"Alright, the items are in your hands, which means it's time for me to find a quiet corner to slack off and rest," Slowking telepathically signed off before vanishing into thin air with a fluid Teleport.
"Feng Che! Sabrina!"
Julie came running down the corridor, panting heavily. She had sprinted all the way from the administrative deck, large drops of sweat rolling down her cheeks as she paused to catch her breath before the young pair.
"The scheduling has cleared! Your promotion circuit is about to commence, and the presiding proctors have officially been designated."
"Please follow me. I'll map out the assessment criteria as we walk to the stadium."
"For this circuit, each of you must challenge four active League Elites in back-to-back succession. Every proctor will deploy a three-Pokémon roster against you."
"Upon securing a victory, you will be allotted a strict two-hour rest window to tend to your team. If you fail to re-enter the field before that timer expires, the World League's automated system will authorize the next Elite to launch a forced engagement regardless of your readiness."
"Your sole objective is to cleanly clear all four proctors. Once that's accomplished, Chief Sky will immediately push through your official reassignments to the frontier sectors."
By the time Julie finished her breakdown, they had arrived at the grand sports complex.
"Feng Che, you're assigned to Arena A."
"Sabrina, you'll be taking Arena B."
"Give it everything you've got!" Julie cheered, pumping her fists encouragingly.
Feng Che strode into the tunnel and stepped out onto the pristine turf of Arena A, immediately sensing that his first opponent was an exceptional combatant. This wasn't a face he recognized from the regional circuits; this man was an elite operational combatant stationed directly at World League headquarters.
The man was exceptionally built, looking every bit like a career martial artist, his massive frame wrapped in thick tactical bandages that showed faint glints of fresh blood weeping from underlying training scars.
"Greetings, Leader Feng Che. I am Elite Ross, commonly known across the special operations branch as the Frenzied Bloodhand," the bipedal mountain introduced himself, his voice gruff. "I am a Fighting-type specialist."
"Steel your mind, boy. I have no intention of holding back. Come forth, Bewear!"
The massive Ursine predator resembled a bizarre, oversized pink plush toy. Its skull and heavy tail were a soft pink, contrasted sharply by a solid black midsection and thick, hyper-muscled black limbs.
A Bewear's dorsal muscle density exceeded a metric ton of pure crushing pressure; anything caught within its characteristic double-arm embrace would be snapped in half like a dry twig. They possessed a terrifying, primitive physical force, driven by an instinctual habit of crushing their pack-mates in suffocating displays of affection.
"A Bewear... a magnificent choice for raw kinetic output," Feng Che noted. He was well-aware that the Alola region historically revered a legendary variant of this species as a local deity—an apex predator that ruled its ecosystem with an iron fist.
"Let's see how you handle the prehistoric lineage. Go, Aerodactyl!"
Feng Che tossed his luxury ball, releasing a magnificent Aerodactyl into the stadium air. The ancient dragon's slate-gray hide was encrusted with jagged, obsidian-like rock spires along its spine.
"An Aerodactyl that has successfully unlocked its ancestral bloodline traits... truly an exceptional specimen," Ross praised, his eyes widening slightly.
As the presiding warden for the League's restricted Fossil Biosphere, Ross understood the immense rarity of a true atavistic restoration. This was a genetic pedigree that the central research division couldn't replicate, no matter how many fossils they extracted.
"But I wonder if your ancient flyer can endure the sheer physical pressure of my beast."
"Bewear, Bulk Up, then unleash an unrestricted offensive cascade!"
The pink giant took a deep, localized breath, its heavy muscle groups instantly swelling and hardening beneath its plush hide. With a thunderous stomp of its left foot, it shattered the sub-soil, ripping a massive block of bedrock cleanly out of the turf.
Harnessing its savage physical strength, it snapped the boulder in half with its bare hands and hurled the massive projectile straight at Aerodactyl like a artillery shell.
"Aerodactyl, Iron Head." Feng Che's command was delivered with absolute composure.
The ancient predator's skull surged with a brilliant, metallic silver sheen. It dove sharply, its reinforced crown colliding head-on with the oncoming boulder. CRACK! The sheer kinetic shockwave pulverized the stone into a spray of flying gravel.
Bewear moved with uncanny, fluid agility for its size, slipping through the falling shrapnel to snatch another massive piece of debris mid-air, instantly hurling it back up into the flight path.
"Your beast possesses exceptional manual dexterity," Feng Che noted smoothly.
Aerodactyl beat its heavy wings, executing a flawless Steel Wing sequence. A silver-gray arc of energy flashed through the sky, cleanly slicing the incoming projectiles into harmless, uniform fragments.
"Now, Air Slash!"
Blades of compressed air, thin as razor wire, rippled through the sunlight, vanishing from sight as they accelerated across the arena.
Bewear's large ears twitched violently, tracking the micro-vibrations in the air currents. It twisted its heavy torso mid-stride, executing a series of desperate evasive rolls across the turf to dodge the invisible blades.
Yet, despite the pressure, the pink giant was steadily closing the distance, its eyes locking onto the flyer's altitude.
Suddenly, Bewear exploded forward, launching itself into the air with a maximum-output Close Combat, its massive, sandbag-sized fists whistling as they targeted Aerodactyl's chest.
"Aerodactyl, Aero Ace!"
The giant fists struck nothing but a fading afterimage. Aerodactyl completely bypassed the trajectory, pivoting instantly behind Bewear's exposed back to unleash a concentrated Hurricane.
The localized vortex caught the pink bear mid-air. Unable to correct its alignment, Bewear was hurled out of the sky, crashing heavily into the stadium floor and carving a massive, humanoid crater into the concrete.
"Alright, Bewear, stop playing around," Ross called out, his tone remaining entirely level. "Open the throttles completely. Use Superpower!"
The pink titan roared as it scrambled out of the crater, two plumes of white steam venting from its nostrils as its breathing turned heavy and rhythmic.
"Follow up with Thrash!"
Bewear slammed both paws into the ground, sending spiderweb fractures rippling across the entire stadium floor as it surged forward, swinging its heavy arms in a blind, destructive frenzy.
Aerodactyl fanned its wings, manifesting dozens of arm-sized, jagged stone pillars that hovered in the air before snapping its wings forward to launch them like a volley of high-velocity railgun spikes.
Bewear merely extended its heavy arms, its muscled palms catching a spike targeted directly at its eyes. With a violent twist of its torso, it hurled the stone lance straight back at the sky, the projectile whistling as it reversed course.
Before the thrown spike could breach Aerodactyl's personal airspace, the flyer snapped a second stone pillar downward, cleanly shattering the incoming projectile mid-air.
"Excellent. Aerodactyl, Brave Bird!"
Layers of localized kinetic air currents condensed around Aerodactyl's frame, transforming the prehistoric predator into a roaring, stone-sheathed missile as it dove out of the clouds.
Seeing the incoming titan, Bewear braced its heavy hind legs and cocked its right fist, its entire muscular framework throttling to absolute maximum capacity. It threw a monumental straight punch directly into the crown of the descending stone missile.
BOOM!
The reinforced rock casing wrapping Aerodactyl shattered instantly under the impact, the stone shell peeling away in a massive spray of debris to reveal the flyer beneath. The sheer physical weight of Bewear's counter-punch forcibly halted Aerodactyl's forward momentum, launching it out of the air and slamming it into the turf amidst a billowing cloud of white dust.
But before Bewear could close the distance to execute a finishing blow, Aerodactyl vanished from the impact zone, leaving nothing but a deep, yawning fissure in the ground.
"Bewear, direct a maximum Close Combat straight into the fault line!"
The bear took another deep breath, slamming its massive fists into the opening of the fissure with mechanical speed. The entire arena vibrated violently as the concrete buckled under the concussive force, creating a massive, hollowed-out sinkhole.
"Using a close-quarters strike to simulate a manual Earthquake? Highly innovative," Feng Che observed with a cold smile. "But my Aerodactyl carries an atavistic lineage. Breaking it requires far more than basic ground friction."
"Aerodactyl, Rock Tomb!"
Dozens of jagged, needle-sharp stone pillars erupted from the perimeter of the sinkhole, lunging inward to impale the bear.
Bewear leaped wildly across the shifting debris to evade the spikes, its fists moving in a blur as it unleashed over a hundred continuous punches to smash the encroaching stones into dust, completely obscuring the center of the field in a dense cloud of gray powder.
Taking advantage of the visual blind spot, Feng Che's Aerodactyl burst from a hidden subterranean pocket, beating its wings furiously to reclaim its absolute dominion over the high altitude.
By the time Bewear cleared the dust cloud and registered the flyer's position, the window had closed.
The Sovereign of the Skies flared its wings, compressing the high-velocity updrafts into a colossal, spinning column of wind that roared down upon the crater.
Unable to secure its footing on the ruined concrete, the massive pink bear was violently swept up into the vortex, its heavy form spinning helplessly within the eye of the storm.
"Bewear, anchor your alignment and fire a maximum Hyper Beam straight down the core frequency!" Ross commanded, his voice sharp.
A blinding, golden lance of destructive energy tore through the center of the hurricane, shattering the wind pressure completely as the pink silhouette stumbled heavily back onto the cracked turf. The intense friction of the vortex had clearly left deep, bleeding abrasions across its hide.
"Aerodactyl, press the advantage! Brave Bird, maximum velocity!"
Wrapped in a fresh corona of roaring air currents, the prehistoric predator whistled through the smoke, hurtling toward the winded bear like a falling star.