659 CH40 (654), Well, That Backfired On Her

Maybe Bruce/Crobat's battle was too impressive, but I actually had to wait for nearly 12 minutes before I got called up for my next battle. I simply assumed that Bruce's performance had the Battle Club staff search/wait for one of the stronger Knights to become available, which was fine with me since they were freely providing my Pokemon a better challenge.

Anyway, even if it took a bit longer, I did end up across another trainer, and this time around, I led the battle with Borr/Glaceon. I felt the elation the lady across from me felt when her Torkoal ended up facing my Glaceon. She had no idea that Borr evolved only recently and hence only knew two ice-type moves right now, so while Borr did have a minor weakness towards fire energy, his current battle style was entirely independent of his ice typing.

Borr showed her just how unreliant he was on ice moves. He used Quick Attack to run circles around Torkoal and occasionally to dodge some of Torkoal's moves that had a wider coverage. Borr's Star Shield did block most of the attacks that Borr failed to stop, though he did get singed by Heat Wave twice. There was a case where Borr ran too close to Torkoal while dodging another Heat Wave, which Torkoal made use of to release a Lava Plume.

If not for Star Shield that would have been pretty bad, but thankfully the worst of the attack got stopped by Star Shield, though he still got a bit hurt after the shield got destroyed and a small part of the Lava Plume landed on Borr. In fact, Borr had been lucky that this happened late into their battle after Hyper Voice and Shadow Ball had ground down Torkoal enough for them to ignore Eruption in favor of Lava Plume. If this had happened around the start of the fight, Torkoal would definitely have used Eruption instead, and I seriously doubted that Borr would have escaped that kind of hit with anything less than serious injuries.

Thankfully, he had been careful enough to avoid something like this, and after getting hit by that Lava Plume he made sure to keep his distance even when he was in a hurry. Nonetheless, less than 3 minutes after that hit, Borr was finally ready to end this battle. Torkoal's persistent attacks and Borr's Hyper Voice as well as Shadow Ball had taken a considerable amount of Torkoal's energy and health, resulting in it becoming somewhat sluggish.

Meanwhile, Borr had managed to squeeze in three Calm Minds while he was attacking Torkoal and dodging its attacks. That was more than enough to turn his next move into a pretty strong one, so after dodging Torkoal's latest Flamethrower, Borr closed in a bit from Torkoal's backside and released a Stored Power straight at it. Thankfully, that proved to be enough to take Torkoal down, though Borr was visibly panting afterward.

Things did not get better for Borr when his second opponent made an appearance. It happened to be Rapidash at the (high) silver stage as well, and this time around it was the other side that was running circles around us and keeping a distance while attacking from afar. Only Borr/Glaceon's high mastery of Quick Attack allowed him to keep up with Rapidash though that became harder when the other side began to boost their already high speed.

Nonetheless, through good timing, well-done positioning, great reaction time, and tactics, Borr managed to dish out as good as he got. The high-intensity and high-speed battle did exhaust Rapidash quite a bit, not to mention the damage caused by Borr and its own moves. Nonetheless, even though Rapidash's situation looked bad, Borr's looked worse, and he ended up falling before Rapidash after getting hit by a final Flare Blitz.

With Borr down for the count, I had to send out my second Pokemon and I decided to go with Gaara/Gabite. Rapidash lasted less than a minute against Gaara, mostly due to the damage it already suffered. The passive damage caused by the Sandstorm and a single Earth Power ended up taking Rapidash out of commission.

The final Pokemon of the other party ended up being a Camerupt, and it actually performed an Eruption mere moments after being released. Yet, Gaara reacted swiftly and directly cocooned himself with sand. Once the Eruption was over, the outside of the sand cocoon looked melted, and while Camerupt and its trainer were focused on the sand cocoon, Gaara appeared/dug out from the ground behind Camerupt.

Gaara then did two things, he created a large Sand Tomb and grabbed onto Camerupt's hind legs before dragging it to the center of the tomb. While he succeeded with that, he failed to drag it below the ground and only submerged it a bit below the sand, due to its trashing as well as the use of Lava Plume, which forced Gaara to go under once more to dodge the attack. They tried to be smart about it and used Earthquake while Gaara was underground, but Camerupt obviously had no experience using Earthquake on sand compared to firm ground since the shaking was rather weak.

Gaara had long left the ground before the weakened Earthquake could spread all that far. He then proceeded to demonstrate to Camerupt how to perform an Earthquake on the sand, and the shaking sand caused Camerupt to stumble and fall down. The shaking also ended up burying the fallen Camerupt a bit further, and Gaara capitalized on that. He controlled the sand to completely bury Camerupt before compressing the sand around it.

He then used one of his favorite strategies, he brought the slightly wiggling big sand ball out of the ground and levitated it slightly above the ground before jumping onto it to use a point-blank "super" Earthquake. Being surrounded by earth/sand amplified the effect of the Earthquake. There was still some movement after that, which proved that Camerupt was still conscious and struggling to get out. Gaara did not let that bother him and compressed the ball further, which translated to the sand ball shrinking a bit before he performed another Earthquake.

The struggling became very minute after that, and another 40 or do seconds later it completely ceased. Seeing how Gaara allowed the sand to fall away after the activities stopped, it was clear that he believed the battle to be over, and facts proved that he was right since we could see that Camerupt was unconscious after it fell onto the soft sand below. I naturally praised Gaara for his victory and went back to the lobby after thanking my opponent for the good fight.

Anyway, it took a bit less than 10 minutes until I got called up again, and this time I sent out Jean/Espeon first. The first foe she had to face was a Tangela and as a Pokemon that was unsuited for a frontal confrontation with so many vines, Jean kept her distance throughout the whole battle. She made use of Quick Attack and Teleport to dodge all of Tangela's attacks and attempts to immobilize her, while also using Swift and Hyper Voice to scrape away at Tangela's health.

She naturally did not forget to use Calm Mind whenever possible in preparation for Stored Power. She currently had no other move that could serve as a decisive finisher or at least something that could cause a lot of damage, which forced her to drag out battles against those without a useful weakness and chip away at their health instead. Still, 4 Calm Minds was all it took for Stored Power to reach the level of a trump card move, and as soon as that happened, Jean set up a Star Shield before teleporting behind Tangela.

Tangela's reaction was quick enough and due to the various vines it had, it was even able to counter-attack towards its backside. However, the Star Shield stalled Tangela's vines for a few seconds, which was all Jean needed to release a point-blank Stored Power at it. The power of the move hurled Tangela away, and it rolled a bit along the ground before it came to a stop. Once that happened it became apparent that it was out cold so it was declared unable to battle and was switched out with the next Pokemon.

Unfortunately for Jean, that Pokemon happened to be a Shiftry. Sadly Jean did not know Miracle Eye, so none of her moves would be able to harm Shiftry as long as her Psionate was active, and unfortunately for Jean, her mastery over her ability had not yet reached the extent where she could turn it off at will. I knew it was possible since we had watched Pokemon during high-level matches that could turn off Pixilate and Refrigerate.

However, for now, the process was a passive one, which meant that there was nothing Jean could do against Shiftry, except maybe for wasting its time by dodging all the time through Quick Attack and Teleport. Sadly that was all she could do against dark types until she either learned to turn off her ability or somehow managed to learn Miracle Eye. This was naturally not an option for me, so I had no choice but to forfeit her turn, though I made it sound like I wanted her to give the others a chance to battle as well.

Jean did throw a pout my way at that and I could feel her feeling frustrated at the situation, but there was nothing we could do and she knew it. Still, I knew that she would feel better once she found out that I was not counting this as her loss since I counted it as an impossible odds scenario, which meant that she would be able to fight again, though I would count it as her loss if it happened a second time.

Anyway, I briefly considered if I should send out Igneel/Charizard, Fortuna/Togekiss, or Freyja/Lopunny to deal with Shiftry. I eventually chose to send out Fortuna. Some would see that as too much bullying, but I knew that sending out Fortuna would be the choice that would satisfy Jean the most, which is why I went with it.

As soon as Fortuna appeared on the field and the referee gave the starting signal, she began firing off one Air Slash after the other, forcing Shiftry to scurry around the battlefield to dodge Fortuna's onslaught of Air Slashes. I knew that Shiftry did that because of its flying weakness, but what it did not know was how great of a decision it was on its part to not try to tank one of the Air Slashes in hopes of retaliating.

Each one of Fortuna's Air Slashes had a 99.99% chance of causing Shiftry to flinch, so once the first Air Slash hit home, Shiftry would be momentarily unable to dodge the second one, and then the third, and so on. The only way it could escape that hellish loop would be an act of incredible will and resilience, but that became even harder because of the extra damage and pain Air Slash would cause it due to its weakness.

Unfortunately for Shiftry, it eventually ended up getting hit by an Air Slash when it tried to counterattack using Hurricane of all things. Predictably its Hurricane got interrupted and Shiftry was hit by a second Air Slash. Four hits later it got knocked out, which was a rather tragic way to lose. As soon as it was declared unable to battle its trainer recalled it and I saw the guy pat the ball in a placating manner before putting it away.

He then sent out his third Pokemon which happened to be a Ludicolo. Ludicolo's first move was Blizzard, which Fortuna blocked using Metronome, or rather she blocked Blizzard using the Heat Wave triggered by Metronome. Once Blizzard was taken care of, she once again began sending out a barrage of Air Slashes that put Ludicolo on the back foot. Interestingly enough, Ludicolo was dodging Fortuna's Air Slashes by dancing out of the way unlike Shiftry, who had relied on its speed to dodge. Still, the question was how long could Ludicolo keep dodging through its dancing.

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