CH26 (156), Friendly Spar (3)

On Weiss's side, her Buneary appeared, and on mine, Ali appeared. I was not sure which move Buneary used as its opening move but it was obviously a self-boosting one, since all boosting moves and abilities had visual effects as far as I knew, and I saw the sign on Buneary.

Meanwhile, my Ralts initiated Future Sight as soon as he appeared. It took him a few seconds more than Buneary to finish his opening move since his Future Sight was only at beginner mastery right now and stronger moves like that take a bit longer to perform than other moves.

"Again!" Weiss ordered to make use of that time for her Buneary to boost itself again.

What she probably had not expected was for Ali to suddenly get a boost in as well while Buneary was still in the middle of its boosting. That was thanks to the ability he copied from Shino.

For this battle I had my Ralts use his talent Save Point on my Yanma. I regretted letting him escape all those years ago and a bit more than 2 years ago, I managed to track him down. It wasn't easy and took me nearly a month to find him, despite knowing the area he lived in, but in the end, I managed to catch the ancient variant.

Anyway, since I knew that Ali would be fighting against Buneary I had him copy Yanma's Speed Boost to take away Buneary's biggest advantage, its speed. Ralts's body could currently support 7 rounds of Speed Boost and each boost happened every few seconds until that limit has been reached.

Anyway, after he got boosted Ali used Double Team and 12 copies appeared on the field. Ali began to run around Buneary and all his copies copied him.

Next up he began to use Teleport to switch places with his copies, and it was extremely hard to notice the switch if one did not know what one was looking for since I had him especially focus on pulling that off as seamlessly as possible during training.

Weiss obviously did not plan to just watch us perform, so before Ralts could go on the offensive she reacted.

"Ice Beam! Freeze them." She yelled out, rousing her Buneary from the daze it had fallen into after seeing so many Ralts running around itself.

The Buneary-line itself did not have that many useful moves in their natural move pool, and no long-range attacks at all, but it seemed Weiss had made use of her resources and taught her Buneary Ice Beam because she ordered it to attack Ali with it.

However, due to our Double Team/Teleport combo, it had no chance of hitting at all and Ali began firing Psybeams at Buneary who had a really hard time following Ali's attacks because the direction the real attack came from each time was different thanks to Teleport.

Each time it fired an Ice Beam at the place the Psybeam had come from Ali had already teleported away, and whenever the number of copies fell to 5 he would use another Double Team to return the number to 12 raising the number of targets back to 13.

It was not like Weiss and Buneary didn't want to break free from the situation, but Ali had already gotten fully boosted speed-wise so no matter if Buneary used Quick Attack or its normal speed to either attack him or to break out of the enforcement it failed.

A bit more than 2 minutes after the battle began, the Future Sight Ralts used as his opening move struck, hurting Buneary and making it momentarily incapacitated.

Ali, who knew that attack would come had waited for this chance, so he used the given chance to successfully get ahold of Buneary with Psychic. He then raised it into the air and slammed it back down a few times.

Buneary struggled against Ali's psychic grip but by the time it managed to break free it had been slammed around 4 times, which with the previous hits it received from Psybeam had it on its last legs.

"Bunny, can you hold on?" Asked Weiss worriedly seeing her Buneary struggling to stay on its feet.

"BUN!" yelled Buneary determinedly to show it hadn't given up yet, but "reality" was a cruel mistress, or rather Ali gave zero sh*t about the inspirational exchange that happened between Weiss and her Buneary.

He just fired another Psybeam at Buneary right after it had finished its shout. It directly crumpled to the ground after being hit unable to get up. Weiss seemed unsure how to react and just recalled it after she released a sigh.

I praised Ali a bit before I recalled him as well, and we both pulled out our second balls. Upon Ace's signal, we released our Pokemon, and Enji appeared on my side, while her Jinx appeared on Weiss's side.

To be honest, unless something really surprising happened I did not believe that this round would take as long as the previous one which had taken roughly 3 minutes. On the contrary, I was sure it would take less than a minute for my Growlithe to take out her Jinx.

Anyway, as soon as they appeared on the field they made their opening moves. Jinx used Hail for obvious reasons, while Enji used Howl to boost his strength and that it had the chance to slightly intimidate some opponents also helped.

It didn't work most of the time, and it also didn't happen this time around, but that was okay. I'm sure he will be more intimidating once he becomes a big bad Arcanine.

"Psychic!" Weiss ordered shortly before Jinx was done with Hail and it followed her order as soon as it was done with its opening move.

'Oh, looks like someone wants revenge.' I thought more amused than worried.

She seemed to have raised the proficiency of Psychic and Hail pretty high because by the time Enji was done with his Howl Jinx had him in her psychic grip.

Still, Enji knew what to do in such situations, he directly initiated Crunch and the dark energy loosened her hold enough for him to quickly use his superior physical strength to completely break her hold.

The reason the dark energy did not directly break the psychic hold instead of just wearing it was that the dark energy was centered around his mouth and not his whole body.

After he broke free he used Quick Attack to move towards her, which he chained with Flame Wheel before slamming into Jinx hurling her away, and just like that in roughly 30 seconds, he had beaten Weiss's Jinx.

Enji's parameters were much higher than hers, then he got a boost through Howl. Now, apply that to a Quick Attack accelerated Flame Wheel, an attack from a type she was weak against, and you got a one-hit knockout.

"What the hell!" I could hear Ace shouting from the side, while Weiss was just staring incomprehensibly at her knocked-out Jinx.

She looked from her Jinx to Enji and then again to her Jinx a few times before coming to grasp with the fact that her Jinx had been beaten so quickly and thoroughly.

She showed a bitter smile that I could see thanks to my great eyesight before she recalled her Pokemon. Still, unlike what many others in her place would have, she did not look depressed or beaten, instead, she had a determined look on her face.

Growlithe quickly ran up to me excitedly waiting for his praise and I gave him what he wanted, stroking his fur while praising him for his victory before I recalled him as well.

"Do you wanna keep going?" I asked her since I was pretty sure that at least the next round was going to end similarly to this one and I did not want to break her confidence or anything like that.

We were friends, at least regular ones, and I didn't want to leave a shadow in her heart or something like that. Still, she showed that she was a strong individual not only strength-wise but also so mentally through the answers she gave.

"Let's continue. I had expected something like this to happen when you told us about your Pokemon, but it seems I subconsciously doubted your words a bit, seeing it kind of as bragging when you told us the strength of your Pokemon.

So, it came as a bit of a shock for them to be just as strong if not stronger than told, even if I had known about their strength. As they say, seeing is believing. I think you might truly be one of the most talented individuals of our generation.

I'm sure with a visible goal in front of me to strive for I will get even stronger than I would have gotten otherwise. So, let's continue." She shook her head when she said the first part but I could feel the determination and motivation radiating from her when she said the last bit.

I just nodded at that and pulled out my next ball. She followed suit and pulled out her next ball as well. Once Ace, who had simultaneously calmed down and gotten fired up after hearing Weiss determine speech, gave the signal we released our Pokemon.

On her side, her Dewgong appeared, took one look at the field before it used Safeguard as its opening move instead of using Hail, which I believed to be its real opening move.

On my side, Thor appeared and apparently decided to completely forgo any opening move. The opening moves we had settled on for my Pikachu were either Rain Dance, which was currently still a work in progress or Double Team to confuse the enemy.

No, instead of making an opening move Thor directly used Quick Attack to run at Dewgong at an extremely fast speed, and just as Dewgong finished using Safeguard, he delivered a Thunder Punch right at its head after jumping right as Quick Attack ended.

Pikachu used the push-back of his punch to make a backflip before perfectly landing on the floor while Dewgong rolled/flew back a bit before coming to a stop.

Thankfully, the ground had not been frozen over due to the Hail or any other ice move, or that whole maneuver could have gone off the rails pretty fast. Still, it didn't, so that was good.

Anyway, to my and Thor's surprise, Dewgong wasn't knocked out yet. No, while it was definitely badly hurt, not the life-threatening kind but the Pokemon battle kind, it was still struggling to get rid of the disorientation the sudden attack caused. Not only that but thanks to Hail and its Ice Body ability it was already starting to slowly recover.

Since we could allow that, and because Thor knew that, he fired a full-powered Thunderbolt. While using such a full-powered move took a few precious extra seconds, the attack still arrived before Dewgong could get his faculties under control.

Thor kept the Thunderbolt going for a few seconds before he stopped and this time around Dewgong was out cold. My Pikachu had won just like that with the only damage he suffered coming from the Hail that was going on.

Thankfully, that stopped while I was praising Pikachu for winning. I recalled him afterward and Weiss did the same with her Dewgong. She was much less shocked than she had been with Jinx.

The two of us pulled out the last balls for this battle and once the signal was given, we released our Pokemon. Mars appeared on my side and her Alolan Ninetales appeared on Weiss's side. Furthermore, as soon as it appeared a Hail began to form on its own, showing that it definitely had the Snow Warning ability.

Both Pokemon performed boosting moves for their opening move. I couldn't be sure but I guessed that the Alolan Ninetales used Nasty Plot, while I knew that my Ursaring used Work Up.

"Blizzard!" Weiss ordered, pulling out the big guns from the start.

The move combined with the ongoing Hail drastically reduced the view, but I managed to see Mars slipping below the ground using Dig. Ninetales kept up the Blizzard for roughly 10 seconds before it stopped and once the visibility had returned they noticed that Ursaring was nowhere to be seen.

Both tensed at that, but before Weiss could say anything Mars struck. Instead of jumping out from below my Ursaring decided to drag Ninetales into the hole he dug. That obviously meant we couldn't see what was happening down there.

However, right after Mars dragged his foe down, we heard a really loud noise that told me that he had used Hyper Voice. Due to the location they were fighting I was sure the attack got amplified, but I was also sure that it would have had to have hurt him as well.

Nonetheless, Hyper Voice still would hurt Ninetales more and on the of that, it should have disoriented Ninetales a bit as well. For the next 60 plus seconds, all we could do was listen to the fighting sounds coming from below.

It seemed like Mars was adamant about keeping his foe down there, so they didn't resurface for quite a while. After the initial Hyper Voice, we kept hearing rumbling and fighting sounds, which meant they were fighting pretty hard down there.

A few times we saw a pink, light blue, yellow, and red glow coming from the hole, which I assumed were some fairy, psychic, as well as ice moves from Ninetales and Fire as well as Thunder Punches from Mars.

Nearly 2 minutes later the fighting sounds stopped and we waited for the winner to come out since we assumed the sounds had stopped after one of them won.

When the figure of Weiss's Alolan Ninetales came flying out of the hole I thought Mars had lost, but when it landed in a heap instead of on its four feet I knew it was knocked out, which meant Ursaring had to have thrown it out.

My theory got confirmed when Ursaring came out shortly after as well. He looked worse for wear, or rather he looked like he was running on fumes, but he could still stand on his feet and he was conscious.

I praised him for his victory and recalled him while Weiss did the same with her Pokemon before we both walked towards Ace.

"No idea what happened down there, but the way Mars looked it must have been one hell of a fight," I told Weiss, low-key praising her Alolan Ninetales, once we arrived at Ace's side.

"Thank you, I think so too." She said with a small smile. It seemed like she was a bit happy at nearly taking out one of my Pokemon, which she classified as freaks in a good way.

After that, we kept going over all battles talking about things we thought were good, and mentioned what we thought was not so good as well as what could have been done that would have been better.

Well, this was more for them than for me, but I had fun, and helping them now might be helpful to me later on. Besides the better they got, the better the challenge they could give me, so I had no problem with the arrangement.

It was more than one and a half hours later that we stopped. We decided to go to a Pidgey Burgers Store together where we ate some burgers. Afterward, we said our goodbyes and wished each other happy holidays before they returned to their apartments to pack up for tomorrow while I went home as well.

My parents were going to arrive in roughly 3 hours, so I wanted to make sure the house was presentable.

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