Doctor Doom watched as the light of hope faded from his opponent’s eyes. He could see now that the girl understood completely the depths of despair that she found herself deeply entrenched in. Ignorance had given way to knowledge, and that knowledge heralded the ending of this battle and of her livelihood as she knew it. So proud this frail little girl had been, so determined to best the great Victor Von Doom; now there was nothing left but the ending of this tragic misstep on her part.
Misty had never seen anything like this Gyarados before. She had seen other powerful Pokemon before; plenty of them in fact when she had auditioned to be one of the Elite Four only to be trounced. But to have something with such a well-known weakness to electrical attacks shrug off such a powerful attack like Thunder… was terrifying. Nothing should be able to shrug off an attack like that. Yet it had been done. Doom’s words seemed prophetic now. She was doomed.
“Doom,” Doom started. “You may destroy the Starmie at your leisure.”
The Gyarados knew enough about its master to know when it said it could do things at its leisure he meant anything but that. The key words in that sentence that he zoned in on were “destroy” and “Starmie.” Gyarados wasn’t like most Gyarados; it was not blinded by its rage. It had harnessed the extra energy generated from its usual fury and used it to grow even more powerful and, following in the steps of his master, smarter. Doom was determined to live up to his namesake, his great and kind master, in order to properly honor him on their journey to conquer the world.
It helped that he got to savagely rip things up in this pursuit, as Doom found that he really enjoyed ripping apart lesser Pokemon.
“Stop! Please. Don’t kill Starmie. I beg of you,” Misty pleaded to Doom as tears streaked down her face.
Doom made a subtle hand gesture and the other Doom knew to halt its planned attack for the moment. Doom eyed Misty with a calculating look in his eye. Victor Von Doom was plotting. Somewhere a badly beaten Reed Richards shuddered in absolute horror.
“It is most interesting that you now choose to grovel to me after all of your boasts and taunts, gym leader. What, suppose you, could you have to offer me in exchange for the mercy of Doom? Mercy is not something that is just handed out after all, it must be paid for. What, Misty, do you plan to pay me with.”
“Actually,” the ref began, “from what I understand mercy is the act of sparing someone without needing urk-“ the man’s speech was cut off by Doom’s right hand closing in a distinctively choking motion as the man futilely grasped at his neck.
“Doom does not recall asking for an opinion on the matter.” Doom opened his fist and the man sucked in all of the air he could muster. Doom turned his attack back to Misty and said, “Well? What do you have to offer.”
“I bestow upon you the Cascade Badge, it indicates-“
“Irrelevant to the transaction at hand. I have earned that by crushing both you and your Pokemon. You cannot give away things that are no longer yours to give away, child. Try again.”