Mom pulled me in a hug as soon as I made it to our seats and the others chuckled a bit at my expense before congratulating me for making it to the semifinals.
We watched the final battle which was between Brian, a ground-type specialist from Hoenn, and Diana, a poison-type specialist from the Orange Archipelago.
If one only took their specialties into account then Brian had a great advantage, but if one looked at the Pokemon they had shown so far the odds became much more even.
Brian had shown a (mid) silver-stage Quagsire, a (mid) silver-stage Claydol, a (high) silver-stage Flygon that had been at the (mid) silver stage but advanced at the start of the competition, and a (high) silver-stage Excadrill.
Yes, Brian had been the one from Hoenn that had a Flygon and a Claydol, both pretty hard Pokemon to get. Also from what I had seen his Claydol was not far from reaching the (high) silver stage as well.
This might sound a bit prejudiced, but I was highly suspecting that Brian had another strong Pokemon on hand that he was keeping back. There were multiple reasons for my suspicion, but the biggest one was his surname, which was Stone.
The boy had the same surname as Steven, and he had four Pokemon at the silver stage, even if 2 were at the (mid) silver stage, while two were at the (high) silver stage. Still, two of his Pokemon were quite rare and I doubted that his academy handed out Baltoy to their students.
It was naturally possible that I was reading too much into it, and it was all a coincidence, but it was safe to assume that Brian could pull out a strong Pokemon if he felt the need to do so.
It did not necessarily have to be a gold-stage Pokemon, even a (high) silver-stage Krookodile, Rhyperior, Mamoswine, Swampert, or Mew forbid Garchomp could be game changers.
I had to keep track of everyone since it was possible that I would have to face them during the global competition, even if I did not face them during the continental one. On that note, Diana was not bad as well. She was the one that had the Dragalge I noticed during my check before the competition.
Dragalge was at the (high) silver stage, and besides that, she had shown a (high) silver stage Crobat, and a (high) silver stage Gengar, which had been at the (mid) silver stage at the beginning of the competition. A lot of participants had benefited from the hard battles that way, with some of their Pokemon progressing to the next substage.
I also suspected that Diana had more Pokemon than she had shown, but I was not sure if they were strong or not, since she had shown 3 strong Pokemon, which was the average so far. The only real reason I was so skeptical towards Brian despite him having shown 4 Pokemon was his surname.
Anyway, once one compared the Pokemon both revealed, the outcome become much more open, and the battle between the two had been a truly close thing.
The first round coincidentally ended up being a battle of dragon versus dragon. Dragalge and Diana actually copied our strategy to turn the field into a pool. That act not only made moving easier for Dragalge, but it also cut off Flygon from the ground, sealing some of the strongest ground moves.
Still, Flygon showed why dragons were universally respected and fought valiantly against Dragalge. Towards the end, it even managed to cause so much destruction that the frozen ground cracked and the water got drained, returning the field to its regular state.
At that point the fight between Flygon and Dragalge was at its peak, so Dragalge had no time to worry about the reducing water level. In the end, Flygon managed to take out Dragalge, but it suffered a lot of damage in the process, which resulted in it being easily taken out by Diana's Gengar.
Brian's next Pokemon both made sense and confused me since it was weaker than Gengar. He sent out his Claydol, and while its psychic moves were good against Gengar, Gengar's ghost moves would hurt it just as much, not to forget that Gengar was stronger than Claydol.
Well, whatever the case, Claydol did its best and held out quite a bit against Gengar. It managed to cause some damage to Gengar but in the end, it became obvious that it would lose.
However, just as Gengar was going to finish it off, Claydol did something unexpected. It rushed towards Gengar and used Explosion which should have been futile, but it seemed it had managed to sneak in a Foresight while they were fighting, so the full might of the Explosion hit Gengar at close to point blank.
I had honestly not expected that to happen since I thought that Claydol could not learn Foresight, but present events had proven me wrong. It seemed that Brian never planned to beat Gengar with Claydol, but wanted to take it down with his Claydol instead, and he had succeeded as well.
The referee declared both Pokemon unable to battle, leaving both contestants with their final Pokemon. At this point, I was confident that Diana would lose since she only had her Crobat left, and Brian had his Excadrill, which was immune to poison moves.
I was not the only one since I saw that everyone around me thought the same, but Diana took us all by surprise when she called out a Salazzle instead of her Crobat. Brian called out his Excadrill as expected, and once their fight began, it became clear that Salazzle was only at the (mid) silver stage.
Still, despite being weaker than Excadrill, on top of having a major weakness in ground moves, I could understand why Diana chose to go with it instead of Crobat, and a short while later everyone else understood it as well.
Salazzle's Corrosion allowed her to poison Excadrill despite its steel typing, and her fire moves allowed her to do some serious damage to him as well, so she was truly the better alternative.
She did her best and even managed to poison Excadrill, but ultimately, Excadrill managed to take her down before the poison could take it down. In the end, Excadrill's superior power and the damage done by ground-type moves proved too much for Salazzle, even if she did a great job holding out quite some time.
If she had been at the (high) silver stage as well, she might have been able to win, but she wasn't and ended up losing, which made Brian the final semifinalist of the Pokemon battle category.
The crowd went wild when the referee declared the winner, and I saw a lot of people giving a standing ovation. I was clapping as well, even if I refrained from cheering since it had been a truly great battle. I could understand why the two received the biggest applause out of all quarterfinal battles so far.
Once Brian and Diana left the field the crowd began to calm down and the first duo of quarterfinalists of the personal combat category made their way to the field after it was restored to its original appearance.
While the host was introducing the two, Misty leaned toward me with a mischievous smile.
"Mikail, Diana used your pool strategy. I think you can expect to see that strategy being used by others a lot in the future," she teased me, and I just shrugged.
"I already expected that to happen when I did it. It is not that complicated after all. Besides the strategy only works in competition venues like this, so I don't mind helping out the water-type trainers a bit." I returned in a blase tone, showing her just how unbothered I was by the whole thing.
"That's good," she said with a nod. "Then don't mind if I use it as well," she said in a teasing tone before turning her attention to the field where the battle had begun.
"Go ahead," I told her before focusing on the battle as well.
The two that were fighting were Joe, a Martial Artist from one of the dojos in the Sevii Archipelago, and Lee, an air/flying Elementalist from Johto, who used the element to enhance his body and martial art instead of using it as his main offense. Both were at Tier 2 First-Class prowess-wise. Joe due to his physique and martial arts, and Lee as an Elementalist.
Within the first 5 minutes of the confrontation, it became apparent that Joe was the superior martial artist, but Lee's elemental support allowed him to gain the edge in their confrontation. Lee was simple faster due to his air manipulation, and he could block Joe's attack using an air wall if necessary, the same with unbalancing Joe.
So, despite Lee not using his air manipulation in an offensive manner, he had a distinct advantage over Joe, who had made it this far purely with his martial arts prowess and strong body.
Still, Joe was not ready to give up despite being at a disadvantage, and he impressively managed to hold out for more than 20 minutes. He even managed to force Lee to expend so much of his energy that Lee had to resort to offensive air moves to decisively finish the battle before he ran out of juice.
The crowd cheered for both of them, and Joe's name got shouted as much as Lee's name. The two left the field under everyone's cheers, and I stood up since it was time for my personal battle. I made my way to the field under the well-wishes of my group, and Yvonne arrived on her side at the same time as I did on mine.
The host did our introductions and the referee did his spiel before giving the starting signal. I had no experience in fighting someone like her and I was not sure what to expect, so I decided to adopt a wait-and-see attitude.
I made no move to approach her, and simply assumed a ready position while observing her to see what she was going to do. Well, that proved to be the wrong decision.
Yvonne used my inaction to disseminate some miasma/ghost energy. Apparently, she only needed the miasma to reach a height of about 20 cm, so she managed to quickly cover the whole field in it. This was the first time she had done that during the competition, so I had not expected her to do it.
I did not know what exactly the miasma field did, but it definitely helped mask her signature since I felt her life sign diminish using my aura sense. I tried to stop her from creating more miasma using my senbons after I noticed that the more she spread the lower her signs/presence became.
Seeing how bad it would be if I did not stop her, I began showering her in senbons while moving toward her. Yvonne dodged most of them while deflecting those she could not dodge with a pair of daggers.
Not only that, but it seemed that while my action did slow down her miasma production, it failed to stop it. She only stopped once the miasma reached up to our knees. I was presuming she did it because she deemed it enough and she wanted to preserve her energy.
I also noticed another effect of the miasma. My body had begun to feel more sluggish, so I simply decided that I did not want to have anything to do with it. To that end, I headed up using aura platforms as stepping stones.
Once I was sufficiently high, I used minuscule amounts of aura to create small platforms that allowed me to walk up there while I considered how I take out Yvonne without going back down to the miasma-covered field.
Yvonne herself was looking up to me, and thankfully she had no way to reach me. I saw her shrug before she began to slowly spread even more miasma while walking around the battlefield.
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