A semicircle of folding chairs has been arranged facing a pond just outside the walls of ASB Central's contest hall. They are almost all occupied by chattering people, most of them clutching programs that outline the schedule of events to take place in this year's Grand Festival. A few people still hover around the edges of the gathering, looking for an empty seat, but with only minutes left before the scheduled start of this appeal round, there aren't many to be had. The novelty of the event, as well as sunny, warm weather and the attractiveness of the park where the first appeals will take place, has resulted in a decent turnout.
The four coordinators who will be competing in this block of appeals stand in a small huddle on the far side of the pond, looking across at the people assembling to watch their performances. Their anticipation is at least as great as the audience's, though of a more nervous character, as they watch the judge walk out in front of the pond to announce the start of the appeal round.
Psymon and Jibakurei
Starting off this block of appeals is Psymon, who takes the stage alone, choosing not to reveal his pokémon immediately. Even when he does toss a pokéball to the grass and call on its occupant, all that appears is an oddly-shaped rock.
Jibakurei the spiritomb remains hidden in his keystone as he releases a smokescreen, a thick, black cloud boiling into the air around him and hiding his stony prison from sight. The ghost calls on his psychic powers to stir up the billowing smoke--it's a bit hard to get a firm grip on the sooty cloud, but Jibakurei does manage to at least condense the smokescreen down to a rough ball shape, floating a little above the his keystone. To finish, Jibakurei composes a ball of blue-glowing flames and shoots it up from his keystone and into the slowly whirling ball of smoke above. The will-o-wisp bobs and whirls at the heart of the smoke for a few seconds before the whole composition fades away into the sunlit air.
Psymon bows and smiles to the crowd as they applaud, but Jibakurei remains hidden in the depths of its keystone, unsure of whether it would spoil the effect for him to make an appearance now. In the end Psymon recalls him before he makes up his mind, and with one final wave to the audience, the trainer tramps off the stage.
Negrek: 6.0
The basic idea of this appeal is cool: using psychic and somkescreen to create a creepy kind of apparition. There are some issues with how you went about executing it, though. First, smoke is kind of hard to mold, psychic power or no, so for a pokémon not expecially proficient in psychic abilities, it's going to be difficult to get a real distinct shape. Will-o-wisp is also only a single flame and kind of hard to direct and make look like eyes. Ultimately, though, I feel you could have done more with this appeal. You chose just to have Jibakurei create a larger spiritomb from his cloud of smoke. While in its way a little overambitious, perhaps you could have formed something more interesting out of the smoke?
Metallica Fanboy: 6.7
It was a good idea, and the execution may not have gone exactly as planned, but it still went well.
Kratos Aurion: 6.0
The appeal worked, and I do like the concept behind it, but the result was a little underwhelming. The shape simply looked like a spiritomb, which is... what the pokémon itself was. You probably could've gotten away with forming a more impressive shape as opposed to simply recreating what was already there.
L'il Dwagie and Niflheim
L'il Dwagie looks more exhilarated than nervous as she steps up for her turn to appeal, bringing with her Niflheim the spinarak. The large green spider leaps down from her trainer's shoulder and scuttles forward to stand square before the crowd.
Niflheim gets off to an audacious start, strutting her stuff before the crowd and hissing self-aggrandizing comments as she goes. The audience can't understand a thing the spider says, but her body language makes clear her self-confidence and a certain disdain for the other competitors in this round, who are clearly the inferior pokémon.
With her superiority firmly established, Niflheim sets about building herself a domed web. It's a bit difficult to put together a real impressive structure out in the middle of the grass without anything large to anchor it to, but Niflheim does her best, managing at least to get a decent pile of webbing built, the thick, sticky strands that make it up glistening slightly in the sun. The spinarak clambers up and into the middle of her web, then releases a pulsing signal beam from her mandibles. The threads near her are burned clean through by the power of the attack, but those a little more on the outskirts are briefly illuminated in a dazzle of glowing reds, blues, and purples as the signal beam lights up the spinarak's creation.
Niflheim accepts the audience's applause as her due, only reluctantly crawling off her scorched web and back to her trainer as L'il Dwagie makes it clear that she's going to be leaving now, with or without her superstar spinarak.
Negrek: 6.5
The light show was pretty, although something like psybeam would probably have given you a prettier effect (more colors). The swagger didn't really connect to the rest of the appeal, though, and it didn't have much to distinguish it from the rest of the pack.
Kratos' Grades (block five)
Metallica Fanboy: 6.2
There were some clear flaws, particularly regarding Signal Beam, but the idea was well-jointed enough to warrant an average grade.
Kratos Aurion: 7.1
Save for the burnt bits, the illuminated dome looked quite dazzling. I can't really see what the swagger had to do with it, though; Niflheim exerting her superiority seems better suited to a more intimidating, dominating appeal than to a pretty light show.
Chiropter and Cama Zotz
Chiropter is next to take his place before the audience, carrying a pokéball at the ready. He tosses it into the air as soon as he reaches center stage, calling forth Cama Zotz the crobat. He takes to the air, four wings thrumming, and moves out over the pond to begin his appeal.
The crobat flies rapidly around the perimeter of the pond, dipping down until his wings kick up littles sprays of water as he passes on his way. Tugged into a frenzy by Cama Zotz's flight, the water first stirs and froths, then begins to whirlpool in towards its center as the crobat continues to circle the pond. With a final infusion of energy from Cama Zotz, a fierce twister shoots up from the center of the swirling water, tinged with aquamarine streaks of dragon energy and throwing a fine mist of water in all directions.
Cama Zotz doesn't stop circling, only putting on another burst of speed and disappearing into little more than a purple blur on the edge of the raging water. As he flies along he begins to glow and shed duplicates of himself into the air behind him. Clone after clone takes flight, matching their creator's speed and luminescence to fill the air around the twister with intertwining streaks of light. By the time the crobat's sky attack has reached the peak of its power, Cama Zotz almost invisible inside his aura of brilliant golden orange, and there are at least ten crobat-clones whipping around the twister. They mimic their master as he sweeps abruptly away from the twister and angles out over the crowd; the crobat clones streak off in every direction, dragging meteoric trails of energy after them as they rapidly vanish from view.
The twister spins itself out in Cama Zotz's absence and Chiropter steps forward to acknowledge the audience's applause; a few seconds later, a rather tired but pleased Cama Zotz comes flying back to claim his share of the accolades.
Negrek: 9.5
Very pretty. You did an appeal similar to this with Tuari a while ago, right? In any case, Cama Zotz's speed and, therefore, ability to make tons of clones is really what made this one work. I have seen rather too many tornado-making appeals in this round for my liking, though.
Metallica Fanboy: 8.0
The appeal was nothing short of great -- the attacks combined well and put on excellent effects.
Kratos Aurion: 9.2
Wow. Very impressive. The colors and movement were spectacular, and it flowed together well. Nicely done, as always.
Patar and Mongrel
Patar finishes the appeal round out, bringing his zangoose, Mongrel, to the stage. Despite his name, Mongrel is sleek and well-groomed for his contest appearance, though his expression is a bit surly as he surveys the audience.
The zangoose begins with a dance, waving his claws slowly in the air above his head as he sways back and forth, describing slow loops on the grass. The bright summer sun is abruptly smothered by dense clouds, which promptly unleash a downpour on both Mongrel and his audience. This miraculously being the first weather-altering attack the spectators have had to deal with this round, there is much scrambling for something with which to keep the rain off as Mongrel continues with his appeal.
The zangoose raises both paws above his head, conjuring an orb of icy energy between them that sprays a blast of chilly wind in a wide cone, bits of ice and snow whirling upwards as the rain pelts down. What raindrops come into contact with the attack are frozen, adding to the cloud of icy particles already carried on the wintry wind. No sooner has Mongrel stopped his blizzard than the zangoose jumps, now bringing claws coated in poison whipping around to slice through the remnants of his blizzard attack, which is traveling back to earth. The snow and ice is all in bits far too small to shatter, but the attack at least makes for a nice acrobatic display before Mongrel lands lightly on the ground amidst a light snow flurry and gives the audience a halfhearted wave before being recalled.
Negrek: 4.5
It ended up looking okay, but this appeal didn't really work. The thing is, since blizzard is already a blast of ice and snow, using it to freeze raindrops doesn't really do anything... you just end up with a few more bits of ice floating around. It's not something an audience can really see and appreciate. Also, those little bits of ice are really too small to cut through or shatter, and poison jab wouldn't really do more than spray some goop around.
Metallica Fanboy: 6.5
Again, while there were executional problems, the idea wasn't bad.
Kratos Aurion: 6.0
I'm afraid this is another appeal style I'm starting to get a little bored with, and it didn't go over quite the way you'd intended. Mongrel's speed and agility were impressive, though, and the rain and snow added a little extra sparkle to it.
The judges spend some time in conference, discussing the relative merits of the appeals they've seen this round. Spectators and competitors wait with bated breath, hoping that the suspense will soon come to an end with the announcement of the final scores. Finally, the numbers are displayed:
Final Scores
Chiropter: 26.7
L'il Dwagie: 19.3
Psymon: 18.7
Patar: 17.0
