CH117 (731), Brightwick Gym (2)

Well, I said that Kimura/Hitmonform could use the elemental moves he knew to battle Chandelure, but even with those reality decided to limit his options. If we got lucky and Chandelure did not have Flash Fire as its ability, which would make it immune to fire moves, then its fire/ghost typing made Fire Punch, Blaze Kick, Ice Punch, Ice Kick, Bullet Punch, Steel Kick as well as Poison Jab rather useless. On top of that, its levitation invalidated his Earthquake, leaving him with only Thunder Punch, Thunder Kick, and Throat Chop as truly useful offensive moves he could use against Chandelure.

Taking that into account it was no surprise that Kimura was struggling against Chandelure. Kimura's boosted speed was really coming in clutch here, both when he was dodging and during the rare times he was attempting to counterattack, which was when his boosted strength came in clutch since each of his hits caused crucial damage, at least it was crucial for us.

I seriously doubted our chances if not for the speed boost since Anastasia and her Chandelure were fighting pretty dirty despite the large advantage they had over Kimura. Chandelure did not leave out any chance to use moves such as Will-O-Wisp, Confuse Ray, Minimize, which was not nice if used against oneself, Smog, Fire Spin, and even Pain Split on one occasion. Honestly, I was pretty sure that the only reason they had not used Curse was because they deemed it too risky with Kimura being as boosted as he was. No wonder people had been complaining online.

Thankfully, Will-O-Wisp could be blocked using Swift, while Vaccum Wave was pretty useful against Fire Spin, which left Kimura performing Acrobatics whenever Chandelure tried a Confuse Ray or a sudden Minimize. Yet, despite that Kimura was managing to slowly grind Chandelure down, even if he was starting to run out of steam both energy and stamina-wise in the process, which led to him being forced to tank more of the moves that did not harbor the risk of some nasty status conditions.

Nonetheless, I proudly watched as a somewhat banged-up Kimura closed in for what was probably the final Thunder Punch, though I was admittedly quite nervous because Chandelure's style so far had me concerned about a final resort scenario happening, which was why I was watching Anastasia and Chandelure like a hawk. That allowed me to notice a slight shimmer on Chandelure, which set off alarm bells inside my head, so I immediately used our mental link to order Kimura, who had reached Chandelure's side, to abandon Thunder Punch in favor of Protect.

He did so just in time to at least not face the brunt of Chandelure blowing itself up. Honestly, what was it with ghost types and their trainers using kamikaze moves all the time? Everyone waited with bated breath for the smoke/dust cloud to disperse and once it did, we got to see that Kimura had managed to weather through the point blank Explosion, though he did look slightly crispy. Still, that did not stop the audience from cheering him on and the referee from proclaiming him the victor after ascertaining that Chandelure was unable to battle.

Unfortunately, while Kimura did not look too banged up, I knew better. Kimura was barely hanging in there, and the only reason he was putting up a front instead of keeling over was because he wanted Anastasia to call out her final Pokemon first since he correctly believed that his seemingly still somewhat fighting fit look would impact her decision. 

Anastasia proved him right when she released her (high) gold stage Talonflame as her final Pokemon; As soon as Talonflame made its appearance, Kimura stopped pretending and fell over, which surprised the crowd and Anastasia quite a bit. The referee declared Kimura unable to battle and I recalled him after praising him for his performance. Once I had put his ball away, I brought out Kun/Azuraid's ball, and as soon as the referee gave the signal I released him onto the field. Azuraid's were rather uncommon, just like Hitmonform, so his appearance induced another wave of excitement.

Anyway, Kun took off into the air, and the two flying types stared at each other from across the field. Kun as a water/flying type had a definite advantage over the fire/flying type Talonflame, and with Kun having long started his limit breaking he also had an absolute stage advantage over his (high) gold stage opponent. Hence, it came as no surprise to me that Kun had the upper hand throughout their entire battle. The only reason Talonflame was able to even hold out for as long as it did was by capitalizing on its species' slight speed advantage as well as Gale Wings ability which it further expanded on using moves like Tailwind, Agility, Flame Charge, Acrobatics, and Quick Attack, allowing it to engage in a form of cat and mouse game with Kun.

Well, more like a fish and bird game, though in this case the roles of prey and predator were reversed with the bird being the prey and the fish being the predator. Ultimately, Talonflame was not able to escape the inevitable and ended up falling after failing to dodge yet another Hydro Pump trap. The crowd cheered quite a bit even when Talonflame fell since their battle had been a rather exciting as well as visually appealing one with a lot of aerial maneuvers, and I had to give credit where it was due, I had not thought that Talonflame would be able to hold out for as long as it did.

Nonetheless, I did not mind that development one bit since Kun ended up exerting much more energy and effort than I expected which was good since that would hopefully push him beyond his current limits. Regardless, while the crowd cheered, the referee declared Talonflame unable to battle which made Kun the victor, and with Anastasia's third Pokemon beaten I was declared the winner of the first battle/challenge.

Anastasia congratulated me on my victory before vacating the field and I recalled Kun after telling him that he had done a good job before I began to wait for my next opponent. The emcee did his job and revealed that I would be facing Chen, who upon being introduced made his way onto the field. While he walked towards the trainer zone, I went over what I had read up on Chen. Like Anastasia, Chen also switched between 5 Pokemon for 4 to 6 Badge challenges, though in his case those Pokemon were a Camerupt, Salazzle, Marowak (Alolan), Houndoom, and Charizard. Despite using different Pokemon, the Gym Trainers all seemed to follow a certain pattern.

I guess this was the Brightwick Gym's way to stand out from the rest of the fire type Gyms, though it was also what led to their less than stellar reputation online since they liked to employ "trickery" during their battles instead of fighting head-on relying on firepower like most fire type trainer/Gyms.

When the referee gave the starting signal Chen sent out his (high) gold stage Camerupt, which directly used Eruption as its opening move, forcing Tyson/Machamp to abandon his own opening in favor of dodging the sudden Eruption. That opening move made me think that Chen wanted to fight me head-on, but he and Camerupt quickly proved that I was wrong. Camerupt began to pull tricks like using a weakened Magnitude pretending to use Earthquake while in truth it used Smog in hopes of poisoning Tyson.

Camerupt even pretended to use Fissure while releasing a Yawn before following that up with a pretend Earthquake that actually shifted to an actual Fissure attempt. Their fighting style was nothing like one would expect from a Camerupt. Honestly, had I come to the Gym "blind"/without any preparation, their strategy would have probably been a lot more effective. Nonetheless, even expecting them to fight using unconventional tactics, Camerupt kept Tyson on his toes right until it finally fell under yet another Punch Barrage.

As I watched Chen recall his beaten Camerupt, I had to admit that beating Camerupt had exhausted Tyson more than it would have if Camerupt had faced him head-on, and after seeing him call out his (high) gold stage Marowak (Alolan), I knew that they were likely going to continue in this vein. Yet, even then I did not expect Marowak to open with a freaking Curse of all things, especially since Tyson was a fighting type though I guess he did demonstrate that he knew a bunch of elemental moves during his battle against Camerupt, demonstrating that he was not incapable of hurting Marowak even without using fighting type moves.

Still, yes, Curse put Tyson on a timer, but it also gave Marowak a handicapped start, though the next two to three minutes proved that Marowak did not really care about dragging things out. It appeared that Marowak simply wanted to drag Tyson down without caring about anything else. It employed various ploys to Burn Tyson before Hexing him as much as possible. Marowak even went as far as tanking some hits that it could have definitely dodged to execute that strategy, and even though it did fall within a mere three minutes, which was no surprise after tanking that last Stone Edge, it still managed to put Tyson in a position of sure defeat with the Endeavor it used in return.

I knew that, Chen knew it, and even the audience could see that Tyson was barely hanging in there and that the next triggering of the Curse, or the one after that at the latest would probably manage to take him out. Chen was so confident in that, that the next Pokemon he sent out was a Houndoom, which was not a good idea in general, and nearly ended up proving why underestimating others could have catastrophic consequences.

As soon as the referee gave the starting signal, Tyson used Mach Punch to blitz Houndoom at a speed neither Chen nor his Houndoom had expected. Tyson was about to deliver multiple Brick Breaks using his four arms, but Houndoom ended up being lucky with the Curse triggering in the middle of Tyson's attack, which caused him to collapse, though Tyson still managed to grit his teeth and complete at least one of the Brick Breaks, sending Houndoom flying before falling onto the ground.

The referee declared Tyson unable to battle while Houndoom was still skipping off the ground like a stone thrown across a lake. I naturally praised Tyson for doing a very good job before recalling him. Next, I once again took out Kun's ball and called him out to tie up the second battle as well. Kun appeared on the field just as Houndoom stood back up after finally stopping its forced cruise. It actually threw Chen a wronged look before giving Kun and me an incensed glare.

Unfortunately for Houndoom, it ended up being unable to release its anger since Kun played it safe and took off into the air before he proceeded to shower Houndoom with water moves from afar/above without coming down even once. Houndoom tried to rush toward Kun to close the distance multiple times and it used moves like Smog and Heat Wave in hopes of causing Kun as much damage as possible despite the situation it found itself in, but despite its best efforts, Houndoom still ended up falling under Kun's aerial water bombardment.

Still, it did not give up until the end which earned it a lot of applause from the audience even after its loss. Chen recalled his Houndoom before he gave me a thumbs up following which he left the battlefield as well, once again leaving me alone on the battlefield. The referee did not count since I was classifying him as part of the battlefield. While I stood there, waiting for my final adversary, the Gym Leader, to show up, the emcee began Dennis' intro, hyping up the crowd.

Dennis walked onto the field under the cheers as well as screams of the audience, and once he made it to his spot, he began the Gym Leader's spiel all of them seemingly had to do.

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