From: Karnivax (karnivax@my-deja.com) Subject: [PW!] The Maleficent Seven, Part 1 Newsgroups: alt.games.nintendo.pokemon Date: 2000-08-28 20:00:23 PST (OOC: Yes. Seven. I didn't make a mistake. ^_^;;;) Before Kyle and Enzo could wage their latest Pokémon battle, Enzo tossed his first Pokéball into the bleachers of his own personal Pokémon gym. The spheroid opened and released Spellbinder the Hypno. "Maestro," Enzo said to the hairy yellow Pokémon. "Some battle music, if ya please." Spellbinder lumbered to the top of the bleachers and into the gym's sound booth. He rifled through a large collection of compact discs. Kyle stood on his trainer pillar tapping one foot impatiently. From Enzo's trainer pillar, Jessica stared blankly back at Kyle. "Hypno?!" Spellbinder bellowed at Enzo. "It doesn't matter!" Enzo replied. "This ain't gonna take more than five minutes..." Spellbinder eventually chose a disc and inserted it into the stereo. He skipped through the tracks until he reached his favorite one. He pressed the play button. From the mighty speakers that were positioned at each corner of the arena blasted Vince DiCola's "Autobot/ Decepticon Battle." "Excellent choice!" Enzo shouted. He glanced at Kyle. "Let's get started, shall we?" "You said that already!" Kyle snapped. He took one of the Pokéballs from his belt. Enzo boomed, "This'll be a six-on-six match! So ya better have one damn good second string, boy..." He threw his next Pokéball into the center of the arena. "Halberd, go!" "Let's get the insubordinates out of the way..." Kyle tossed down his Pokéball. "Goliath, I choose you!" Halberd, Enzo's bandanna-wearing Farfetch'd, came face-to-face with Goliath, Kyle's grumpy-looking Golem. Halberd pressed the power button on his brand-new language translator. "Far...far...far..." Halberd tested. Realizing that the translator was not working, he took it off and gave it a few quick whacks with his leek. The attack caused the translator's battery door to fall open. There were no batteries in the device. "Far fetch'd!!!" he said angrily. "Take mine," the apathetic Goliath snorted. He removed his own translator and handed it to the diminutive duck. "Sucker," Halberd chuckled. He backed away and struck a samurai- like pose. "Swords Dance," Enzo commanded. "Twice." Halberd let out an annoyed sigh. He slowly knelt down and did a triple headspin. He fell on his back. He spent something like fifteen seconds recovering. Then he did another triple headspin. Again he fell. Again he paused to recover. Finally he stood up again, his Attack rating soaring. Goliath stood and clapped unenthusiastically for the breakdancing duck. Kyle sat down on his pillar and looked at his inactive Golem. "Rock Slide?" he tried. It was worth a shot. "Gol...golem..." Goliath staggered about and clutched his head in pain. "Gooolem!" he roared. Eventually he thrust his arms in Halberd's direction. Several pieces of his stone armor floated up into the air. "Body Slam!" Enzo shouted. Halberd quickly hopped back before charging and lunging at the seemingly ill Goliath with all his might. Even with the power boost from the double Swords Dance, Halberd hardly put a crack in Goliath's hide. Halberd grabbed his feathery chest as he rebounded. "Damn!" he cried. "I think I broke a -" His sentence was cut off as he was suddenly buried in a barrage of falling boulders. One of Halberd's wings poked out from the pile of stone. The wing twitched briefly and then went limp. Kyle stood up again. "Ah hah!" he said to Goliath. "You have to do what I say!" He looked up at the ceiling as he jeered, "What was that line of yours? 'I will *never* succumb to the will of a few miserable hominids!' That was it, wasn't it?" Goliath growled, "Gooolll..." His armor instantaneously regenerated. "Hah!" Kyle laughed. "I'm up by one, Enzo!" An angry Enzo recalled Halberd. "Last time I ever use that damn Farfetch'd!" he thundered. He tossed down his next Pokéball. "Yggdrasil, make gravel out o' this Golem!" The Pokéball unleashed a tall four-headed Exeggutor. Each head was suspended in the air by invisible psychic force near the Exeggutor's body. The bipedal tree stomped toward the midget Golem. The heads quickly revolved around the tree. An angry-looking head took the dominant position. "Exeeegg..." it snarled. Kyle quickly booted up his Pokédex to get a reading on Goliath's attacks. "Use Explosion now!" Kyle ordered. Goliath just staggered again and fought the pain that came of his disobedience. "Mega Drain," Enzo commanded. As Goliath went into what seemed to be death throes, Yggdrasil sunk its teeth into Goliath's armor and proceeded to drain the life from the stone beast. Both combatants glowed green as the energy transfer took place. Goliath's intense struggling gradually slowed down to a stop. The glow faded. Its feeding complete, Yggdrasil withdrew. Its four heads let out a chorus of belches. "Exeeeggutor!" the dominant head said proudly. Goliath was left in a catatonic state. Kyle sighed as he recalled the unruly Golem and reached for another Pokéball. "Go, Grendel!" Kyle shouted as his next Pokéball released Grendel the Aerodactyl. "Fly attack!" "Aeeerooooo!" Without even much of a running start, Goliath took to the air. "Exeggutor?" A scared-looking head revolved around to the front of Yggdrasil. The coconut tree nearly dizzied itself as it tried to keep up with the fast flyer. "Sleep Powder!" Enzo shouted. Yggdrasil shook its leaves and launched a sizable cloud of Sleep Powder into the air. Grendel just held his breath and flew right through it before lining himself up with Yggdrasil and swooping down at full speed. "Daaactyl!" The impact as Grendel rammed into Yggdrasil caused the Exeggutor's heads to fly off. The headless body wavered and crashed to the ground in the middle of the scattered heads. "Jeez! Is...is it dead?" Kyle wondered. Spellbinder quickly paused the music. The heads started to move. "Exegg...cute..." the angry head sighed as its color changed from yellow to pink. Undergoing the same color change, the three remaining heads righted themselves and hopped over to the fallen angry head. They saw that the angry head had suffered a large crack. "Exegg..." the disembodied head moaned to its comrades. "Cute...exeeegggg..." Then there was silence. The angry head closed its eyes. "Exegg?" The scared-looking head looked down at the fallen angry head. "Cute?" The scared head pushed the angry head lightly and got no response. The three remaining heads stared at each other. A sad-looking head burst into tears. A happy-looking head suddenly took on an expression of utmost seriousness. "Exegg!" the head said forcefully. It looked at the sad head and scolded, "Exegg cute!" Hearing this, the sad head choked back its tears. The serious-looking head hopped on top of the motionless Exeggutor body. "Cute! Exegg!" the head demanded. The two heads that remained looked at each other. "Exegg!" the serious head said again, louder this time. The two remaining heads joined the serious head. The three heads reunited with the Exeggutor body, and the seemingly dead tree suddenly got back on its feet. "Exeeeggutor!" all three heads exclaimed. They turned from pink back to yellow. The serious head looked downright furious now. Enzo beamed the dead Exeggcute back into its Pokéball. "Don't worry," Enzo told Yggdrasil. "He'll get a proper burial as soon as this is over." He pointed at Spellbinder. "Resume th' music!" Spellbinder, not paying much attention to what he was doing, pushed a few wrong buttons. From the speakers came a Devo-style keyboard intro, then eventually lyrics: "Put down that chainsaw and listen to me / It's time for us to join in the fight / It's time to let your babies grow up to be cowboys / It's time to let the bedbugs bite..." Enzo shrugged. "Close enough." He grabbed on to the railing of his trainer pillar. "Yggdrasil, Psychic." "Grendel, Wing Attack!" Kyle commanded while the vengeful Exeggutor was powering up. Grendel waved one wing in Yggdrasil's direction and flung a volley of razor-edged scales at the three-headed plant. The scales stripped a good amount of bark off of Yggdrasil, but if it was injured, it was not showing it. For a moment, all three of Yggdrasil's heads took on the same strained expression as the biped leaned toward Grendel and unleashed a mighty psionic blast from its leaves. The concussive blast rammed Grendel right into Kyle's sturdy trainer pillar. "Now, Sleep Powder," Enzo ordered. With Grendel stunned, it was a simple task for Yggdrasil to dust the avian with Sleep Powder. Grendel quickly dozed off. Kyle bit his lip. It looked like Grendel was through, but Kyle was not about to recall the prehistoric beast until he was certain. "Psychic again," Enzo commanded. "Exegg!" Yggdrasil dug its claws into the clay to brace for an even bigger Psychic attack. It spent a considerable amount of time gathering energy while Grendel snoozed. The Aerodactyl snapped awake just in time to see a gigantic multicolored wave of psi rushing toward him. "Oh, crap!!!" Kyle immediately jumped off the pillar just moments before it was engulfed in psi. Grendel was blasted right through the pillar and into the wall. The pillar went down like a felled tree. Enzo smacked himself on the forehead as he watched the pillar collapse. "That's gonna cost me..." He looked at Jessica. "What am I sayin'? It won't cost *me* anything!" He then shouted at Kyle, "Yer Aerodactyl's disqualified! Th' score's five-four in my favor now!" Yggdrasil was about to lumber out of the arena to continue its rage- driven assault on Grendel when Enzo yelled at it to stop where it was. Kyle withdrew Grendel and took a seat amongst the rubble from the pillar. _Splendid._ He reached for his next Pokéball. --K * A * R * N * I * V * A * X-- "Some have said there is no subtlety to destruction. You know what? They're dead." --Jaya Ballard, task mage