CH73 (303), Prelude To The Continental Competition

The day after the regional competition I chose to relax for the whole day since the day after that, on Arcday, the continental competition would start, and I wanted to unwind before then, so I simply went over what I knew about the upcoming competition before mom called me down for breakfast.

This year the continental competition was going to be held in the Orange Archipelago, Pummelo Island to be specific. Rather fitting, considering that it was the island where any championship battles were fought.

I would be facing the best graduating secondary students from Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, the Orange Archipelago, and the Sevii Archipelago. Well, and those from Rota as well, but I was not sure if they could progress enough to surprise me during the single day we had before the continental competition.

There was always the possibility that they held back after qualifying to keep cards for later, but I kinda doubted that was the case, at least for the personal fighters. The trainers could have held back some ace Pokemon, but that's all speculation.

Still, that did remind me that the students from the other regions could have done that as well, so it was possible and even likely that their competition files were incomplete.

Anyway, Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, and the Orange Archipelago, would be sending over 16 students for each category, while Rota and the Sevii Archipelago would be sending 8 students per category.

That meant each category had exactly 80 students, which meant there would be a single extra elimination round, to reduce the number of participants for the round of 64. 16 had to go, so 32 students would have to particle in that extra round, and as far as I knew the selection was completely "random".

Since these were the best students each region had to offer, the organizers allotted a bit of extra time to each battle, which meant that the elimination round and round of 64 for both categories were allotted for the first day.

The round of 32 and 16 of both categories were slotted for Mewday, and the quarterfinals and up were set for Giratiday. Important to note, was that those that made it to the round of 16 were qualified for the global competition, so it was possible that some would still try to hold back some cards as long as they did not risk being disqualified.

Hmm, what else? On Arcday the battles were going to take place across 6 venues, and the competition program was scheduled to start at 9 a.m and the last battles were supposed to end by 6 p.m. Obviously, the closing time was variable in case some delays happened. The same timeframe was set for Mewday and Giratiday.

The time after 6 p.m can be used to explore Pummelo Island and its surroundings. It would be interesting to see the wild Pokemon there. The Orange Archipelago was known to possess a stable population of various variants, such as the pink-colored ones from Pinkan Island and the alternately colored ones from Valencia Island.

Moreover, due to being an Archipelago, the Islands had quite a variety of water types around their shores, so it would be interesting to take a look at the local wildlife.

Not only that, it would be interesting to see what kind of Pokemon my competitors were going to bring along. Hopefully, there would be rare or interesting ones among them.

Well, since I could look up which Pokemon had been used so far, I decided to check out the Pokemon the representatives of each region used during their regional competition.

I started from the original region, Kanto, and saw that no one had revealed a gold stage Pokemon so far, the strongest one was at the (high) silver stage. Still, all of them had shown to possess a minimum of two (high) silver-stage Pokemon, along with at least a (mid) silver stage one.

I doubted that there would be more than one or two gold stage Pokemon since they only showed up around the semifinals of the global competition during the last two years.

Strength aside, the rarest Pokemon among them were a Ditto, a Mr.Mime, a Jynx, a Porygon, a Kangaskhan, and there was even a Snorlax. I could not believe that someone our age actually dared to train a Snorlax.

The guy had to be the young master of some large family. Otherwise, there was no way someone our age could afford the upkeep of one. I mean even the majority of full-fledged trainers hesitated and considered first if they should get a Snorlax for their team or not, despite virtually all Snorlax having the potential of being future powerhouses.

Both the Porygon and the Ditto were a surprise, and I was curious how the two trainers had gotten their hands on them. I was sure that they had to have received them as gifts since both species were rarer than even pseudo-legendaries in the wild.

Unfortunately, there were no pseudo-legendaries among the revealed Pokemon. It would have been interesting to face a Dragonair or Dragonite. Maybe, someone had one of those but kept it back until now.

The Johto group didn't show any Larvitar-line member or any other pseudo legendary, so I could only hope someone was holding out on us. I would definitely use Mothra/Butterfree against a Tyranitar if there was one. It was a matter of principle.

The rare Pokemon that had been revealed were a Slowking, a Steelix, a Gliscor, and a Scizor. Hopefully, there would be some other ones that had been kept a secret, since it would be interesting to face a Mamoswine or Kingdra.

For Hoenn, the rarest were Aggron, Flygon, Claydol, and Absol. The Orange Archipelago actually had someone with a Vespiquen. Besides that, Roserade, Lapras, and Dragalge can be considered the rarest of the bunch. Dragalge had been a surprise, but as I previously considered, the Archipelago status could be the reason for that.

The ones from the Sevii Archipelago looked to be less lucky since the rarest of the bunch were a Magnezone and a Lickilicky. Still, they had some of the more common strong species such as Gyarados and Ursaring.

I was unsure how long I had been looking through my potential competitors on the competition's website, but my mom's call snapped me out of investigation mode, and I headed downstairs for breakfast.

While we were eating, I told mom and dad about my plans to simply rest the whole day. They agreed, telling me that I earned it, and we spent the rest of the day at home. We stayed on the terrace for a few hours, simply enjoying the sun, before going inside and watching some good old TV.

We had a barbecue for dinner, before watching a movie to round off the day. I displayed the TV screen on the sky of Utopia for everyone, so that they could watch the movie with us. I naturally gave them some snacks and drinks along with the movie, and they enjoyed the movie night as well.

Before going to bed, I checked everyone's status to see how they were doing, and I received a pleasant surprise. Stan/Gyarados's Agility had increased to SSS, and it was his fourth one. That gave me hope that Stan might break through into the gold stage before the global competition, even doing so on the last day was good enough in my books.

Moreover, Stan was not the only one that had shown progress. Hera/Pidgeot's Energy Capacity had risen to S, leaving only her Energy Density for her to finish her first round of limit-breaking. I was hopeful that a good battle during the continental competition would be enough to facilitate that.

In addition to Hera, Tyson/Machoke also showed an improvement. His Agility rose to A, which officially kicked off his limit-breaking. All his parameters were now at A, but I was confident that his Strength would rise to S within a month or two. The battles during the competition might help speed that up.

I was happy with the result and went to sleep with a smile on my face after praising them all. The next day I woke up at 6:00 a.m, and after a quick breakfast and some goodbyes with my parents, I made my way to the Aaron Aura Academy.

It was 6:30 a.m by the time I made it there and Mr. Cameron was already waiting at the gate. I was the only one from our academy, so it was only the two of us that would be heading to Pummelo Island.

After greeting him, Mr. Cameron told me that we would be meeting with the other representatives and their supervisors in front of the Rota Palace, where the queen and king would wish us luck before we set off from there.

Hearing that I understood why he asked me to meet him this early since I could not imagine a royal event taking less than half an hour no matter how short they tried to keep it. Call me biased, but that was what I thought.

Alakazam teleported us to the entrance of the palace and I could see that the others were already there. I knew none of my fellow representatives enough to randomly start a conversation with them since everyone else was from other academies, so I did not try to start any small talk after giving a general greeting.

Most opted for the same and we waited in relative silence for the royals to show up. It took nearly 15 minutes for their entrance to be announced and another minute for them to actually arrive in front of us.

The "ceremony" took a bit less than I had expected and the royals left after 20 minutes. After they left, the supervisors talked with each other before Mr. Cameron and two others called out their psychic types. The five psychic Pokemon teleported all of us to our destination.

The alliance had booked the Pummelo Grand Resort for the duration of the continental competition. All visiting academies had rooms reserved for them until Giratiday evening. After we arrived there, everyone split up and went to their assigned/reserved rooms.

Mr. Cameron led me to my room and told me to meet up in the lobby at 8:20 a.m. The opening ceremony would begin at 8:45 a.m, while the first battles would start at 9:00 a.m.

I still had a bit more than an hour until I had to be in the lobby, so I took another look at the Pokemon my competitors had revealed so far. That way I would have an idea of which Pokemon to use against whom.

I was still trying to keep the same conditions I had been adhering to during the regional competition, so Mothra/Butterfree and Horus/Xatu would not get to fight as long as no surprises happened.

Tyson and Stan would definitely get their turn, one in hopes of fulfilling his evolution condition, and the other for stimulation in hopes of completing his limit-breaking.

I also handed out everyone's breakfast and before I knew it the time was up and I had to head to the lobby. There I met up with Mr. Cameron and we made our way to the Pummelo Grand Stadium where the opening ceremony would be held.

I saw the others from Rota heading there as well, and not only them but also other youngsters along with their supervisors. I knew that they were the participants from the other regions since I had seen their pictures in their files, and I could recognize them due to that.

At the entrance of the stadium, a member of the staff approached Mr. Cameron and I heard that she was responsible for showing us our seats. Still, we had to wait for the others from Rota before we were led to our seats since all representatives of one region along with their supervisors were assigned seats beside each other.

It took less than 5 minutes for the last one to arrive, and as soon as they came, the staff lady led the way. By the time we sat down, there were less than 5 minutes until the start of the opening ceremony.

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