Chapter 356: The True Ace Enters the Fray!
"Battle... Begin!!!! —"
The referee's flag dropped like a guillotine.
"Go!!! Drapion!!!"
"I choose you!!!! Meet your match, my Eternal Ace!!"
Kenji reached for the center Poké Ball on his belt and hurled it with a sharp, practiced snap of his wrist.
His Eternal Ace???!
The crowd leaned in, eyes glued to the tumbling sphere. Speculation had been running wild in the stands: would he lead with the God of Nightmares, Darkrai? Or was there another hidden horror tucked away in his roster?
Red light lanced into the arena. As it solidified, the silhouette that emerged was lean—shorter and more aerodynamic than the species norm. It possessed a striking red-and-yellow patterned abdomen and an exoskeleton that gleamed with a predatory, metallic sheen.
A Mega Stone hung prominently from a pendant around its neck.
"A Beedrill???! Are you serious?"
"Wait, look at the color—that's a Shiny Beedrill," a man in the front row noted, adjusting his glasses.
"What a letdown," another spectator grumbled, looking bored. "I thought we were going to see another Legendary. It's just a bug. I could find ten of those in the park on my way home."
The consensus was underwhelming. A Beedrill was a common species, an early-game Pokémon whose final evolution barely cracked a 395 base stat total. Seeing one on the grand final stage of the Huaxia League Conference was almost unheard of.
"Wait... Kenji?"
A few older fans began to murmur. They remembered the early days—the Metropolis Academy Exchange tournament. Kenji had used a Beedrill back then, a monster that had moved so fast it sparked a new branch of research in Pokémon academia dubbed the "Super Speed" state.
But as the National League and the current Conference progressed, the bee had vanished from his rotation. Most analysts had assumed that as Kenji's team grew stronger, the low-scaling Beedrill had simply been "optimized" out of his roster in favor of Pseudo-Legendaries and Mythicals.
Common wisdom said Bug-types grew fast early but hit a brick wall in the late game.
Seeing it now, adorned with a Mega Stone and called an "Eternal Ace" by the favorite to win, the crowd began to reconsider.
"Is he really claiming a Beedrill is his Ace? Over Darkrai?"
"No way. It's physically impossible. One is a God; the other has a base stat total lower than a middle evolution starter. There is no comparison."
On the field, Darkrai—masquerading as a shadow in the corner—seemed to radiate a smug telepathic aura: Oh, if only you fools knew why I'm the one sitting on the bench.
Drapion hovered on the opposite side, its armored joints clicking nervously. It was a peak Champion-level Pokémon belonging to an Elite Four master, yet it was acting as if it were staring at a firing squad.
It knew. Having trained under Grandma Liu, it possessed a refined sense for power. To its senses, the "bug" in front of it wasn't a Pokémon at all—it was a localized distortion in reality, a being whose growth speed defied every law of nature.
"Battle... Start!!!"
The official command rang out.
"Drapion!! Rock Slide!!"
"DRAAA-PION!!! —"
The scorpion roared, its claws snapping. Dozens of massive boulders materialized in the air above Beedrill, then plummeted in a crushing barrage.
Beedrill didn't move. It stayed suspended in the air, its wings barely a blur, looking almost indifferent to the tons of rock falling toward its head.
KRA-KOOM!!!! —
The boulders slammed into the arena floor, creating a cacophony of explosions.
"WHAT???!"
The audience gasped.
"Did... did I just see that? The rocks passed right through its head? I must be seeing things..." a fan muttered, rubbing his eyes.
He wasn't the only one. Hundreds of people were staring at the field in confusion. Beedrill was still there, hovering in the exact same spot, looking completely untouched.
Everyone turned their eyes to the massive overhead screen. The tournament's high-speed cameras had captured the exchange.
The replay began: 50x Slow Motion.
Even at that absurdly slow speed, the crowd saw only a flicker. As the first boulder reached the strike zone, Beedrill's silhouette simply... blurred. It moved in a microscopic, lightning-fast zigzag, dodging every rock with a margin of millimeters before returning to its original coordinates so fast that the human eye interpreted it as staying still.
The entire 100,000-seat stadium inhaled at once.
50x slow-mo, and it's still just a shadow???!
Just how fast was this thing?
[Beedrill] (4-Star)
Gender: Male
Level: 93 (Champion)
Type: Bug / Poison
Abilities: Adaptability, Huge Power
Base Stats Total: 735 (Non-Mega)
Potential: Limit
Kenji's Beedrill possessed 340 more stat points than an average member of its species. It was effectively twice the Pokémon any other trainer had ever seen.
And that was before Mega Evolution.
"Beedrill! X-Scissor!!"
"SIII!!!! —"
Upon hearing the word, Beedrill vanished. It didn't "move"; it simply ceased to be in one location and reappeared in another.
Drapion's survival instincts flared. Its tail whipped around to guard its rear, and its head performed a gruesome 180-degree rotation to track the assassin.
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