CH80 (310), Continental Semifinals (2)

Well, now that Brian had won, it was my turn, so I once again made my way to the field under the well-wishes of my parents and friends. There were still close to 5 minutes until the scheduled time, so I made it there with time to spare.

Hans also arrived a minute after I did, and seeing that the two of us were already in position, the host began our introduction in advance. Hans Rust's intro was as usual with the host mentioning him representing Hoenn and the Stainless Steel Academy in Rustboro City.

The host praised his performance so far before he moved on to my introduction. He prolonged the intro a bit since he had more time, and mentioned things like me being an aspiring researcher and so on, but thankfully he had to stop when the referee began his usual spiel.

Still, ultimately, the starting signal came and the two of us released our first, and in my case most likely only Pokemon. On Hans's side, his Skarmory materialized, while on mine the majestic, the fantastic, the in this case literally intimidating, the amazing, the one and only Stan/Gyarados appeared.

Heh, I loved how his name managed to ruin even the greatest intros by its sheer dullness, was that the right word? Well, it seemed to fit well enough. However, no matter how unimpressive his name seemed, his appearance and the intimidating aura he gave off, in part due to his Intimidate ability, elected awe, and respect from everyone who saw him.

So, it did not come as a surprise that the crowd became still at his appearance before breaking out in cheers despite having seen him before. Skarmory on the other hand got to feel the full effect of Intimidate, and flinched, suffering from its effects, which even managed to distract it from performing its opening move.

Stan on the other hand did not have such a problem and immediately set off a Rain Dance. That would make it easier to hit Skarmory with Thunderbolts and Thunders while boosting his water moves.

Still, Intimidate or not, as soon as Hans gave the command for Skarmory to open up the distance some more, it followed suit without hesitation. Unfortunately for them, but good for me was that Skarmory were mostly geared towards close combat, so the probability of it having more than 1 or 2 long-range moves if any at all was pretty low.

Still, seemingly aware that he would be forced to confront Stan head-on, Hans commanded his Skarmory to use Automatize as often as possible. Well, my boy's next action proved that Skarmory would need all the speed it could get, cause Stan set off a veritable thunderstorm.

He began rapid firing Thunderbolts at Skarmory who did its best to dodge them all. It had no time to think about much else besides dodging the next lightning strike and trying to increase its speed to help its dodging efforts.

What nearly no one noticed, including my opponent was that some of the Thunderbolts only looked like they were aimed at Skarmory, while they were in truth being aimed at the rain clouds above it.

That was the case for roughly every third or fourth Thunderbolt. Stan aimed to turn the clouds into real thunder clouds by charging them up with electric energy.

Skarmory being close to them, on top of being of the steel type, would then automatically attract the lightning strikes, and it would be forced to dodge attacks from two sides at once. Yeah, it was easy to imagine how that would end up.

It took Stan close to 4 minutes to set that up and he gave Skarmory no time to attack him during that time, forcing it to focus on dealing with his onslaught instead.

Once the stage was set, he aimed a final Thunderbolt at Skarmory, which it dodged thanks to its boosted speed, but it couldn't dodge the artificial natural lightning that struck it from above.

Stan used that to follow up with a Thunder of his own, and that got followed by another lightning strike from above. I was unsure if Skarmory was paralyzed or too hurt to move, but it began plummeting toward the ground, and it got struck by a final lightning strike on the way down, which used up the electric energy in the cloud.

Still, once it came closer to the ground, I could make out that it was knocked out, and the camera zoomed in on the falling Skarmory as well, showing everyone that it was out cold, so Hans recalled it before it could crash into the ground. I saw Moxie doing its thing, boosting Stan's strength.

The whole fight took 5 minutes, but the effect was enormous. The crowd stood up and went wild. They were cheering and all of them were chanting praises for my Gyarados or simply clapping to show how impressed they were with the show/strategy Stan, and in turn, I had displayed.

The referee officially declared Stan the winner and told Hans to call out his next Pokemon, who chose his Magnezone. I instantly knew what he wanted to do, the little shit was planning to copy our strategy and use it against Stan.

Well, that was obviously a pipe dream. There was no way I was going to let that happen, so I decided to give out my first command.

"Cancel Rain Dance," I ordered Stan, who immediately used his water energy manipulation to disperse the rain clouds formed by his water energy. This way Magnezone would be unable to use them against us.

Besides, Stan was going to roast Magnezone, so the rain would have only gotten in the way anyway, so Rain Dance would have stopped one way or another at some point in the fight.

Hmm, maybe I should have had him switch to Sunny Day instead. Well, whatever, it was not like he needed the boost from Sunny Day to roast Magnezone, so it was fine.

While Stan was dispersing Hans did not stay idle, seeing as I had seen through his plan, he simply forwent it and went on the offensive instead while Stan was busy.

Magnezone directly fired a Discharge at Stan, who had no time to dodge. However, I was not worried since we had devised a strategy against electric moves that helped reduce the damage to close to zero.

Gyarados immediately, or dare I say instinctively thanks to Thor/Raichu, used the moves Iron Head and Iron Tail to cover his entire body in steel energy, while burrowing his tail into the ground, effectively grounding the Discharge.

While effectively using the two moves at once was not possible without mastering them first, we only used them to cover Stan's body, not to attack with them, which was much easier to accomplish, even if took him quite some time before he was able to cover his whole body. Yet, all that effort had been worth it since he could now do the steel cover in a second.

Anyway, thanks to Iron Conduit as we called it, Stan dealt with Discharge while suffering nearly no damage, and he immediately retaliated with a Flamethrower, forcing Magnezone to dodge. Stan kept up the Flamethrower for a bit and shifted his head trying to hit Magnezone with it.

Meanwhile, Mangezone used Gyro Ball but kept moving. Instead of using it offensively, it managed to use the force its spinning generated to disperse the flames that managed to reach it before it could move away.

I was not sure how it managed to do the next part, but I was assuming that Magnezone had the Analytic ability and that its ability allowed it to successfully use a Lock-On on Stan. Otherwise, I saw no way for Magnezone to nail Stan with a Zap Cannon while it was running, excuse me, dodging Stan's offensive.

Still, it was a fact that it did manage to hit Stan with a Zap Cannon, and it even managed to hurt Stan a decent bit with that. Stan punctuated that fact with a scream of pain as well as anger, and unfortunately for them, that was not a reason for them to celebrate.

On the contrary, I could feel Stan becoming absolutely serious over our bond, and I could feel that he was not planning to hold back at all with what he was going to do next.

One moment he was where he used to be, and the next he was fast approaching Magnezone at full speed. Mangezone had barely any time to react, so when Stan flipped, slamming his tail coated in Rock Smash at it from above, it barely managed to erect a Protect in time.

Still, barely or not, Protect did its job and successfully blocked Stan's Rock Smash before it broke. However, that proved to be irrelevant since Stan already moved on to the next part of his plan.

As soon as he landed back on the ground after slapping Magnezone downward, he set off an Earthquake at the now grounded Pokemon. Magnezone was usually safe from earthbound ground moves because it was usually levitating above the ground, but thanks to Stan's earlier tail smash, it got to experience the full might of the Earthquake.

Still, Stan did not seem to think that was enough and bathed Magnezone in a Flamethrower that he kept up for roughly 10 seconds. Only then was he satisfied and stopped, revealing the clearly knocked-out Pokemon, that was glowing in a slight red, for everyone to see.

Honestly, I had not expected him to go that hard and seriously at Magnezone. That just went to show how strong that Zap Cannon had to have been, for it to have hurt Stan so much, that he became this serious. Stan was being periodically subjected to Thor's electrotherapy, after all, so he was not unfamiliar with the effect or pain released by electric moves.

Anyway, faster than expected victory or not, Stan got his second Moxie boost while the referee declared him the winner and asked Hans to call out his last Pokemon.

Well, normally only his Scizor should have been left, but I was not sure if that was really the case or not. Hans might have had an ace in his sleeve that he could still reveal, so when he called out his last Pokemon everyone held their breath in anticipation.

Yet, what appeared was still his Scizor. Nonetheless, this did not necessarily mean that Hans did not have another Pokemon. He could have deemed it useless to call it out now, so instead of revealing it, he chose to go with Scizor.

On the other hand, it was also possible that Scizor was really his only other Pokemon. Regardless of which one it was, Scizor was the one that appeared, but I did not believe that he would remain on the field for long. He had to face a twice-boosted Stan who had no plans to hold back after all.

Well, the fight did not go as I expected it to go. Instead of roasting it like I expected him to, Stan went in personally and clashed with Scizor directly, which was actually its strong point.

Yet, no matter how good Scizor were strength-wise, it could not keep up with a boosted Stan and made intimate contact with the ground. Stan followed that up with an Iron Head against the steel type, and only after that did he release a Flamethrower, ending the pretty one-sided and kinda underwhelming battle, by bathing Scizor in flames until it was out cold.

I guess he still had to work out some frustration which was why he went up personal first. Anyway, the referee declared Scizor unable to battle, and Hans recalled it. I was then declared the winner and officially advanced to the finals, which made the crowd cheer.

I recalled Stan under their cheers and had my usual exchange with Hans before making my way back to my seat. While I made my way there I was thinking about Stan.

To be honest, the fights had been less challenging than I had thought they would be, with only the first one against Skarmory being a decent challenge, so I was not sure if they had been enough to stimulate his parameters as I had hoped they would.

I guess I would have to wait and see if it helped or not, but I would definitely not be using Stan during the final since I did not think that he would be challenged at all seeing how he would have the type advantage.

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