Getting crushed by mom in a hug had become a routine by now, as had ignoring the snickering of the others. I simply let mom hug me until she was satisfied while answering the questions from my friends.
"So, are you going to use Stan or any of your other water types, or are you going to keep abiding by the condition set by your academy?" That one came predictably from Misty.
"Nope, using any of my water types would be bullying Brian a bit too much," I began with a light laugh before finishing with "I'm going to use 3 Pokemon this time around, specifically Hera, Nyx, and Mars, in that order."
"What happened about using only a single Pokemon per battle? It seemed that you've been trying to keep that one up as much as possible," Aaron said jokingly, and before I could answer Kinji spoke up.
"They probably asked him to let them fight because they felt bored," he said with mirth, and I had to nod in agreement because that was actually what happened. The three had asked to fight before and since I chose to not use Stan/Gyarados, I decided to fulfill their request.
"He's right, you know," I verbally confirmed Kinji's claim. "The three bugged me until I gave in," I jokingly finished, eliciting the laughter of everyone.
Mom also chose that moment to let me leave her embrace, allowing me to move to my seat before I resumed taking part in the conversation.
"Well, Pokemon aside, that was quite the interesting sword technique you used there," Takeshi, the only serious sword user among our group of friends, commented. "A bit over the top and too many wasted moves, but powerful nonetheless," he could not help add.
"I know," I acknowledged his point. "I wouldn't have used it if I was not sure that Eren could not take advantage of its faults," I assured him, and he nodded with a satisfied smile, seeing that I had not been reckless.
We kept talking about the competition so far and the rewards for the Top 8 of each category came up. Unlike the regional competition, which only rewarded the participants with academy points, the continental competition had tangible rewards for the Top 8 participants.
"Well, I honestly have no idea if the reward for a dual champion is different, but I know that the champion of each category is allowed to choose three B-Class materials of his choice from a ready list of options. Depending on the chosen materials these rewards can reach a value of up to 5 million Poke or more.
Second place is allowed to choose one B-Class material from that list, so around a million as well. The two that lost the semifinals are allowed to choose three C-Class materials from a prepared list, while the 4 that lost the quarterfinals are allowed to choose one C-Class material from the same list.
Those are pretty generous rewards, especially for the finalists," dad shared, and everyone nodded.
"Those prizes are as good if not better than the ones of the Regional Senior Tournament," Takeshi clamored, being surprised by the generous rewards.
I saw mom and Kinji nodding, but Misty and Aaron were calm. The two had gone to academies themselves, so it was not surprising that they knew what kind of rewards were handed out.
"Being able to choose 6 B-Class materials is already good enough, even if they don't prepare a special reward after I become the dual-champion," I said serenely and I meant it as well.
I would choose the 6 rarest among the available materials, and in the future when Utopia was able to replicate B-Class materials, I would have my own supply of those rare materials.
"It would be interesting if they offered you some rare Pokemon," Aaron said and Misty agreed with him. The others gave their agreement as well.
While we were talking my 20 minutes ran out, and I had to make my way back to the field that was back to pristine condition. I went down under everyone's well wishes and made it to my position right on time. Brian was already in position when I arrived, the host immediately began our introductions.
"On one side, we have Brian Stone, a young ground-type specialist hailing from Rustboro City in Hoenn. He is representing his home region and the Dry Earth Academy in Fallarbor City.
He and his ground-type Pokemon have performed remarkably so far and definitely earned him his place in the finals. Let's see how he and his Pokemon perform, in face of his latest opponent," he finished before moving on to my introduction.
"On the other side, we have Mikail Geo, a young aura user originally hailing from Hope Town in Kanto, who moved to Rota for his studies. He is currently representing Rota and the Aaron Aura Academy in Rota City. I'm sure may have heard about him for different reasons, but we are focusing on his Pokemon.
Young Mikail has shown the most versatile team so far, and he seems to be following the path of a generalist. According to the news I have received, he seems to be a crowd favorite and seeing the performance of his Pokemon so far I can understand why," the host finished my introduction as well.
In my opinion, the last part sounded a bit biased toward me, but maybe I was a bit oversensitive. As soon as the host was done, the referee took over and began his usual spiel. Once he was done going over the rules as well as regulations of the battle, he gave the signal to start the Pokemon battle, and the two of us released our first Pokemon.
On my side, Hera/Pidgeot appeared as I had planned, and on Brian's side, his Excadrill appeared. As soon as Hera appeared, she went high up and used Sunny Day, to blind any Pokemon, or foe in general, that tried to look up to spot her.
Even if it did not blind them, it made it harder to spot her, so it was a bonus. Besides, it boosted her Heat Wave, so that was a plus as well. While she was doing that, Excadrill performed his opening move as well, which was setting off a Sandstorm.
That activated his Sand Rush ability, doubling his speed inside the Sandstorm. Not that I thought that it would help it against Hera at all. Hera began her next move, which was Heat Wave, she was planning to do the same thing Erik's Charizard tried against Brian's Flygon, but unlike Flygon, Excadrill could not fly into the air to confront Hera.
She turned the Sandstorm into a furnace, which forced Excadrill underground to escape the glass storm and the heat as well as fire that was going around on top of the field.
Hera did not stop at overtaking her opponent's Sandstorm like that and began a Hurricane that fused into the Sandstorm and began to take control of its movement in the absence of Excadrill's control.
It turned into a flaming sand/glass tornado/hurricane, so there was naturally an eye in the middle that was sand and glass free, even if it was still quite hot there.
While Hera was doing all that, Excadrill chose to remain underground, and I was not sure in what area of the field it was hiding under. Still, Hera was observing the field with her Keen Eyes, and I was sure that she would find Excadrill as long as it gave any visible indication of its position.
It may have taken Hera nearly 3 minutes of keeping control of the burning sandnado while she was on the lookout, but it seemed she managed to spot something since she moved the burning tornado to a certain point, where she compressed its size as much as she could before firing a Hyper Beam into its core, causing a massive explosion of fire, sand, glass, and dust.
Hera did not wait for more than the 4 seconds it took her to regain mobility after that powerful Hyper Beam since the big dust cloud did not settle by itself by that point, she flapped her wings to disperse it.
That turned out a wise decision since everyone got to see a badly hurt Excadrill aiming its own Hyper Beam at Hera, and it fired it off right as it became visible.
Thanks to having seen the attack, Hera managed to pull off a Protect before the Hyper Beam hit her, and it clashed with Protect instead. She naturally did not idle either and used the protection Protect provided her to escape from its immediate area, just as the shield created by Protect broke.
Yet, Hera did not care about that as she dived toward the immobilized Excadrill. She clapped its head with a Steel Wing on each of her wings, and that proved enough to knock out the already considerably hurt Pokemon.
The whole fight took less than 6 minutes, and Brian recalled his unconscious Pokemon while the referee declared Hera the winner. I recalled her as well, just like I had planned, and upon receiving his signal the two of us released their second Pokemon.
As I had previously decided, my second Pokemon was Nyx/Umbreon, and her opponent turned out to be Brian's Claydol. That was a rather unfortunate match-up for Claydol, with Nyx being immune to psychic-type moves or psychic energy in general.
As soon as the referee gave the starting signal, Nyx shot Claydol a Mean Look, briefly immobilizing it. She immediately followed up her Mean Look with a Dark Pulse, hitting Claydol head-on.
The dark energy caused the psionic energy inside Claydol to get disrupted, which interrupted its levitation, causing it to crash into the ground.
Nyx directly fired a Dark Pulse at her crashing spot, before heading there using Quick Attack to arrive there as fast as possible. She then used Crunch to attack the struggling Claydol. The dark energy in her Crunch kept Claydol from using its psionic energy, which stopped it from levitating, which considering its build, made it a struggle to move around.
Claydol tried to use other moves to get rid of Nyx, but she stubbornly kept ahold of it, only releasing her Crunch to hit Claydol with a point-blank Dark Pulse, that seemed to finally take it down. At least that's what I thought before Claydol suddenly lit up in an Explosion.
Nyx had no time to react and was hit by the force of the Explosion, which flung her away from Claydol. After the dust cloud settled, we could see the definitely out cold Claydol laying in a little crater at the place it exploded at.
Meanwhile, Nyx was standing on her four feet, but she looked visibly hurt by the Explosion she experienced. Not that Brian could be happy about even that much for long since she began to use Moonlight to heal herself a bit before the referee even had a chance to declare her the winner.
Still, self-healing or not, I recalled her regardless, just like I had planned since the beginning. Brian obviously recalled his knocked-out Claydol as well, and upon receiving the signal from the referee, we released our third, and in Brian's case, his last Pokemon.
On my side of the field, Mars/Ursaring appeared in all his glory, just as I had decided before the Pokemon battle. On Brian's side, on the other hand, his Flygon appeared.
While that was what I had actually expected, I won't lie and say that there had not been a niggling thought that Brian might have a trump card that he would reveal to try to stage a comeback for the sake of the champion title.
However, facts had proven me wrong, and Mars had to face Brian's Flygon instead of some mystery Pokemon. As soon as Mars had taken out the dragon, I would be the (northern) continental champion in the Pokemon battle category, which would only leave me to win the personal combat category as well before I was a dual continental champion.
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