CH8 (622), Lucky Strike

I spent another 10 minutes assuring Anorith that everything was okay and that he was in a safe environment before I began to slowly introduce him to the others since I did not want to overwhelm him by introducing everyone at once. Going through the whole gang took close to two hours and once I was done, I quickly left for the battlefield.

There were only 10 minutes left before the start of my match, and I was asked to be there 5 minutes before that. I had no idea what Pokemon my opponent would be using, but I had long decided to go with Fortuna/Togekiss for my second match.

Coincidentally, I made it to the venue just in time to witness how the battle before ours ended in a victory for a Slowbro. After the two trainers vacated the battlefield and it had been restored, I as well as my opponent were called up for our battle. The referee did his usual spiel, and the two of us released our Pokemon at his signal.

"Go, Darling," the lady said, releasing a Lairon of all things. "Charm them, Baby Doll," was my line, and as soon as Fortuna appeared on the field she used Charm before quickly chaining Baby-Doll Eyes on the silver stage Lairon.

Honestly, this was pretty much the worst possible matchup for Fortuna type-wise, but I was confident that we would win. Our first move had already reduced the danger Lairon posed by a bit, and while Fortuna's moves were mostly of the fairy or flying type, she did have some alternatives that we could use. Not to mention the ultimate trump card she had.

"Rock Slide, take that bird out of the sky," the lady ordered and a second later a lot of rocks were hurled at Fortuna. The moment I heard Rock Slide, I gave a counterorder. "Dodge, and Tailwind," I swiftly ordered, and Fortuna began to dance through the rocks.

Yet, it seemed that Lairon and the lady were set on keeping this up as long as possible, likely hoping for a lucky hit that would stagger Fortuna. Obviously, I had no plans to wait for something like that. "Get out of there, use Rock Smash to break out if you can't dodge. Follow up with Ancient Power, once you're free," I instructed, which had Fortuna dodge the next rock before she sped forward to fly out of the rock rain.

She was able to dodge two more rocks that were in her way but had to break two more apart with Rock Smash before she was able to break out and stop right behind Lairon. Fortuna then rained down a bunch of rocks of her own onto Lairon. Lairon was able to tank through that quite easily, which was fine since hurting it was not what we were after in this case.

No, what we were after was the boost that would follow Ancient Power. While the chance to trigger the boosting effect was normally rather low, we were talking about Fortuna here, so Ancient Power's secondary effect became a completely different ballgame in her hands, and I was not surprised to note an increase in Fortuna's speed indicating that the secondary effect had triggered right away.

We had two options available on how Fortuna could win this fight. One was the slow and steady way that involved boosting Fortuna using Ancient Power or other boosting moves, while also peppering Lairon with Rock Smash to stack damage and lower its impressive defense. I was absolutely sure that Fortuna could win this fight using this tactic, it would just take considerably more time than the second one.

The second option was much simpler and involved a certain level of luck. Now that Tailwind was up and Fortuna had boosted herself once, her speed would make it easier to boost herself two or three more times, more specifically her offensive abilities, but Ancient Power granted an overall boost anyway.

Regardless, once she had pumped up her offense a bit, she would use Metronome to trigger a move that was super effective against Lairon. I was confident that she could pull that much off with her mastered Metronome. It was just that how fast Fortuna would finish the fight would depend on which super-effective move she managed to trigger. I naturally decided to go with option two since we could fall back to option one if two did not work out, so I went ahead and gave Fortuna the order.

"Fortuna, keep moving. Don't let Lairon hit you and rain some more rocks on it while dodging anything it throws at you," Fortuna nodded and promptly fired off another, slightly stronger, Ancient Power.

"Ignore those pebbles, and use Autotomize instead. Then start rolling," the lady ordered, and her Lairon followed her orders dutifully. It ignored the rock that banged against it and visibly discharged some metal sparks before rolling up, to then roll around using Rollout.

As the spikey metal ball of doom rolled around the deck gaining speed, Fortuna was content to keep peppering Lairon with Ancient Power, and I was content to let them build up speed since I had a pretty good idea of what they were planning to do, so I allowed Fortuna to keep on boosting instead of forcing her to try to hit the speedy metal marble with a Metronome.

In less than a minute Lairon had become a blur, at least that was what it probably looked like for most, and that was when the lady gave the order I had been waiting for, so the moment she yelled "Bullet Shot", causing her Lairon to cleverly use its spike to cause it to lift off the deck and shot toward a 7 time boosted Fortuna at what appeared to be the "speed of a bullet", I gave an order as well.

"Metronome" I called out at the same time as the first letter left the Lady's mouth, which Fortuna immediately followed. Her Metronome finished just as Lairon left the ground, leaving it unable to dodge since it could not move midair. That left Lairon as an open target for the Focus Blast that got luckily triggered by Fortuna's Metronome, and I knew then and there that this battle was over.

The strongest energy-based fighting type move currently known used by a 7 times-boosted Fortuna proved to be more than enough to stop the Lairon Bullet from moving forward before overwhelming it and smashing it back onto the deck, followed by an energy eruption/explosion.

"Darling," the lady worriedly called out as the dust rose from where Lairon crashed. "Blow the dust away," I ordered seeing no reason to wait for it to disperse on its own, already knowing what we would see. Fortuna flapped her wings and the dust was blown away, revealing the outcold Lairon in a small crater caused by its crash. Honestly, Lairon looked pretty banged up and I felt a bit of pity for it since I knew that it would take some time to recover from that.

I had honestly not expected Fortuna to get the jackpot with that Metronome. A 7 time-boosted Focus Blast was a bit over the top considering Lairon's major weakness towards fighting energy and relatively weak special defense.

Regardless, seeing Lairon's state the referee declared it unable to battle, making Fortuna/me the victor. The Lady quickly recalled her Lairon and gave me a curt nod before hurrying away, presumably to get her Lairon looked at. I noticed a lot of people looking at me worriedly, no doubt intimidated by Fortuna's last attack.

I simply smiled at them before making my way back to my cabin. I was done for the day since the third round would be held tomorrow, and I did not plan to hang out in the common areas. Nonetheless, I was still interested in watching the rest of the battles happening today, so once I was in my cabin, I turned on the small TV and opened the live feed before entering Utopia.

I left a small portal open to the cabin and used it to project the TV screen onto the sky so that everyone interested could follow the tournament battles. It took another two hours for all battles of the second round to end, and I had to admit that I saw some interesting Pokemon among those that made it to the next round, chief among them were a (high) silver stage Lucario and a pink (high) silver stage Snorlax of all things.

I was pretty sure that the Snorlax had to originally have been from the Orange Archipelago, specifically from Pinkan Island. Well, either that or its trainer had for some outlandish reason fed his Snorlax a ton of Pinkan Berries over a long period of time. No idea why he would do that though since it was simply a "cosmetic" change that had no impact on the Pokemon's strength, unlike the shiny gene.

If the guy really did that on purpose then he might have a pink problem *cough* loose screws *cough*. The man had actually been sporting pink hair, and now I could not help but wonder if it was natural or if he had dyed it to that color. Anyway, a few minutes after the last battle, the organizers put up the timetable for the third round, and as luck would have it mine was against the pink dude.

Our battle was the ninth one and was scheduled to happen at 11:00 a.m. The third round was the last one that had 1-on-1 battles since the two after that were 2-on-2 battles instead. I began to mull over who to use against the pink guy, but then I decided to take a look at the Pokemon he used in his first match.

I could not help but be surprised that his Pokemon had not drawn my attention, but then I looked up the time of his battle and saw that it was during the time I caught my giant Magikarp which I explained how I managed to miss a pink Primeape of all things. That discovery had me wonder if all of this dude's Pokemon were pink.

Nonetheless, now that I knew that he was not a normal-type specialist, I decided to not use Freyja/Lopunny. Instead, I went with the safest option, which was Bruce/Crobat. Freyja would get her chance during the next battle. That way someone could have her back in case a bad match-up occurred.

Anyway, after making that decision, I spent the rest of the day ensuring that all new arrivals felt welcome to Utopia and that they all knew that my team and I had their backs. I made sure that they understood that we wanted the best for them and that I/we would help them become as strong as they could.

Anorith at first showed no real reaction to the get-strong spiel, which I attributed to the circumstances of his "birth", but when he was shown the strength Mothra/Butterfree and co possessed, Anorith finally showed a yearning/interest in becoming as strong as them. I was definitely happy with that since I wanted him to eventually evolve into Armaldo, which was only possible if he became stronger.

The next morning I prepared a big breakfast together with my cooking assistants, and once everyone had eaten their fill we spent half an hour telling the newbies some of the stuff we had done over the years. Following that I started off the morning training session. I let the others do their thing since they knew what they were supposed to do and focused on determining the newcomer's current abilities/limits.

I pretty much spent all the time until 10:45 a.m. focusing on them to work out a proper training plan for them, before I had to stop for now since I had to leave Utopia to participate in the battle against Julian, the pink dude. I made it to the battlefield on time and was asked to move onto the field just two minutes after my arrival.

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