This time, he was already outside in the open-air arena, tending to some of the other Pelipper when Callan arrived—

“Ah, there you are!” he called out, watching as the Pelipper on his right hand took off, letting out a squawking noise before heading back to that one particular tree that the nine of them called home.

Holy shit, if things were going to keep up he might have to have another aviary constructed just for the Pelippers… but knowing how territorial Mike was, well…

“Bring out your Pokémon, and we can start. You get first move, too.”

Now it was a question of what he was going to be packing.

Callan waved in response, seeing Alexei tending to a set of mail birds. "It's been a while since I've done this." He replied, 18 years to be exact. Still, it excited him to get back into things.

"Come out, Vodka."



What erupted from the Pokeball was a Pokemon of unusual color and striation. A Zoroark, clearly, but with much different physical appearances than usual. Once warped by the Spacetime Distortion, Vodka had turned into this form. He was eager to put him through his paces, and see what the Zoroark was capable of. As Alexei allowed him the first move, he did so obligingly.

"Nasty Plot." He ordered.

The Zoroark's immediate vicinity flowed with an impregnably malicious energy, flowing into his body. Given that he was given time, Zoroark did so twice, vastly increasing its special attack power by four stages, essentially tripling its power output.

Alexei Ivanov

He almost guffawed at the name of the Pokémon that came out to meet him—before the laugh was cut abruptly short at the sight of what had emerged from the red beam of light across the field.

“Where… did you find that?” he inquired, blinking—then realizing that they would have to talk about this later because holy shit he came out guns blazing.

Looks like it was time to get serious.

One singular note pierced the air, and his Salamence came flying from somewhere, hovering on his side of the field.

Some moves didn’t have any tells, however the glaring moue from the Salamence’s Intimidating stare hopefully threw this… this strange looking Zoroark off its game.

In response, after the initial moue, said draconid pulled off an even more terrifying one in the form of a Scary Face. Well, one wasn’t going to be enough so he did it twice, too, before letting out a challenging roar across the space.

---

Salamence used Scary Face, twice!

Oh boy, looks like he was going to be heavily tested with Alexei's choice of Pokemon. Salamences were beautiful creatures, dangerous in the wild, and incredibly powerful. Rare was it that a Bagon would ever be able to achieve its dream of flying, but it was always wonderful to see one whose dreams were realized. The thought of having to fight one almost saddened Callan, but that was neither here or now.

Callan moved up to his Zoroark and gently placed a hand on its shoulder, you got this, he inwardly thought to Vodka, before stepping back and out of the Pokemon battle stage. "He's a Zorua I got, I found myself stuck in a distortion, Vodka came out like this." He replied, "I think he looks cool, I don't know how it happened though." Callan stopped however, as the battle was about to begin.

Scary Face was unavoidable, at least, the first one was. The snarling face of the Salamence sent a cold fear writhing inside his Zoroark, stifening its joints, its oppressive aura immediately slowed down anything that it deigned to attack. Unfortunately for Zoroark, this was never something that Callan intended to dodge. By it's nature, the Pokemon did not have much in terms of physical or special defense, and now bereft of its speed necessary to dodge, the only option left available to it was to attack as much as possible. Even though the Intimidate triggered, it would not affect his moveset, Callan thought, as all of Vodka's moves were special based.

Channeling the the Aura it had been charging for a while, the Zoroark channeled its energies and sent out energy stars, in the form of Swift, heat seeking missiles that traced its opponents movements with sharp accuracy. These would hurt, given that they were triple the attack power of its normal version, alongside Vodka's same type attack bonus.

Alexei Ivanov

Maybe he should’ve gone with Kyouya—

No, wait, this was a better choice, coincidentally.

He could tell the other man was quick on their feet in getting out of sticky situations, and there was something else he was looking for, if he was being honest with himself.

Let’s see how creative you can get… he thought as the Salamence saw the incoming barrage of—that was an unexpected choice, however it was also a well-thought of one.

A sharp note, and this time there was an avalanche of boulders—a Rock Slide raining down and around the area; mostly to provide protection, but there were some other bits and pieces that had been triggered far enough to cause the strange-looking Zoroark to move!

Well, even with the rocky ‘protective shield’ the projectiles from the Zoroark still came slicing through. Cunning.

---

Salamence used a defensive Rock Slide!

The stars from Callan's Zoroark had been tripled in power, and so the strength of that force, combined with the boost from Nasty Plot, equaled roughly to just under two Hyper Beams. As the Salamence's Rock Slide collided against it, the damage was dampened, its velocity abosrbed by the rocks, but it still would cut through, damaging the Salamence somewhat.

Meanwhile Vodka himself had a predicament, while the rock slide was used as a defensive measure, there was still a sleet of it being aimed towards himself. Since the majority had been on the Salamence's side, it would likely not knock out in one blow, but that was a non-factor. In the end, Callan knew the weaknesses of his Pokemon, it had terrible defensive capabilities and no defensive moves. His only capacity was to overpower the Salamence with raw damage. But he could not just stand there and allow his Zoroark to take damage completely. "Vodka, Bitter Malice!"

He yelled, as he saw the rocks forming above the arena. In tandem with the stones flying into the air, so too did Vodka's own powers come up. A black pool of Ghost Energy bubbled underneath the Zoroark's body, as tendrils of deep, navy purple and black erupted upwards like viscous tentacles, spiralling up and slicing the rock slides with its offensive power. The stones would dig into the Zoroark, but with his use of it as a defensive capacity, it would lessen the blow, though its skin, arms, legs, would be dug into would sharp stones and rocks, lacerating its body with various cuts. His Zoroark did not have much HP, and it showed.

Simultaneously, the tendrils would then fly out from the air, arcing downwards towards the Salamence like a tsunami wave of ghost energy, hoping to crash down against it and hitting its mark. Much like before, the damage would be amplified by Vodka's ghost typing and Special Attack increase.

• Vodka uses BITTER MALICE to slice up the ROCK SLIDE and dampened its damage against him.
• Vodka redirects the BITTER MALICE towards Alexei's Salamence.

Alexei Ivanov

Thankfully the aerial rocky barricade held, however there was something—he was very sure there was something coming from the other side.

“Careful!” was all he would say from his end of the field, and the Salamence backed away—however for some strange reason the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up. Like there was something bad coming. Big, and bad.

The Salamence could sense the intent in the air as well, backing away and watching as the boulders were sliced apart and definitely caught off-guard by the sudden force of the attack!

A surprised roar came from the Salamence, and boy he did not like that at all. Taking things into his own hands, the draconid then flew low, close to the ground, before charging up energy between his claws.

Once he was close enough to the strange Zoroark, the Salamence then reared up, attempting to slice with a Dragon Claw before attempting to back down and place more distance between himself and the other Pokémon.

---

Salamence is hit by the attack; and flies in low before using a close-range Dragon Claw!

When the Salamence flew towards his Vodka, Callan knew there was no conventional way for his Zoroark to dodge, not now, since his speed had been crippled to a third of what it originally was. But still, it was what he needed to do at the moment. With the Salamence flying head on at his Zoroark and having sustained two prior attacks, he had perhaps one last chance to make it count. There was no retreat that was available to his Pokemon, and so there was only one option, to take the hit and make something successful out of it.

As the Salamence flew towards Zoroark, the Zoroark released two Swifts, firing forwards towards the Salamence, who would have to take the brunt of the energy blast in order to strike Vodka. If the Dragon Claw struck Zoroark, Salamence would have to fly directly into an energy blast with the force of approximately four Hyper Beams behind it, with it Fainting before it would reach Vodka, who would then faint soon after.

• With no ability to avoid, Vodka focuses the full force of his power into 2 Swifts and firing into Salamence, accepting the blow of the Dragon Claw as a result.
  

Alexei Ivanov

This was going to be a close fight—

Considering what the Zoroark had done earlier, how the hell did that barrage of projectiles hit much harder—however fact of the matter was that the other attack, which he suspected was a Ghost-type attack—had done considerable damage before his Salamence had gone in for the close-range attack…

Taking the Dragon Claw, the Zoroark—or, well, the strange iteration of it—then lashed out with a head-on attack, literally pouring everything into that last—

Wait, did the Zoroark just literally throw everything in that—the Salamence roared as the bright flash of light caught him off-guard as he flew backwards, trying to avoid the brunt of the attack; which was the risk in and on itself because he’d decided to take the fight to the other instead of staying at a range.

Alexei had to fish out his shades as the attack went off with the force of a flash-bang grenade.

Once the light had faded—

“Oh, what?”

Because not only was the Zoroark down, even his own Salamence was slumped against the rubble of the earlier boulders that he’d conjured up in a defensive screen.

“Hot dang, man,” he said with a whistle as he recalled the Salamence back into his Moon Ball as he made his way across the field.

“You have to tell me more about the Zoroark… you mentioned something about a distortion…?” he trailed off, waiting for the other to continue, if he was willing to share the rest.

---

Salamence is hit by the attack; and flies in low before using a close-range Dragon Claw!

Callan's heart pulsed in anticipation, as the dome of Bitter Malice faded away, and the scene before them was unveiled. Both Zoroark and Salamence had fainted on the floor. Callan paused, as he smiled, and returned Vodka back into his POkeball. "Thank you boy." He whispered, kissing the Pokeball. "Take a good rest, you've earned it."

Callan sucked in a breath of air, now for the evaluation, he assumed. He turned towards Alexei, faint smile on his lips. "Oh, yeah... weirdest thing, I was in the mall studying for an exam when a space-time distortion hit and turned my boy white." Callan paused, "Then he evolved soon after, and I don't think I've seen any Pokemon in the wild do that kind of move before, the warping shadow technique? It's called Bitter Malice apparently, I read it in some obscure Sinnoh text online."

Callan paused, "I can tell you about it over coffee when we wait for the healing at a Pokemon Center, if you like."

Alexei Ivanov

“At the—this happened at the mall?!” he exclaimed once he’d closed the distance while fishing out something from his jacket pocket.

The fact of the matter was that these ‘distortions’ as they were had a tendency to appear at random places, but holy shit, this one appeared right in the middle of the mall?!

“Did—did you notice like anything strange happen around your Zorua before he changed color from black to white?” he followed up.

“Because I have a Braviary who… well, he’s not exactly the same, either… since when does a Braviary know how to use Psychic-type attacks?”

He’d had to keep that particular one isolated from all the other avians because of how strange… how unreal was it… damn.

“If you can show me that online thing, I would appreciate it. There’s… very little information that the League has about these ‘distortions’ at the current time as we’re still uncovering answers.”

He then gestured for the other to hold their hand out.

“Just because we ended in a tie doesn’t mean I’m not going to acknowledge that—in fact it’s rather the opposite. Even though I literally threw my Salamence at you—I mean, I can tell you have the experience and came out literally guns blazing. Plus you got real creative despite the power difference.”

Once he was done with that, he then dropped the small, glittering metallic object into Callan’s hand.



“Congratulations! Oh, and I’ll take you on the coffee offer.”