On Bill's side, his Altaria appeared, while on mine, Tatsumaki/Kadabra made her appearance. I honestly thought that this was a bit too much on my part, but I did not want to deprive Tatsumaki of the chance to battle on the global scene after she asked for a chance to fight as well.
As soon as she appeared on the field she first applied Safeguard before using Future Sight once, after which she followed up with a Calm Mind to boost herself. She did all that by the time her opponent had finished its own opening moveset, which showed just how crazy her masteries and move execution had become.
Altaria first used Safeguard upon its arrival and followed that up with Cotton Guard, raising its physical defense quite a bit. Not that it would be that useful since Tatsumaki preferred energy attacks.
Still, Altaria tried to put on a concert with Sing, but Tatsumaki was not having it. She first tried to use Disable to hopefully block Sing for the next 15 to 20 minutes, before she used Psychic to clap Altaria's beak shut, forcing its current song to an abrupt end, when Disable did not work due to Safeguard.
Altaria tried to struggle out of Tatsumaki's psychic hold and even fired a Moonblast at her to interrupt her. Unfortunately for her, Tatsumaki had mastered Psychic quite some time ago, so she had no problem dodging its attack while keeping up her Psychic.
In fact, she finished stretching out her psychic hold from its beak to its whole body, completely immobilizing Altaria, whose struggle intensified even if it proved to be a futile action.
In the end, Tatsumaki immobilized it completely, and she followed up by intensifying her Psychic attack, and yet Altaria managed to stubbornly hold onto its consciousness.
It was only delaying the inevitable but it still managed to initiate a Sky Attack while under great pressure and pain. The energy of Sky Attack helped it to break out of Tatsumaki's Psychic, but the attack that followed was easily dodged with a single Teleport.
Altaria turned around to face Tatsumaki who had appeared behind itself, and the moment it did it got hit by the Future Sight that materialized. Tatsumaki capitalized on that moment to capture it in another Psychic, and this time around she went as far as to plant Altaria head first into the ground.
Tatsumaki pulled it back out and checked if Altaria was still conscious or if it had finally been knocked out. Well, it wasn't out, Altaria was clinging to its consciousness and it refused to fall. However, it was obvious that it was already done and only conscious due to sheer will and stubbornness.
I felt that Tatsumaki felt admiration and respect for Altaria's grit, so out of respect, she decided to take her out directly. She teleported in front of it and delivered an Ice Punch that finally put its lights out.
The whole fight took less than 5 minutes, closer to 3 actually, and no one present seemed to have expected such a fast conclusion at this stage of the competition since I could feel and see their shocked reactions.
Even Bill seemed to be a bit dazed at how swiftly and easily his dragon was taken out by my Kadabra. He only snapped out of it when the referee declared Altaria unable to battle and Tatsumaki the winner. Bill recalled his dragon and I did the same with Tatsumaki after thanking her.
Both of us pulled out our third Pokemon and released them as soon as the referee gave the signal. I expected a Rhydon or Houndoom to appear on Bill's side, but it was neither Pokemon that showed up.
Instead, what appeared on the other side was a freaking Rhyperior. It seemed that Bill had somehow managed to have his Rhydon evolve before the global competition, and if not for Abzu/Milotic making an appearance on my side, I may have worried since Rhyperior were absolute tanks.
Unfortunately, for Bill, they had a major weakness towards water moves and an average at best defense against energy attacks, both of which happened to be Abzu's forte. Even if it had Solid Rock as its ability, its weakness to water remained in the major category even if it was at the lower spectrum.
Anyway, Rhyperior was not playing around at all, and it showed that with its first move. It directly used an Earthquake as soon as it appeared forcing Abzu to use Surf simply to get off the ground.
He was unable to perform his opening move due to that, and the small fissures that appeared on the group due to Earthquake, drained the water from the hasty Surf completely, keeping Rhyperior mostly safe from it.
It simply raised three large rocks in front of itself to create a rock wall that blocked the rest of the water from getting to itself. Not only that, it then made use of those big rocks and used them with Rock Throw, hurling them at my Milotic, who slithered to the right, dodging the first stone.
He blocked the second one with a Hydro Pump, before breaking the third one with an Aqua Tail, the force of his tail slamming into the rock breaking it into smaller pieces, of which some got sent back at Rhyperior, who simply ignored them, and it became obvious why when they failed to harm it even a little.
Abzu ignored that and let off a Rain Dance, that Rhyperior did nothing to stop. In fact, it seemed to be readying a move of its own while Abzu was making it rain.
It became clear what Rhyperior had been doing since it released a big Thunder at Abzu, as soon as it began to rain. Abzu was forced to use Iron Tail to ground himself to minimize the damage, but he still got a bit hurt in the process.
Releasing such a big Thunder took a bit out of Rhyperior so he could not immediately follow up with another electric move. However, it stomped on the ground while Abzu was grounded releasing an Earthquake to attack him.
Abzu saw that and used the specialty of the Magikarp line to escape the Earthquake. While he was unable to Splash as high as my Gyarados, Abzu managed to reach close to 40 meters in height, and the moment he reach the peak of his Splash, he released the biggest Surf he could, creating a water wave large enough to cover the whole field.
The moment Rhyperior saw the first hint of the flood heading its way, it created huge rocks out of the ground and created a rock dome around itself for protection. It looked like he either used the help of Rock Tomb or Stone Edge for that, and it worked as well.
The Surf crashed onto the ground, and the rock dome managed to withstand the initial crash, but we couldn't see the exact status of the dome. The zooming cameras showed some minute cracks on its surface, but that was all.
The water had only pooled to 3 meters despite Abzu's best effort and the rain, but even that was draining rather quickly, in part because of all the small fissures on and in the ground, the previous Earthquakes had caused.
That meant that waiting for Rhyperior to suffocate inside its own dome was fruitless since the water would drain before that could happen., especially since Pokemon like Rhyperior could survive airless for hours at a time while being able to breathe any air, no matter how stale, so trying to suffocate a rock or ground type was extremely tedious, and sometimes even useless since some did not need to breathe at all.
Anyway, while Rhyperior was hiding under its rock dome, Abzu used Water Gun to safely return to the ground, or the shrinking pool on the ground, and instead of trying to stop the water from draining he used the time to apply an Aqua Ring and to Coil once.
Thanks to the rain, it took nearly 10 seconds for the water level to go below the crown of the dome. That was the moment when Rhyperior seemed to release another Earthquake, that shook the ground and the water as well.
Its plan worked and the draining speed of the water increased. It took less than 5 seconds for the water level to reach half of the rock dome, which was enough time for Abzu to Recover a bit.
Still, as soon as half of the dome was free Abzu began to use Ice Beam to freeze it, starting from the crown. He made sure to cover the rock in a nice thick layer of ice. Once all the water had drained, Abzu had turned the rock dome into an Igloo, and he was continuing to use Ice Beam to increase the thickness of the ice.
Abzu was planning to freeze Rhyperior using the cold atmosphere that was no doubt worsening inside the dome. While that was happening I was wondering if Rhyperior would use Dig to escape its own dome, but my silent question got answered when the ice-covered rock dome exploded outwards and a huge boulder flew in the direction of Abzu.
Rhyperior had obviously gone for the more ferocious method of escape and used Rock Wrecker to break out and attack Abzu. However, I believed that Dig would have been smarter since Abzu managed to dodge the Rock Wrecker that had to first destroy the iced dome, and used Rhyperior's temporary immobilized state to hit it head-on with an Ice Beam.
However, he only kept it up for 3 or so seconds before switching to Scald, making use of a natural phenomenon to cause great damage to Rhyperior. Yet, Rhyperior endured all that, and as soon as it could move it released a Thunder at Abzu who was focused on his attack.
Thunder hit Abzu, but my boy showed that Rhyperior was not the only hard-ass on the field, even if it was literally in Rhyperior's case. Abzu endured the Thunder and fired a Hydro Pump at Rhyperior and kept it up until Rhyperior got knocked out, which did not take long due to the damage it suffered beforehand.
As soon as Rhyperior slumped on the ground, out cold, the referee declared it unable to battle and Abzu the winner, which made me the winner of the Pokemon battle. Bill recalled his Rhyperior and I did the same with Abzu after praising him.
We complimented each other before leaving the field under the applause of the audience, and with this victory, I made it to the round of 16 as well as the second day of the competition, at least in the Pokemon battle category.
After my Pokemon battle, I had more than an hour until my battle at 6 p.m, so I decided to go out for an early dinner during that time. I opted for one of the sushi restaurants that had been recommended to me since sushi seemed to be the specialty of Fountaine City.
The place I went to was called "Sushi Paradise", and I had to admit that I thought that it deserved that name. That was the best sushi I had ever eaten, and the assortment was truly wide. Seaking Nigiri was my favorite by far, and even the regular fish sushi was awesome.
Well, as great as the taste was, the bill came up a bit high as well, but that was because I managed to snag myself some wild Pokemon/Seaking sushi that was rather expensive.
The regular sushi and my drinks came up at around 620 Poke, and I had to admit that I ate as well as drank a lot. The expensive bit was the portions of Seaking Sushi, which cost 4320 Poke on their own. Considering that I only ate 8 Seaking Nigiri, that was a lot of money.
Still, I happily paid the bill, feeling completely satisfied by the great taste of the food, and made my way to the venue of my last fight for the day. Once I won that personal fight I would have made it to the round of 16 in both categories, and to be honest I doubted that I would lose.
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