The full force of the Earthquake poured into Venusaur. Rather than staggering under it, Venusaur looked almost settled, like the energy had somewhere to go.
Paul stared. Venusaur was Grass and Poison-type. Ground-type moves should deal neutral damage.
Yet Venusaur had taken nothing.
In the stands, Conway reached up and straightened his glasses. A flicker of grim satisfaction crossed his face.
Finally. Someone else.
As a trainer who built everything around data and preparation, he had a particular hatred for opponents who refused to follow the rules, and Ash was the undisputed king of that.
Losing to him was one thing. Conway could live with defeat. What he could not live with was losing without understanding how or why, watching his entire strategy get dismantled by a sequence of events that made no logical sense. Ash had shattered Trick Room directly. Who did that?
Now Paul was standing in the same fog, and on the finals stage no less. Conway watched with a mix of sympathy and morbid curiosity.
He still quietly wanted Paul to win. Arrogant and cold as the guy was, they were both from Sinnoh, and they had some history. But given what Ash kept pulling out, Paul's odds were looking grim.
On the field, Venusaur had already converted the absorbed Ground-type energy into Grass-type power and fed it back into the earth. The entire field shuddered. Then the vines erupted, thicker and more violent than before, surging upward across every inch of the arena.
This Frenzy Plant had been fed by the opponent's own Earthquake. It hit roughly thirty percent harder than the one that had ended Froslass.
The reason Venusaur could do this traced back to Xerneas. In Kalos, Xerneas was known as the God of Life and Creation, but it carried a lesser-known second title: Ruler of the Earth. Its signature move, Geomancy, drew power directly from the ground to strengthen itself. The earth's energy and Xerneas's own were, in a sense, the same thing.
This was an obscure detail the veterans in the Chat Group had passed along to Ash, and it had opened up a new training direction entirely. As long as incoming Ground-type energy did not far exceed Venusaur's own strength, it could absorb and redirect it. Against Torterra specifically, the gap was close enough that Venusaur did take some residual damage, but compared to the power it converted in return, that damage was essentially negligible.
The Frenzy Plant tore across the field toward Torterra. Unlike Venusaur, Torterra carried no resistance to Grass-type moves. A direct hit would be serious trouble.
Paul did not hesitate. "Torterra, return."
Pulling Torterra back mid-exchange served two purposes at once. It sidestepped the Frenzy Plant entirely and left Venusaur locked into a recharge turn with no target to hit.
"Drapion, let's go."
A large, heavily armoured scorpion appeared on the field, its body a deep purple, every surface covered in dense carapace plating. It looked like something built specifically to be difficult to hurt.
In the stands, Brock's expression sharpened as he watched it appear. "Drapion is one of Paul's signature Pokémon. Poison and Dark dual typing, originally from Sinnoh. Last recorded data had it around mid High Level, though it may have pushed past that by now."
Pokémon like Drapion were essentially unheard of in Kanto, but Paul's team had warranted close study. Ash had done the research, and Brock and Misty had absorbed a fair amount from it.
The typing matchup here heavily favoured Drapion. Venusaur's Grass-type moves would be resisted, and its Poison-type moves would do nothing at all against a Dark-type.
Meanwhile, the swap itself had been well timed. Torterra's Ground and Grass-type moves had both proven useless against Venusaur, so there was no reason to keep it in. Drapion offered real offensive coverage and a clean path to pressuring Venusaur while it sat through its recharge.
That said, Ash would never have pulled his pokemon back in the first place. Unfavorable matchup or not, as long as his Pokémon wanted to fight, Ash would let it.
Rationally it was not always the optimal call, but that instinct was precisely what set him apart from trainers who played purely by the numbers.
Where Paul represented pure calculated logic, Ash represented something closer to pure conviction. Two extremes, opposite ends of the same scale.
To Paul's surprise, the Frenzy Plant was still active. The time it took to swap Pokémon should have been enough for the move to start fading. Instead the vines looked as vigorous as ever, and the moment Drapion landed on the field they turned toward it as if drawn by instinct.
"Pin Missile."
Drapion dropped into a low stance and its tail fired five sharp Bug-type projectiles in rapid succession. A professionally trained Pokémon could land all five consistently, and Drapion was no exception. The missiles tore through the air toward the incoming vines and a chain of explosions kicked up a wall of smoke across the field.
A second later, thorns punched clean through the smoke and hammered into Drapion.
Paul's expression tightened. Five consecutive Bug-type hits, which should have suppressed Grass-type moves, had barely slowed the Frenzy Plant down. The vines had torn straight through without pause and landed with full force. The gap in raw power between the two sides was wider than he had accounted for.
After the impact, the Frenzy Plant finally spent itself and fell still. On Venusaur's side, the win barely registered as satisfying.
It wanted Torterra. That was the fight it had signed up for. What was a scorpion doing on the field? Where had the Grass-type pride gone?
Ash caught the mood and smiled despite himself. "Come back for now. We'll find another chance."
With Paul's playstyle, Torterra was not coming back out while Venusaur was still on the field. The matchup was too lopsided and Paul was too pragmatic to force it. Ash recalled Venusaur and reached for his next ball.
"Charizard, let's go!"
Paul's eyes narrowed. "Drapion, Toxic Spikes."
"Stop it. Flamethrower!"
Toxic Spikes was exactly the kind of move Ash refused to let land. Any Pokémon entering the field afterward would be poisoned on contact, grounded fliers included. Poison drained stamina steadily and could even interrupt moves mid-execution. There was no scenario where allowing it to be set up made sense.
Charizard drew in the heat, and a moment later a river of crimson fire lit up the entire field.
Paul blinked. Then he looked up.
Hanging above the arena was a blazing artificial sun, the residual energy from Venusaur's Sunny Day still burning at full strength. It was feeding directly into Charizard's output. That setup had not been an accident. Venusaur had laid the groundwork before being recalled, and Charizard had walked straight into the ideal conditions.
Forget the Toxic Spikes. Under those flames, trying to finish setting them up would cost Drapion its life.
"Drapion, Protect!"
The Toxic Spikes were abandoned. An emerald barrier snapped into place just as the Flamethrower arrived.
The explosion that followed shook the entire field. Thick black smoke swallowed everything and the crowd leaned forward collectively, straining to see through it.
A shape came shooting out of the smoke and slammed hard into the protective barrier at the edge of the field.
It was Drapion.
It had used Protect and still ended up there.
"Fire Punch!"
Charizard was already moving, diving out of the sunlit sky like a falling star, claws blazing. The punch connected squarely with the stunned Drapion and fire erupted across its body.
Drapion let out a long wail, straightened involuntarily from the heat, then went limp.
"Drapion is unable to battle. Charizard wins!"
Another near-instant knockout. Froslass had been fragile and two levels below Venusaur, so that result was understandable. But Drapion was known for its durability, and it had only been one level below Charizard. It had used Protect. And it had still gone down in two moves.
Even an Elite Four Level Pokémon with a Sunny Day boost would struggle to end Drapion that quickly.
Paul recalled Drapion quietly.
Three of his Pokémon were down. On Ash's side, only Infernape could be considered out of the fight. In a standard six-on-six, losing three Pokémon first did not necessarily mean losing the match. Usually those early losses came with something gained in return, information, damage, positioning, something.
Paul had gained nothing. Ash had lost his weakest Pokémon in the lineup and was otherwise untouched. The rest of Ash's team remained an open question, and every Pokémon he had sent out so far had shown no visible ceiling.
Before this match Paul had never genuinely believed a peer could push him this far. Not even Ash. But standing across the field from him now, actually absorbing each exchange in real time, he understood it for the first time.
Victory was drifting away. In any other match he would have recognised that and moved on, because a battle with no path to winning held no value. But this was the Indigo Plateau Conference final. Walking away was not an option.
"Aggron, let's go."