74 Chapter Pov Vailein

After sending 161 kids away from the slums, the end of the night is fast approaching. I return to my room and pretend to just wake up. I change and get ready to go to the tournament venue. At the venue I find a breakfast served but I don't touch it, instead I eat from my own prepared rations cause I fear people will temper with the tournament food, just like they did with the dorms.

Our second opponent gave an even more anticlimactic feeling, none of our opponents had a king level Pokemon. Sergio finishes the last 4 trainers by himself and gives us the victory. After the boring battle. This time we take the 6 girls with us and go out for a meal, and some shopping. We still don't touch or talk directly to the girls until we are 2 km away from the teachers. Then we call Porygon and our friendly Data Pokemon shows up from cyberspace, enters the girls' communicator devices and changes data so we can talk freely. They properly introduce themselves to us. Not really important but they also mention that they are sort of a honey trap, and unless they get us to be into them the chances are that they will live horrible lives. I offer them a small token that no one will find unless they know what they are looking for. This token can grand them work in one of our apartment complexes, as well as a room to themselves.

At this time in our society 1 in every 3 kids is an orphan, many of them will be abused in one way or another. This means that only half the orphans survive till they get to be self-sufficient. Oh well that is for when I have actually built my base, else I won't be able to house the orphans that I rescue. After going to several places, we return to the camp. In the camp the teachers call us in for a strategy meeting for our next opponent. Apparently that would be the favorite after the megatropolis teams.

From our preliminary scouting the opponent will have 4 to 5 king level Pokemon, with the remainder being pseudo-king level Pokemon. It will be a very hard battle if we do our normal plan of reducing two participants to members of our cheer squad. To make it easier on our strongest Pokemon Sergio Mav and I each pull out another Pokemon on pseudo-king level. Now our odds are about even, even though we are now just fighting with 5 members.

In order to have the trainers battle in top forms as much as possible, we will battle in the following order: Sergio, Mav, me, the last two remaining others, Mav, me, Sergio, Mav and me. This gives each of us some time to recover after each loss.

This opponent turns out to be pretty decent. Sergio has to battle a pseudo-king Qwilfish he manages to pull out a draw. Mav battles a Chatot of pseudo-king stage to a draw. My first Pokemon, Nidoking battles a Blastoise. This means that my Nidoking has a type disadvantage in this battle.

Nidoking vs Blastoise:

Nidoking is a close combat bruiser, Blastoise is a long ranged artillery type attacker. Blastoise thus digs in its feet and starts blasting out a large torrent of water from its cannons. Nidoking responds by having the ground swallow him whole. From below the ground Nidoking attacks Blastoise with earth spikes, which are easily defended against with small blasts of water. Blastoise launches a new water beam right into the underground tunnel that Nidoking made. Suddenly a small hole appears close to Blastoise, out of the hole a high pressure beam of water comes out. This water beam is aimed directly at Blastoise who gets a few white marks on its turtle shell. When Blastoise turns around to see how it was attacked, Nidoking suddenly appears on Blastoise backside and strikes with a powerful punch on the back of Blastoises head. Due to the trainers yell Blastoise retracts his head in time and Nidoking misses. The follow up poison glob strikes the part where Blastoise just retracted his head and thus poisons Blastoise. Nidoking in return gets blasted by one of the guns and slides back a few yards. Seeing Nidoking slowly lose his consciousness, I plan on retrieving it as a loss. Before Nidoking faints however he stomps on the ground and gives Blastoise a few large smacks with earth pillars. Again both are knocked out at nearly the same time. Thus it is a draw.

That was a very tense battle, nothing new to me and Mavs though. Sergio however seems to exhaust himself during each battle. I guess this qualifies under the motto you don't have to be afraid of a god-like enemy but a pig teammate. If we had great teammates we could reach complete a single battle and rest to strengthen for the next day, just like the enemy. We however have a few weak teammates. Every Pokemon below the king stage is like golfing with 2 strokes punishment before even hitting the ball the first time, for each hole. 2 of the weakest members barely defeat one Pokemon, luckily they do manageto last just long enough to reveal that the next Pokemon is a Goodra. When it is Mavs turn, he makes short work of it with his Noivern that is on King stage. In turn his Noivern is taken out of the sky in the following round by an Aggron. Noivern did quite a lot of damage to Aggron. Now it is my turn again and to everyone's surprise I chose Houndoom. Houndoom should after all be my strongest Pokemon.

Houndoom vs Aggron:

Since Aggron was already out of his Poke-ball he gets to strike first. Aggron let's the earth erupt small bits of lava. The attack misses my quick Houndoom. Houndoom coats himself in flames and goes for a body blow, Aggron tries to counter by coating it's claws in metal energy and strikes at Houndoom. Houndoom however never went for a full body strike but for glancing blows followed by whip strikes of its tail. The body blow seems to be full of fire energy, but in reality it is just for show and the tail is striking with a lot of dark energy. Since Aggron already was in a previous fight it only lasts through 4 of such combos before it surrenders. Houndoom expended some energy but as always has a monstrous stamina.

The next opponent is a well groomed young man with a very poised demeanor. He has every mark of a high class noble, probably a champion son. Seeing this guy's attitude I am more than willing to humiliate him a bit. When he pulls out a luxury-ball however that notion already slightly fades. It is a Poke-ball that even money can't buy because champion stage energy is needed to make one. My mood sinks further when he sends out a Salamence. Especially seeing the muscle his Salamence shows, darn that is one well trained Pokemon.

Houndoom vs Salamence:

Houndoom is a land based Pokemon, loyal and quick. Salamence is a Pokemon who can fly and run, the species Salamence has a very high energy control talent. Both Pokemon start with an attack based on fire, Houndoom flamethrower and Salamence dragon fire. The attacks cancel each other out but Houndoom was already in a battle before this so logically Salamence has the advantage. Salamences trainer has a playful attitude and uses ranged attacks to waste Houndooms energy. Houndoom accepts the playtime and uses his fire type energy to fight back. The trainer however forgot that Houndoom is not just a fire type Pokemon but also a dark type. Just when Salamence is done playing and decides to up his pressure on Houndoom, Houndoom uses his dark energy to sink into it's own shadow. Half a second later Houndoom pops up on top of Salamence's back, just below a wing from that shadow and spits his remaining fire energy on the head of Salamence. It is not enough to knock the Salamence out however. With no more fire energy Houndoom uses his remaining dark energy, after all a short teleportation and the previous battle drains 75% of that energy. Houndoom shoots all that energy out in a single pulse. This knocks Houndoom out and wounds Salamence pretty badly. Enough to have it withdraw to get healing from one of the many nurses.