“I’m retiring Cryogonal,” I said to the arbiter, who nodded back firmly as if he expected this. Fair enough, no one wanted to see an almost fainted pokemon go against a Metang.

  Mountain weakly protested, but I ignored him. The Cryogonal was promptly returned, and his pokeball slotted back on the belt.

  I took a deep breath.

  Now, what to do here?

  I let out a deep sigh.

  What a stupid question. There’s only one thing to do in this situation, only one chance of victory. I ignored the second and third pokeball on my belt, Valley and Jungle respectively, and pulled on the fourth one.

  Aiming at the middle of my side of the battlefield, I clicked the white button and released my second pokemon.

  The familiar red light surged forth, stopped above the ground, and began to change. Intangible light gave way to organic material, and I stared as hard as I could at the Baltoy slowly appearing on the field, trying to memorize him like never before; the tan color, the red stripes, the two spikes, and the two closed eyes that would soon be open.

  He immediately turned towards Metang. The passive psychic energy the steel type gave off must be like a lighthouse on a dark sea to him.

  “Mesa,” I called, and he turned halfway through to look at me. “If we want to win this battle, you will have to evolve.”

  His closed eyes widened in surprise, probably more about the fact that we’ve been pushed to the point of putting everything into his evolution. He turned back forward towards his opponent, at the metallic pokemon with red eyes floating steadily above the ground.

  The steel type posture was impeccable. He didn’t even have the bobbing to his flight that levitating pokemon usually had. It was as if he was sitting on the floor, but in the air. It also made him look like a mountain, invulnerable, insurmountable, even calm.

  His eyes were locked tightly on Mesa however, and his arms, while inert against his body, somehow looked tense, as if just waiting for a signal to start fighting, or maybe they just were always like that.

  Mesa took in the display and seemed to accept the evolution's necessity by the loosening of his body.

  “He’ll probably overpower you at first so fight defensive until you evolve, and always keep in mind that you have to evolve, it should help.” Mesa nodded just, and the arbiter began the fight.

  Metang took the initiative.

  His bulky arms opened wide and the pokemon leaped through the air like an Incineroar towards the Baltoy on the other side of the field.

  Mesa lowered two glowing arms to the ground and pulled them up. Pure mud flowed up through the gaps on the steel plates just in front of him to become a reinforced wall of rock.

  It won’t be enough.

  “He’ll break through,” I said. “Double Team to confuse and Rapid Spin away.”

  Mesa rotated, and from one pokemon three equal ones spun around at different directions, one went right, another left, and the last one backed away from the wall just as Metang’s form struck it. The steel type passed through like a hot knife through butter, but the smoothness of the action was betrayed by the fact that the entire wall burst out like a balloon, sending its pieces littering across the floor.

  The two red eyes shifted rapidly between the three copies before locking on the one of the right and turning towards it before shooting off towards there.

  He could tell which one is real. Interesting.

  Usually, that would mean that he was well trained on his psychic side, as psychic pokemon had advanced training to see through Double Team and other illusory moves, but that convention didn’t apply to pokemon like Metang, a pokemon born with equal talent in every single individual of his line.

  So, was he trained or just talented? We had to get an answer, since finding it out could possibly make this battle easier for us.

  “Let’s probe him”, I said as Mesa backed away. “Psybeam.”

  The ground type turned around in mid flight, raised his hands, and shot the pink beam straight at the steel type speeding towards him.

  Metang slowed down, his eyes glowed pink, and a pink screen appeared to meet the beam.

  The Psybeam still broke through just as the blue pokemon took on a silver sheen across his entire body. The move slammed into the silver pokemon, but didn't do any damage, not even pushed him back a little, and the pokemon accelerated back to his normal speed.

  Gotcha.

  “Let’s build some reserves since the ground is hostile here.” Mesa flew to the side as he was reaching one of the barriers, and pulled on his internal ground energy as he crossed the field.

  The steel floor made it hard for him, but Mesa was good and brought a vast quantity of sand and mud from between the plates he traveled under, the sand began to accumulate. It would be invaluable to have earth over the steel floors if we wanted to win.

  Metang curved towards him and followed, getting closer every second.

  And while the chase happened, I thought about Metang’s use of Light Screen. Jasmine hadn't trained him on his psychic side yet, since a psychic trained Metang should be able to take control of Mesa’s Psybeam due to his inexperience in energy manipulation. Instead, he had to weaken the move with Light Screen before using Iron Defense to take what's left.

  That could be great for us.

  Baltoy evolved by training their psychic energy to be on par with its ground type body, if Metang wasn’t trained and couldn't simply dismiss psychic moves, we could use this high stakes situation to stimulate Mesa’s evolution instead of being plummeted for it.

  There’s a small chance he could be faking but we'll soon see which is which, as Mother Elena used to say.

  “Mesa, defend with ground, attack with psychic!” I shouted. Mesa stopped and turned around. The sand he’d been collecting put itself between the two pokemon like a barrier.

  Metang didn’t hesitate at seeing his prey stop and, ignoring the strange change in tactics, shot straight at the Baltoy.

  Three Psybeam shot through the sand, one after the other.

  The blue body sparked and became entirely silver. A Light Screen was raised and the three moves lost power as they passed through it, and the steel type smashed through them.

  Setting his right arm ablaze with an even deeper shade of silver, he raised it to strike.

  Mesa glowed, and the giant sand cloud that was floating around him clumped together in front of him and turned into a giant glowing stone hammer that slammed into the silver arm.

  The clash froze the two for a second before the hammer was blown away into pieces. Mesa appeared from behind it and sent a Psybeam directly at Metang. The larger pokemon blocked with his silvered arm, leaving behind a small bruise on the energized limb, and he swung it forward to claw at the Baltoy with his Metal Claw. Mesa was far enough though, and spun away just in the nick of time. He continued to flee, the small rocks on the ground followed him, and behind them Metang, quickly catching up.

  Those pieces floating behind Mesa came together and formed a rectangular slab of stone that Mesa threw behind him. The steel type pulled back his left arm and swung as it glowed orange. The Brick Break pulverized the stone but two Psybeam came after, and he needed to slow down to use the Light Screen and Iron Defense combination again.

  This wasn't working.

  “You’ll need to surprise him,” I said to Mesa as he passed nearby. He gave out a curt nod.

  Metang was coming, so the ground type pulled on the earth below again but was only able to gather one big rough boulder before the Metang was in reach. Mesa spun around himself in the air, and the boulder went with him on a long arc to strike Metang on the side.

  Instead of fighting it like before, the steel type took the hit and went with the movement, fully rotating even as he advanced on his target. He brought his arm around with Brick Break into the flying clay doll.

  Mesa leaned towards the ground with a spin, almost completely laying on it, and the massive arm passed inches away from his body.

  Metang had missed, and it took a second for him to process this.

  That's when a pink beam struck the right side of his face hard, and without Light Screen and Iron Defense to deal with it, he was pushed back a little, giving Mesa time to run. The blue pokemon simply regained command over himself and drove forward through the air, but now he had a bruise near his right eye that made the one on his arm look like a tap.

  The Baltoy only stopped when he was already near the end of the field. He began to pull more and more soil from below and also took back from above the ground where the rests of the hammer and the slab were.

  They came together just as Metang approached.

  He quickly turned a part of the massive pile of earth into a spear and threw it right at the incoming Metang, who dodged by a hair, pulled back one of his blue pillars back, and threw a mighty punch at the small ground type.

  Mesa grabbed the rest of his stock and created two massive rock shields that slightly resembled fists. The first barely blocked the punch, and would've cracked into pieces without Mesa reinforcing it constantly, and the second one slammed itself into Metang’s face as he went for a grab with his other arm. The steel type instantly responded by moving his arms around like a heavy machine and destroying the two rocks.

  A pink beam hit Metang just after he ripped the stones apart, but he ignored the pain and went for a grab. Mesa spun up and around him, and the two arms passed inches away from him, nearly catching him.

  The steel type let out a cranking noise that sounded like a raging scream as he pivoted towards the Baltoy.

  Instead of rushing at Mesa like he’d been doing all this time, he dashed into the air just above the ground type. Metang glowed silver, and shot down a powerful silvery energy beam right at Mesa.

  Flash Cannon.

  “It’s a beam! Dodge to the side,” I warned, and Mesa dashed to the right, dodging the silver beam that blasted the ground, creating a small shock wave but not actually affecting the incredibly strong steel plates on the floor.

  The Baltoy looked over his shoulder, and saw Metang already falling towards him, his metallic blue body now glowing gray with Body Slam. It was too late to dodge. Mesa pulled all the rocks, mud, and sand he had around him into a single stone shield above and fortified it as much as he could, but the power of the Metagross line prevailed.

  The rock fractured, and while it bled the power of the move, the Metang himself still slammed into Mesa with his whole body, who in turn slammed into the ground and bounced off it with a cry as it flew towards our side of the field.

  It wasn’t the first time I saw him be hurt of course, but it was such a brutal hit that I felt a lump on my throat.

  Mesa pushed himself up with his two fingerless arms and woozily floated up. His clay body had a crack where one of the edges of Metang hit.

  Metang just hovered in front of him, silently watching as he pulled himself up, maybe showing respect by waiting, but for some reason I doubted it.

  The cracked pokemon stared up at the steel type, and the smashed pieces of rock littering across the entire battlefield traveled back to him, and earth from under the floor too. They mashed up and formed two giant pieces of rock that sharpened into items worth of giants, a shield and a lance with a drill-like tip. Mesa commanded them up as if he was a knight against a dragon. His closed eyes narrowed in concentration.

  Metang exploded towards him.

  Baltoy, lance, and shield were suddenly covered with pink energy, just like the barriers around the two pokemon.

  Metang shot a Flash Cannon as he approached but the shield was pulled to the front with ease, at an angle that allowed it to parry away the beam. It fractured into pieces in the process, but they were brought together by the pink glow instantly and forged back by Mesa's Rock Tomb.

  Now closer, Metang tried to body through the shield and into the Baltoy again, but Mesa and the shield were pulled to the side and around by the pink energy. The steel type rotated to follow, but the lance, now rotating at high speed, drilled into the middle of his head, just above the white horn. The staggering was minimal and the steel type pushed his body back into the Baltoy, but he was already flying over the larger pokemon, his lance and shield behind him. Metang extended his arms to catch him again, but he once again slipped past them, and it wasn’t even close this time around.

  I watched him go with a huge and proud smile.

  The team reviewed together every battle or match we fought that was recorded, especially one as big as our finals match against George Reed. Mesa watched it closer than I thought, as he was incorporating the moving technique of Misdreavus and her Confusion together with his expertise in rock constructs.

  I should’ve expected something like that from him.

  Metang tried again, this time with two Flash Cannons one after the other but Mesa weaved around the two, the difference that Confusion made was too much for him to overcome with his speed. The steel type still completed the action as he shot forward, trying to grab him, but as the two Flash Cannon had barely slowed Mesa, he was able to shoot a couple of Psybeam and get away.

  Metang used Light Screen, and the attacks were reduced again and splashed harmless into his silver coat.

  Mesa was ready to continue, but the steel type suddenly stopped in the air like a glitching computer. Mesa didn't let his guard down, but the pokemon really didn't move anymore.

  From the corner of my eye I saw Jasmine lean forward on the railing.

  “Metang,” she called out, but the pokemon didn’t respond at all. “Use Swift.”

  My knuckles tightened around the railing, turning white.

  Metang was restraining himself. They were sandbagging us. Mesa also came to the conclusion, but Metang had reacted instantly to Jasmine’s voice.

  His metallic body lit up in white, and twenty powerful looking gray stars were launched forward from him in long arcs. Mesa pulled back with Confusion and dodged some, he threw his shield and lance against them to block more, but it was impossible to dodge the last eight perfectly. They cornered him near the pink wall, closed on him, and exploded, inflicting their impact. Most of them exploded under him, and he was sent spiraling up near Jasmine’s side.

  And there was Metang, waiting for him with an orange glowing arm.

  Mesa was falling towards the ground, and the larger form hovered behind him. His red eyes narrowed and the massive orange arm swung like a cleaver. The clay body folded into two under the strength.

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  It was the worst hit of Mesa’s battling career.

  The blow cracked open a hole in the middle of his torso. From there was born a fissure, a single trembling horizontal line running through his entire torso that created a hundred others going up and down his body, from spike to spike.

  It was expected. We expected it. We planned for and around it, but it still hurt. Still, it probably hurt infinitely less in me than in him, and it wasn’t over.

  No. It was just the beginning.

  I watched as the broken Baltoy rolled throughout the floor and only stopped when he hit a pink barrier. He stopped in a sitting position. I stared at his prone form as did everyone, Metang, Jasmine, the arbiter, and the crowd.

  He was just there, sitting on the ground and leaning against the barrier like the doll he looked like, inert. There wasn’t any sign of consciousness, and the fact that his eyes were always shut didn’t help.

  Maybe he just fainted.

  Above was the giant monitor for the crowd to follow the battle, and in the middle of it was a timer, my eyes flicked between Mesa’s body and the timer as it ran. After a full minute, the arbiter raised his arm towards the other side.

  Just like that, he declared Metang the victor.

  All that pain for nothing.

  Mesa erupted into light.

  The blindingly white light overwhelmed the field, and I covered my eyes. The energy generated was much stronger than in Jungle’s evolution, truly blinding. It was so strong that I was surprised when it began to end quickly, in a matter of seconds. It faded completely, and I looked over the crook of my elbow and saw him.

  Mesa, the Baltoy, had shed his cracked form and started from zero as a Claydol.

  His new form was completely smooth, and entirely black with a noticeable inky texture except for the seemingly painted white and yellow circles on his round torso, the yellow studs along his pumpkin shaped head, and the white rims over his pink eyes. The eight sensory organs were already awake and blinked in turns, ensuring he would never miss anything going on around him again, one of them even twitched up to stare at me.

  He was a masterfully sculpted statue standing still, but the similarity with the inert art broke when the pokemon moved towards the field’s center, as there was an elasticity to the way his body moved as he levitated. The best description would be bubbly, or even bouncy, a counterpoint to his opponent’s controlled and rigid flight.

  The Claydol stopped before the Metang, and the two locked eyes with each other.

  Mesa’s new arms, now shaped like orbs, separated themselves from his torso and spun around him in circles until they were floating by his side. They turned their flat tips towards the steel type pokemon menacingly.

  Metang didn’t move, but his eyes tightened.

  “Stop,” the arbiter said through the speakers. “I have already indicated that the battle is over, which means the victory is for Metang, regardless of the late evolution.”

  Everything stopped for a second and my first instinct was to listen to him, to grab my pokeball to return Mesa. I squashed it in favor of looking at Jasmine, and did my best to ignore the increasing noise from the stands.

  The Steel Gym Leader also ignored the crowd and just focused on her pokemon, who’s yet to move since the evolution, not even at the arbiter’s words. Her eyes narrowed into a stare and she pursued her lips before coughing loudly on her hand. Metang wasn't moved.

  I see.

  I feel like I understood at least one thing about the robotic pokemon: he was stubborn.

  “I’m overruling the arbiter’s ruling,” Jasmine finally said, rolling her eyes, “The battle will continue, and will be restarted with a count.”

  The arbiter didn’t seem surprised at being ousted by his boss. “Restarting the battle in 3… 2… 1… Fight.”

  Metang rocketed forward, eager to show the newly evolved pokemon his place, and immediately twisted to the side to avoid two Hyper Beam.

  I slammed my hand at the railing at seeing one of the most powerful moves of all time being used by Mesa. It was a signature move that Claydol learned upon evolution, and while nowhere near to the one that put me in the hospital in speed or power, they were still two Hyper Beam and would pack a good punch, even on a Metang.

  The white light from the two orb arms was fading, and the earth rumbled. The ground beneath Mesa erupted like a volcano, pushing the steel plates up and away, and from the hole earth rose. It flowed up as easily as water, like an upside down waterfall. All that earth turned into fine sand and started to float around him.

  His evolution didn’t just improve his psychic side, or made him learn Hyper Beam, all that was Mesa grew exponentially.

  Metang shot a Flash Cannon.

  The Claydol burst into the pink light of Confusion and was pulled up, dodging the move effortlessly. He continued being pulled, but now curved towards Metang, the earth following behind like two massive wings.

  Metang lit up, and sent twenty stars to explode Mesa and the collection behind him.

  Sand twisted into rock and took the shape of hollow rock balls. The twenty orbs rocketed past the ground type and towards each Swift star. They met, and the rock balls swallowed each and every one like maws, sealing them inside. They fell to the ground, and there was no explosion.

  Claydol’s sand cloak split up and clustered together into large pockets of mass. As he reached Metang, he had ten stone shields and ten drill lances floating in a grade pattern in front of him.

  Metang shot a charged Flash Cannon at the center of the collection, directly at Mesa, and four shields clumped together in front of him and took the hit, suffering minimal damage this time.

  His two orbs floated around the rock and shot back two Hyper Beam. The steel type raised a Light Screen that lowered the twin beam’s power as they passed through, and smashed them away with silvery glowing arms, but the glows faded to reveal bruises on them.

  The drills shot forward like arrows.

  Metang rotated like a ballerina, body shining silver, and twisted his arms around his body madly. The metallic blue hurricane deflected four lances before the shields also got there and bashed him from many sides, throwing him off of his defensive posture and allowing the other six drills to perforate the steel type all over his front.

  He fell.

  As he did the lances and shields followed. He twisted in the air, aligning himself at Mesa and dodging and bashing the attacks as he moved back until most of them were out of the way.

  Metang finally shot forward, as did Mesa. He pulled his bulky arms back and then pushed them forward like two bullets at the ground type’s large head, probably expecting to hammer him from two sides.

  The black pokemon stopped just outside his reach, and a myriad of Psybeam shot forward from the pink eyes at the two arms, bleeding off his entire momentum until he stopped in the air.

  The two pokemon were almost at touching distance.

  Then shields and lances ascended and descended from all directions, having come back at Mesa’s command.

  Metang twisted and weaved around them but was too surrounded by the flying equipment, and had to accept a few hits to get outside their reach. Metang shot down towards the ground and towards Jasmine’s side of the field. He stopped just when he was in front of his trainer.

  He turned around, and stared once again at Mesa.

  Mesa descended and stared back from across the battlefield. Metang swung an arm up lightly, as if just throwing something out in the direction of Jasmine.

  “Alright…” she sighed loudly. “You can use Confusion now.”

  Metang disappeared in the blink of an eye.

  The rock constructs guarding Mesa were blown into fragments and away from him by a pink shock wave, leaving him defenseless and wide eyed. From above, a purple comet incinerated the very air with its speed and slammed into the ground pokemon. The Claydol folded not unlike before when he was a Baltoy and shot down, hitting the steel floor. Metang appeared where Mesa had been, and he was the wrong color.

  The steel type had changed to a strange purple, and it took me a second to understand that he was using Confusion so efficiently that the pure pink color of the move merged perfectly with his metallic blue, making it look like the pokemon changed color completely.

  Mesa, meanwhile, was down and didn’t rise immediately, but the rocks did.

  Around Metang all the stones that were shields and lances before turned into sharp spears that speared up at the floating steel type, but Metang had already vanished again, and all the earth curved back towards Mesa from all directions, and from the ground under him.

  He also floated up to stand straight.

  All his eight eyes blinked, and a storm of pink beams shot from every direction imaginable around the pokemon. The Psybeam barrage splashed on the floor, ran up the sky, and hit the barriers, nowhere was safe for the steel type to hide. Which is why the steel type appeared and used his combination of Light Screen and Iron Defense to withstand them.

  Mesa twirled around on where he was and his arms shot twin Hyper Beam in that direction, and he followed that by throwing a dozen rocks spears at him.

  The purple Metang pulled himself under the gray beams, and easily dodged the rock projectiles that Mesa was throwing at him with Confusion, but didn’t disappear as before.

  I see.

  “Keep him occupied,” I said. “He can’t achieve max speed if he has to keep changing direction.”

  Mesa kept the aerial pokemon dodging with simple boulders that shot around him, but a few gasps from the crowd made me look down at him. He was being involved in an armor of reinforced stone that imitated a Baltoy’s body, with the only thing outside it being his floating orb arms. He was also creating new rock constructs that were linked to many parts of his armor, and this time he took inspiration from Mountain.

  Twenty thick stone chains floated around his armored body as he flew up and near Metang. He threw the chains at him like a net, just like the Cryogonal did.

  Metang’s red eyes left the debris floating around to take in the new threat, the armored pokemon and the chains coming at him. He continued dodging, but in between released two volleys of Swift, one at the chains, and one at the armor. The heavy chains were barely repelled, but the rock armor just smashed through the explosions as it went like a battering ram at the steel type.

  Metang easily dodged, but the arms floating behind the armor caught him off guard and blasted him with two Hyper Beams that crossed from two sides, forming an X as they crashed into him.

  Metang once again fell from the sky, turning blue again.

  The Claydol gave chase, the stone armor curving towards the ground at high speed after him. The chains were pulled by the armor and thrown forward, trying to grab the falling steel type. They reached him as he got close to the ground, almost touching him.

  Until they didn’t.

  Metang pulled up and curved to the side. His Confusion came back and he soared across the battlefield to stand as far as possible from Mesa, who had to let the twenty chains and the armor around him dissolve into sand as he couldn’t stop them from crashing on the floor. I think his plan might’ve been to hold Metang down and smash the armor into him.

  The Claydol floated down like a feather towards our side of the field, just as Metang stopped in the middle of Jasmine’s. The two pokemon were back on their respective sides again, as they were in the beginning of this long battle.

  But Metang wasn’t the same pokemon. There were bruises all over his body now, from the Hyper Beam, from the Psybeam, from the drill lances, from the spears and rocks. His red eyes were tighter, probably from pain. He was clearly the worst of the two, as Mesa’s evolution had healed all but a few faint traces of the devastating attacks he’d landed.

  Yet it was clear that the Claydol was the more exhausted between the two. He’d already done many things before evolving, and ever since then he’s thrown large quantities of energy at his moves, and used them at their widest ranges. He was almost done for.

  I could almost see the calculations running on their two heads.

  Another round of this, and Mesa might faint from exhaustion.

  Another round of this, and Metang could faint from damage.

  Whoever came on top of the next skirmish would win.

  Mesa started floating forward, all the sand particles across the floor rolling through the ground with him. The purple Metang stayed frozen, confident in the fact that he just needed to outlast the next few moves and he’d win.

  I could interfere and say something here, but right now Mesa probably knows himself way more than I know him. I’d need a few days of training to understand the limits of his new form. His greatest asset now was something I couldn’t help him with, his instincts as a pokemon.

  I leaned forward on the railing to watch him work.

  The Claydol was reaching the middle of the battlefield and Metang still wasn’t moving, still waiting for something, and I could guess what. He probably has something planned, a wild card ready to use. I thought about calling him out but as Mesa stopped in the middle of the arena, I realized that somehow the Claydol already knew about this.

  Gravity seemed to change as all the sand on the field rose up towards the ceiling, forming a giant dark floor above the entire field until it hit the pink barriers. The entire place became shrouded in almost complete darkness. I could only see the faint purple form of Metang and the eight pink glowing eyes of Mesa.

  The eye that looked straight back at me blinked once and alone, and then he closed all his eyes and disappeared into the dusk.

  Metang still didn’t move.

  The ground rumbled on Jasmine’s side.

  I held my breath.

  The purple form dashed to the side, as Metang assessed that the danger was coming from below.

  He was right, and all the steel plates on the floor where he’d been floating over flew out, as if exploded from below. It opened a giant hole on the ground, and a pillar of earth shot up from the ground like a giant worm. Its head opened up in two parts, and the gash ran down the body, opening the giant pillar into a wave of mud and dirt that ran towards my side of the field, where Metang was flying to.

  I stared at him as he turned around, still flying away, and watched the wave that threatened to swallow him whole, but he wasn’t panicking, he was instead looking carefully over the incoming wave as its body cruised through the darkness. He was searching for something. He was searching for Mesa.

  A myriad of colors exploded from the Metang, too fast for me to catch them all, and he shot off towards the wave. A ripple of pink energy rolled off of him, met the giant dark wave and pushed it back as the Metang entered its range, as if he repealed the attack. The pokemon swerved right, then swerved left, then flew up the curvature of the wave as it came crashing down on him. He shot out a Flash Cannon at the peak of the wave, and stopped completely when it hit.

  Two Hyper Beams raced from the bottom of the dark floor up at him. Metang, back against them, dodged one but the other slammed on his shoulder and threw him off. He looked down, now knowing that Mesa had actually been down there, and that he’d been fooled. The wave was almost crushing him now.

  I see.

  Mesa had somehow noticed that after his evolution Metang wasn’t able to sense him anymore, and used Double Team to send an image of himself atop the wave to bait him.

  Metang was staring down at Mesa still, standing still as the wave finally swallowed him. It was just a matter of seconds until he was hit. There was no tactic here, he was just frozen. For the first time since I saw him, Metang was hesitant.

  “Release it!” Jasmine’s powerful voice echoed throughout the whole stadium, sharp and quick like a whip, even from behind the massive moving wall of rock. From where the svelte woman could conjure such power and range I didn’t know.

  Metang obeyed with no delay.

  The purple sheen he’d been maintaining for so long collapsed outwards, as if shedding itself. From the remains, the pokemon became a pink sun under the shadows of the sand ceiling. The steel type spun around an arm like a machine and threw the energy to the side, right in the middle of the wave.

  The giant dark wall was washed by pink. It swayed and swerved as if it was a mere leaf on the wind until it couldn’t hold itself together and detonated from top to bottom, shattering hundreds of little stones back towards the other side of the field. The energy of the release and the impact whipped around the field, and the pink barriers glowed brighter and brighter as they contained it.

  The shadowed blue form of Metang now stood alone in the sky. I could barely see from here that he was huffing, something that looked strange on a pokemon that hadn’t exhibited vital signs before. He wasn’t down though, by the fact that his Confusion coating was slowly reforming itself over his steel, there was still some fight to be had.

  Or at least I thought so, until I caught a glimpse of Jasmine.

  She was revealed as the fragments of the wave, the rocks and clouds of dust, fell down to the floor. She was still standing on her platform, but leaning far away from the security of the railing now, wide eyed and mouth open as she looked up.

  I looked up too, but there was nothing up there besides the sand floor that Mesa created to hide, right?

  Not a chance. A master like Jasmine wouldn’t look like that if there was nothing up there. I continued looking up even as I saw from the corner of my eye that Metang was now shooting down, apparently having located Mesa.

  Nothing changed for a few seconds, until dark spots began to appear all over the already dark ceiling. They came from inside the massive dark cloud. These spots grew and grew as if something was building up inside.

  They were already grown, I realized, they were just falling now.

  Rolling down, to be precise.

  It’s possible that Mesa had been planning this since he evolved, or maybe he was planning this ever since I told him he needed to evolve at the beginning of the battle, but no. I’m sure that he’d been planning on doing something just like this ever since we left Azalea, ever since we saw the Yanmega swarm.

  Mesa really did learn from experience, hum.

  All at once, boulders covered in the purple energy of Ancient Power broke the surface of the cloud and fell down towards the steel floor. They were at least twice the size of Metang and at least sixty fell all over the sky.

  There’s nowhere to hide.

  Below, Metang raced down the air cutting at an optimal angle to reach the Claydol before the boulders hit him. Mesa wasn’t idle, and shot Psybeam and Hyper Beam at the incoming pokemon. The steel type raised one hand and hefted a Light Screen on its claws, put it in front of his body, and dashed through all the moves, accumulating more and more bruises, and even the loss of whole parts of his steel skin.

  The last thing I saw before the rocks ended my line of sight was Metang pulling back his arm as he reached the Mesa.

  The boulders slammed into the ground all at once, at the two pokemon, and the whole battlefield, stands, and even the structure of the stadium shook and swayed before pink energy raced all over and stabilized the place.

  It was just then that I noticed that Mesa had made a sacrificial play.

  ---

  I admired Mesa’s work as a group of ground and rock types began to excavate the newly made rock floor, searching the area where the two pokemon were entombed.

  These boulders… he must’ve been making them ever since the sand went up using his mastery of Sand and Rock Tomb to turn sand into rock and then gather them together into massive boulders bigger than a Hariyama. Then he held them up there until Metang wasted his trump card, that massive Confusion explosion.

  To make sure Metang would waste specifically something that could deal with the rocks, he used a scenario similar to this one; the large rock wave. They were both forces of nature that you couldn’t dodge.

  And he also had the foresight to use Ancient Power.

  His thought process was clear looking back, as there’s no telling if just normal falling boulders would be enough to put down Metang, so he used the speeding propriety of Ancient Power to accelerate the rocks, making them hit with a lot more force, hopefully enough to put down the steel type.

  And he also let them all fall down together instead of staggering them, as Metang, fast as he was with his Confusion, could probably weave around them if given the chance.

  I was right before, about not having enough information.

  I couldn’t have guided him into doing this, not the sand ceiling, not the wall, not the boulders, not the Double Team he sent up as distraction… not the sacrificial play. It bothered me that I hadn’t thought about that possibility, as while many young trainers don’t think about double knockout, but it was a common tactic in advanced tournaments.

  I have a long way to go too, it seems.

  Looking around the battlefield, at all the destruction, at all the power used here just five minutes ago… I really couldn’t command this much power without prepping, but also, to suddenly go from what he could do before to creating a massive moving wave of rock the size of a large building on one hand while also creating a meteor fall made of constructed boulders empowered by Ancient Power on the other.

  I could say that this was the power of evolution, but I knew it wasn’t. I could say it’s the power of a Claydol, but I had already seen lots of Claydol fighting at Conference matches.

  This was just Mesa.

  Ridiculous.

  I heard the sound of steps behind me and looked over my shoulder. Gym Leader Jasmine was there, climbing up the steps, and on her right hand was her badge, the Mineral Badge.

  “Gym Leader Jasmine,” I said, turning around and standing straight, “I… shouldn’t we wait for them to free our pokemon?”

  “There’s no need to wait, Trainer Scott,” she said after a small laugh, “If Metang was conscious, he’d already have freed himself and your pokemon, so it’s either a double knockout or your victory, in the two cases you’re entitled to your badge.”

  “I see.” I took the badge, pulled out my casing, and slotted the badge there just as one of the workers of the Gym waved the two of us down.

  Jasmine and I walked down the platform and got close, following a hastily made path through the boulders. We saw one of Metang’s bulky arms sticking out from under three boulders.

  Jasmine nodded to the crew, and two massive Aggron came and lifted the rocks one by one.

  Under it were the two pokemon. The Metang was upside down with both arms sprawled in two directions, the one we saw already, and the other had his claws over Mesa’s large head, not grabbing since he didn’t have strength, but it was somehow funny how he was able to grab the Claydol before they were smashed down.

  I stepped over the steel type, and crouched down to get a look at my now larger pokemon.

  Yep, evolution had been useless.

  Mesa was, once again, very cracked.