657 CH38 (652), The Last Two Spots

The battle between Seb/Nidoking and Gaia/Nidoqueen went on for nearly 15 minutes before a winner finally emerged. It was no surprise that their battle took this long, the siblings simply knew each other too well. Add the fact that they were pretty much equal in prowess, and it was practically guaranteed that a battle between them would take a long time.

Nonetheless, after a sibling spat of epic proportions, Gaia ended up falling first, making Seb the winner of their fight, though he fell on his ass as well after confirming that his sister was down for the count. We naturally healed them back to full health since they still had quite a few battles ahead of them, but I let Utopia's passive healing deal with the finer aspects of recovery.

I led the duo to the area their family was watching from, before calling Parvati/Beedrill and Stan/Gyarados onto the battlefield. Honestly, Parvati had the worst match-up as far as the Gym battle was concerned, not to mention that she along with Osiris/Skellibra were only at the (mid) dark gold stage, but Osiris at least had a good enough typing for the Gym Battle in case he ended up qualifying.

Nonetheless, valid points or not, I was not going to stop her from trying to earn her place among the Gym Team, though frankly, her chances were not the best. The battle went as well as one could expect and while Parvati did her best, she still ended up losing against Stan. Unlike the previous battle, this one was not close and ended in a decisive victory for Stan, which was honestly not that surprising since Stan was pretty much the second strongest of my Pokemon right now, though he did have to share that spot with Moka/Crobat.

I had honestly expected her to sign up for the mini-tournament as well, and it took me off guard when she chose to abstain from the Gym Battle. I mean she did not have to worry about the steel type's immunity to poison energy thanks to Corrosion, so she was actually more qualified for the position than Stan, Gaia, and Parvati, but since she decided to sit this one out, I decided to respect her choice.

Anyway, after Stan and Parvati vacated the battlefield Ryujin/Gyarados and Osiris/Skellibra went up for their fight. Due to the fact that Osiris had standardized his ice weakness, the battle between the two dragons was much more balanced than it would have otherwise been since Ryujin's ice moves only caused regular damage, but Ryujin still had a distinct advantage over Osiris since he had standardized his dragon weakness while Osiris still had his, which Ryujin capitalized on to win in the end. That Ryujin had the substage/parameter advantage naturally helped as well.

The fourth battle was between Seb/Nidoking and Stan/Gyarados. Seb certainly did his best during the battle, and he made use of electric attacks/moves in hopes of taking advantage of Stan's "still" minor electric weakness, but unfortunately for him, Stan followed suit and used ice moves in return. Seb could not even poison Stan since Stan made sure to block or avoid any poison attacks, so with both aiming at each other weaknesses and the mastery of their respective moves being similar, Stan's superior parameters ended up being the deciding factor that led to Seb's loss.

The battle between Gaia/Nidoqueen and Parvati/Beedrill that followed was not nearly as close. While Parvati did put up a good fight, Gaia had a noticeable advantage throughout the fight and ended up finishing the battle with a well-timed Fire Punch. Once their battle was over I decided to add a 15-minute intermission since 4 of the 6 participants had already fought twice, including Seb, who would be facing Ryujin/Gyarados in the next battle, who had only fought once so far.

After the 15 minutes were up, the two fighters went up and started to battle. Seb did not make it easy for Ryujin in any way and put up a fierce resistance against him. Nonetheless, Ryujin still managed to win their battle, though he certainly did not look much better than Seb by the end of it, and I had to use a generous amount of tonics to help their recovery for their next battles.

The battle between Gaia and Osiris/Skellibra that followed was just as fierce, and somewhat surprisingly ended with Gaia collapsing a few moments before Osiris. While that could technically be seen as a double knockout, the battle still counted as Osiris' victory since Gaia fell first. Osiris certainly did a good job during that battle considering that Gaia had the stage advantage.

Next up was a clash of titans, at least size-wise, with Ryujin/Gyarados fighting against Stan/Gyarados. Unfortunately for Ryujin, the dragon variant ended up losing against the leader of the Slytherin Squad. Stan just proved himself to be stronger than Ryujin, though he did look worse for wear by the time Ryujin lost.

Following that was the battle between Seb/Nidoking and Parvati/Beedrill. Maybe it was because she had lost her previous two battles, but Parvati fought much more ferociously this time around. Unfortunately for her, Seb fought just as ferociously since he had lost his two battles after the victory against Gaia as well. Both Pokemon went at it without holding back and their clash ended up being the longest one so far with both Pokemon refusing to go down.

Yet, eventually, Parvati's willpower was no longer enough to keep her going. Her comparatively bad endurance ended up costing her the victory, resulting in her third loss, which pretty much took her out of the running even though she still had two more battles of her. Still, I doubted that would discourage Parvati, and I was sure she would still give her all during those battles even if it was to earn at least one victory.

The fifth battle of the second round and the 10th battle overall was between Osiris/Skellibra and Stan/Gyarados. Osiris did his best during the battle and made ample use of his lightning talent in hopes of taking down Stan. However, Stan did not go easy on him at all and went all out as well. He blocked or redirected any attempts of Osiris to fry him, and retaliated with devastating water and dragon moves.

Ultimately, Osiris fell under Stan's attacks, granting Stan his fourth victory. With this, Stan had pretty much settled his position as one of the two winners of this mini-tournament, though I doubted that he would go easy during his last battle just because of that. Either way, I declared another 15-minute break before the third and final set of battles could begin.

The first battle of the final 5 put Parvati/Beedrill up against Ryujin/Gyarados. Parvati once again went all out from the get-go. She fought as if her life depended on the battle, and she actually fought Ryujin to a standstill. Unlike Seb and Gaia, Ryujin was not immune to her poison, and Parvati's Queenly disposition reduced the effect of Ryujin's Alpha Predator, though it still showed an effect, which made the ferocious battle Parvati put up even more impressive.

Still, Ryujin was just as determined as her to win the battle and slowly but surely tilted the standstill in his favor. Eventually, he managed to take Parvati down, though he was poisoned and rather hurt by the time he managed to do that. Had Parvati managed to hold out for another 2-3 minutes, she might have been able to win, but she didn't, and Ryujin ended up winning their battle.

This victory temporarily pushed Ryujin to second place with 3 victories, though that could still change. As of now, Stan was obviously first with his 4 victories. The third place belonged to Seb/Nidoking with 2 victories. Gaia/Nidoqueen as well as Osiris/Skellibra both had one victory each, and Parvati was the only one without a win so far.

Anyway, the next battle was between Seb and Osiris. Both Pokemon went all out since they still had a chance to secure a spot on the gym team depending on how things went. Yet, one of them had to fall, and it ended up being Osiris. Unluckily for him, he ended up getting poisoned during the final third of their battle, and after that things went downhill for him, resulting in his loss.

Still, while this development meant that Osiris was certainly out of the race, it allowed Seb to catch up with Ryujin/Gyarados, at least for now. The next battle between Ryujin and Gaia would determine if Seb remained in the race, or if Ryujin ended up securing the second spot on the gym team.

Seb predictably cheered for his sister when the two moved onto the battlefield. Gaia herself still had a chance of securing a spot on the team as well if she won this fight along with her next one, so she gave it her all during the fight. Unfortunately for her Ryujin was just as determined to earn that spot and he showed no mercy at all during their battle.

Their battle ended when Gaia froze up after getting hit by the fifth Ice Beam. Ryujin released a happy roar after winning, momentarily ignoring the poison coursing through his body since he had secured the second spot with his victory.

Theoretically, we could have stopped the tournament at this point since none of the following fights would change that Stan/Gyarados and Ryujin had won the two spots on the gym team, but I knew that there was no way that Parvati/Beedrill would accept a premature end to the tournament before she had her final battle.

As I expected, Parvati went up and called out Osiris/Skellibra as well. Seeing that, I let them go through with the battle, knowing that Parvati would feel hurt if I took away her chance of earning at least one victory during the mini-tournament. Maybe it was due to the difference in motivation, or maybe it was because Parvati fought like possessed, but Parvati ended up winning the battle against Osiris. She beat him with her second Venoshock after he got poisoned.

Either way, Parvati was happy to have won at least once and she had earned it. None of us thought that Osiris had let her win since he had fought quite well, even if he was not as motivated as her, which was no surprise since Parvati had been practically burning with motivation. Still, with their battle complete, only a final battle was left unfinished, and I directly asked Gaia/Nidoqueen as well as Stan/Gyarados if they wanted to go through with their battle or if they were fine with skipping it.

Gaia said that she wanted to fight and Stan went along with her wish, so they went up to fight as well. Gaia did put up a pretty good fight, and she even managed to poison Stan towards the end of their battle. Unfortunately for her, she was already quite battered at that point and ended up getting knocked out before she could take advantage of it or the poison could do much.

With that battle over we had completed all 15 fights, with each one of them getting to fight five times. Stan managed to win all 5 of his battles securing the fifth spot on the gym team as the undisputed winner of the mini-tournament while Ryujin/Gyarados secured the sixth spot on the gym team with his four victories. This meant that the final two spots on the team that was going to challenge Stephanie Stone had gone to two Gyarados, pushing the number of Gyarados on the team to three.

I officially announced that Mothra/Butterfree, Enji/Arcanine, Mars/Ursasol, Ignis/Gyarados, Stan/Gyarados, and Ryujin/Gyarados would be fighting in the Gym Battle against Stephanie Stone. I also declared that these six would not be participating in any of the battles against the gym trainers I would have to face before Stephanie, so the others would still get to take part in the Gym Challenge.

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