"This is the battle schedule for the preliminaries!"
After the opening ceremony, everyone returned to the Pokémon Center in the Athlete Village. This is the home base for all the participating Pokémon Trainers. Of course, the final selection and preliminaries arrangements were also announced here.
"Found it! Found it." Molly had the sharpest eyes and was the first to find Ash's battle schedule. "Big Brother will be battling in Group H!"
The preliminaries are a battle between groups of three Trainers. Ash is in the same group with a girl who looked to be a few years younger than him and a boy who is definitely older than Ash. As long as Ash can defeat these two Trainers in Group H, he can enter the final round without anything to worry about!
"Big Brother is the strongest Pokémon Trainer, he will definitely win all of the battle!" Molly was full of confidence in her brothers strength.
Everyone walked out of the Pokémon Center with a smile and prepared to go back to their rooms. On the way, they met a girl with a Vulpix who looked very familiar to them.
"I've been waiting for a long time!" The girl seemed to be waiting for Ash, "Your name is Ash Ketchum, right?"
"Who are you?" Ash looked at her for a while, and then asked helplessly, "Who are you? You look familiar. Have we met somewhere?"
Hearing Ash's answer, the girl almost fell down, "I am your opponent in the group stage, my name is Macy! You are so lacking in your brain! From the moment you saw me, the battle has already begun. You got it!"
In this way, Ash and his party understood, "I see, you are here to inspect the other persons situation?"
"That's right, I came to see what kind of Pokémon my opponent uses!" Macy thoughts was very actually preety smart, but she did remind Ash that he could get to know more information another Trainer through the computer in their room.
Thinking of this, he smiled and said, "Nice to meet you, Macy. Let's talk again later in the preliminaries and have a battle without any regrets!"
With that said, he led his away without saying any other words to her.
While passing by the food court, Ash noticed the Team Rockets Trio working part-time in one of the many shop. Sure enough, they escaped from prison again successfully.
When they were in Blackthorn City, they caused him a big trouble. Of course, Ash wanted to punish them severely, so he ordered Officer Jenny as him being a Pokémon Investigator to be particularly 'kind' to them.
After finally having some quiet time, he didn't expect that they would come to the Silver Conference to meet him again.
Ash thought it was the best idea to ignore them so he just led his group back to their room for some rest.
"So that's it, the Pokémon Macy uses are all Fire-type!" Brock was easily able to find Macy's information on the computer in the room.
"So your opponent will use Fire-type Pokémon, so you should definitely use a Water-type Pokémon to deal with them!" As a Water-type Pokémon trainer, Misty wasn't exactly too fond of a pure Fire-type Pokémon Trainers.
However, Ash choose to shake his head, "The other party is not a Trainer who will simply use a Fire-type Pokémon!"
There are indeed Trainers like Misty who focus exclusively on one type of Pokémon because it is cheaper to focus on training one type of Pokémon than focusing on many.
Misty herself dreams to become the greatest Water-type Pokémon Master.
But obviously Macy also has a preference for a single type, the Fire-type.
Ash dragged down her information on the page and saw that among the Pokémon she had registered in her name, in addition to the multiple Fire-type Pokémon, there was also an Electabuzz that could restrain Water-type Pokémon's, and a Jynx for no reason, at least any reason that he can think of!
"Ash is right here. If a Water-type Pokémon is sent out, maybe even Ash will have to he careful!" Misty's enthusiasm finally calmed down a little.
Ash smiled and said, "It's not just the Water-type that can restrain the Fire-type! Brock, please help me register these three for my upcoming battle against her!"
"The first battle of Group H in the preliminaries will start soon. Who will be the victor in this round?"
In the preliminaries, it was still the fair roulette that decided who will take out their Pokémon forst. This time Ash still had his protagonist luck with him.
"The first to send out their Pokémon will be Macy!"
"Ash Ketchum, I won't hold back!" Macy looked very motivated, "If I'm going to go first, then I'll use you first!"
The Pokémon sent out by Macy was none other than a Slugma, the pre-evolution form of Magcargo that Ash had met many times during his travels!
"Get ready for a wicked sandstorm, Rhydon!"
That's right, the Pokémon that Ash said can not only use Water-type attacks that can restrain the Fire-type, but also the Ground and Rock-type! Ash's Rhydon is not only proficient in Rock and Ground-type skills, but can also use the quite a few Water-type skills.
It can be said that he is the perfectl restraint to all of Macy's Pokémon other than her Starmie!
"What?" Sure enough, Macy was stunned for a moment when she saw Ash send out her Rhydon.
She deliberately appeared in front of Ash just to remind him that she was good at using Fire-type Pokémon and to indirectly tell him to send out his Water-type Pokémon's, but now this random Rhydon is already giving her a headache even though the match hasn't even begun!
"Macy brought out her Slugma, and Ash had sent out his Rhydon to challenge Macy! We can see that Ash's Rhydon is much larger than the ones we have data on!"
"In my 7 year career as a professional Pokémon Battle commentator, I have never seen anything like this!"
Even the commentator was scared by the size of Ash's Rhydon. Just like Ash's Tyranitar is still continuing to grow in size, so is his Rhydon.
The special Rock-type food exchangef from the System seems to be very effective on them and their size. With the assistance of his Macho Brace, Ash's two Rock-type Pokémon have grown in terrifying size.
Now this Rhydon has grown to 2.2 meters, and it looks very impressive just standing there without even doing anything.
"Let us go first, Rhydon!" The moment the battle started, Ash's momentum completely changed from his usual calm self to a more aggressive one, and his Rhydon also followed suit and roared to the sky, getting ready to do some damage!
Rhydon grasped his claws out of thin air, and a stone the size of a large balloon appeared. He smashed the stone towards Slugma.
"Slugma, get out of the way!"
Facing the giant Rhydon that perfectly restrained herself, Macy could only grit her teeth, but Slugma was barely able to avoid the first stone by who knows other than Arcoos, but there was a second and a third!
Boom!
Slugma itself is not a very fast by any means, so he was quickly hit by one of the stones Rhydon threw!
Rock-type attacks have an outstanding effect on Slugma!
"Slugma!" Macy exclaimed, "Use Flamethrower!"
Slugma lives in the hot Volcano zone, so his Flamethrower is obviously very powerful, but neither Ash nor his Rhydon seemed to care about this Flamethrower!
After all, they have a secret attack to restrain the Fire-type!
"Surf!"
In this place without water, Rhydon couldn't summon much water, but it still set off a wave of water under his feet, which hit Slugma directly without him or Macy be able to do anything to stop it!
"Slugma loses the ability to fight, Rhydon wins thsi battle!"
"Oh my god, Ash's Rhydon can actually use the move Surf!" The commentator was extremely stunned by the scene in front of him!
"In my 8 years of commantating Pokémon Battles, I have never seen a Rhydon use Surf!"
"Come back, Slugma!" Macy took back Slugma and looked back at Ash, "Ash, you are really powerful, but I will not give up just yet!"
"You'll be next!" This time, it was a Electabuzz who was sent out by Macy!
According to her idea, Ash will definitely send out a Water-type Pokémon as they already registered what Pokémon's they will be using for thsi battle, so she took back her already fainted Slugma, and then sent out her Electabuzz.
She thought that she can maybe take out his Rhydon and then his next Pokémon with her Electabuzz but Ash's Rhydon made her feel completely powerless!
"Electabuzz, use Iron Tail!"
In order to cope with the possibility of her opponent sending out Ground-type Pokémon, her Electabuzz learned the Steel-type Iron Tail. Obviously, this attack does have a effect on the Rock-type Rhydon!
The gap in levels is inevitable! Ash smiled confidently but also a little menacingly l, "Earthquake!"
The Earthquake produced by that terrifying figure stopped the running Electabuzz in his tracks.
"Stone Edge!" Taking advantage of Electabuzz not moving at all, Ash decisively launched a very powerful Rock-type move. The very sharp stone pillars mercilessly knocked Electabuzz away!
"Electabuzz loses the ability to fight, Rhydon wins this battle!"
"Oh my god, in my 9 years of experience, I have never seen a Trainer as strong as Ash, he really is really too strong. Rhydon has already defeated two Pokémon from Trainer Macy! Now, Trainer Macy only has her last Pokémon left, and Trainer Ash still has all three of his Pokémon left!"