CH23 (46), Mothra’s Mock Fights

It had been more than a week since the Field families visit and Mikail had returned to his previous schedule spending the time since then to focus on Mothra's mock battle preparations.

They had agreed on 3 commands and which behavior, as well as reaction, would be ideal during different scenarios. 

The commands were Spider, Hunter, and Ninja.

The first command Spider meant Mothra had to use sticky String Shots as well as Electrowebs to surround herself and wait for her opponent to approach her. 

Ideally, she would use the time to boost herself but since she did not know any stat-boosting moves yet this point was moot.

Instead, she would try to distract her approaching foe with String Shots and Electrowebs.

The second command Hunter meant that Mothra would use her String Shot to move around and dodge her opponent as well as attack him whenever she could.

The third command Ninja was more like the middle ground between the previous two commands.

It would not be wrong to say that the strategy for this command resembled guerrilla warfare and kiting.

Mothra was supposed to use String Shot to move around here as well, but instead of directly attacking the opponent the focus was on dodging the foe and laying traps.

She would then force/lure her foe to walk into said traps, but she obviously could still deliver a hit if she saw a good opening.

The first command was better against fast foes.

The second command was better against close-range fighters that were slower than her and the third command was better against long-range as well as flying opponents. 

Her training bore fruit because aside from grasping her commands and combat behavior, she also made big progress with her String Shot.

Her standard String Shot now possessed enough elasticity and resilience to let her swing around like Tarzan. 

She had reduced the time it took her to release her standard String Shot to a little less than a second.

He had also tried to use them to swing around for a bit because it looked fun and everyone that knew Tarzan wanted to do that at least once, he was no exception.

The string had managed to withstand even his weight so there was no problem with Mothra using it however she liked.

It took her a little bit more than a second to produce her extra-sticky String Shot but she could finish the first sticky layer for her perimeter in about 2 seconds.

The strings were sticky and durable enough to keep even him glued to a spot despite him trying his best to get free so as long as the target was not much larger and stronger than him it would be hard to break free once one was caught.

Even if that was the case nothing was preventing Mothra from wrapping around her opponent with even more String Shots.

Her extra-durable String Shot took her about as long as her sticky one.

This one was used to tie up her opponent without him being stuck somewhere and hardened after some time.

It was really durable so breaking out was extremely hard unless one was much stronger than Mothra and it was useful outside of fights too.

As far as her Electroweb was concerned she had simply focused on reducing its execution time.

Currently, she could perform the move in less than 2 seconds as they had aimed for.

As a result of all this, Mikail was pretty sure she was going to dominate all her mock battles, as long as she did not fight against someone that was much stronger than her and he was not dumb enough to challenge someone like that just to keep her humble or something like that.

He didn't have to do anything like that because Mothra had witnessed the 2 vs 2 between his father and uncle Thorn as well, so she knew that she was still relatively weak.

Nonetheless, she had become his strongest Pokemon despite Natu having a higher stage.

At least she had won most of the practice matches between them, thanks to the sheer versatility of String Shot even if Natu was starting to catch up thanks to learning Teleport.

Mikail decided to look at her status one last time before they went out to initiate her first official mock battle.

The matches with Natu did not count.

'Name: Mothra

Species: Caterpie

Gender: Female

Type: Bug 

Potential: Blue (23.8%)

Parameters:

Stage: Iron Stage (low)

Vitality: G

Strength: H

Endurance: H -> G

Agility: G

Energy Capacity: I -> H

Energy Density: I -> H

Condition: Healthy, Excited 

Masteries: Neutral Energy Manipulation (Initial), Bug E. Manipulation (Novice) -> (Beginner)

Techniques: Tackle (Novice), String Shot (Proficient) -> (Advanced), Bug Bite (Beginner), Electroweb (Novice) -> (Beginner), Confusion (Initial)

Hmm, her potential increase has slowed down lately, and both the 'E'-class Silver Powder and the Beedrill's Lance have lost their usefulness.

I'll have to use the Tiny Mushroom and the Amber next.

Her Endurance has increased thanks to the physical aspect of all that training and the two energy parameters have increased because of technique exercises.

I am not surprised that String Shots mastery has improved to advanced but the fact that Bug E. Manipulation has improved to Beginner is a pleasant surprise.

It probably happened because she trained so much with String Shot.

This will make it easier for Mothra to learn other bug-type moves in the future.'

Mikail allowed Mothra to climb up to his left shoulder and told Natu to follow them, after which he started walking towards the northwestern area.

There he found a (low) iron-stage Rattata as Mothra's first opponent.

Both Pokemon stood opposite of each other and waited for Mikail's start signal.

As soon as the rock that he threw touched the ground, the Rattata started running towards Mothra and Mikail yelled out his command at the same time.

"Spider!"

It took him 1 second to deliver his command and Rattata managed to cover 1/5 of the distance between during that time.

Immediately after hearing his yell, Mothra started covering her vicinity in her sticky strings.

She finished the first layer even before Rattata managed to reach her 10 meters range.

She directly started adding a second layer to the previous one, starting with the area in front of her.

Once it was close enough, the poor Rattata noted that it had no other choice but to go over the sticky field.

While it hesitated Mothra finished with the second layer, shrinking the gaps between the sticky strings leaving less clean areas for her opponent to step on.

Rattata circled Mothra once to look for a clear strip it could use but it saw that there was no such strip, so it had no choice but to move forward while trying to avoid the sticky strings, which slowed it down quite a bit.

Mothra used this to alternately spit Electrowebs and standard String Shots at Rattata, who was forced to dodge her attacks causing it to step on the sticky strings on the floor.

It got slowed down by the strings it stepped on and was forced to step on more and more strings while trying to dodge Mothra's attacks.

A few moments later it finally got stuck.

As soon as she saw Rattata getting stuck she fired an Electroweb at it.

Once she saw that Rattata was more or less immobilized she aimed a String Shot at a tree right behind it and pulled herself in its direction.

While she was sailing through the air towards her opponent, she used Tackle to deliver a momentum boosted flying Tackle at her helpless foe.

She landed her blow while laughing and Mikail saw that she had knocked out the Rattata.

He carried the beaten Rattata towards the stream, so that he could use the water to slowly dissolve Mothra's strings.

While they would degrade on their own even if left alone, that would take a while, but he was not willing to wait that long.

After he cleaned the Rattata, he healed it up and gave it its reward.

He praised Mothra for her win and directly started searching for her next opponent.

He wanted the next challenger to be a Pidgey and managed to find a suitable one that agreed after searching for a bit. 

Both Pokemon stood opposite of each other and waited for Mikail's start signal.

As soon as the rock that he threw touched the ground, they both sprang into action.

This time there was no need for him to say anything because they had already decided that Mothra was always going to execute command Ninja against any flying opponent as long as no other instruction came.

During the time Pidgey took off, Mothra fired two String Shots at two trees on both sides of it while sticking the other end at the floor, before she fired a third one at a boulder on the right side away from Pidgey and pulled herself towards the boulder.

While she was sailing towards the boulder she looked around to choose her next targets.

After she landed she shot three strings at trees near her foe's previous position.

Pidgey had started flying towards her in the meantime forcing Mothra to aim a few String Shots at it to keep it from flying in a straight line, lest it got hit.

She fired another String Shot this time to a tree on the left to change her position once more.

From there she executed 2 more String Shots one to the left and one to the right before she swung towards her starting position.

Pidgey who had enough of Caterpie's dodging used a Gust to attack her from the distance.

The wind shook Mothra a bit but she managed to safely reach her goal.

She started aiming her String Shot towards the strings that were in the air thanks to her previous efforts, thus limiting the hindrance-free airspace available to Pidgey.

Once she had done that she began firing String Shots at it while crawling away from it.

The pissed-off Pidgey dodged her attacks and kept flying towards her as fast as it could while also dodging the strings in the air, which forced it to maneuver around quite a bit.

Mothra kept cleverly aiming her attacks so that even if Pidgey dodged her String Shots, they would be stuck to the strings in the air or the trees and boulder around them consequently limiting its airspace more and more.

Pidgey used a Gust to blow the newest round of attacks from Caterpie away but it had no way to get rid of the strings that were slowly but surely trapping her.

If it had known Air Slash or Wing Attack then it could have escaped this situation but unfortunately, it didn't, so it was no surprise when Caterpie forced it into a metaphorical corner and finally landed an Electroweb on it.

This was what decided the fight because the web that entangled Pidgey also fused with the strings that were already in the air, which allowed Mothra to leisurely fire another Electroweb at her caught opponent.

Mikail stopped Mothra from firing a third Electroweb at Pidgey and declared her the winner.

Her opponent had to unwillingly accept defeat since it was unable to free itself.

Mothra started to wiggle in happiness after being declared the winner.

Mikail had to chuckle at Mothra's antics and congratulated her before calling her over, so that she could break Pidgey free from the strings in the air, by nibbling them through.

He caught the wrapped-up Pokemon before it could hit the ground and carried it to the stream to dissolve the strings.

Afterward, he healed the Pidgey and gave it its promised reward as well, before he challenged an Ekans for Mothra's third battle.

They won that mock fight as well using the spider strategy.

Mikail decided to call it a day after that, so he took his little champion into his arms and started walking back home.

He kept thinking about the fights during the trek home, mainly the one against Pidgey.

'That fight was much more laborious compared to the other two.

I have to adjust our strategy against flying opponents, even if the changes I can make while Mothra is a Caterpie are limited.

If it had been a flying type with a bit more experienced or one with better moves, we could have lost that fight.

The ninja strategy works the best when there are many things that can be linked by String Shots, like trees or big boulders, so forests would be the best environment for it and plains would be the worst environment for it.

I think it's time we started focusing on Confusion since String Shot is already at advanced mastery and anything more than that is probably going to take quite a while.

Today is also the day I have to call Rose.

After a "talk" with mom, we agreed that I would call Rose every Arcday, so I am sure that she is going to call them as soon as I reach home.

At least I can ask Rose if there have been any changes to the Vulpix egg so it's not all that bad.'

-------------------

***A Big Thank You to Zones for becoming a Patron***

Advertising plug-in:

Help me stay motivated.

patreo*n/Azrail93