A New Dream

A Dragon of a Battle: Dawn's POV

I watched Paul walk confidently up to his spot on the battlefield and I couldn't help but frown a bit. He had acted strange when I came over to see him and I wondered if something had happened. Shrugging the feeling off, for now, I moved as close as I could to the edge of the battlefield and looked over at Paul's opponent. To my surprise, I actually recognized the guy. His name was Ryuu and he specialized in dragon type pokemon. I had watched him battle before my second-round battle and he had quite literally crushed his opponents.

The referee repeated the rules of a three-on-three pokemon battle and announced its beginning. For the first time today, Paul got to go second and I watched him carefully as Ryuu released a pokemon I didn't recognize. Glancing surreptitiously around me I slipped my pokedex out of my jacket pocket and quickly scanned it, showing that it was a Turtonator. I remembered studying a little bit about this pokemon a few months ago, but I was embarrassed at how much I had forgotten.

Paul didn't seem to be intimidated by the heavily defensive pokemon that was a good four inches taller than him. Without breaking his expressionless mask he calmly called out his signature phrase as his Lycanroc materialized in front of him and howled up at the sky. I couldn't help but smile as Lycanroc growled menacingly at the much bigger pokemon in front of her and I wished I could be as fearless as she was.

"Dragon Pulse, Turtonator!" Ryuu said in his deep voice. 

His pokemon instantly complied, opening his mouth and letting out a stream of purple power with the rough shape of a dragon's head at the end of the beam.

"Dodge it, and use Stealth Rock," Paul commanded. I watched in admiration as Lycanroc crouched and just before the Dragon Pulse could crash into her she exploded up, flipping beautifully over the stream of power that crashed into the ground. In mid-air, she howled and large jagged rocks began to float around the entire battlefield. Ryuu seemed unconcerned.

"Dragon Pulse again," he ordered.

"Use Drill Run and push through it," Paul ordered. 

Another gush of purple power roared from Turtonator and my eyes widened as Lycanroc began running straight towards it. Suddenly she jumped and began spinning and I blinked as dirt formed a corkscrew around her body. She barreled right into the dragon pulse and split the move in half before careening into Turtonator's spiky shell. The large pokemon grunted and took a step as Lycanroc continued to try and drill into the heavy-duty shell. But as her move ended and she jumped back it looked like the move, even though it should have been super effective, hadn't done that much damage.

"Body Slam!" Ryuu called and my eyes widened as the bulky pokemon turned and began to lumber towards Lycanroc. As it jumped to crash its huge girth against her though I saw Paul smirk.

"Stone Edge," he ordered calmly. 

Lycanroc howled and just as Turtonator was about to connect with her three huge stones erupted from the ground all around her and smacked into the Turtonator's unprotected belly. The huge pokemon was tossed back and landed roughly on its shell. I giggled as the Turtonator struggled. The spikes on its shell had sunk into the ground and seemed to have trapped it for the time being.

"Rock Slide, Lycanroc!" Paul said.

"Protect!" Ryuu called out. 

I saw Paul's smirk fade into his normal expressionless mask as Lycanroc created a large amount of rocks and dumped them on Turtonator's protective barrier. As the rocks fell I could see the large pokemon rocking back and forth until he was able to free himself and get back on his feet.As soon as the protect wore off Ryuu hollered, "Flamethrower!" A large stream of fire gushed from Turtonator's mouth but Lycanroc dodged easily at Paul's instructions.