ears.

"PLAY ROUGH!!!," Janine yelled out likely anticipating that her Granbull's ears were ringing. She timed that pretty well since it coincided with the next command I gave in hopes of capitalizing on Granbull's pain, "Iron Tail". Jean swiftly did a flip and slammed her metallic tail at Granbull, but due to it suddenly starting to thrash around, her aim was off once more. Play Rough ended up being used as a evasive maneuver and I had to say that it was a smart move.

Still, Jean was not one to give up like that and she immediately did a side sweep after landing, her tail still clad in steel energy. She managed to sweep Granbull off its feet, causing it to fall down. "Another one," I yelled out to take advantage of its fall, but I was not the only one yelling commands.

"CRUNCH," Janine shouted, and I could not help but wince at what happened next. Both Pokemon followed their respective orders, which resulted in Jean's Iron Tail slamming into Granbull's dark energy-laden mouth. I winced not only because that had to have hurt like hell, but also because Granbull actually powered through the pain and bit down, causing Jean to cry out in pain.

"JEAN, SHADOW BALL," I shouted and Jean gritted her teeth and released a pretty much point-blank Shadow Ball at Granbull, who finally slumped, indicating that it had fallen unconscious. Yet, even knocked out it kept its jaw locked, though the dark energy had vanished.

As the referee declared Jean the winner and me the victor of the match, she used her psychic abilities to open Granbull's latched mouth from her tail before running back to me, making pitiful eyes while waving her tail in front of my face. I saw Janine recall her downed Granbull out of the corner of my eyes while I kneeled down and praised Jean on her victory before using my aura to soothe/heal her tail. I then pat her head before recalling her.

Afterward, I stood back up and headed for Janine, who had already vacated the battlefield. After thanking her for the battle and complimenting her on her reactions during the battle as well as her choice of Pokemon, I checked out whether my opponent for the semi-finals had been determined yet, but that was not the case.

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