Luffy grinned and bounced up and down "It's starting! It's starting!"
Zorro just smirked, ready to battle and beat anyone in his way.
"I live, lived?, to serve and protect."
"Five minutes? Too long a wait for my tastes," Sonic said. He did various stretches and exercises while he waited, as if preparing for a marathon than actual battling.
DAMMIT MARK, STOP HOTTING HELPY!!
huzzaaaaaaaah
Zuko smiled back at Toph, giving her a friendly hug. "You too, Toph. And remember what I taught you, alright?" He said, gently punching her on the shoulder, just like she often did with him. "If you and Diggy work together, this contest is already yours."
Roku seemed to be doing the same, as he was now giving some sort of unintelligible speech to Diggy. And by unintelligible, we mean that it was the word "growlithe" being repeated over and over, with different inflections every time.
The crowd yelled out "FOUR" as the clock got down to four minutes.
Glenn nodded and moved to the other trainers. He noted the large turnout of this event and all of the onlookers. It was unusual compared to home. His times were difficult but rewarding. Human settlements were usually few and far between and peaceful competition seldom occurred. There was just too much adventuring in that day to be bothered with inventing ways to compete and test skills. Those competitions were usually among the elite of the knights. The green haired knight put thoughts aside and knelt down, with Masamune following in turn. They knelt issuing silent prayers to nature and Cyrus.
Wizard of science.
Toph seemed to suddenly blank out as she was hugged by Zuko. She returned the hug, feeling a bit... awkward as she gave him her best smile. "You too, Moodbender." She leaned closer, whispering. "Oh, and keep an eye out on Big Guy over there, alright? He seems like he'll be our first opponent."
Luffy could barely contain his enthusiasm. All those years of preparation, watching his mentor and brother go on and become legends in their own rights. He'd follow them, wining this contest, putting a team together, and fulfilling his dreams. Because deep in his heart he knew, he'd be a pokemon master!
"I live, lived?, to serve and protect."
"Hm.."
Iskander looked around him at the gathered pokemon trainers. His eyes shone with enthusiasm, at last his saga would begin and he would be on the journey that would never end. It was exciting and Iskander loved that feeling- when you stepped into the uncertain darkness of the future with the light of your courage lighting the way.
There was quite an assortment of trainers there, nothing fell short of expectations. His Aron was now perched on his shoulders, carefully balancing itself on Iskander's massive shoulders- a blue fire burned in its eyes as it took in the scene- so many other pokemon, so many trainers.
Iskander crossed his arms and waited for the countdown to finish. He would meet the trainers soon enough but for now he would savour the excitement.
To say that Luke was excited would be an understatement. Truth be told, he hadn’t known just what to expect when he signed up for this contest, but the crowd’s sheer, palpable enthusiasm was rubbing off on him and the sandy-haired young man found it hard to resist getting swept up in it. That announcer sure knew how to work a crowd and get them pumped up…
Grinning, Luke found himself bouncing on the balls of his feet as he waited for the contest to begin. This would be his and Artoo’s first real test as Trainer and Pokémon, and he was going to give it all he had.
Luke, a familiar voice echoed within his head, a memory stirred up by his excitement. The Aura will be with you…always.
The Danse Macabre Codex
huzzaaaaaaaah
Zuko was surprised when Toph hugged him back- usually, he expected her to punch him in the shoulder with even more strength- but accepted the surprise with a nod and a pat to the head. He wandered over to his place in the line, right by Iskander's side.
"You know, Toph wants to go after you." He said to the big brute as the clock started getting to its last seconds. "You'll have your work cut out for you. Just one tip: don't underestimate her. You and me, we're going to be surrounded by her element. And I mean it."
The announcer jumped in front of the dungeon as the crowd started counting down. "FIVE! FOUR! THREE! TWO! ONE!" And just as the clock hit zero, confetti went out as the dungeon's doors were opened. The crowds started to cheer as two huge screens besides the door started displaying the phrase "GOOD LUCK". The announcer kept motioning for the audience to cheer louder. "THE POKEMON DUNGEON CONTEST. HAS. BEGUUUUUN!"
As the trainers rushed inside, they would find a perfect recreation of a dungeon. Rocks made up the walls, the ceiling and the floor, and the entire place was very dark, apart from the occasional torch and camera attached to the wall filming the contestants. The objective of the contest was to get to the end, but not only was the darkness very confusing, but the dungeon kept going down and down, breaking up into different sections and stretches.
Some areas were filled with water. Some were so cold, that stalactites could be seen forming in the ceiling. The only indication that the trainers were going somewhere were the stairs at the end of each room, taking them into the next one. Some trainers would eventually find items scattered around the dungeons: flashlights and snacks. These items were scattered around in such a way that five minutes in, every trainer would at least have a flashlight to help them move on.
But the big thing about the dungeon were its Pokémons. From the first room, the trainers would be able to hear distant growls coming from the Pokémons they would face. Their eyes would blink in the darkness as they got ready to attack. The challenge had just begun.
I'm Back Bitches (not really)
As the door opens Jack comes rushing inside. Within a few minutes he finds a flashlight and has gone down a set of stairs. He looks around the room and holds Sally up onto his shoulder. "Come on. Let's keep going and try to see if they left us anything else. I don't like the feel of this place."
As Jack walks through the room he suddenly hears a scraping on the walls. Dude! Geo-geo! Geodude! "Knew it. Something was up. You ready, Sally?"
Sally nervously nods as she prepares for her first battle. Ra-Ralts!
As Jack and Sally prepare to stand their ground and Jack breathes deeply while putting his hands in his pockets, a Geodude comes into the light.
Meanwhile in other spots of the cave chirps and cries can be heard as well as grunts. Trainers walking through the cave might notice a Machop punching the walls to test its strength or see swarms of Zubat and Woobat clinging to the ceiling. Zuko himself would hear a small chirp through the ground as well as rumbles that only master Earthbenders could sense. Diga-la-dig! Diga-la-dig! Diglett! These small moles are popping up out of the ground mostly in patches where the sun has found cracks of the cavern walls to seep through.
The water is not entirely safe, either. Small swarms of Basculin can be seen in some of the water-filled rooms, though fortunately only a blue-striped or red-striped group depending on the room.
edited 7th Apr '13 10:03:38 PM by Fusionman
To Be Updated when I'm not Lazy
-Khârn's eyes light up at the sound of Pokemon in the distance. Finally, something to do that does not involve paperwork or talking to a crowd! He turns towards the loudest sounding door and runs towards it, his Totodile eagerly following at the chance to get its teeth stuck in.-
As the start of the Challenge near, Sonic finished stretching walked up to the entrance, getting down on all fours. He popped up while still on all fours like a track runner ready to go when the announcer began the countdown......
The doors opened....
Sonic ran straight inside, leaving the rest of the trainers in his dust, a blue blur rushing through the darkness with Miles flying straight behind him. Within one minute the speedster already grabbed himself a flashlight and was already dodging all the various Pokemon inhabiting the dungeon. Within the second minutes he was already past the first room, dashing over the Basculin infested waters fast enough to hydroplane over the surface. As he entered the second room, it would take something pretty impassable to stop Sonic......
DAMMIT MARK, STOP HOTTING HELPY!!
As soon as the door opened, Merasmus entered the dungeon, Erebos and the Bombinomicon following right behind him. Once inside, Merasmus found it neccessary to announce:
"Cower, fools! For I, the great Magician Merasmus can see even in total dar-umph!"
"Yeah, great job at seeng that wall there, grandpa..."
"Oh, you little...fine...LIGHTUS APPEARIBUS!"
Hitting his staff on the ground, a bright flash of light engulfed Merasmus and his companions, illuminating the hallways around them. As the Bombinomicon floated off to get a flashlight it spotted, the light faded again. Something else didn't fade, however and thus after switching the flashlight on, Merasmus found himself face-to-face with a rather annoyed looking Zubat, screeching angrily.
Luffy and Zorro ran into the cave without a moments hesitation. Soon they sank deeper and deeper into the tunnles till the light was all but gone.
"Hey Zorro? Can you see anything? I'm blind as a Zubat."
"Osha-osh! Oshawot!" Zorro called out, taking an item he found to his trainer.
"Ooh, what is it? Food? ' Crunch ' Ow! It's hard! the heck is it?"
Luffy takes the object out of his mouth and switches it on by accident, revealing it to be a flash light.
"Oh cool! Now we can see! Wish it was a sandwich though." He muttered, causing Zorro to sweat drop.
"I live, lived?, to serve and protect."
Emolga flew off into the Dungeon, much to her dismay. Nadeshiko ran after it, not waiting around for Iskander or anyone else. Nadeshiko couldn't see well in the dark, though Emolga tried to charge up her cheeks and spark up some thundershocks to light up the area, to make up for a lack of a proper Flash move. However, it created a dim light, though it was bright enough for the two of them to see what's in front of them. It gave them tunnel vision, yes, but they can walk in the dungeon now. Though only in a straight line.
Wizard of science.
Once Toph stepped inside the dungeon, a big grin appeared on her face. Alright, this was going to be easier than she thought! At first, the idea of just earthbending a way to the end popped in her head, but that wasn't fair or fun. But she did carefully avoid those flooded areas- not only because she didn't want to get wet, but also because she really hated swimming.
The fun really got started when she found herself face to face with a pair of Digletts. "Diggy, are you ready?" She yelled to her Pokémon, who jumped forward and nodded, smiling too. She pointed at one of the Digletts and yelled "use Scratch!", grinning as Diggy ran forward and attempted to do just as his trainer had asked: scratch the face of one of the Diglett's with his claws.
As the contest began, Green rushed in after the others. She felt much calmer after the darkness enveloped her, keeping her safe from the crowds. She didn't bother grabbing a light source; her uncanny night vision had only one equal, to her knowledge. Roxy didn't share it, so Green carried her partner in her arms as she simply took the left-most option at every crossing she came across.
A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never sit in.
Scout had followed the other Pokemon trainers into the cave when the timer had reached zero. Now, as the groups dispersed through the labyrinthine network of passages and caves.Scout had never really been into a cave before, not this deep down anyways, and he was doing his best not to be bothered by the confined spaces or the lack of light. "Shoulda brought a flashlight or some crap like that," he muttered to himself bitterly as he squinted into the darkness beyond. Far away, something rustled and chirped, and something else scurried from one cavern wall to another before it was swallowed up in the gloom.
Before he could get his bearings, something else popped out of the ground. With a startled yelp * he leapt back involuntarily. Ahead of him was... well... it looked like a rock of some kind, but rocks usually didn't have muscular, brutish arms or eyeballs that glowered back at him. Before he could try and do anything else, he noticed a boy and another weird creature glaring down at it, like some kind of Old West standoff.
"Yo, um, so that's a... a... one of those freakin' things we're supposed to beat up, right?" he asked, his loud Bostonian drawl cutting through the tension. He looked around for some kind of confirmation. "Any one of ya got a big stick or, uh, a two-by-four, or something?"
edited 9th Apr '13 7:57:11 PM by Locoman
Luke ran inside as the countdown reached zero and the doors swung open, Artoo drifting along right behind him. As he entered the dungeon, the sandy-haired teen had to give the place’s designers credit; if he hadn’t already known better, he would have sworn that he was in a real cave—and even then it was difficult not to mistake it for the real deal. That he could hear the distant growls of irritated Pokémon and see tiny lights that might have been their eyes blinking in the darkness only made the illusion all the more convincing.
Noticing that the others had already begun to split up and wander off into the darkness ahead, Luke shook his head and glanced over his shoulder. “Guess we should keep moving,” he said to his partner. “Don’t want to be last, after all.”
The Klink tootled an agreement, and with that they were off.
Though Luke hadn’t intended to split off from the rest of the group right away, he soon discovered that he didn’t have much choice in the matter; the place was practically pitch-black, concealing the fact that it also followed paths that twisted and turned in strange and confusing ways, and in no time at all the young man from Anchorhead found himself alone with his partner in the darkness.
“I can’t see a thing down here,” he complained.
“Klinkklink!” Artoo chimed from somewhere off to the left; as it spoke, Luke noticed a faint whiff of ozone and heard a soft crackling of electrical discharge. Turning in that direction, he saw that the Klink had found a flashlight somewhere in the dark—probably sensed the electricity in the batteries, he thought—and was somehow projecting a tiny fork of electrical energy to carry it through the air.
Luke whistled, genuinely impressed. “I didn’t know you could do that, Artoo.”
Artoo let out a sarcastic-sounding blurt, as if to say there was a lot Luke didn’t know about it. Which was true, he supposed; they had only known each other for a couple of weeks, after all…
“Fair enough,” he said. “Nice work.”
He held out his hand, and Artoo promptly dropped the flashlight into his waiting palm. Turning it on, he saw that he was in a downward-sloping passageway, at the end of which lay an opening into a larger area; stepping through it, he emerged into a vast rocky chamber full of stalactites and stalagmites, with fat droplets of water dripping from the ceiling to splash loudly on the stone ground below.
Luke swept the flashlight’s beam around the room, whistling. Whoever had designed this place really went all out…
His train of thought was interrupted then as a voice rang out from somewhere off to his right. Several voices, in fact, two of them sounding distinctly like Pokémon. Spinning towards the sound and pointing his light in that direction, Luke could make out two people in the distance: one was some lanky guy with headphones and a baseball cap, while the other was that well-dressed pale man. He also saw that there was a Ralts at the pale man's side; and a short distance away, a Geodude was rolling straight at the pair like it was looking for a fight.
Luke had never seen a Ralts fight before, and he couldn’t help wondering what it would do. He also found himself a little confused by the brief snatches of conversation he caught from that other guy; it almost sounded like he knew absolutely nothing about Pokémon at all...
Artoo let out a shrill whine of alarm, drawing Luke’s attention back to the here and now. “What is it, Artoo?”
“Geodude!” came a gruff, angry voice from somewhere right ahead. “Geodude, geo! Geodude!”
Startled, Luke swung his flashlight towards the noise—and saw an irate-looking Geodude squatting on the cave floor not fifteen feet away, shooting him the mother of all death glares. The surly boulder of a Pokémon punched its palm, then beckoned to the aspiring Aura Guardian as if to say “Come at me, bro”.
“Oh, boy,” Luke said with a sudden sinking feeling. He knew that Geodude didn’t have a type advantage over Artoo, what with it being a Rock-type Pokémon while his partner was a Steel-type, but at the same Artoo didn’t really have any moves that could take advantage of that. This would not be an easy fight…
Still, he wouldn’t let that get him down. “You ready, Artoo?”
His partner responded with an affirmative “Klink!”
“Then let’s do this,” Luke said with a grin. “Let him have it!”
With this command, Artoo flew towards the Geodude, its gears spinning rapidly as it tried to catch the Rock-type between them.
Nadeshiko soon found herself looking at a pond full of strange green fish with red stripes. Much like her, these fish seemed to have limited vocabulary as well, repeating only one thing over and over again: Basculin. "Basculin?" Nadeshiko said as she looked into the water. Emolga's jaw dropped.
"Emolga..." She muttered, trying to see if Nadeshiko would say her name, since she got the name of the fish right just from hearing their Pokémon Speak. She turned around, distracted from the waters to look at her.
"Tackle!" She said. Emolga went white with shock, and soon, red with anger.
"EMOLGAEMOLGAEMOLGAEMOLGAEMOLGAEMOLGAEMOLGA!" Emolga shouted to her.
edited 22nd Apr '13 12:42:26 PM by Psyga315
Glenn and Masamune with Luffy and Merasmus
"Lets go, Masamune." "Piplup." The pair moved forward into the dungeon, finding themselves near two particular trainers. One was wearing a straw hat and had some pokemon Glenn had never seen before, a seemingly good pair. The other guy however, was some kind of magic user wearing a skull with a floating book and a Ghost Pokemon. Glenn leaned down to Muramasa. "Be careful, we can't trust him yet." As the other two brought light sources Glenn didn't feel the need to go out to find the materials for a Torch. Then the loosely formed group ran into some Zubats. "Masamune, lets defeat the Zubats. Growl, and follow up with Bubble." Zubats, common in caves, moved by sound so Growl should be fairly effective.
huzzaaaaaaaah
Zuko stepped into another room, drenching with water, the flashlight on his hand. "Oh, great, we're back here, Roku." He said to his also drenched Growlithe, who was right now drying himself off near a small flame Zuko had created in his other hand. "Save some of that for me, buddy."
He stopped walking once he spotted his first enemy: a pair of Digletts. And fighting them was Toph. Well, this was a coincidence. "Roku, looks like we have a job to do. But you have to be careful- these are ground types- got it?"
Roku nodded, fully dried up. "How... how did you even do that." Zuko said, as the Growlithe simply shrugged. "Nevermind. Roku, Bite!" And with that, Roku rushed towards the other Digletts, trying to bite down on it.
Luffy grinned as the Zubats flew up "Alright Zorro, water gun to knock 'em outta the air!"
Zorro smiled and leaped up, sending a jet of water at the attacking pokemon.
"I live, lived?, to serve and protect."
"Of course it would have to be Zubats! As if there weren't enough of the darn things at my castle already! *sigh* Fine...Erebos, use Lick!"
"Gastly..."
Immediately the ghost Pokémon began swiping at the swarm of Zubat with his long tongue.
The kid looked at the other contestants with curiousity, turning his head toward each one individually. Among them, there were some trainers who looked really though, even though Ness knew he shouldn't judge people by their looks — especially the scarred man with a burn on his face and a dog-like Pokémon, and the bulking giant who looked like he could wrestle with a Machomp without any trouble. Those guys look really though... I must give all I got right from the start, he thought, becoming more and more excited and a tad nervous.