The New Normal - 16-11

The New Normal – 16-11 – Toughing out the cold

Eventually, after all the other battles had concluded, the final teams that represented the Top 8 had been finalised. They were:

Me and Elesa, Karen and Iris, Lorelei and Tate/Liza, Crasher Wake and Marshal, Drake and Burgh, Janine and Flint, Flannery and Koga, and last but not least, Brock and Bertha.

Including us, these were all the teams that remained. I was pretty surprised to see Drayden and Brawly not make it, as I thought that the Unovan Dragon specialist would have the strength necessary to make it to the Top 8. However, in their very first elimination match, they ended up being matched against Drake and Burgh, and the two Dragon specialists of Hoenn and Unova respectively duked it out to see who was the stronger trainer among them.

Turns out, it was Drake – and it was a pretty convincing win for him too. That wasn’t to disparage Drayden’s strength; the man had already proven throughout this Tournament that his strength was more than a match for even other Elite Four members to deal with – and he was the one that had given me the most trouble in the Tournament thus far.

But against Drake, he had faltered. Drake was just slightly stronger, and he had a larger pool of Pokémon to choose from, so he and Burgh had managed to outmanoeuvre Drayden and Brawly.

I saw highlights of the battle, so I knew that Drake had made use of his Blastoise extensively as his first Pokémon to whittle down his opponents from a distance. He and Burgh made use of their superior Special Attack to force Drayden and Brawly’s Pokémon to get in close, where Burgh bombarded them with status effects and Blastoise blasted them all away with Ice Beams and Dragon Pulses – while also being just too tanky to take down easily.

Then when it eventually came down to Salamence vs Hydreigon, it hadn’t been a fair fight at all since Blastoise was able to inflict heavy damage against Hydreigon before going down. That had allowed Salamence to completely overpower the weakened Hydreigon before taking out Brawly’s Hariyama with relative ease and secured them the win.

Additionally, I had also taken the time to watch the match with Brock and Bertha against Volkner and the Waterflower sisters. Even though Bertha was a member of the Elite Four, I still personally favoured Volkner and the sisters, mainly because I was more familiar with Volkner than I was with Bertha. Furthermore, I thought that with Volkner’s Rotom forms that Blaine had previously told me about, he would be able to surprise Brock and Bertha and achieve a clean victory.

So I was surprised to see that the reverse turned out to be true. I knew that Karen had been doing a lot of training with Brock on the side before the Tournament, and that training really showed itself in the battle. I couldn’t believe that they were going for stall tactics against their opponents, but it worked out and it secured them a massive advantage that they managed to convert into a win.

I felt bad seeing Daisy lose. But honestly, she had nothing to be sad about. Almost making it to the Top 8 is a worthwhile achievement.

Speaking of Top 8, our next opponent in the Top 8 had already been decided. We were against Lorelei and the psychic twins.

Just like us, they had also been able to maintain a perfect win rate up until this point, and looking at their previous matches they had found great success by utilising the psychic twins’ large range of support moves to buff up Lorelei and allow the Ice specialist to carry the fight.

Lorelei had really shown up in this Tournament, having stunned the crowd with her repeated displays of strength where she completely dominated fights with the raw power of her Ice types. And after her recent battles, more and more people were starting to think that she may have surpassed her uncle in strength.

I partially agreed; Pryce’s strength had long since stagnated, and the same applied to his tactics and strategies. However, when it came to the fundamentals of being an Ice specialist, there were still some aspects that I felt Pryce did slightly better than Lorelei. For example, his Ice Beams generally came out a little quicker and had a slightly more potent Freeze effect.

Nevertheless, knowing that my next opponent was another member of the Indigo Elite Four only made me more excited for our upcoming fight. Especially since Lorelei was now considered by ‘most’ of the public to be ranked as the second strongest amongst the Indigo Elite Four.

I was still ranked first. But losing here would probably change that. And I wouldn’t allow that to happen.

After all, I still had my own pride.

Elesa was obviously readily on board with earning herself another victory. Especially since she had been thinking about her plans post-Tournament.

“Seeing you run around all the time handling this and that has really made me think about what I can do to better myself back at home.” She had told me, “I always felt like I was doing a lot – with my career as a fashion model and as a Gym Leader simultaneously – but compared to you, I feel a little lazy.”

“There’s really no need to draw such comparisons.” I said, “We all have different goals in life. There’s nothing wrong with working at your own pace.”

“Maybe, but I still got inspired nonetheless.” She replied, “Especially after seeing and learning more about what you did with your home city of Cerulean – transforming it from a city purely known for its contests and turning it into something far more – inspired me to try and implement one of my old plans.”

“You see, I’ve always thought that Nimbasa City should have more to do for visitors. We have so many different entertainment facilities, but most of them are passive – there is often little to no opportunity for you to participate yourself.” She explained, “That’s why I thought that it would be nice to have some kind of special battling facility built in Nimbasa, and I had previously thought about redesigning the subway system to implement something like that, though I had put it off due to lack of funds and time.”

“But now…. now I think it might be something worth trying.” She said, “And if I win this Tournament, then it’ll be easier to convince the League to have the new facility be located at Nimbasa.”

I realised she must have been referring about the Battle Subway, which had yet to be built. So while I knew that the Battle Subway would eventually come into fruition regardless if she won this Tournament or not, I also hoped that I could help accelerate her plans.

So with determination rushing through our veins, we once again put our heads to the grindstone as we did everything we could to prepare ourselves for the upcoming battle. We made sure to touch up on our Pokémon’s training, and then it was time to fight.

The morning before the battel, I had learnt from Whitney that, back at home, this battle had been the one that most of Indigo had been anticipating and were eager to watch, as it was actually the first time that a pair of Indigo Elite Four members would be facing off against each other in the tournament.

Likewise, it was also the first time that I was fighting against Lorelei, so while I was generally considered to be the favourite to win, the public was eager to see if there would be an upset happening today.

As I stepped onto the field, staring down at my opponents, I would make sure that there wouldn’t be.

“TRAINERS! ARE YOU READY?! THE BATTLE BEGINS IN THREE!... TWO!... ONE!... FIGHT!”

“Avalugg! Stick to the plan!”      “Claydol, Trick Room!”

“Taunt it, Ornstein!”     “Galvantula, Rain Dance!”

It seemed like both teams had already come up with their own battle plans beforehand and didn’t hesitate to put them into action. Having expected the usual shenanigans that Psychic specialists normally got up to, I felt that it was only prudent to immediately have my fastest Pokémon in Ornstein fire off a Taunt as soon as he emerged from his Pokéball. Likewise, knowing how much more powerful Lorelei got in the Snow, we instantly tried to deny that for her.

It was why we had chosen to make use of two of our fastest Pokémon to start off the fight, just so we could ensure that we could fire off a Taunt and Rain Dance respectively.

However, it seems like they weren’t entirely relying on the Snow to win this fight, and were instead trying to win via Trick Room. The Taunt would have shut that down, but the miniscule delay of travel time that the Taunt took before it could hit allowed the Trick Room to come into effect.

The space around the battlefield began to warp and twist as our Pokémon’s speeds were reversed. This was terrible for the two of us, considering that both Avalugg and Claydol had now become significantly faster than our originally speedy Pokémon.

And Avalugg was quick to make use of that by suddenly blitzing forwards in a light blue blur as it became so fast that it was almost like it had teleported right in front of Ornstein. But it had made a mistake – it had underestimated Ornstein’s natural reaction speed and close quarters prowess, even when affected by a Trick Room. So as the Avalugg tried to bite down with a Strong Jaw boosted Ice Fang, Ornstein had already prepared an Obstruct that completely blocked the attack while also sharply lowering Avalugg’s Defenses.

After all, the Trick Room had no effect on Ornstein’s ingrained skills and techniques.

Realising its mistake, Avalugg rapidly backpedalled out of the way of a retaliatory Brick Break and switched targets to Galvantula. The Avalugg rushed down Galvantula with incredible speed, who was still struggling to adapt to the effects of Trick Room and failed to skitter out of the way in time. The subsequent Ice Fang bit down hard, causing Galvantula to let out a pained cry as it flinched.

To make matters worse, an avalanche of rocks crashed down from above onto the flinching Galvantula as Claydol fired off an Ancient Power from all the way in the back.

Meanwhile, due to the Trick Room, Ornstein wasn’t able to catch up to either of his opponents. Avalugg especially was so fast when rushing around the arena that I legitimately had trouble tracking it at times with my eyes.

I frowned; this Trick Room was really causing us a lot of issues. Our biggest advantage had become our greatest weakness, and I fully recognised that it was only a matter of time before both of our Pokémon were taken out.

So I knew I had to switch. Fortunately, I had just the Pokémon to deal with the Trick Room.

“Come back, Ornstein. GO! SMOUGH! GET THE CLAYDOL!”

Having my Pokémon’s strengths and tactics repeatedly drilled into her, Elesa quickly understood what I was going for and what she needed to do. Therefore, as Smough instantly blitzed down Claydol as he made use of the Trick Room to skyrocket his own speeds to ridiculous levels, Galvantula abandoned any attempt to fight back as it went fully on the defensive – doing everything it can to stay alive in the fight.

Galvantula also learned to make use of the natural rebound force from Volt Switch to bounce itself away from Avalugg, making more space for itself and therefore buying more time. Discharges and Thunder Waves were also used extensively as deterrants.

Of course, this was by no means enough to stop Avalugg for any longer than a couple seconds or so. But that was all the time that Smough needed to absolutely pummel the Claydol into the ground.

Thanks to the earlier Taunt, Claydol was completely denied access to its formidable arsenal of support and status moves. Therefore, because it was unable to Teleport away or set up a Reflect screen, Claydol’s only recourse was to try to fend off the Smough’s relentless assault with Psychics and Earth Powers.

Needless to say, those attacks might as well have bounced off of Smough for all the pitiful damage that they did.

And because of that, Claydol could do little else as Smough utterly brutalised it into the ground, as he smashed down again and again with a relentless barrage of savage Ice Punches and Crunches. Claydol’s desperate attempts to push it off amounted to nothing, as Smough completely overpowered it.

Thus, in what was likely a moment of panic in seeing their Claydol getting beat down like this, the twins hastily made an attempt to switch out their Claydol before it could be completely taken out.

Unfortunately for them, Smough refused to let them go. As the red beam of light tried to extract Claydol from the battle, Smough roared forwards in a flash of darkness, chasing after it in a Pursuit, and ripped away any chance of retreat from Claydol as it was mercilessly thrown back to the ground.

And with it denied its final chance of escaping the battle, Claydol was soon taken out by another few Ice Punches from Smough.

In its place, the twins sent out a fresh Lunatone.

The Lunatone wasted no time as it immediately replaced the earlier Rain by setting up the Snow. Knowing that Smough was still yet to be proficient with weather moves, I doubted that Smough would be able to win the weather war alone against a specialised support in Lunatone. So I didn’t bother with that, instead I was going to have Smough do what he did best.

I was going to have him beat the shit out of Lunatone before it could try to trip us up with its arsenal of support moves.

Unfortunately, Smough wouldn’t have much time to do so, as the removal of the Rain was the death knell for Galvantula. Without the Rain, its Electric type moves were much less of a threat to Avalugg, and Galvantula soon fell to a now empowered Ice Fang from it.

However, thanks to our research, I also knew that the Snow wasn’t as big of a benefit for Avalugg as it was for Lorelei’s other Ice types. Of course, it still got a boost in power for its Ice type moves, but Avalugg was not a Pokémon that relied on Freeze to secure knockouts. Instead, it relied on its raw power, much like my bruisers did. So the Snow wasn’t nearly as beneficial.

Therefore, it should be fine to leave the Snow up for the time being.

With that in mind, Galvantula’s defeat allowed Elesa to send out her own slow Electric type – her Eelektross. And now with two Pokémon that were equally as slow, if not slower, than our opponent’s Pokémon, that meant that we were able to make use of this Trick Room for our own benefit.

Meanwhile, recognising that if Smough planned to take out Lunatone to turn this battle into a 2v1, Avalugg charged and slammed into Smough head on. But Smough had caught the incoming charge with his hands, and the two of them quickly descended into a chaotic brawl.

Iron Heads smashed against each other. Hammer Arms were blocked, delivered, and parried with equal speed. Ice Fangs met against Fire Punches. Stone Edges were tanked through. A roar of dominance was quickly silenced as a fist smashed into another’s face. An attempt to back away to make more distance was cut off as they slammed into each other with a Body Slam.

Thanks to the Trick Room, both of their attacks came far quicker than you would expect from Pokémon of their size and stature. It was almost an amusing sight – two Pokémon known for being one of the slowest amongst all Pokémon species were suddenly fighting against each other while being almost so fast that it got disorientating.

At one point, the two of were moving so fast that you couldn’t even see their arms – they were nothing more than blurs.

Yet thanks to the Thick Fat ability, even with Avalugg’s greater Defense over Smough, Smough was slowly but surely gaining the advantage. Not only that, but Smough actually fought more skillfully than Avalugg.

This was something that I had noticed when studying Lorelei’s previous battles where she utilised the defensive Ice type. Most of her training had revolved around shoring up Avalugg’s critical weaknesses – its extremely poor Special Defenses, and its quadruple weakness to both Steel and Fighting attacks.

However, due to a lack of time, what Lorelei hadn’t been specifically focusing on improving Avalugg’s close quarter techniques, since it wasn’t an urgent priority. That might have been the correct decision for 99% of battles, but Smough was the 1% exception.

Therefore, if you combined that with the fact that I had trained up Smough for far longer than she had with Avalugg, there was a noticeable gap in their techniques, with Smough being superior in this respect too.

So even though Avalugg was supposed to be Lorelei’s greatest defensive Pokémon, and her hardiest physical attacker, it still found itself outmatched against the unrelenting might of Smough. As a result, Avalugg found itself slowly losing ground as its injuries slowly began to build up.

While this was all happening, both Lunatone and Eelektross were doing their best to intercede in the fight while stopping the other from doing the same. The problem was, neither Pokémon knew Taunt, so the only real way to stop the other from making use of support moves to assist in the brawl was to force them to focus on themselves instead.

That meant that another, separate, 1v1 had taken place between them. And the attacks came flying.

Eelektross was doing its utmost to not give any room for Lunatone to breathe as it furiously bombarded it with an endless barrage of Thunderbolts. Lunatone had been forced to set up a Light Screen to block some of the incoming damage, but even then it wasn’t enough and it was forced to take evasive manoeuvres.

Eelektross was the most powerful of Elesa’s Electric types – and it showed.

There were attempts by Lunatone to try and put Eelektross to sleep with a Hypnosis, but because of the Trick Room, Eelektross was actually able to dodge out of the way with its speed. Furthermore, I noticed that despite being one of the twins’ starter, Lunatone was not as aggressive or as powerful as other Psychic type specialists I had fought against. It was clearly relegated to more of a supporting role, and that meant the power of its attacks were a little lacking.

And then the Trick Room came to an end.

Instantly, the dynamics of the entire fight shifted. The brawl between Smough and Avalugg slowed to a crawl as both Pokémon lost all of their warped speed from the Trick Room.

However, while Smough had done a lot of speed training thanks to his spars against much faster Pokémon like Ornstein, the same could not be said about Avalugg – who I suspected had not done much speed training against opposing physical attackers that fought like Smough, since no such Pokémon existed on Lorelei’s team. Her team primarily consisted of Special Attackers, after all.

Therefore, the loss of the Trick Room only made it even more advantageous for Smough, who was now using its relatively superior speed to outmanoeuvre and punish many attacks from Avalugg, parrying them and retaliating with crushing Hammer Arms of his own.

Yet the same happened with the battle between Eelektross and Lunatone. Now that Eelektross was slower, Lunatone began to have more space to start interfering with the brawl between Smough and Avalugg, and was able to Skill Swap away the Thick Fat from Smough and replace it with the far more useless Levitate.

Likewise, it tried to set up with Reflects, but those were immediately broken by a Brick Break. So instead, Lunatone did its best to cripple Smough with a Hypnosis, shooting one off whenever Eelektross was in-between attacks.

But it was Eelektross that landed the big hit first against Avalugg. Taking advantage of Lunatone’s and Avalugg’s distracted state, it had fired off a powerful Flash Cannon that struck Avalugg in the side while it was busy fighting against Smough.

The quadruply supereffective attack ripped through Avalugg’s pitiful Special Defenses. And with Avalugg already being greatly injured from its brawl against Smough, the Flash Cannon instantly knocked it out of the fight.

Seeing this, Lorelei wasted no time in sending out her final Pokémon – her starter Lapras. Worse, within half a second of it being sent out, it immediately began to form a massive Blizzard right on top of Smough.

He was given absolutely no time to dodge as he was instantly trapped within the vortex of freezing winds. Without Thick Fat, he rapidly began to freeze over.

I was about to shout something out of instinct, but something in my gut held me back. My veteran instincts as a trainer told me that the next few moments was going to decide this fight. I was going to have to be extremely careful about what I did next.

My mind ran the calculations, and I ruthlessly realised that Smough was useless in the upcoming fight against Lapras. With the Trick Room down, his slow speed was a liability. He had to go, even though I was out of switches. It was better to retire him from the fight.

Ornstein had to be the one to win this for me.

So I quickly shouted to Elesa, “CHANGE IT TO THE SUN, NOW!”

Right after that, I made my own declaration, “I’M RETIRING MY SNORAX FROM THE FIGHT! GO, ORNSTEIN!”

“Sunny Day, Eelektross!”

“STOP IT, LUNATONE! HYPNOSIS!”

Also realising how urgent this situation was, Eelektross dropped everything it was doing as it fired off a beam of light into the sky, turning the Snow into Sun literal milliseconds before it was put to sleep by the Hypnosis. But it had been more than worth it.

Lorelei’s Pokémon could not be allowed to fight in the Snow. That was just a loss waiting to happen.

So as the Sun began to shine on the battlefield, Ornstein emerged from his Pokéball and instantly fired off a Taunt at both Lapras and Lunatone, denying them both the ability to set up the Snow again. Then, using his incredible speed, he blitzed down Lunatone before Lapras could catch it with an Ice Beam.

Lunatone instinctively fired off a Psychic against Ornstein, but it was completely ineffective and Ornstein ruthlessly delivered a critical Night Slash that sliced deep into its side. Given that Lunatone was already injured from the fight against Eelektross, and with its poor Defense, it only took one more Night Slash for it to go down – leaving the fight as a 2v1.

Lapras did its best to knock out Eelektross before it could wake up, but Ornstein stifled those plans as he unleashed a piercingly loud Screech at Lapras – with it being so loud that it also managed to rip Eelektross out of its forcefully-induced sleep.

Now the fight now a proper 2v1. Not only that, with Lapras Taunted and the Sun up, Lorelei’s starter was not only unable to make use of its arsenal of support moves, but all of its Water moves had their power cut in half because of the Sun.

Therefore, for the first time in the tournament, Lorelei was unable to give off a good showing for herself as her Lapras found itself slowly but surely whittled down without being able to fight back at all.

We did literally everything we could to close out this battle as cleanly as possible. Eelektross had paralysed it with a Thunder Wave, while Ornstein kept his distance and threw out repeated Scary Faces to slow down Lapras even further, until it was cripplingly slow.

And then, it was just a matter of protecting Eelektross while it bombarded Lapras down from a distance with supereffective Thunderbolts. With all these disadvantages arrayed against it, there was nothing Lapras could do.

Eventually, it could stand up to our attacks no longer, and it fell.

It was easily the hardest battle that we had to face so far in the Tournament – but victory was ours.

 A.N. I never had John fight against Lorelei, and while this was a 2v2, I felt like this was a good demonstration of what that fight would be like. I wanted to also show that Lorelei is more than just a one-trick pony with her Ice types, and she her Avalugg is almost able to stand up to the likes of Smough. It’s just unfortunate for her that her Trick Room strategy was not effective because John’s bruisers are also so slow as well.

Yet, I also wanted to highlight that even with all of John’s strength, it was his quick thinking and decisive actions that saved this fight. The fight was closer than it seemed. Hope you enjoyed!