C103 - Akala's 'gym challenge'

Pete had underestimated how casual Alolans were. For the first day of the league start in Alola, he turned up in a smart suit for the commentary he was going to provide.

He was completely overdressed. Kukui turned up in shorts and a tanktop while Olivia had a skirt and a bikini top on. None of them even wore shoes. Of course, Pete quickly packed the jacket, unbuttoned most of his dress-shirt, and folded up the long sleeves as well as his pants' legs. He hoped dearly Sophie wouldn't scold him later about stretching the fabric.

Before Olivia would accept challenges in a gym leader setting style, every contestant would fight three other challengers, and Olivia, Kukui, and Pete would choose five challengers out of the 72 that turned up.

Since Pete never bothered to watch the anime, he barely recognized any of the contenders over the course of the small tournament. There were, however, some people that simply looked like more than background characters.

At the very front of that was Ilima, who shared way too many similarities with Whitney than Pete could chalk up to mere coincidence. Not only did he have light pink hair, same as Pete's good friend, he even specialized in normal pokemon, same as the Goldenrod City gym leader.

It was so uncanny that he called the young woman during one of Ilima's matches to ask if they were relatives - but it turned out it really was a coincidence! Since the young contender was objectively rather good-looking, Whitney expressed her desire for Pete to introduce them to each other, which he gladly complied with.

The look on Ilima's face when Pete talked to him out of his own volition to give him the phone number of a young and pretty gym leader was priceless, too. His cocky smirk slipped for quite a while as he started looking rather shy.

Done with his wingman responsibilities, Pete noted the other four most likely contenders to succeed in being allowed to challenge the island kahuna. There was a recent graduate from Kukui's school called Kiawe. He looked much older than he actually was, and additionally, the incredibly tanned man boasted a fearsome pokemon lineup.

If Kukui hadn't reassured them that he indeed saw the young man grow up, Pete might have placed him as a man in his middle age. Clearly, Kiawe focused on training fire pokemon. His ace was a very experienced Charizard that used to belong to his father, same as his second strongest pokemon: a Turtonator.

The powerful fire/dragon pokemon was an absolute beast and was clearly very well trained. It could have probably sweeped all three enemy teams in a three versus one ace. Pete hoped he could see the fire/ghost pokemon Alolan Marowak properly in action for his battles against Olivia. The regional variant didn't fight one proper fight that wasn't a sudden one-hit K.O. against the weakest pokemon of the contender.

Well, Kiawe had his work cut out for him with the very apparent typing disadvantage against rock for his team. Which was also true for Guzma, who Pete vaguely recognized as the main 'antagonist' and leader of Team Skull, which simply didn't exist yet.

It made sense, Pete's influence on the world drastically changed the Alolan landscape as Ultra Space and Ultra Beasts simply weren't a thing yet - same as z-moves, z-rings and all that. Even then, Team Skull - while clearly villainous - was one of the least threatening villain organisations in the games.

They kidnapped a few pokemon and a young girl, which is bad enough - but then their leader was feared straight by a legendary pokemon, and they disbanded. Compared to the global smuggling rings and child indoctrination of Team Rocket, Team Skull was truly a minor concern.

Well, at the very least, their leader Guzma was a rather impressive trainer. His ace was a Golisopod with a rather insidious fighting style of feints and cheap shots. The bug/water pokemon used every opportunity to get out of line of sight and land a hit on his unaware opponent.

The other two pokemon he has shown were a battle-hardened Pinsir littered in scars on its carapace and a Vikavolt that wasn't hit once in all three fights.

Guzma's future right-hand Plumeria - the only known Team Skull Admin - managed to become one of the five contenders, too. She was certainly a dark horse, and she managed to clinch out a 2-1 victory against someone Pete recognized as future Alolan Elite Four and ghost type specialist Acerola.

After Acerola's Drifblim won the first match rather easily, her Froslass and Sableye lost to rather lucky hits. At least that was Pete's opinion. In any case, Acerola was much, much younger than the rest of the trainers, so her losing a single of three matches in an upset was already a testament to her future prowess.

Plumeria was rather disgruntled when her Crobat lost to Drifblim in a match high up in the sky, but she got lucky when her Salazzle countered Acerola's Frosslass by beating ice with fire. How her Toxapex managed to beat the ghost type trainer's Sableye was a mystery to everyone, though. Not even Pete could say for certain.

The poison/water pokemon of Plumeria apparently used a few setup moves while hiding behind her own body form and used Liquidation - a physical water type move - a bunch of times until Sableye simply fell over.

'Was it a repeated defense debuff followed by a few lucky crits? If it even was Liquidation... I'm not entirely sure. The move was added in like Gen8 or something, right?' Pete mused as he watched the rebellious girl with the colorful wardrobe stand there among the five contestants that qualified and waved for the cameras.

Pete shook his head and looked toward the last young man to qualify. Gladion, son of Lusamine and de-facto heir to the Aether Foundation. The blonde trainer was the only one who didn't focus on a single typing energy and brought a diverse lineup - clearly aided by the massive amount of resources being the son of Lusamine would bring.

As the clear favorite of this whole thing, Gladion brought the very first Porygon line pokemon Pete had seen in this life - a Porygon-Z with a stupendously high special attack stat. And it wasn't even his ace. That right belonged to a shiny Lucario that won every fight with a maximum of two Extreme Speeds.

Gladion's third pokemon wasn't a slouch either, but it fell a little short compared to the spectacular performance of his two leading pokemon. Being sneaky and unassuming was in this species' nature, though. So, there might still be a chance that it was indeed his Zoroark that was the actual ace Gladion brought.

After they qualified, Pete hit off the first match of the day the following morning with Kukui and a very pregnant Burnet sitting next to him on the panel.

"Welcome everyone to the first gym challenge in this freshly reinstated Alolan Circuit! Professor Kukui graciously offered me to introduce today's contestants - though, I kind of get the feeling he was simply too lazy to do it himself," Pete greeted in jest, only to receive an annoyed glare from Kukui and amused chuckles from his wife. The crowd loved the banter, though.

"By winning the small rock-paper-scissor tournament we hosted after the festivities yesterday, the first contestant to battle the gorgeous kahuna of Akala Island today is Challenger Ilima! Please join me in welcoming the young normal type specialist to the stage!"

Applause rang through the beach-side stadium in Heahea City that had one side open toward the ocean. A good six thousand people managed to make quite some noise for the first challenger who entered with a confident expression and waved at the crowd.

"Yes, yes. He certainly has quite the fanbase - especially with the girls!" Pete joked and got a few excited shrieks from the female audience. "Next for me to introduce, however, is someone with fans in every faction and not just because of her beauty. Please give a warm welcome to the fashion icon, master jeweler, rock type goddess, and Akala's kahuna - Olivia!"

As the crowd exploded into cheers, Burnet leaned over to whisper not so quietly but still away from the mic, "Laying it on a little thick there, buddy."

Kukui, just to get a jab in too, quickly agreed, "Yeah, mate. You trying to get into her pants or something?"

It didn't go quite as intended for the professor as his wife poked him into the side harshly and admonished, "Don't be gross, you idiot."

Pete shrugged it off with a laugh and turned to his mic once more to continue.

"For the first and potential third match, Olivia graciously accepted the role of releasing her pokemon first to allow a favorable matchup for the contenders. Let's see who fights the first one versus one!"

Olivia threw out a poke ball and released her first pokemon, Alolan Golem. The pokemon came with an interesting hidden ability called Galvanize that - as far as Pete was aware - was exclusive to the Alolan variant of the Golem line. It functioned the same as Pixilate and changed normal type moves into stab-electric moves for the rock/electric pokemon.

If he had a rock or electric affinity, Pete was half a mind to catch a bunch of these regional pokemon just to test the limits of this ability. But he promised his wife he wouldn't bring home tens of new pokemon, and he already has two with Popplio and Mimkyu. He still wanted two Alolan variants in Ninetales and Raichu - it wouldn't do to go overboard.

Back on the battle stage, Ilima released his first pokemon - Kangaskhan!

"Interesting! Ilima seems to want to clinch out an early win by sending out his ace! Let's see what happens!"

Kangaskhan used a setup move that looked like it was Work Up, buffing both attack and special attack. But Alolan Golem turned out to be very experienced as it used both Rock Polish and a variant of Wild Charge together. Moments into the match, a spherical mountain of rock and electric energies spinned into Kangaskhan at extreme speeds.

It hit, too, leaving Kangaskhan with some electrical burns and a few bruises, but before Olivia's pokemon could roll away, Ilima's pokemon used Counter. The fighting type move did more damage the more damage it took in the last move, and Wild Charge with Rollout characteristics was clearly a very hard-hitting move.

The moment the very effective fighting move Counter connected, the audience was stunned into silence.Olivia's Golem had used Protect mid-spin to block the devastating attack...