Chapter 60- Oak (Complete)

Lance. Fucking Lance. What he wanted and why he was here didn’t matter, not now. What mattered was that I needed a way out of here, a way without involving Sabrina. I was sure the two of us could find an escape, but I would never doom her to a life on the run simply to prevent my own arrest. Not her. Never her.

I stared at him, noting the Pokéballs on his belt. The good news was that the only Pokémon he had released right now was his Dragonite. However, the bad news was that it wasn't the Dragonite I would have wanted to face first. It was muscular and looked like it could bend steel with its teeth, but it wasn't the one that had been the downfall of elite trainers in the region. It wasn't the one I would have loved to surprise with my attack. On the plus side, it meant my surprise was more likely to work.

In the space between blinks, Dragonite found itself surrounded. I smiled as the plan began. Gai and Broly went first, the vanguard in all things for a very good reason. They were fast, covering the space between them and Dragonite in less time than it would take me to blink. While this Dragonite had the best grasp of extreme speed, I wasn't surprised when it moved its head out of the way of Broly's slash and blocked Gai's kick. It didn't matter though. I had called them the vanguard, but a better term would have been distraction. Kenpachi and Snorlax landed with the real attacks. Whatever defense Dragonite managed to raise against Gai and Broly's surprise attack was washed away as the two physical behemoths fell on it with full power and very little desire to hold back. Lance just watched from behind his Pokémon, where he had quickly retreated after the attack. I spoke to Ino in my head, and she nodded at the tactic I suggested. Was it cheating? Maybe. Did I care? No. Ino stretched her psychic influence towards the belt at Lance's waist, but it was a waste as a dark distorted glow surrounded the champion and completely blocked off her influence. I scowled at it. What the hell was that?

"I have a lot to thank you for, Donnell Oak. After all, if you hadn't been the one to build a team made of impressive Pokémon from all over the world, I might never have had the idea to check the remains of Mewtwo's destruction for members to add to my team. They called me crazy, reckless, and stupid. They called me 'Lord' when I returned with her. I don't know a lot about her species, but the one thing I do know is that she isn't done growing yet. I can feel it. She needs strong opponents. Let's see if the boy who beat Claire and Agatha can do what all the elders of the Wataru clan so far have failed to do. Let us evolve, Donnell Oak." What was with all the elite trainers and going mad? It was getting a bit repetitive.

I was forced to reevaluate my assessment when a shadow built around Lance's body. That definitely wasn't evaluative. I watched in shock as a shadow actually emerged from his own shadow. The shadow turned out to be a Pokémon that looked like a lizard. It had a black head with two horns and stripes on its sides, short stubby arms hiding a unique form of strength, and a tail that got lighter towards its end. I recognized the Pokémon immediately and almost paled in fear. Drakloak, the second evolutionary stage of Dragapult, a Pokémon that broke the meta. Fuck. This was almost as bad as Lance having a legendary on his team. Drakloak? What the fuck? I was sure they didn't even exist in this universe. The only reason I wasn't pissing myself with fear was because Ino was well-rested and Kenpachi was roaring for a fight. Drakloak had a weakness to both Dark and Fairy types, if my memory served me well. I hoped it did. I wasn't ready to face a ghost dragon. Even Hydreigon had been a pain to fight against those Rocket twins, and they weren't the best trainers. Speaking of which, what happened to the rest of Team Rocket? I just somehow knew that I would be finding out the answer to that question sooner than I'd like. For now, though, I gave Ino her orders and relayed Kenpachi's. I would be drawing one of the attackers away from Dragonite, but Kisame would be taking his place. I silently begged Igneel to remain above the clouds. Lance had missed him in his approach, so our surprise attack was still feasible, at least.

Not everything had gone to shit. Just most of it.

Kisame rushed into Dragonite with an aura of water surrounding her just as Kenpachi began his retreat. He walked backward, keeping his face toward the dragon, and when it tried to pounce on him, sensing some sort of weakness in my Pokémon, Kisame was there. She was a storm bound in flesh as she moved. Every swipe of her tail was matched with a blast of water that could rip through solid stone with ease. Against Dragonite’s body, the water broke, barely eliciting a wince from the durable creature. It didn't matter, though. Kisame wasn't the one going to be causing the real damage. That honor belonged to Snorlax and Gai. Their punches might as well have been cannon shots for all the damage they did. Post-evolution, and after months of training to get used to his body and hone his strength, Gai was living up to the mantle of Pseudo-legendary. The team was all roughly on the same level now, so it was difficult to point out any Pokémon's growth as a standout. Speaking of growth, though, I turned my gaze to Broly, watching him zip around his opponent, harrying him with his stone axes. I needed a way for Broly to reliably damage much more durable opponents. When I said the team was on the same level, I lied. More often than not, Broly could hold out against any member of the team, using his speed to cause chaos and dodge attacks by the skin of his teeth. The only problem was that he was almost never able to beat any of them. It always ended in draws. He was strong, but the team was beginning to leave him behind. That could not be allowed to happen. I could already see it in his eyes whenever Igneel hit a new feat or when Kenpachi easily mastered a new rock-type maneuver. He felt like he was being left behind by the youngsters, and I couldn't let that continue. I'd find something for him. Extreme Speed was an excellent equalizer, but now we needed to do a bit more than equalize. We had to go beyond, plus ultra (couldn't resist).

The fight between Drakloak and my ghost hunters was nothing more than a tense standoff as things stood. The ghost dragon just remained standing in front of them, and both Ino and Kenpachi watched it tensely. They could feel my tension about it, so they knew this couldn't be an opponent to underestimate. I was thankful for that. The Dreepy on our opponent's horn giggled something, and it blurred into motion. It went straight for Kenpachi, and that was its first mistake. It dove at him, and when Kenpachi tried to swat it away with his tail, it flipped above it, giggling until it flipped right into a moonblast from Ino. Lance scowled as his Pokémon was sent flying, but it didn't remain there for long, looking like it took no damage at all from that attack. It was actually right back on its way to my Pokémon as if nothing had happened. It was much faster this time, but a simple stomp from Kenpachi generated an earthquake that robbed it of its footing, and another moonblast from Ino sent it flying again. And again, it came back. This time, it maneuvered through the shaking ground with the sure footing of a dancer and dodged Ino's attacks expertly, as if it was in a ballet show. Now, Lance was smiling. I couldn't see why, though.

When it got close to Kenpachi, it found itself on the receiving end of a punch from a fist cloaked entirely in darkness. Kenpachi's fists didn't have much reach or even much space to coil and generate power, but with how quickly Drakloak was moving, and how hard Kenpachi's armor was, a very stoppable force crashed right into the immovable object. Think fly and windshield. Of course, that wasn't exactly what happened. Drakloak folded around the fist and barfed out an ethereal specter on Kenpachi's body. It looked exactly like a ghost would in a stereotypical cartoon: just a white cloud in the shape of anime ghosts. I didn't understand the move until the specter latched onto Kenpachi's face and just exploded. I found myself gaping in shock as Kenpachi reeled from the attack. He didn't fall, but he was quite stunned.

He stumbled backward and kept stumbling. What the fuck was that attack? Drakloak tried jumping at Kenpachi again to press the attack, but Ino grabbed him in her telekinesis and threw him right back with a wave of the hand that contained her spoon. The spoon itself was a lovely idea Oak had had. We'd been using it for close to a year now, and I just had to admit that she'd never been stronger. For Alakazam, it worked as a focus, but for her, it was more of an amplifier. I couldn't explain the relationship between psychics and silver. It might also have something to do with the fact that she was a crossbreed of a Gardevoir and an Alakazam. She shared more traits with her father's family than any crossbreed I'd ever heard of before. I knew Oak had been doing some weird shit back in the day, but I still hadn't been able to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding my right hand.

Ino didn't care, of course. What did it matter to her why she was so much better than any other of her species? She only cared that she was. Drakloak tried coming back, but Ino teleported to it and moved her spoon surrounded with the aura of psychocut around it a few times before teleporting back. It had cuts along its body, all areas that should have made it difficult for it to move. No vital areas, of course. No one was stupid enough to actually kill one of Lance's Pokémon. A pissed-off trio of Pseudo-legendaries would have very little difficulty tearing through my team as we were now. I focused my energy on taking out the Pokémon Lance had already released while working on my escape. I wouldn't be beating him. With only two of his Pokémon, my entire team was well and truly occupied. I could only imagine what would happen if he tossed out THE DRAGONITE: the one that was said to be strong enough to change the weather with its presence, the one that could probably go toe-to-toe with Oak's. If that happened, I'd be fucked. Very fucked.

"Let’s kick it up a notch, shall we?" Lance asked rhetorically, and I answered in my head. 'No, No. We really shouldn’t.' If things kept getting more and more complex, Tsunade would be forced to get into the battle, and say I was playing favorites at your own peril, but I wasn’t going to let her get involved in a fight like this. Not now, at least.

Of course, the question had been rhetorical. What did he care about my lack of verbal reply? The Champion(?) grabbed a Poké Ball from his belt and sent out another Pokémon. I held my breath as the red light began to coalesce into a Pokémon, and I heard a draconic roar. I calmed quickly as I realized it was much higher in pitch than the one I really didn’t want to hear. When the Pokémon came into view, I sighed in both relief and exasperation. Relief because it wasn’t Dragonite, and exasperation because I knew exactly what would happen next.

I was proven right as the Pokémon let out another screech that was matched with one from far above the clouds. Igneel was going to get to meet some of his family for the first time. Of course, he greeted his uncle(?) in the only way he knew how. Body cloaked in flames, he crashed right into Lance’s Charizard from above. Both Pokémon let out matching roars as they wrestled in the air, and Igneel led them straight to the ground. I smiled because there was little else I could do. Did Igneel disobey orders? Yes. Did he also make it so we wouldn’t have to reroute anyone from their present tasks to focus on the new arrival? Yes. I guess shifting circumstances were to blame. Surely my own Pokémon respected and listened to me. As I assured myself of that, it rang hollow even to my own ears. Fuck.

Igneel and Charizard crashed right into the foliage, setting it alight as they passed. When they landed, they went right into a melee of claws and tails. Igneel seemed to be the better scrapper from the get-go, but once Charizard adapted to Igneel’s aggression and style, he began to pull ahead. Slowly and surely, he locked out Igneel’s claws and began to outmanoeuvre him. A swipe from Igneel was dodged with contemptuous ease, and the elder fire dragon lashed out with a fist straight to Igneel’s midsection, nearly flooring my Pokémon. I scowled as Igneel moved backward a bit before diving right at his opponent again. What he lacked in skill and experience, he made up for with aggression. I honestly doubted Lance’s Charizard had ever faced an opponent as battle-crazy and fight-hungry as Igneel.

Turning back to Drakloak’s battle and doing my best to study the new variable, I noted that Kenpachi had found his feet once again and seemed more cautious of his opponent. Good. Since evolution, he’d so rarely been challenged that he was running the risk of growing complacent. If I was being honest, the same applied to me. Fighting Lance now told me all I needed to know about me and my team. We weren’t ready. They were holding back and still dealing with us like this. I could see Dragonite fighting the urge to just smash through Snorlax’s guard before focusing on Broly and Gai as they zipped around him. I could see Charizard avoid making any attacks that seemed likely to end the fight he had going on with Igneel.

Only Drakloak seemed to be going all out, but Ino and Kenpachi were doing a fantastic job of keeping him at bay. I was forced to recall Lance’s words. Evolution. That’s what he sought with this fight. He wanted to evolve his Drakloak, and he wanted me to help him. Help him by fighting him with all I had. The other battles mattered little to him. He trusted his team to defeat mine. His rapt attention was on Drakloak. He wanted to evolve the ghost dragon, and it was in his best interest if the fight went on for as long as possible.

The only choices I seemed to have were to either play along and hope I’d be able to escape after the evolution, or to deny Lance his goal entirely and find a way to leave. The second option was the most dangerous. He’d already admitted to me that he was here for the evolution and little more. If I denied him that, what was the guarantee that I wouldn’t have an unsatisfied champion chasing me down? On the other hand, what was the guarantee that he would let me go after achieving his aim? His arrival at this time couldn’t be a coincidence. He clearly had some agreement with the government of Kanto. A conundrum if I’ve ever seen one.

XXXXXXXXX - THE PROFESSOR

I watched Donnell’s fight against Lance with what felt like pride burning against my chest. Kanto’s news agencies must have been making a killing from all the drama that had taken place in the last few months, and this seemed to be the coup de grâce.

“You won’t interfere, Dad?” David asked, and I turned to my second-born son with a scowl. He should have been the disappointment, plateauing at ACE when his brothers were on the route to ascending the pinnacles of business and Pokémon training. But if I was ever honest with myself, he was the one I loved the most. He was the one my heart went out for every second, but he was also the one who had the easiest time getting under my skin.

“No. I will not. The President is making a move now. He desires me to make a move to aid my son so he can have the upper hand in our relationship. He desires to make me a fugitive of the law so he can run roughshod over a region he wasn’t even born in. The region needs me to remain right where I am,” I replied, keeping my eyes on the screen. My greatest project fought against the Champion, and even after being a trainer for less than two full years, he was still putting up a fantastic show.

No trainer before and no trainer after would ever show the speed of growth Donnell did. The blood of the father of all Pokémon ran in his veins, and the blood was breeding true. The only other survivor from that project, Sabrina, was also showing beautiful progress. Except that with her, we’d tried to see what would happen if we were to breed psychic genes into a human embryo. She was widely recognized as the world’s most powerful human psychic. A specimen beyond any other, showing similar power to an actual psychic Pokémon when every psychic human that came before was barely able to do parlour tricks.

“So you won’t help him. He could die. His team could die!” David stressed, and I wondered where I went wrong to give my sons so little faith in me. Dontaryon courted foreigners, Donnell did not trust me at all, and even David was beginning to show rebellion.

“Lance would never. The boy remembers how he became champion. He would never court my wrath so blatantly. Even now, his team holds back. He will obtain what he seeks from Donnell, and he will leave. To do more is beyond him. I am sure the elders of Blackthorne pounded that idea into his head before he arrived here. They remember my wrath,” I said, assuring my sons of their brother’s safety. Lance would not dare. The boy could not harm what was mine.

“Now hush. I must focus on that unique specimen,” I said, ending the conversation. I watched as the strange Dragon-type Pokémon that I was 60% sure was part Ghost type moved between Ino and Kenpachi in an aggressive dance. Donnell was showing that strange knowledge that had to come from his blood again. Even with insufficient evidence and the barest of hints, he’d already sussed out which of his teammates would be best suited for the strange Pokémon. Mew’s blood was something else. The ability to discover things about Pokémon with nothing but intuition was guaranteed to make him into the next great Pokémon researcher, if only he had the temperament. But I was beginning to suspect that temperament would do little to hold back a trainer who discovered new evolutions and new species of Pokémon in his leisure time. He was something else.

The dragon danced out of the way of a rainbow-colored blast from Ino’s spoon, showing his reptilian nature in the way he snaked around the attack. His dodge placed him right into the path of Tyranitar’s lashing tail, surrounded in Dark-type energy. The Dragon was forced to dive right back before being captured in Ino’s telekinesis. It broke out of it with nary a flex of Ghost-type energy, but the delay had been enough for Tyranitar’s tail to send it flying into the foliage. It moved into the path of the fight between the Charizards. Both fire drakes showed little caution for the smaller Pokémon in their midst as they fought in a storm of claws and flames. The way things looked to me, much of the Viridian greenery would be alight at the end of this battle as neither of the trainers was inclined to ask their Pokémon to turn it down. My home city was probably going to be in a bad state, but it was nothing unexpected. Fights between elites seldom left much standing in their wakes.

The camera panned to the fight against the Dragonite, and I sighed as I watched Donnell’s team show their lack of experience in fighting as a unit even after all the training they’d received. Much like their trainer, they were more suited to being alone. Donnell never learned how Pokémon were influenced by their trainers. As it stood, with the blood in his veins, I was willing to bet that he influenced his Pokémon even more than any other trainer did. It was obvious in the way they fought and acted. They were all solitary creatures for the most part, much like he was. They were a silent bunch. With the exception of the Charizard and Tyranitar, much of his team would barely make a sound until it was needed. They were also vicious. They showed the same propensity for violence and lack of hesitation that Donnell showed as a child. They were quick to kill. For a bunch that was mostly made up of bred Pokémon, it was quite a rarity. They were also wild, just like he had been as a child and still is, even now.

They showed most of those traits as they fought against Lance’s pseudo-legendary. Milotic proved to be the biggest threat as she sniped the Dragon Pokémon with powerful lances and beams of ice whenever it made the mistake of letting its guard down. Snorlax occupied much of its attention in a savage melee, and both Kleavour and Kommo-o did their own thing. In and out of the fight, they darted, preventing their comrade from being overwhelmed by the stronger Pokémon. Their teamwork was basic but functional. If it were just a bit better, Milotic would be able to launch even stronger and more devastating attacks without fear of hitting her teammate. The two close-range fighters would not need to take turns as they attacked because they would already be accustomed to each other's movements. However, they were making progress as the fight continued. That was another trait they shared with their trainer: they learned fast.

A/N: The fight with Lance will conclude in the next chapter, and two chapters later, we will reach the tournament (or will we?). Stay tuned, I guess.