"Fire!"

  "Dud Ssh!"

  The two voices of the handlers roared above the screams of the crowd.

  Charizard reared on its hind legs a out a steam of fire towards the Gyarados.

  But heeding the ands of its handler, who had apparently anticipated Charizard's move, Gyarados gracefully dodged the fire attad at the same time, its flexible body twisted in a zigzag, sshing through the air.

  Despite the he ugly ssh hissed through the arena, and its effect was quite evident.

  Charizard, still rearing and likely preparing for a follow-through, was suddenly shoved backward along with its handler, who had been h just behind it.

  The Fire-type stumbled for a couple of seds but saved itself by using its broad wings to break the forceful gust of air.

  The Manticores handler, however, wasn't as lucky.

  He was hurled across half of the arena and smmed into the edge wall.

  A thunderous cheer erupted from the Griffins’ side, masking the painful "Uuuuh!" from the Manticores' fans.

  The remaining Manticore defender, who had been quiough to swerve away from the sshing gust, had abandoned his primary role and goo che his teammate.

  The toll of his as, however, was being shouldered by the Charizard.

  "Ssh! Ssh! Ssh!"

  The Griffins handler was now screaming breathlessly, and the Gyarados responded with astonishing agility.

  Its flexible ahy body twisted right a, and with every twist, the sshing gust screamed.

  Charizard found itself spped left and right, thrown up and down with immense force.

  The crowd’s rea was wild and chaotic. Almost everyone had left their seats.

  Some were screaming, others yelling unfathomable words, and still more csped their hands in anticipation.

  "Hydro Pump! Hydro Pump it... Use Hydro Pump!"

  Magnus yelled at the top of his lungs, but his voily mingled with the rest of the crowd’s chaos.

  His heart alpitating madly in fury. While the rest were appuding the Griffins’ attack, he was w what the hell had gotten into them.

  "That is a freaking Water-type, for heaven's sake! Use Hydro Pump!"

  He cried more to himself than to the Gyarados handler.

  "What the fuck was sshing supposed to do?"

  The Griffins had disoriehe Manticores’ defender and hahey had a freakishly good ce of ending this before the Manticores recovered, but all they were doing was f a powerful Water-type to twist and ssh like it was a baseball bat .

  While keeping momentum was essential, Magnus knew Charizard could tank this until Gyarados was exhausted, and theides would turn against the Griffins.

  "I mean, do they even know it use Water at all?"

  Nobody answered his question as all three friends, together with the rest of Manticore's fans, were screaming their encement to the two pyers, who were now zooming towards their charge.

  The Gyarados handler was a step ahead.

  "Coil, spin, and toss!"

  Before Magnus had time to pte what the ands were supposed to do, the serpent's lithe body slithered with lightning speed, and before the r Charizard had time to retreat, Gyarados had coiled its humongous body around the fire type.

  In a show of power, it stretched and released its victim just as fast.

  Charizard was tossed through the air, spinning like a yoyo. It would have crashed into its team, who had been en route to its aid.

  The two, however, were quite fast in respohis time and swooped to either side.

  The Manticore defender's wand shot toward Charizard, but no words boomed as it should have.

  Their Pokémon's immi fall was, however, ended. It suddenly seemed tain its stability mid-air, and its massive wings swished as it took back trol of its flight.

  "And the Manticores appear to have regathered their team! Rex, the handler, looks quite fie the heavy attack from Gyarados—the fight tinues!"

  Indeed, Magnus noticed that the handler looked quite fie having been on the receiving end of such a brute, fierce attack.

  'Must be those vests,' he thought, recalling what he had read earlier. These vests had powerful spells to repel mortal danger.

  "And here es atack."

  The crowd’s voice surged as the entator's voice went on.

  True enough, the two teams were streaking toward each other at terrific speed, both Pokémon at the front and their partners flying closely behind.

  "Wing attaow!" the Charizard handler screamed at his charge.

  "Ssh, ssh, and fast!" tered their oppo, but it was already a sed too te.

  The two teams had already been at the brink of crashing into each other, but Charizard and his team suddenly pulled up, narrowly evading the swooshing serpent body.

  The ck of tact it had been expeg carried Gyarados forward in bursts of untrolble speed.

  But the Charizard wasn’t doogether with its team, they spun around in a dazzling show of athleticism , and at the same time, a gust of wind—like the one from Gyarados’s sshes but somehow more powerful—screamed across the ground, headed toward the serpent’s team.

  "Diffindo!"

  The Griffins’ defender had cast a defensive spell, but that too must have e a sed too te.

  The forceful turbulenocked the wand out of his grip and spped at their backs, sending all three hurtling to the same wall the Manticores had crashed into.

  Magnus had thought the roars of the crowd could never get any louder, but he was quite wrong.

  At this rate, he wondered whether the noise wasn’t strong enough to break through the barriers cast here and reauggles in the surrounding areas.

  The crash they had all been expeg never came, though—at least not for the pyers.

  The serpent, seeing its team’s dangerous destination, had done something quite noble, which cost it to bee the sole victim.

  Its flexible rear body had coiled protectively around its two partners, seg them before its front body crashed into the wall with shuddering force.

  The three fell to the ground.

  "Fug idiots," Magnus cried furiously. "Those were my st Galleons.

  "What the fuck? I mean, these gits should have won easy... They easily had the upper hand, seeing they had a water type against a fire-flying type... But even if they didn't know that, did they not have any more endgame moves?

  'Ssh, ssh... the fuck was 'ssh' supposed to do?' The Manticores had been caught off guard the first time; they would be idiots to let it happen a sed time.

  "Told you, mate... told you. You were nuts to stake yalleons on these losers." Fred had bent his head to Magnus’s ears purposefully to taunt him.

  Magnus felt like spping the shit out of him as he looked at the burial pce of his st hope.

  The referee had swooped dowhe Griffins were, cheg their Pokémon.

  "That's a knockout," Gee was screaming. "No way it’s ing up after that."

  The sed, however, Magnus was the one screaming—and not just him. The eand where Gyarados fans had been sitting, looking crestfalleed in hopeful cheers.

  It seemed Gee’s doubts were what Gyarados had been waiting to prove wrong.

  The serpe out a blood-curdling roar as its body rose and towered upward.

  "It’s up... it’s up..." Magnus said, spping the ribs of his friends in turn.

  "No way... I’ll be damned," Lee was screaming.

  Only now did Magnus truly uand just how gigantic the serpent was. I mean, half its body was still coiled on the ground, but it was still t almost halfway to the high end of the stands.

  'how the hell did they transport such humongous beasts across the try without pojeballs?', Magnus wondered

  "Gyarados is fit. The battle tinues," the referee's voice rang above the noise.

  Magnus’s hopes, however, seemed like they had just briefly been revived only to be killed properly.

  The referee had barely finished giving his verdict when the Manticores, who had clearly been waiting for this decision, streaked through the air, ing to finish what little was left.

  Charizard’s head was outstretched, and somehow Magnus knew, even before seeing it, that the fire that was ing would be the final nail.

  The world seemed to narrow down into a tunnel, shutting out all the noise around him. In his mind, he suddenly saw himself standio the serpent, overlooking the oning attack.

  He was, however, surprised by the calm inside him... and it wasn’t just him...

  Nyarados too felt the same thing.

  He didn’t know how, but he could se, he could see it.

  This situation, it seemed, was irely fn. There was a world where Charizard being in the air and Gyarados on the ground was the final ingredient to the water type's victory.

  Any moment now, the fire would e.

  Even as he thought about it, the fire type opes maw, and he saw the oning fmes.

  "Gyarados, use water... I mean, use Ice Beam... freeze him!"

  He did not know why the fuck he was saying this. There wasn’t a freaking ce of being heard above the chaotioise, and even if the Pokémon heard him, it didn’t look possible that it would uand a thing he said.

  I mean, its own handler did not know it could use water, let alone freeze anything, and probably the Pokémon itself had ried it.

  Suddenly, however, the serpent’s red eyes rolled, and he... he could swear they had narrowed on him. They had looked at him.

  The sed, however, it had rolled away and was fixated on the oning fire.

  Gyarados let out another chilling cry but never made a move to duck. The two Griffin pyers, seeing the oning fire, had taken to their brooms.

  Nobody, however, had anticipated what transpired .

  The fire was almost three meters away when a stream of blue shimmering energy came gushing out of the serpent’s maw toward the speeding fmes.

  The instant they made tact, there was a sharp hiss, and the ground was momentarily filled with steam as ice met fire.

  But Gyarados wasn’t do shifted the ice attack upward, catg its oppo mid-flight.

  The icy bst engulfed Charizard, freezing its wings and tail fme in shimmering ice. Charizard plummeted to the ground, uo move, its wings aire body encased in frost.

  "oh my.... its ice beam.... he did it... he heard me"

  ***

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