295 CH63 (293), Preliminary Rounds

After beating Sandy I made my way to my next personal fight. Turns out I got kinda unlucky with that one since I got matched up with someone who had yet to fight, kinda like an extra round. Most people only had to fight 4 times to make it to the round of 128, but some unlucky ones had to fight 5 times instead.

No idea if someone was so unlucky that he had to fight 6 times, but the reason some had to fight more than others was that the number of students did not cut down to 128 without some having to fight more often than others.

Anyway, that extra fight was the only reason I did not have to wait an hour or more for my next fight. I arrived on time at the Harley Stadium and fought against a girl from an air academy. She used wind blades to attack from afar, but when she saw me dodging or blocking/destroying her wind blades while moving towards her, she changed her strategy.

She began creating wind streams in hopes of blowing me away, but I managed to make it through them, honestly, I dodged them as much as I could. Still, she used air/wind to increase her speed to keep away from me.

At that point, our fight devolved into a chase that depended on what was going to run out first, her stamina, and/or energy, or mine. Truthfully, I got curious whether she could fly or not, seeing how she was a Tier 2 Third-Class Air Elementalist, but I reasoned that it probably took too much energy, or she was not proficient enough to fly accurately.

4 minutes into our chase, and 6 minutes since our fight began, she began slowing down a bit, and I used that moment to boost my legs with the highest boost they could endure. I practically flash-stepped, or jumped, in front of her and tackled her to get a hold of her.

Afterward, I used my aura to create aura spikes on my knuckles which I pointed to her throat signaling that she lost since I could have taken her out if I wanted to. The referee declared me the winner, and I released Glinda from my hold. After thanking her for the fight, I left the Harley Stadium and made my way back to the Dawn Stadium.

Once there I took a look at my schedule on the website. I saw that my next Pokemon battle would be at 12:15 p.m, so in a bit more than an hour, and my next personal fight would be at 1 p.m. Furthermore, none of my opponents had been determined yet.

I decided to ask about the situation of my academy mates, so I went to look for Mr. Cameron, who had told us he would be staying at Dawn Stadium until 3 p.m, after which he could be found in his room in Dawn City.

I went to the seats that had been reserved for us and found him sitting in one of them talking to his Alakazam and Gallade. The two were probably keeping an eye on everyone from our academy for him.

After exchanging greetings I asked him how our guys and gals were faring, and Mr. Cameron told me that excluding me, 4 had already fought their battles and won, while two were still waiting for their turn.

I got invited by him to a chat group he had created for us and saw that Sorrel would be having his second fight in two hours, while Marlene's second fight was in 80 minutes.

They had already gone to their battle venues ahead of time and were hanging around those areas since they did not want to risk being late to their fights.

I wished them all luck, before deciding to move to the venue of my next battle as well, so after bidding farewell to Mr. Cameron, I left Dawn Stadium and followed the instructions on one of the maps I had previously taken.

I found myself a cafe joint near the venue and brought some crepes to snack on since I felt a bit peckish. I obviously bought some hot cocoa to go with the crepes, since true men drink hot cocoa.

Once the time for the fight approached I entered the venue, and came face to face with my opponent. It was a boy from a mineral-centric academy that accepted students as long as they had an affinity with either ground, rock, or steel.

Now, I know that some people could go full-on science mode and argue that natural ice is a mineral, so it should belong to that group as well, but the elementalists did not group ice with the other three, but with water instead.

Anyway, this Fred Sparkstone had a rock affinity, and predictably his Pokemon were of the same type. Still, most rock-type Pokemon had a second typing, so I was not sure which Pokemon I should use to avoid having a type advantage.

Considering the Pokemon he had revealed in his previous fight I decided to go with Parvati/Beedrill. Fred's first Pokemon was a (low) silver stage Shuckle, and I had to agree with his choice even if I personally did not particularly like the species.

Shuckle was a defensive beast, both in the physical and energy aspect, so starting with one would allow him to exhaust his opponent's Pokemon, and get a feel for his foe's style/strategy.

Besides depending on the moves Shuckle knew, it could become an offensive option as well. Knowing what a menace that thing could become in the right hand, I gave Parvati a single command, "smash it".

Parvati dutifully executed the command and directly went for the nuclear option. She used Iron Lance on Shuckle who had no way to react, and three rounds of hits with each of her lances later, each aimed at the same area, the defensive beast was down.

Parvati gave neither Fred nor Shuckle any chance to properly react before knocking Shuckle out. Fred was still gaping at Parvati when the referee declared Shuckle unable to battle. He most likely had not expected Parvati to use a steel-type move, much less one as strong and fast as Iron Lance.

Not that I expected him to recognize the move since it was Parvati's custom move. He snapped out of it when the referee asked him for a second time to call out his next Pokemon.

Fred recalled his Shuckle semi-dazedly and looked thoughtful for a moment before calling out a Magcargo. This would have been a great decision on his part if it did not become apparent once the referee gave the starting signal, that Magcargo was only at the (high) bronze stage.

I decided that a long-range approach would be better, so I told Parvati to beat Magcargo without touching him, so she began flying around Magcargo making sure to dodge his attacks while peppering him with Toxic until he got poisoned.

Sadly for Fred, Magcargo were pretty slow Pokemon, so Parvati who was a whole stage above it, had an easy time avoiding its attacks while maintaining any distance she wanted.

Still, due to its flaming body, it took a while, but Magcargo finally got poisoned. Once that happened Parvati switched to Venoshock, and two of her mastered Venoshocks were enough to knock Magcargo out. Since we went with such a safety-first strategy instead of using Brick Break to knock it out, the whole fight took close to 5 minutes.

Fred recalled his Magcargo and called out his last Pokemon, which according to his self-encouraging shout seemed to be his starter. To my disbelief what appeared on his side was actually an Aggron, which made me wonder why he did not call that one out first instead of using Magcargo.

The referee gave the go, and it became clear that Aggron was at the (mid) silver stage, so I was guessing that Fred had been hoping that Magcargo would at least burn Parvati even if it could not beat her, which would have definitely possible if it had the Magma Armor ability.

Anyway, Aggron's steel typing meant that Parvati's poison was useless, and all her other moves besides Brick Break did no real damage as well, so she was forced to use only that along with Agility, Focus Energy, and Laser Focus.

The fight became a real test for Parvati's agility, maneuvering, mobility, and flying ability. She had to wave in and out to deliver Brick Breaks. She was avoiding Rock Tombs, as well as Rock Slides while moving in, and Iron Tail, Metal Claw, and Iron Head while being in front of Aggron.

Thankfully Parvati proved to be fast enough even after Aggron used Automatize to increase its speed. While she did get hit by an Iron Tail and got glanced by a few Metal Claws, she managed to dodge the rest.

The damage she suffered was not enough to slow her down too much, and the damage she caused Aggron had slowed it down as well, so that offset her slightly lower speed.

She went in for another offensive dodging a wave of rocks from a Rock Slide, waving through the gaps between them. She made to the side of Aggron and dodged a Metal Claw swipe from its left arm. Parvati maneuvered herself behind Aggron and prepared to deliver a Brick Break at the back of Aggron's head.

However, Aggron countered that by using an Iron Head and throwing its head back. This forced Parvati to use her Brick Break to block the Iron Head instead. Yet, she did not give up and used another Brick Break with her other arm/lance.

Since Aggron's head was leaning back for its attack, its temple was kind of open, so she delivered her second Brick Break there. Due to its unbalanced position, Parvati's attack knocked Aggron over.

Parvati saw her chance and bundled Aggron up using a lot of String Shots. She did this to prevent Aggron from straightening itself and standing back up. Just as the cherry on top she added two Electrowebs on top of the String Shot bundle she created.

Once she was satisfied, she began raining Brick Break blows on struggling Aggron. It tried to break free from the strings/webs but got knocked out by a final Brick Break to the skull before it could succeed.

After Aggron stopped struggling, Parvati flew back to me and landed in front of me, visibly exhausted after facing all three of Fred's Pokemon, especially the Aggron just now.

So, while the referee was checking out Aggron to see if it was really out cold or not, I went up and hugged Parvati while praising her great performance.

The referee finally ascertained that Aggron was down and declared Parvati and thus me the winner. I recalled Parvati after giving her a final pat on the head. Afterward, I went up to Fred and thanked him for the fight before leaving the venue.

I reported my victory to the academy group chat before moving to the venue of my next personal fight. I faced someone from an ice academy and managed to take him out pretty easily. In fact, I would say that this one had been the easiest of my three personal fights so far.

Once I won that battle as well, I gave another report and saw that everyone else won their matches as well. Currently, everyone in our group had won their respective second round, with me having won the third round in the personal combat category, so we had no one that had been disqualified yet.

I had a final fight today in the personal combat category at 5:30 p.m, which would be my fourth one, but my fourth and final Pokemon battle before the round of 128 would be held tomorrow at noon.

I met up with everyone at 3:30 p.m for lunch, and we talked about our fights. Out of the seven of us, two had lost their third matches, but thankfully Sorell and Marlene were not among them. As their part-time coach, I would not have liked that.

Anyway, we did not tease the two that lost and simply consoled them a bit. Out of the others, two still had a fight planned for today, while the others had their fights scheduled for tomorrow morning.

I wished those that still had to fight today good luck before moving toward Dawn Stadium where my final fight for the day would take place. I relaxed there until it was time for me to fight, and once the time came, I went up to the ring and did my best right from the start, since I wanted to go back to my hotel room.

The poor boy from some knight academy stood no chance and I finished the fight within two minutes. Once the referee declared me the winner, I thanked my opponent for the fight and made my way back to the hotel.

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