章 298: CH66 (296), Road To The Finals (1)
After my victory, I got a small surprise in the form of a majority of my friends waiting beside my parents to congratulate me. There were a few that were not present, but I had honestly not expected them to show up yet.
I thought some would come to watch the finals but that so many came, and so early at that, was a pleasant surprise.
"Wow, everyone, what a surprise," I said, expressing my astonishment in words.
"Yeah, we've made a group chat to see who can come and except for Akame, Coco, Kazuma, Sakamoto, and Yu, everyone was free, so we all came to support you. Yu couldn't come for obvious reasons, but he sends his regards and promises to come when you reach the semi-finals in the global competition.
Akame and Coco are busy due to clan-related stuff, but they sent their regard. Kazuma is the same, and Sakamoto has a family matter to deal with. All of them should have sent their regards and apologies for missing your competition to the group chat by now.
They probably also send you a private message," Kinji spoke up for everyone to avoid a racket.
"Thank you for coming to support me, everyone," I said with a smile, genuinely happy that they took the time to support me.
Afterward, I went up to each of them and pulled them into a friendly hug to greet them as we usually did. Once I was done greeting all my friends, I turned to the adults that had accompanied their kids.
"Thank you as well for coming over to support me," I told the adult members of the Gold, Schnee, and Field families.
"No problem, my boy. It is always interesting to watch the best of the young generation showcase their talent. I'm sure it will be enjoyable to watch how you win this thing," Uncle Thorn said and the other adults nodded with smiles.
Aunt Lily as well as Aunt Willow teased me that their daughters were excited about watching me and that they chose to tag along. All adults and nearly all of my friends, except for Rose and Weiss, who were blushing, began to laugh. I dutifully dodged the metaphorical bullet like a pro by diverting the topic.
"The quarterfinals start at 1 p.m, and unlike the previous rounds, all battles, regardless of their category, starting from the quarterfinals will be held at the Dawn Stadium. Each category is estimated to take 80 to 100 minutes, which is why they set the start of the semi-finals to 5 p.m.
Those should supposedly take 60 minutes for each category, but I don't think they took me into account when making those estimations," I said the last bit in a lightly jesting tone, and most giggled while some laughed, so I could say I successfully changed the topic.
"So, Mika which fight comes first, the personal one or the Pokemon battle?" Rose pitched in, and I saw/felt everyone focusing on me, showing that they were just as curious as her.
"Let me take a quick look to see if that has been determined yet," I returned while pulling up my phone.
I noticed that I had gotten message notifications and a quick check showed that they were from those that could not come, confirming Kinji's earlier assumption.
After briefly thanking them for their well wishes, I checked out the competition website. I found the info on both my fights before looking up from my phone with a "found it."
"Seems like the organizers decided to alternate between the categories, instead of finishing one before starting the other. My first quarterfinal fight is going to be the personal one somewhere between 2 to 2:15 p.m, depending on how long the 3 battles before me take," I shared, and Ace being who he was, had to pipe up. "Who are you fighting?"
"I was about to say that," I replied while throwing him a "really, did you have to interrupt me?" look, which made everyone snicker. Yes, I was pretty expressive if I had to say so myself.
"As I was going to say before I was interrupted," cue some more snickering, "I'll be fighting against Ciri Swan from Joule Electric Academy in Root City."
"How strong is she?" came another interruption, but since I noticed that it came from Jessica I did not return a quip as I would have if it had been Ace since I knew she was asking because she was too concerned with worrying whether that Ciri would be a problem for me or not.
I was definitely not biased, okay? I smiled at Jessie before I resumed talking, skilfully ignoring the protest of Ace, who was complaining about me playing favorites. The answer to her question would have come up next anyway.
"Ciri, as a Tier 2 First-Class Electric Elementalist, is a bonafide genius, that uses her electric energy manipulation to boost her physique. This not only boosts her speed and reaction time but also increases her strength, on top of giving her hits shocking properties. Pun fully intended," I added before I heard a few groans coming from my friends, while the adults snickered a bit.
"Really, Mikail, really?" came from Aaron which made the others laugh and I joined them as well since I knew it was a lame joke.
"Sorry," I fake apologized before continuing. "Ciri is also capable of releasing electricity from afar similar to Thundershock and Thunder Wave. So, all in all, she is a fast foe that's pretty good in long-range and close-range combat," I finished retelling what I had read up on her.
"She sounds strong," Weiss said after I was done, and the others, me included, agreed with her.
"Yes, she does," I consented with a nod. "I honestly feel bad for her, if she had not been pitted against me she would have made it further, maybe even to the finals," I finished unable to keep out the slight pity in my voice.
"She was simply unlucky this time around," Kinji said while patting me on the shoulder.
"Yeah, sometimes luck just is not on your side," Aaron affirmed, before shrugging my adding, "at least her bad luck did not risk her life."
"I'm sure that once Mikail wins the whole competition no one is going to look down on her for losing," Jessie added, already, rightfully so, assuming that I was going to win this.
"So what about your other quarterfinal opponent?" Takeshi asked and the others stopped talking about Ciri to look over at me instead. I acknowledged his question and began telling him and everyone else about whom I was going to face in a Pokemon battle.
"That one is against another girl, called Esma Yaz. She's from Sun Fire Academy in Spark City, and her Pokemon are pretty strong, at least the ones she has shown."
*Hooo* and *ohhhh* sounds were released by the others hearing me praise someone else's Pokemon as strong. I also heard Misty scoff quietly when the Fire Academy came up, her pride as a water specialist getting the best of her. I ignored all of that and simply continued.
"So far Esma has shown off 4 of her Pokemon. A (mid) silver-stage Ninetales, a (mid) silver-stage Rapidash, a (low) silver-stage Talonflame, and a (low) silver-stage Houndoom."
They were obviously not on the same level as my Pokemon, but for our age group, or rather for those that had yet to start their journey, or even among those that recently started their journey, her Pokemon were pretty impressive. Still, considering where we were, that was to be expected, since she would not have made it here if that had not been the case.
"Who are you going to use against her? We've heard about the agreement with your teachers, or I would have asked you to use Stan or Manami," Misty inquired before adding her two cents.
"Oh, oh, use Tatsumaki," came from Rose.
"Or you could use Nyx," Weiss threw out.
"I think Luna would be a good choice," Jessie voiced.
"Surely Hera would be the best option," Wendy chimed in.
"Tyson would be interesting to watch," Ace decided to add his piece.
"I'd say go for Optimus and, or Prime, but that might be a bit too much for the confidence of your opponent," Kinji, our bug-type specialist extraordinaire said.
"Alright, alright, everyone, I think that's enough suggestions," I said, stopping the others from throwing in their two cents as well.
"Let me think for a moment who to go with," I declared before pondering over my options.
The Pokemon they listed were pretty much the ones I could use in the fight, so it was a question of whom among them I should choose. Optimus/Butterfree and Prime/Beedrill were definitely out since as Kinji said, I did not want to shatter Esma's confidence. After going over the others, I ultimately settled on Tatsumaki/Kadabra.
"I think I'll go with Tatsumaki," when I said that Rose began cheering, and her enthusiasm made most of us laugh, or at least chuckle. We had in the meantime made it to the Dawn Stadium, and there were still, 5 minutes till 1 p.m, so enough time for us to find some seats or standing places to watch the first battle of the quarterfinals.
By the time we found an area with enough empty seats in the same area for us all, the referee had given the start signal and both competitors had released their first Pokemon.
The battle that followed took close to 25 minutes and was in my humble opinion not bad. Still, both were weaker than Esma, so the winner would pose no challenge as long as he was not hiding some super surprise.
The personal combat battle that followed took 20 minutes, and the winner was an aura user called Adam Gala, that used some fire on top of his aura.
The last battle before my turn also took 20 minutes, and a boy called John Snow won that one. I released a snort when I heard his introduction, but the battle he won proved, or at least indicated, that he was a pretty good trainer.
During John's battle, I had received a message that I had to be on the field 5 minutes after the ongoing battle, so once it was over, I went down to the field, while everyone wished me success.
Once I was on the field, I changed greetings with my opponent, Ciri, and the referee, who did his standard thing, before he declared the start of our battle.
As soon as he gave the signal, Ciri released an electric stream towards me, trying to take me by surprise, and she mostly succeeded in her endeavor as well. The only indicator I got of her attack was the spike of emotions I felt moments before she attacked.
Thankfully, my mind managed to react fast enough, and my body was strong as well as fit enough to follow the input it received from my mind thanks to my aura.
If my reaction speed and reflexes had not been fast enough, I would have been unable to dodge the surprise attack, and even a graze shot could have paralyzed me for a moment if I was unlucky enough. Thankfully that did not happen.
Ciri seeing that I managed to escape, tsk'd, before she released some more attacks toward me, but since I was ready I managed to dodge those much more smoothly.
After I dodged a few of her electric attacks, she switched her approach and began to move toward me for some close combat. I immediately noticed that she was faster than me if I was not teleporting, and that did not really count as movement speed.
Anyway, after a short exchange, I became aware that fighting her like this would be much harder than necessary, so I used aura platforms, to take off into the air.
For all her speed, Ciri was unable to move in the air just yet, so her only option was to either wait until I came down, or to attack me from the distance. She chose the latter. Meanwhile, I was facing a small problem as well since I was unable to attack her from afar using only my aura.
After a few seconds of deliberation and dodging electric streams, I decided to use my senbons to attack her. Ciri had officially "forced" me to use something besides my aura to attack. The bracers did not count, since those were to defend from sharp weapons.
Anyway, I boosted the senbons with my aura, but I did not use my psychic abilities to guide them. Yet, they proved to be a great boon, since they forced Ciri to dodge my senbon rain.
After that, the fight turned into a form of cat and mouse, with her dodging, and me peppering her with senbons. I occasionally blitzed down to gather some of the senbons after forcing her to another part of the battlefield.
Ultimately, my endurance and energy capacity/reserves proved to be higher than hers, and once she stopped being able to boost herself using her electric manipulation, I took her out smoothly. The referee declared me the winner, and after thanking Ciri for the battle, I went back to the seats where the others were sitting.
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