The Mysterious Pre-Match Curse

"They all know Explosion... does their school team do demolition work on the side?"

"No, mining."

Coach Jia answered the question with a perfectly straight face, adding that the other team was quite capable when it came to mining. Otherwise, they wouldn't have ties to the Devon Corporation.

"Are those Pokémon that know Explosion as strong as the Aggron you mentioned, Coach?"

"No. If they were all that strong, they wouldn't need to sacrifice themselves to give their teammates a better shot at winning the championship. They're still a pain to deal with, though."

"Don't worry, Coach. I'll finish the battle before their Pokémon can use Explosion. Besides changing types with Protean, Meownei also knows Protect. Blocking that kind of attack in a one-on-one isn't hard."

"All right. Give it your best. If you run into one of our own, let Meowscarada rest a little longer to recover."

Six people, four fields. There was a pretty good chance of running into a teammate.

Of course, running into a whole bunch of teammates would be unfortunate too. After all, with this kind of bracket division, it was theoretically possible for all four semifinalists to come from the same team.

Everyone knew how strong their teammates were. Usually, once things reached that stage, they would openly throw matches to give their stronger teammates time to rest. Over the years, exploiting those rules had become standard practice in the one-on-one format.

"You head back first. I'll stay here for the day and see if any more old acquaintances show up."

They had pretty much finished checking out the fields, and there wasn't much tactical planning to do for one-on-one battles. Essentially, every team followed the same approach.

Find the most troublesome opponent, and if you faced them, make their life difficult at any cost.

Protect your team's ace. If you faced them, either let them advance straight away or give them some time to recover their stamina. Other than that, just do your best.

After having Li Han take everyone else back to the hotel, Jia Qiong stayed behind alone, planning to see whether there were any other students who had repeated a year.

This was another tacitly accepted aspect of the competition. Those who entered by repeating a year or delaying graduation generally had something fishy going on. In most cases, their schools had reached some sort of agreement with the students to preserve the strength of their teams.

Still, that wasn't easy to arrange. After all, if their Pokémon were good enough, leaving school earlier might well earn them better opportunities.

Ultimately, it came down to each individual's choice.

Nothing much happened for the rest of the day. The only minor hiccup was that some of the hotel's electrical wiring was undergoing maintenance, leaving the restaurant closed at dinnertime.

That forced everyone, who had originally planned to eat at the hotel, to order takeout instead.

And ordering takeout usually fell to the people who had tagged along at their own expense.

"Hey... who ordered beef noodles?!"

The rich broth was still steaming, giving off a strong beef aroma, and the portions were anything but stingy. Thumb-sized chunks of meat covered the noodles, looking even more appetizing beneath the chili oil, chopped scallions, and cilantro.

The restaurant had even delivered the noodles itself. Apparently, they were very professional. Rather than packing the noodles and broth separately, they had sent over a noodle chef and a mobile food cart to prepare everything on the spot.

"Meow~ (They're actually pretty tasty~)"

Holding a fork, Meownei blew on the noodles to cool them down, took a taste, and gave an approving verdict.

"No, the problem isn't the taste... eating beef noodles before a match just feels like bad luck."

Old Liu looked utterly baffled by this. He couldn't understand it. People always said the older generation was prone to superstition, yet these youngsters were even worse than he was. They had superstitions about eating noodles, of all things.

Still, in the spirit of not wasting food, nobody chose to reorder. These days, after all, a twitching left eye meant money was coming, while a twitching right eye was dismissed as superstition. It was all about believing when it suited you.

In the end, the team arrived at the venue bearing the legendary competitive debuff bestowed by beef noodles.

Their luck in yesterday's draw had been decent. Two of them were on the Ocean Field, two on the Rock Field, and one on each of the remaining fields. Xin Mu had eventually switched to the Rock Field. At least he had a teammate there, so if they met, he could take a round off to rest.

They hadn't reached the finals yet, but the surrounding spectator stands were already seventy percent full. Xin Mu searched through a borrowed pair of binoculars, but saw no sign of the familiar trio.

Apparently, the three of them only spawned randomly around Ash and didn't wander elsewhere.

While Xin Mu looked around through his binoculars, someone in the guest seating area was also using binoculars to search for a target.

"'Ello, 'ello, hola! Time for Iono's Odd Tales to go live! Today, we're at the Pangoro Academy Cup, and I'm sure we can find that Meowscarada's Trainer here...

Ah! Found him! See? I told you I had good luck!"

As she spoke, Iono adjusted the angle of her livestream camera. Her equipment seemed to be custom-made. Despite the considerable distance, it captured Meownei and Iono as clearly as a high-definition camera.

Of course, no livestream chat was complete without contrarians. Someone was now demanding that Iono prove this Meowscarada was the one from the video.

Meanwhile, Xin Mu had already met his opponent on the Rock Field: Ding Wanning, the student who was still competing after delaying his graduation for two years.

"Your first time competing? Then you're not very lucky. I've won the individual championship for the past two years. Why not concede now and go prepare for tomorrow's six-on-six?"

Having competed so many times, he remembered all the opponents who were hard to handle. Xin Mu wasn't among them.

Past competitions had also taught him that one-on-one battles took a heavy toll on a Pokémon's stamina. Like running a marathon, they required careful pacing.

Getting an opponent to concede was undoubtedly the easiest option. However, Xin Mu completely ignored him, and Meownei patted its chest before stepping onto the battlefield.

"How rude... Wang, have you found his information?"

"No. He's a complete newcomer, with no battle record at all. I can't even find any records of his Pokémon."

"Then there's no need to keep looking. His Pokémon's already out in the open, though it's a species I don't recognize."

Not everyone knew about Pokémon from other regions, and the person standing before Xin Mu was a case in point.

In fact, Coach Jia had gotten one thing wrong. Ding Wanning hadn't deliberately delayed graduation to compete. His adviser was strict, and his poor performance in his field of study had prevented him from graduating.

But he had never explained that publicly. After all, the false rumor sounded a little better.

"Meowscarada. A Grass- and Dark-type Pokémon."

Things were much the same on Xin Mu's side. Both analysts relayed the opposing side's information to their respective competitors, then ended the call when the match officially began.

"Let's finish this quickly! Aggron, pin it down with Rock Tomb, then finish it with Fire Punch!"

Upon receiving the command, Aggron was just about to act when it froze for a moment. At some point, Meownei had vanished.

"Meow~ (Hey, big lug! I'm over here~)"

The sudden voice revealed Meownei's location to Aggron. But just as Aggron was about to unleash Rock Tomb in that direction, a blue sphere was already right in front of its face.