All gone? The first thought in everyone's head was the same: impossible.
There were at least a hundred thousand Sitrus Berries across these islands. Entire hillsides of them. Claiming they were "all gone" was less like a report and more like a punchline to a bad joke.
But the staff member's face wasn't joking. His hands were shaking.
Nana's composure hardened in an instant. "Show me."
Ash, Misty, and Serena fell in behind her. They wanted to see for themselves what kind of force could strip an entire island's harvest.
Ash's first thought was the Team Rocket Trio. It would be exactly their brand of absurd, large-scale, pointless theft. But even those three couldn't eat a hundred thousand Berries.
Three minutes of fast walking brought them to the source of the crisis.
It was enormous. Deep blue skin, arms like tree trunks, a belly that looked like it contained its own weather system. Its expression was placid, content, and completely vacant, the face of a creature that had never experienced a thought more complex than "eat next thing."
Snorlax.
It sat at the centre of what had been a grove of Sitrus trees, methodically stripping fruit from branches, consuming Berries in fistfuls without pausing to chew. The surrounding trees were bare. Not just bare of fruit. Bare of bark. Some trunks had been gnawed down to stumps. In places, even the roots had been dug up and eaten.
"Of course it's a Snorlax." Ash watched the destruction unfold with the resigned fascination of someone who'd expected exactly this species the moment the word "eaten" was used. "If anything could clear an island of Berries, it's a Snorlax."
"Stop analysing and help!" Serena grabbed his arm. "If this keeps going, there won't just be no Berries left. There won't be any trees left!"
She was right. The Sitrus orchards were the result of generations of cultivation. Specific soil conditions, precise care, years of growth to reach full production. If the roots were gone, everything reset to zero. Decades of work, consumed by a single Pokémon in an afternoon.
Staff members had already tried to intervene. Five of them were pulling at Snorlax's arms, pushing against its sides, shouting at it to stop. Snorlax finished the twenty Berries in its hands, gave its body a casual shake, and sent all five flying in different directions.
It didn't even look at them. It reached for the next tree.
"Ash, use a Pokémon. We need to suppress it before there's nothing left." Misty's voice carried urgency.
"On it. Pikachu, let's go!"
Pikachu launched from Ash's shoulder toward the Snorlax. As it moved, Ash scanned the target.
The data hit his mind like a truck.
Snorlax.
Male.
Normal-type.
High Elite level.
Ability: Gluttony.
Stats: Attack S (potential S).
Special Attack A (potential A).
Defence A (potential A).
Special Defence A (potential A).
HP S (potential S).
Speed S (potential S).
Ash blinked. Closed his eyes. Opened them. Read it again.
Three S-rank potentials. Three A-ranks. On a wild Snorlax found eating stolen fruit on a farming island.
Triple S. On a Snorlax.
The Attack and HP were believable. Snorlax as a species leaned into those stats. But Speed? S-rank Speed on a Snorlax? The species was famous for being the slowest thing on two legs. Even a fast Snorlax was slow by any other standard.
Achieving S-rank in a stat that the species was genetically predisposed against was like finding a Magikarp with S-rank Special Attack. One in a hundred thousand. Maybe rarer.
And it wasn't just the speed anomaly. The overall profile, three S-ranks and three A-ranks, meant this Snorlax had the theoretical potential to reach God level. Among Ash's own roster of gifted Pokémon, only Charizard and Gardevoir matched or exceeded this ceiling.
A random roadside Snorlax with God potential.
Ash had come to buy Berries. He was looking at something worth more than every Berry on all seven islands combined.
The feeding cost would be astronomical. Snorlax's appetite was a species-defining trait, and this one was clearly an overachiever even by Snorlax standards. A normal trainer would go bankrupt funding a single meal.
But specially formulated PokéBlocks existed for exactly this problem, designed to satisfy Snorlax's bottomless hunger in a single serving. And Ash's financial situation made the expense irrelevant. He earned more in a day than most trainers spent in a year.
Before the development of Snorlax-specific PokéBlocks, the species had been a paradox. Extraordinary potential, extreme rarity, and an appetite that could bankrupt a small town. Some trainers who encountered one in the wild chose to walk away rather than face the feeding costs.
The PokéBlocks had solved the economics. But they hadn't solved the scarcity. Snorlax had no fixed habitat. They appeared in any region, on any terrain, at any time, with no pattern anyone had been able to map. Finding one was pure chance.
Ash had come here to buy fruit. The universe had handed him a God level-potential Snorlax instead.
If he didn't catch this, he'd be insulting Togepi's luck aura.
"Pikachu, Quick Attack!"
Pikachu launched. A yellow streak crossed the gap between them and Snorlax in a blink, slamming into the massive Pokémon's belly at full speed.
Snorlax slid backward several metres. The ground beneath it furrowed from the impact.
Pikachu bounced off like a tennis ball hitting a mattress. It spun through the air, disoriented, and barely managed to right itself before stumbling back to earth. The attacker had been repelled further than the target.
Snorlax's belly was more than fat. It was a natural shock absorber, converting incoming kinetic energy into elastic rebound. Hitting it was like punching a wall of dense rubber. The force went in and came right back out.
"Is Pikachu okay?" Misty leaned close to Ash, brow furrowed. Her voice was low, meant only for him. "Something seems off."
"Pikachu's fine. Snorlax is just that tough."
"Are you sure?" Misty tapped her chin. Something in Pikachu's movement had caught her eye. Not wrong, exactly. Just different from what she expected.
Her instinct was correct. Pikachu had undergone its second Limit Break. The transformation had shifted its stat profile. Four S-rank potentials now instead of three: Attack, Special Attack, Speed, and HP had all reached the ceiling. Defence and Special Defence still fluctuated between B and A but were settling.
The gain from the second transformation was smaller than the first, which had jumped from six A-ranks to three S-ranks in one leap. But each additional S-rank increased in difficulty on an exponential curve.
For most Pokémon, moving a single stat from B to A was a lifetime achievement. Moving from A to S was the work of a generation.
The critical change wasn't the raw numbers. It was the fixing of stats. Before this transformation, Pikachu's stats had fluctuated with level changes, never settling at a permanent value.
Now the fixed stats would hold regardless of level. No retraining needed. Whatever level Pikachu reached, it would arrive at peak condition for that level almost immediately.
That advantage was why Pikachu's post-Limit Break level drops recovered so fast. The system was designed for rapid re-levelling.
"SNOR!" Snorlax stopped eating.
That was significant. For a Snorlax to interrupt a meal, the interruption had to register as a genuine threat. Pikachu's Quick Attack had hurt. Not enough to cause real damage, but enough to get attention. Snorlax's placid expression curdled into something angry.
Nobody interrupted dinner.
"Snorlax!" Ash raised his voice. "Those Berries were grown by these people over generations. If you want food, I'll feed you until you burst after I catch you. But you need to stop destroying their livelihood!"
Reason and emotion. An appeal to the Snorlax's better nature, assuming it had one.
A hungry Snorlax did not have a better nature. It patted its belly once and charged.
"So fast!" Misty's shock was genuine.
Snorlax's bulk should have made it lumber. Instead, it crossed the distance to Pikachu in a burst of speed that contradicted every assumption about the species.
That S-rank Speed potential wasn't just theoretical. Even at this level, even without full development, this Snorlax was fast in a way that Snorlax had no right to be.
Body Slam. The full weight of that enormous frame, plus momentum, aimed squarely at Pikachu.
"Dodge!"
Pikachu sprang backward. Snorlax's body hit the ground where it had been standing and the impact shook the earth. The tremor rippled outward, knocking loose fruit from nearby trees and causing Serena to stumble.