"Gyaa!"
The moment Gyarados appeared, it saw Reiji—the human it remembered all too well. It had been a long time, and suddenly, it felt like it could take him on again.
It was no longer the stupid fish from back then. It was Gyarados, ruler of the sea. There was no way it would bow to the same human twice.
Reiji raised an eyebrow at the way Gyarados threw its Intimidate around without restraint. This stupid fish was getting a little too confident. Maybe he should send out his own Gyarados and let it teach its little junior how to behave.
Butterfree's strongest hidden card was its powerful mental strength. Dealing with this stupid fish would be easy enough.
But Reiji didn't want to reveal Butterfree's Psychic power yet. If he ran into a stronger opponent later, that surprise could still steal him a win.
With Butterfree's current mental strength, if it caught an opponent off guard at the same level and poured everything into a Psychic attack, it could take that opponent down. A card like that couldn't be wasted in the group stage.
So Reiji recalled Butterfree into its Poké Ball. "Butterfree, get some rest. We'll leave this one to someone else."
"Facing this Gyarados, Reiji has given up on sweeping with one Pokémon and chosen to switch instead! Could this mean he's feeling the pressure?"
Rai-nii?
Gulzar understood perfectly. Pressure? From one Gyarados? Not a chance. Something bigger was coming.
"Go, Gyarados!"
The Poké Ball Reiji threw was the best answer to the announcer's question.
"Gyaraaaa!"
The moment Reiji's Gyarados appeared, a stronger Intimidate swept across the field, crashing into Gulzar and his Gyarados without restraint. Even the nearby staff were caught in it. Gulzar's Gyarados lost its arrogance in an instant.
"Unbelievable! Another Gyarados! Are all Trainers from the Orange Archipelago walking around with one? And Reiji's Gyarados is even larger than Gulzar's! How will Gulzar respond?"
A wave of chatter swept through the audience. Everyone was talking about whether Trainers from the Orange Archipelago all knew how to catch Gyarados, because it seemed like every one of them had one.
The competitors watching from the sidelines focused on something else. They stared at the sheer size of Reiji's Gyarados. If they were the ones standing across from it, that pressure would be no joke.
"Gulzar moves first!"
The referee's flag dropped. Gulzar forced himself to calm down, shook off the pressure from Intimidate, and shouted to Gyarados as much to steady himself as to command it.
"Gyarados, Hyper Beam!"
Starting with Hyper Beam right away?
Reiji hadn't expected Gulzar to open with his strongest shot. Fine, then.
"Gyarados, Hyper Beam."
Both Gyarados began gathering power in their mouths. Gulzar's Gyarados finished first and fired a destructive orange beam across the field.
Almost at the same time, Reiji's Gyarados unleashed a thicker blast of light.
The two Hyper Beams slammed into each other and exploded with terrifying force.
Boom!
The shockwave burst outward. Eevee leaped in front of Reiji and used Protect, barely holding back the blast.
Gulzar had no such protection. He could only grip the metal railing as hard as he could to keep from being blown away.
The referee had it worst. Aside from Reiji and Gulzar, he was the closest person to the explosion. The shockwave threw him backward, slamming him into the wall and knocking him unconscious.
The audience was farther away, so they fared better, but the wind from the blast still forced everyone to duck and shield themselves. Hats went flying everywhere.
When the explosion finally settled and the smoke cleared, the Ice Field was gone.
In its place was a pool.
The blast had vaporized and melted the entire field, turning it into water.
Gyarados was a Water-type Pokémon, so it could still fight in a pool just fine.
"Ahem. Due to an unexpected incident, the referee has been taken away for treatment. Given the special circumstances of this match, the on-field referee will be removed. Both competitors may continue."
The announcer quickly regained control of the scene and kept the match going. From this point on, there would be no referee on the field. Whichever Gyarados became unable to battle first would lose.
"Gyarados, Hyper Beam!"
The moment the match resumed, Reiji raised his hand and called for another Hyper Beam.
The crowd stirred at once.
They had heard him clearly. Hyper Beam again. A second Hyper Beam, fired immediately after the first.
That wasn't supposed to be possible.
Referee, that Gyarados is cheating!
Too bad the referee had already been carried away. There was no referee left.
When Reiji's Gyarados fired a second Hyper Beam from its mouth, the competitors watching the match shot to their feet. It really could fire Hyper Beam in succession. Reiji hadn't been bluffing.
And what was Gulzar doing?
Panicking.
His Gyarados was locked in place after using Hyper Beam and couldn't move. It could only take the next blast head-on.
Gulzar had already seen how powerful that attack was. His Gyarados was tough, but it couldn't withstand another Hyper Beam like that.
What do I do?
In his panic, Gulzar suddenly remembered one move that could force Gyarados out of its current stiffness.
"Gyarados, Outrage!"
"Gyara!"
The moment Gyarados heard the word, its eyes turned blood-red. It thrashed violently in the pool, and just before the Hyper Beam reached it, it opened its mouth and fired a powerful blast of its own into Reiji's attack.
Another explosion tore through the battlefield. Light and heat flooded the entire stadium, forcing everyone to defend themselves again. No one dared look straight at the field.
But Gyarados had gone berserk from Outrage. It didn't care about the explosion at all. Before the shockwave had even faded, it opened its mouth and spat a pillar of fire at Reiji's Gyarados.
Flamethrower.
Reiji didn't even have time to react. He could only let Gyarados handle it on its own.
His Gyarados opened its mouth and fired a massive column of water, canceling out the Flamethrower.
Hydro Pump overpowered the flames. Through the cloud of steam, it struck Gulzar's Gyarados head-on.
But the rampaging Gyarados ignored the Hydro Pump hitting its body and charged straight at Reiji's side with its jaws wide open.
"Gyarados, Hydro Pump into its mouth!"
"Gyara!"
Reiji's Gyarados saw Gulzar's Gyarados burst out of the steam and fired another Hydro Pump straight into its open mouth, filling it with water and turning it into a bloated, ridiculous-looking fish.
"Gyarados, Iron Tail. Send it flying!"
"Gyara!"
Seeing that Gulzar's Gyarados was full of water and couldn't move properly, Reiji's Gyarados rushed in. Its tail flashed with a metallic shine, and it slammed Iron Tail into the other Gyarados's head, smashing it down hard enough to crater the pool.
The water stuffed inside Gulzar's Gyarados was knocked back out, and the rampaging Gyarados finally fainted cold.
The announcer had been so tense that he was about to call for outside assistance, but Reiji ended the crisis first.
Once the rampaging Gyarados was unconscious, Reiji quietly let out a breath and warned Gulzar, "Don't use Outrage on Gyarados unless you're strong enough to control it. If it loses control, you won't be able to stop what happens next."
"I understand. Thank you." Gulzar looked like a child who had done something wrong and quickly apologized.
He had only told Gyarados to use Outrage because he was desperate and needed to break the Hyper Beam stiffness. He hadn't expected it to spiral out of control so badly. Once Gyarados went berserk, he couldn't control it at all.
"Whew. That was close. Gulzar's Gyarados lost control, but thankfully, Reiji's Gyarados defeated it and the danger has been dealt with. Outside assistance, please stand down."
"In this match, Gulzar's Gyarados was the first to become unable to battle. The winner is Reiji!"
"Ahem. Speaking only for myself, I'd also like to offer Gulzar a word of advice. As Reiji said, if you cannot control a confused Gyarados yourself, please be careful when using it in future matches, so innocent people don't get caught in the danger."
Once the announcer finished declaring the result in place of the referee, the audience finally processed what had just happened. Then the whole venue erupted.
The cheers were deafening.
This group-stage match had been far more thrilling than the others. A Gyarados mirror match, a rampaging Gyarados being brought under control—just seeing that was worth the ticket.
And more importantly, the audience had discovered a new favorite.
A serious contender for the championship.
Reiji's plain, ordinary name officially entered everyone's attention and became the focus of the crowd's chatter.
The reason was simple. Anyone who watched the news knew how hard it was to suppress a rampaging Gyarados.
Yet Reiji had stayed calm even when Gyarados lost control. He had commanded his own Gyarados clearly, defeated the berserk Gyarados, and ended the danger. That alone proved his command ability was far from ordinary.
A rampaging Gyarados could push its strength far beyond normal. If Reiji's Gyarados could defeat one in that state, then in the audience's eyes, Reiji already had the potential to win the whole tournament.
And somehow, someone like him had barely been known before this.
If that wasn't a dark horse, what was?
The strongest dark horse among ordinary Trainers. That became the label the crowd attached to Reiji.
The announcer heard the crowd's reaction and quickly picked up on it. "Reiji stayed calm under pressure just now and successfully defeated a rampaging Gyarados. On behalf of the organizers, I would like to thank him."
"I've also heard some audience members calling Reiji the biggest dark horse of this year's tournament. According to his information, Reiji is an orphan, which means he appears to be an ordinary Trainer with no sponsor. Could this Indigo Plateau Conference become the stage where he proves himself?"
"How far can Reiji, who came this far as an ordinary person, go in this year's Indigo Plateau Conference? Can he become the greatest dark horse of the tournament, rise above the many powerful competitors, and win the championship? Please keep following Reiji's future matches. Let us witness his rise together!"
As the announcer stirred up the crowd, Reiji slowly left the field under the audience's roaring cheers.
Honestly, he didn't want to become this famous.
Unfortunately, the organizers had all his basic information, including the species and number of Pokémon he had registered. They had pulled it from the Pokémon Center so the announcer could use it during matches.
Now that the announcer had hyped him up, his popularity was going to keep climbing. After today, he would definitely be added to the list of championship favorites and discussed alongside the other serious contenders.
And with the labels the announcer had just stacked onto him—ordinary background, dark horse, comeback story, strong Pokémon, calm command, championship contender—it was all perfect television.
Put all of that together, and he would gain fans fast. Especially among ordinary Trainers with no help, people who had fought their way up from the bottom step by step, just like him.
People could only truly relate if they had gone through the same thing, or were still going through it. Only Trainers walking the same road as Reiji would understand how hard it was for people like them.
Hadn't everyone noticed that the announcer never dared use the word "commoner"?
In front of the League's message of freedom and equality, that word was politically dangerous.
Everyone knew things weren't fair. The League couldn't make things fair. Any adult with a bit of sense understood that. You could talk about it privately and know it in your heart, but you couldn't say it out loud. Saying it out loud was slapping the League in the face, and that was very impolite.
If the announcer crossed that red line, he wouldn't be announcing matches anymore. He would probably be blacklisted from the entire industry.
That was why he used "ordinary" instead. Compared with "commoner," "ordinary" didn't carry the same class meaning. It was less sensitive and didn't provoke people as easily.
If he had openly called Reiji a commoner Trainer, that would have caused real trouble. He could say Reiji came from an ordinary background. He could even say that as an orphan, Reiji had less than an ordinary family. He could call him an ordinary Trainer.
But he couldn't call him a commoner Trainer.
That would stir up class conflict and give Team Rocket an opening. That was the root of Team Rocket's existence. Their brainwashing worked by taking frustrated young people and teaching them to blame everything on the League. The result was easy to imagine.
Class existed. It existed in every world, and it was sensitive everywhere. Refusing to look at it didn't make it disappear. Team Rocket used that exact weakness to undermine the League's basic teaching about people, nature, and peaceful coexistence.
As long as the League failed to solve that problem, Team Rocket would always have fresh blood. They could use the League's own propaganda to attack the League's values and deny its authority and legitimacy.
Even if Team Rocket was wiped out, another Team Rocket would eventually appear. That kind of thing couldn't be banned out of existence. Trainers who lived well were always the minority. Most people were still struggling.
So if Reiji didn't want to lie flat, he had two choices.
Join the League, become one of the people who benefited from the system, and use power to bully others.
Or stay out of it, keep his head down, and go fishing.
If Reiji truly wanted to change anything, the pressure he faced would come from every corner of society. A sickness that deep was never simple to cure.
It was easy for him to sympathize with people like them. Getting those people to sympathize with the ones still stuck in the mud?
Impossible.
If he dared touch their cake, they would chase him down with knives. Not one or two people. A whole crowd. And a powerful one.
Sometimes, a person shouldn't be too naive.
As an adult, Reiji knew exactly what the price would be.
One life.
Or many.
[End of chapter]
[100 Power Stones = Extra Chapter]
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