Our little walk led us to the base of the giant tree close to the center of the settlement, and once we made it there, the Sceptile scout leader I first talked to shared my request to undertake the test that would allow me to enter into negotiations with the tribe to gain access to one of their younglings. I did add an "or more" to that when Sceptile said it, though I kept it inside my head for now since it would have been seen as rude if I had actually interrupted Sceptile. Sceptile the 1st took a step back after finishing the report, and one of the elders took over after thanking Sceptile for the report.
The elder preempted that it was a formality before asking me if I truly wanted to undergo the test to prove my competence/worthiness, which I once again confirmed. The elder Sceptile nodded at that before he began to explain what exactly this test entailed, and unsurprisingly it involved battling members of their tribe, at least the first part did. When I asked what the second part entailed, he told me to pass the first one first, which I had to accept since it made sense seeing how I could only move on to the second test if I managed to beat the first one.
Anyway, as I said, the first test involved battling members of their tribe, and in my case, the test consisted of 5 battles because I had already involuntarily revealed that I had dark gold stage Pokemon in my team. The test involved one battle per stage and according to Elder Sceptile, it was supposed to show that my Pokemon were competent battlers within their stage, especially since they had to battle without any input from me. This would supposedly prove that I at least had an idea of how to train Pokemon of that level, and I understood where they were coming from with that.
Still, while that little extra condition might have tripped up some trainers, it posed no problem to us at all since I made sure that all my Pokemon were capable of fighting without my input. Overall, I thought that their test was not a foolproof thing, but it at least made sense to some extent. On another note, Elder Sceptile did not even ask me if I had a Pokemon at the platinum stage, and I could only assume that he didn't bother with that due to my age since it couldn't have been because they didn't have Sceptile of that level in their tribe since there were 3 Sceptile of that level among the ones in front of me, the leading elder included.
Naturally, I did not bother bringing that up on my own since I did theoretically not have one on my team. I was not counting the ghosts because they were Utopians and not team members. Anyway, once they had laid out the rules, the elder called over a (high) iron stage Treecko and told it that it would be facing me. I chose to send out Beldum to face Treecko, and seeing it being at the same substage as Treecko, the Elder Sceptile accepted my choice. I was able to sense that Beldum's appearance had impressed the Sceptile, which was not all that shocking since Beldum was a member of one of the two renowned apex species of Hoenn.
They felt even more impressed when Beldum used moves like Iron Head and Zen Headbutt during the battle, which played a big role in its victory. Beldum also showed good combat senses and awareness when it used its high/elevated weight to dodge just by timely canceling its levitation. He did that mostly when Treecko attempted to hit him with an Assurance or Pursuit, with the latter being harder to dodge. Either way, Beldum managed to take down Treecko with relative ease, earning it some praise from me and allowing us to move on to the second round/battle.
For the second round, the elder called over a (high) bronze stage Grovyle, while I sent out Vendrak/Eggy/Salandit. The elder accepted Vendrak's participation since he was only at the (high) bronze stage as well, but I could feel a slight dissatisfaction at my choice among the watching Sceptile; Probably due to Salandit's fire/poison typing granting him a major resistance against grass energy/moves, more so than the usual type advantage fire or poison type moves had over them. Nonetheless, with the elder Sceptile giving the okay Vendrak got to fight, and thanks to his advantage as well as the extensive training he usually underwent to keep up with, or more like not lag too far behind everyone else, Eggy was able to beat Grovyle without too much difficulty.
The elder Sceptile did not hesitate to announce his victory, and I made sure to praise Eggy on his victory before I moved him back inside Utopia. Still, even though the elder did not complain, some of the spectators certainly looked like they would have loved to complain. Honestly, I kind of expected Elder Sceptile to request that I not send out someone with such a large advantage again, but he simply said that there was nothing wrong with taking advantage of edges granted by nature. His comment settled down all of his fellow Sceptile and made my respect for him raise a notch or two.
I asked them to wait a moment when they attempted to lift the beaten Grovyle to move it away and offered the elder to cure its poison with a custom antidote since Vendrak's poison was pretty strong compared to normal due to Corrosion as well as our own efforts in that direction. The elder accepted my offer and I first applied some salves on the areas that looked affected before giving Grovyle another Antidote to drink, followed by a Potion to speed up its recovery. That action of mine earned me some goodwill from the audience, and the elder Sceptile gave me an acknowledging nod before calling over our next opponent.
This time round a (high) silver Sceptile went up, and I actually had a hard time deciding who to send out against it since more than half of our side's silver stage members had some kind of advantage over Sceptile. Leaving those out I was left with Jean/Espeon, Ferrus/Ferreon, Gaara/Gabite, and Freyja/Lopunny; I had to decide if I wanted to wow them again with another apex species member or if I wanted to use someone more "normal". Not that those three were all that normal, but what can you do? I eventually decided that sending out Freyja, who was "only" at the (mid) silver stage, would leave the biggest impression on them considering that they wanted to see the effect of my training, and beating their chosen one with someone "weaker" would be a good example of that.
I could feel their surprise when they saw that I sent out a weaker Pokemon against their representative, but they quickly learned not to underestimate Freyja. My girl was only at a slight speed disadvantage when they began to battle, but once she began to use Mach Punch to speed things up, she gained a slight advantage over her foe despite Sceptile using Quick Attack to keep up. For the first minute, things were relatively even, but then Cute Charm got triggered resulting in Sceptile becoming infatuated with Freyja. Once that happened, Sceptile's performance pummeled pretty badly, and it didn't take long for him to get knocked out.
It was not that I had disregarded the possibility of Sceptile falling victim to Cute Charm, but I had honestly not expected Sceptile to get affected this strongly. It appeared this particular Sceptile was somewhat of a simp since previous cases of infatuation did not end up this badly. Either way, I praised Freyja on her victory before recalling her. Meanwhile, the other side hurriedly carried away the beaten Sceptile, and I could feel the embarrassment a majority of them felt; Even the elder seemed to feel a bit embarrassed at the way their representative lost against Freyja, and I had a feeling someone was going to get scolded later.
Anyway, the elder swiftly sent out their next Sceptile, and I decided to send out Po/Pangoro since he was very close to advancing to (high) gold. This time around the other side was less surprised that I sent out a slightly "weaker" Pokemon and more wary, which nearly had me chuckle. They might have just noticed that he was a different color, but somehow I doubted that since I was not sure if they even knew for sure what a Pangoro looked like since there were no wild ones in Hoenn as far as I knew, so it depended on whether one of them had seen one with a passing trainer or not, and Pangoro were quite a bit less popular than Lopunny.
Nonetheless, the elder signaled for the battle to start without asking any questions, and my Kung-Fu Panda swiftly began to clash with Sceptile. It didn't take long for Sceptile to realize that Po was a close combat monster worthy of his name, so about two minutes into their fight once it was absolutely clear that Sceptile was at an obvious disadvantage, it jumped back and opened up a distance between them. Sceptile switched to a long-range approach and peppered Po with Bullet Seeds as well as Energy Balls. That approach might have been the right one against any other Pangoro with Po's move pool since he had no long-range moves, but it was useless against Po himself, who had Convert.
They were all confused when Po suddenly yelled Hiken while using a Fire Punch, seemingly hitting the air in Sceptile's direction. Their astonishment when a freaking fire fist suddenly flew out of Po's arm/fist was palpable and I felt some secondhand embarrassment when I heard Po shout that. I had shown him and the others some fight scenes when we had worked on his Convert ability, including some scenes of Ace using Hiken, and Po occasionally shouted Hiken when he felt very excited while using a Converted Fire Punch. Still, surprised or not, Sceptile managed to dodge the fire fist coming its way, though it was forced to keep dodging when a veritable fire fist barrage came flying in its direction.
I had to stop myself from face-palming when Po kept shouting Muda Muda Muda Muda Muda Muda while releasing one Converted Fire Punch after the other. It seemed Po was feeling particularly otaku-ish today, though our guys were the only ones who understood the reference anyway so it was okay I guess, or not. Whatever, more important than it being slightly embarrassing to hear him shout like that was the fact that he was wasting more energy like that due to recklessly releasing more Fire Punches than necessary, so I told him to stop spamming and to aim properly.
Po pouted at me for a moment when I did that, but he still followed my request and switched to a more controlled fighting style. He began to release flying Ice, Thunder, Poison, and Fire Punches while dodging or blocking Sceptile's counter attempts, and while he was doing that he kept trying to close the distance between them; Not only by moving towards Sceptile but also by leading/forcing it closer using his long-range attacks. Two times he managed to force a short period of close combat that way, but Sceptile managed to "escape" both times.
Sceptile and Po fought for more than 10 minutes, closer to 15 actually, which was more than the previous 3 fights combined before their battle got settled. In the end, Po was the last one standing, though he looked pretty banged up even if that was more a visual thing in this case since he still was in good enough shape to keep fighting if he had to. Regardless, Po had won his fight, and I moved him back to Utopia after telling him that he did a good job. Now, there was only one more round left before I would be able to find out what the second test was, and I waited for the elder to send out their final battler.
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