Chapter 11 - 3rd Badge Challenge

As Kyra made her way to her position, I couldn’t help the feeling of excitement pulsing through me.

The 3rd badge was when you could really call yourself a trainer. A lot of people become trainers, only to stop at 1 or 2 badges. Once you have your 3rd badge, you are eligible to take tasks from the Rangers and are expected to help in the defense of any towns nearby that need assistance. When under 2 badges, you could only take certain requests in the towns rather than on the route.

“Let the battle begin!”

I quickly looked at the battlefield, where Kyra had chosen a dodrio and Gym Leader Perry had sent out a vileplume.

“Plume!”

The dodrio dashed forward, clearly using some sort of energy to empower itself as it blurred toward the vileplume.

Meanwhile, the vileplume was spewing out copious amounts of spores, though I could see different colours of spores. It was a combined poison and stun spore attack!

Before the spores could spread much, the dodrio was upon the vileplume all three beaks heading for it. The vileplume tried to twirl and dodge, but the dodrio quickly adjusted its thrusts ensuring it would be hit by at least one.

One of its beaks plucked a chunk out of the vileplumes flower and another slammed its body sending the vileplume flying. The dodrio chased and before the vileplume could recover was sending its beaks towards the vileplumes flesh.

Luckily, Perry chose this time to recall and forfeit her pokemon sparing it the injury.

“You’ve got talent, let’s see if you can follow through. Go, Laddie!” Perry said as she released a quilladin to the battlefield.

Laddie was large and imposing. With hardened spikes and scars along its body. It had many more spikes than what I remember from “before”.

“QUILL!” It roared in a deep voice and the dodrio looked visibly shaken.

“Come on, Patrick!” Kyra yelled and Patrick shook it off. Although it looked like Patrick had easily taken out that vileplume, it turns out he didn’t come out unscathed. He looked to be poisoned and mildly stunned.

Nevertheless, Patrick dashed toward Laddie in an evasive manner to dodge the spikes that Laddie seemed to spew out at a steady rate. Although Patrick was fast, he was still struck by a couple of spikes before reaching Laddie.

Patrick let out a flurry of thrusts towards Laddie, who tried to engage in grappling the dodrio.

For a while, Patrick darted in and out and all around Laddie, landing multiple hits that Laddie shrugged off. During this time Laddie wasn’t just taking it, he would shoot spikes when Patrick disengaged and when Patrick got close, he would skewer and try to grapple the dodrio.

Slowly, Patrick began to get hit more often, though he didn’t give up. He continued to try to damage the quilladin tank while his injuries piled on.

When Patrick was mid lunge towards Laddie, Kyra recalled him.

“Sorry buddy, I know you had more in you, but I can’t let you get hurt.” The mic picked up a whisper from Kyra. She withdrew a different pokeball and said, “Gina, let’s finish this!”

A houndoom appeared on the battlefield already howling. When Laddie shot some spikes at her, she instantly ceased and started to evade and approach. When Gina was halfway to Laddie, she let out some embers from her mouth, causing Laddie to dodge and cease shooting spikes.

At this point Gina bade a beeline to Laddie, showing her true speed, and building up a flame in her mouth. Laddie was on unsure footing due to just dodging, so they released a plethora of larger spikes towards Gina.

Gina was undeterred and lowered her head, deflecting the spikes with her horns and lunging at Laddie with a supercharged fire fang. Laddie threw up his arm to block, and Gina’s fangs sunk into it. An explosive flame obliterated the arm and was on its way to hit the quilladin’s chest when Laddie was recalled.

“The challenger is victorious!”