CH25 (155), Friendly Spar (2)

As soon as both our Pokemon appeared on the field Ace's Mienfoo burst into action performing what I identified as Fake Out, momentarily interrupting my Ivysaur from performing his own opening move, making him briefly flinch.

"Fury Swipes!" Mienfoo upon Ace's order used Hashirama's momentary flinching to perform Fury Swipes and successfully landed 2 hits before Hashirama retaliated with a quick burst of Razor Leaf.

Mienfoo without waiting for any orders quickly retreated from Ivysaur while dodging the leaves produced by Razor Leaf. No doubt making use of Detect since I did not think Mienfoo could have otherwise dodged a few of the leaves it did the way it did.

While Mienfoo was busy dodging, Hashirama sent another round of Razor Leaf after it, and this time around the move was at full strength, meaning the number of leaves was much higher and the danger of the move was higher as well.

That, however, was only done to delay Mienfoo while he first summoned his vines with Vine Whip, before dousing the vines in Sleep Powder and Poison Powder.

"Fu, get close. You've got to stop it." Ace naturally saw what my Ivysaur was doing and warned his Mienfoo but except for trying to close the distance to interrupt Hashirama, there was not much it could do.

Their line could learn only 4 or 5 long-range moves and the only one part of its natural move pool was Aura Sphere. That one however took quite a bit of concentration and a few seconds if it was not sufficiently mastered.

There was a 99% chance that it was the case here since Ace's Mienfoo was too weak to have learned the move for a long time if it had learned it in the first place.

So, getting close was pretty much all Mienfoo could do to either damage Ivysaur or to interrupt him. However, by the time it had dodged and weaved through the Razor Leaf to close the distance, Hashirama was done with his Vine Special.

That meant Mienfoo was greeted with a vine slap to the face that flung his head to the side after it successfully arrived in front of Ivysaur.

'Oof, that had to sting. That Bitch Slap (vine version) was worthy of being added to the books as an example,' were my thoughts when I saw Mienfoo's head being forced to tilt to the right.

Being slapped stung much more than being hit, this was true in this world as well. This omniversal fact proved to be true once more when Mienfoo became visibly more agitated after being slapped.

"Circle him, and attack while dodging." Ace ordered, but due to its agitation, Mienfoo used Force Palm to hit Ivysaur in retaliation instead, even if it resulted in being hit by Ivysaur's two vines once.

Ivysaur simply tanked the Force Palm and focused more on hitting Mienfoo instead, since he had ways to recover any damage suffered. However, the same was true for Mienfoo as well depending on how much they had trained Drain Punch.

Nonetheless, Ivysaur knew about that as well and was on the lookout for Drain Punch.

"Fu! Calm down! You have to circle him. Dodge his attacks while attacking whenever you can." Ace yelled out at his partner, who did as told after being pelted by another two vine hits.

I noticed a thin pink breeze barely visible around Hashirama which I identified as Sweet Scent. The move helped Pokemon relax a bit and combined with the Sleep Powder doused Vine Whips it got hit with, Mienfoo began to turn sluggish.

Ivysaur allowed himself to be hit a few times while delivering a few vine hits in return so that Ace and Mienfoo did not notice his move, and by the time Ace noticed the bad situation of his Mienfoo it was too late.

"Full retreat! Get away from there, Fu." Ace tried to order, but Mienfoo's reaction was too slow since it already had a healthy amount of Sleep and Poison Powder on its body.

Hashirama simply released a cloud of Sleep Powder and Mienfoo could not dodge the relatively easily avoidable gift of the Sandman. Once he used Leech Seed and began initiating Seed Bomb Ace recalled his Mienfoo.

"I forfeit the round. Fu would have gotten knocked out before he woke up anyway." He yelled over and I simply gave him a thumbs up to show my understanding.

"Good job, Hashirama." I praised my Ivysaur before I recalled him.

Ace and I both took out our second ball and upon Weiss's signal released our Pokemon on the field. On Ace's side, his Ninetales appeared, while on mine Luna appeared.

The first thing Ninetales did upon appearing on the field was to use what I identified as Safeguard, while Luna used Gravity. Gravity was pretty useful to slow down or even immobilize the opponent if it was not strong enough.

In this case, Ninetales could still move but its movement speed got reduced to around 20% from what I could see.

"Disable!" Ace yelled out which promptly resulted in Luna's Gravity being blocked for now, but thanks to her mastery over the move, the effect of her first cast was going to last for at least 2-3 minutes even without her reinforcing it.

So, my little bundle of happiness used Copycat to copy Disable before using it on Ninetales to disable Disable. After that, she started doing her jumping dance-like movement that she used to move around to keep her distance from her foe and to dodge any attacks.

That swiftly came in handy since Ace seeing Ninetales's slow speed decided to use long-range attacks until Gravity's effect was gone.

"Flamethrower!" He gave the command but Luna easily dodged the stream of fire and even performed a pirouette while doing so.

She occasionally stopped to boost herself with Cosmic Power as well as Minimize while dodging Flamethrowers, Incinerates, and even a Will-O-Wisp.

That spiel went on for over a minute, and Ace had Ninetales use a Quick Attack during that time but Luna had no problem dodging the still by gravity slowed Ninetales even while using Quick Attack.

Then a bit before the two-minute mark just after dodging another Flamethrower Luna stopped distancing herself and rapidly approached Ninetales instead, which neither Ace nor Ninetales had expected.

Due to their surprise, Luna managed to perform a Sing right in front of Ninetales's face that should have quickly lulled it to sleep but due to the Safeguard it used at the beginning Sing didn't work. It seems like Luna did not recognize that Ninetales opening move had been Safeguard, or maybe she thought that it would have stopped by now.

Anyway, Luna quickly noticed that her Sing had no effect, so she stopped performing it. Ace happy with the situation tried to make use of the fact that Luna was right in front of his Ninetales.

"Flamethrower!" He yelled out and Ninetales quickly tried to follow his command.

However, to Ace's dismay just as Ninetales gather the flames for its Flamethrower, it got hit by Luna's follow-up attack. What followed blew her away. *pfft*

The reason Luna stopped dodging and approached Ninetales in the first place was that she felt like she had gotten enough boosts. So after her failed attempt at putting Ninetales to sleep she released a point-blank Stored Power that crashed into Ninetales, hurling it away for a bit before exploding.

Thankfully, Luna's mastery over Stored Power was pretty high, being at the advanced mastery grade, and she was stronger than Ninetales in general, so she managed to fire her move before Ninetales despite them initiating their moves at nearly the same time.

Understandably Ninetales got knocked out by that move, so Ace had no choice but to recall her, still working on believing how easily he got shot down.

Honestly, it wasn't that surprising that Luna won since she was already at the (mid) silver stage and Ace knew that, because I had told them as much beforehand, so he should have expected to lose.

I believe it was the relative ease and speed at which Luna won that he was finding hard to believe. He most likely had thought that they would have made it much harder for us, or rather Luna, to earn that victory.

Still, Luna ran up to me to hug me after winning and I recalled her as well after praising her for her performance. Except for the Sing part, she had performed flawlessly, and we would go over that part, later on, to see if she had not recognized the Safeguard or if she had thought its duration had run out.

We pulled out our third balls and signaled that we were ready. Upon Weiss's signal we let out our third Pokemon and Ace's Feraligatr appeared on his side, while Tyson appeared on mine.

Honestly, the only move that Tyson had that was really effective was the Thunder Punch he learned from Thor 2 months ago. Furthermore, he had no long-range moves, unlike the Feraligatr species who had 3 that I knew of.

My Machoke would have to close the distance between them if he wanted to win. He couldn't allow Feraligatr to keep his distance or he even could lose.

Thankfully, Feraligatr were generally more geared towards close combat as well, so they would hopefully not try to turn the battle into a long-range one. Still, even if they did, we had tried to prepare a counter-strategy for that case as well.

Anyway, taking those factors into account the opening moves did not surprise me. Well, if we ignored the fact that I knew which one Tyson was going to use, that is.

Anyway, Feraligatr took one look to our side most likely to see who his opponent was and as soon as he saw a Machoke he used Rain Dance. Tyson on the other hand directly used Bulk Up as soon as he appeared.

My Machoke tried to throw in another Bulk up and while he did that Ace gave his order.

"Hydro Pump!" He yelled out, which was followed by a thick stream of water being shot at Tyson who had finished his second Bulk Up shortly before the Hydro Pump arrived in front of him.

This forced him to abort the Focus Energy he was about to use and he moved a bit to the side avoiding Feraligatr's Hydro Pump. Seeing Machoke dodge Feraligatr swung its head a bit to the right to aim the Hydro Pump it was still keeping up at Tyson.

Tyson obviously did not just wait to get hit and used the plan we had come up with just for situations like this. He used a full-power Thunder Punch and hit the ongoing stream of Hydro Pump that was moving towards him.

While this did cause some damage to the arm he was using to attack the Hydro Pump, the electricity of his fully-powered Thunder Punch got passed on to Feraligatr who had been keeping up the Hydro Pump.

Machoke's counter caused it some electrical damage, including some internal damage, forcing Feraligatr to abort his Hydro Pump.

This move of Tyson forced Ace and his Pokemon to shoot their long-range attacks in short bursts instead of continuing streams, which reduced their might and danger since moves like Hydro Pump and Water Gun were basically continuous streams of water shot at the enemy.

"Shoot your moves in short bursts he can't shock you that way," yelled Ace who had obviously noticed the way to avoid Machoke's shocking strategy.

While they were dealing with his counter, Tyson obviously did not twiddle his thumbs. He used the chance to close the distance between them. He managed to reduce the distance by quite a bit before Feraligatr began shooting bursts of Water Gun and Hydro Pump at him.

Tyson had no problem dodging and weaving between the attacks even if it did slow down his approach a bit. Feraligatr even used Screech once Machoke was close enough, but my guy managed to avoid most of its effects by dodging the sound waves even if he did scrunch up his face a bit at the noise the move created in general.

Still, he managed to avoid most of the effects of the move and successfully arrived in front of his target. His fist lit up a bit when he initiated a Thunder Punch to hit Feraligatr, but it surprisingly neutralized his move by shooting a quick Mud-Slap at his hand covering his arm in mud and disrupting his Thunder Punch.

Tyson quickly stopped his punching motion and quickly moved into a Low Sweep instead, successfully knocking over his foe. He swiftly tried to grab his downed foe by the tail to perform a Vital Throw, but Feraligatr who felt his tail being grabbed performed an Aqua Tail, successfully forcing Machoke to let go.

However, Tyson did not let that discourage him and used a Low Kick to destabilize Feraligatr who tried to stand up using the momentary freedom his Aqua Tail had provided.

Tyson followed his Low Kick with a Brick Break to make use of Feraligatr's destabilization sending it on its back. That was followed by a jumping Cross Chop aimed at the foe lying on its back which did kind of look like a wrestling scene.

Feraligatr got successfully hit on its upper body with the Cross Chop, which made it move its arms and legs involuntarily moving upwards. That movement was called the shrimp if I was not wrong.

Anyway, while badly hurt by Tyson's jumping Cross Chop Feraligatr took revenge by using Crunch to bite into Machoke's shoulder practically gluing the two together turning the whole situation into an ultra-short distance brawl since it refused to let go of its bite.

Tyson used Brick Breaks and Thunder Punches to deliver body blows to Feraligatr while they were rolling around the ground and it was keeping up the Crunch while also delivering a few Slashes as well as a few Low Kicks whenever possible.

The pretty brutal all-out brawl went on for nearly a minute before a Thunder Punch finally knocked out the Feraligatr finally loosening its mouth enough to free him.

Feraligtr was bleeding in quite a few places and was covered in a lot of bruises, but Tyson did not look much better. He had quite a few Slash wounds that were bleeding, not to mention his shoulder, which was bleeding quite a bit now that Feraligatr's mouth, and subsequently teeth were removed.

We both recalled them after telling them they fought well, which they did even if it turned into a brawl halfway through. Anyway, both definitely needed a visit at the PokeCenter.

Ace and I walked towards Weiss and once we arrived Ace directly blurted out his surprise.

"Iya! I had kind of expected to lose after you told us about the strength of your Pokemon, but that was way more one-sided than I had thought it would be. Well, at least, Fero made a pretty good showing." He clamored and I had to nod at that.

I had to try teaching Tyson some long-range moves even if they were probably never going to be as strong as I would like due to the Machoke-lines specialization.

Furthermore, there were few long-range moves he could learn, and none except for Flamethrower that any team members knew. So, they would be harder to learn. Still, it was something to note for the future.

"So, you're up next," I told Weiss and she nodded.

We began walking to our positions for the battle and Ace took her previous spot. Once we were ready Ace gave the starting signal and Weiss and I released our first Pokemon.

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