I'm not a competitve person, so I'd lose against anyone in the Frontier, haha. I hope to learn more about competitive battling in the future, though, so perhaps someday I will be able to.
Dual Destinies is a pretty good way to start the series since it's one of the easier games and it has a good plot. The original 3 are set to be released as a bundle game on the 3DS sometime later this year as well, which would be a nice thing to pick up.
Bit of both. I used to go by Artemis and when I decided to have a username change, I really wanted to pick a character of something that I liked, and Athena fit well since it would also be "close" to my old nickname (both being Greek goddesses).