CH83 (313), Continental Champion (2)

As soon as the starting signal was given, both Pokemon used their opening moves. Flygon's move had the biggest visual impact since it used Sandstorm. Meanwhile, Mars/Ursaring used Bulk Up and Work Up once each, to boost himself, while making a Scary Face at Flygon.

What nearly everyone most likely missed was that Mars also released a Sweet Scent, which would involuntarily loosen up Flygon a bit, reducing his combat state and with it its evasion rate.

Scary Face and even the Sandstorm helped cover the use of Sweet Scent so neither Brian nor Flygon noticed it for now. Still, while Mars was finishing up his first set of moves Flygon followed up his Sandstorm with a Supersonic aimed at Mars.

Mars barely managed to finish his opening set but had no time left to dodge Supersonic, so he went for a block instead. He used Hyper Voice to counter the sound waves of Supersonic, and his Hyper Voice not only blocked Flygon's move, but it also continued heading toward Flygon, after destroying Supersonic.

Flygon was forced to block Hyper Voice with a move of its own and used Bug Buzz to successfully deal with Mars counter. Flygon did not leave it at that and immediately counter-attacked. It flew towards the ground and slapped its tail on the ground, causing an Earthquake.

Yet, Mars's reaction was not slow either, and he slammed his right foot on the ground, causing an Earthquake of his own to counter Flygon's Earthquake.

He managed to do so successfully, but I was probably the only one that knew that Mars had to infuse quite some extra energy into the move to match Flygon's higher move mastery and matching type bonus.

Mars was not one to leave the initiative to his opponent so he used Hyper Voice to attack Flygon. He only had three long-range moves, not counting Earthquake, so it was either that one or Swift since he would not pull out Hyper Beam this soon.

Well, Flygon had a much wider range of moves to choose from, and it chose Boomburst to counter Hyper Voice. Its Boomburst began to overpower Hyper Voice, and Mars, who had no way to dodge the move was forced to block it with Protect.

Normally, he could have tried to dodge underground with Dig, but using that tactic against Flygon who had a plethora of ground moves, including Earthquake, was suicide, so using Protect was his only choice.

Well, in fact, he had another way to block the move, but I had asked him to keep it back if he could. We had copied the basic principle of Ash's counter shield and made a variation to Swift, where the stars began to densely circle the user as a shield, blocking any incoming attacks,  instead of tracking down the target.

The strength of the Star Shield as we called it depended on the number of stars, which translated into the amount of energy invested into the Swift used to create the shield and the mastery of the move itself.

The advantage of this shield compared to the counter shield was that Mars did not have to keep it up to maintain his defense. Once used, the shield would remain until it got destroyed or currently until 4 minutes were up.

Anyway, secret shield variation aside, I focused back on the field, where Mars seemed to have decided his next while hiding behind Protect. He fired three volleys of Swift at Flygon, forcing it to dodge and block the stars with moves of its own.

Mars used the cover of the stars to run towards Flygon, who was actually flying around while dealing with all stars. It took Flygon less than 30 seconds to deal with all three volleys of Swift, but that was enough time for Mars to arrive below Flygon.

As soon as he was in position he fired the Hyper Beam he had been charging at Flygon. Flygon trying to dodge that move was a given, and Mars had actually been expecting that, so he considered it while aiming.

His aim was slightly tilted to the left, which was the direction Mars was expecting Flygon to swerve too, so when Flygon really did shift in that direction, part of its body remained in the range of Mars's Hyper Beam.

Flygon got grazed at the back and its wings, so it could not maintain its flight due to the pain. It tried to remain in the air but lost height, and in the meantime, Mars recovered his mobility after about 5 seconds of near immobilization.

He gauged Flygon's current height, which had reduced to around 8 to 9 meters, and analyzed if he could effectively reach it if he jumped with all his might. Coming to the decision that he could in fact jump that high while trying to hit Flygon, he immediately crouched down before jumping up with all his might.

Halfway up his right fist gained a blue hue, and a slight fog began building up there, which was the telltale sign for Ice Punch. Flygon did not wait to be hit, so once it saw that it was too late to dodge it used Dragon Claw to block Ice Punch, and with it, a big part of the damage as well.

Still, Mars did not plan to let go of the opportunity, and grabbed onto Flygon, turning the situation into a mid-air brawl, which resulted in them falling toward the ground, where they resumed their brawl.

Their confrontation turned into a close-range one, with Mars making use of his arsenal, which was geared towards that, while Flygon was using all kinds of moves to attack Mars.

Bugg Buzz, Dragon Claw, Dragon Pulse, Earthquake, Dragonbreath, Earth Power, Dragon Rush; Flygon used all kinds of moves, and even Outrage made an appearance. It was a captivating fight between bear and dragon, that everyone watched with full attention.

Still, in the end, Mars managed to knock Flygon down with a final Ice Punch on the back, right between its wings. Flygon did not stand back up after that and was declared unable to battle. Directly afterward Mars was declared the winner, which made me the champion of the continental competition.

Well, continental champion in the Pokemon battle category among secondary students, but a continental champion nonetheless. I recalled Mars after praising him, and Brian did the same with his Flygon. After that, I did my usual thing and thanked him for the fight before stepping off the battlefield.

However, there were only 5 minutes left until I had to participate in the personal combat final, so going back to our seats made no sense, which was why I was waiting on the side, while the competition staff returned the battlefield to pristine condition for the upcoming fight.

Haru also arrived while the staff was finishing up their work, and we took our position as soon as the staff gave the go-ahead. The host did his thing, introducing Haru as a Fire Elementalist and me as an Aura User proficient with senbons and swords.

The referee followed with his part and then came the signal starting the final battle. As soon as the signal was given, Haru created a fire whip in each hand, giving me the impression that he was planning to keep me at a distance.

Still, a fire whip seemed to be counterproductive if that was the case since he could simply send out streams of flames if he wanted to attack at a range.

I received my answer when the whips straightened out and acted like hoses, spewing out flames from their tips. Haru had no problems manipulating the flame whips since they were made out of his energy. Being made out of energy, the whips did not have much weight to speak of.

I easily dodged the two fire streams, then I pulled out some senbons before I clad them in aura and threw them at Haru. He interrupted his attack and directed his flames at the senbons instead, trying to stop them, but he quickly noticed that he only managed to burn the senbons with concentrated fire since the aura protected the metal from the fire to a certain extent.

This meant that he only managed to block/stop a few of the senbons I threw his way, so he was suddenly forced to dodge the rest, which led to some awkward contractions.

Still, he managed to dodge them all, so kudos to him for that. He was more flexible than I had thought. As a reward, I threw even more aura-clad senbons at him while he was off balance. He was forced to roll and jump around on the ground to dodge them all, which made him look a bit pitiful.

I got a bit into it and let him dance around like that for close to 3 minutes before I gave him some breathing room. It was definitely not because I ran out of senbons or anything like that.

I saw Haru releasing a sigh of relief while standing up from the ground, visibly panting from the ground acrobatics I forced him into. He glared a bit at me before his breathing returned to a calm state.

I gave him a smile in return and acted as if I was going to pull out another senbon, which caused him to flinch involuntarily. Still, I stopped it at that since I did not want to go too far. There was no need to traumatize the poor boy.

Instead, I pulled out my two short swords from my back and clad them in aura, before boosting my body as well. Haru did the smart thing and channeled his anger to fuel his flames instead of acting on them. He sent a veritable wave of fire at me, but I ran towards it after increasing the amount of aura flooding my body.

I then cut a passage into the fire wave while swiftly running through the passage I opened up. Still, Haru seemed to have anticipated that his wave would not stop me since I came face to face with a fire whip that was about to strike my head.

I blocked it with my right sword but was forced to dodge to the side when the second fire whip followed a second or two behind the first one. It seemed like Haru was determined to force me to dance to his tune this time around since another fire strike followed after the second one.

I dodged that one as well, and I saw how he was alternately swinging his fire whips as me, so one whip strike after the other came at me at one or two-second intervals. There was obviously no way I was going to put on a dance show, so took a deep breath, boosted my legs, and threw one of my blades at him.

That forced Haru to dodge, and while he did that, I jumped up, created a platform, performed a double jump by pushing off from it, and landed behind Haru who had just recovered from dodging my sword.

He noticed my arrival behind him and released a gout of fire at his backside while rolling forward. I clad my body in aura to protect myself from the worst of the fire and forced my way through using my blade.

I threw my last blade at him as well in such a way, that he was forced to duck, leaving him in an awkward position since he was about to stand up. I capitalized on that and arrived in from of him, put him in a headlock, and put an aura spike at his throat, officially ending the battle due to the referee declaring me the winner as soon as I did that.

I released Haru from my grip and helped him up. Then I thanked him for the fight, before listening to the referee declare me the continental champion of the personal combat category. With this victory, I was now officially the continental dual champion.

The referee told us we could make our way to our seats since the award ceremony would start in 20 minutes. The venue had to be prepared first, so we both left the battlefield under the applause and cheers of the audience.

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