At the edges of the arena, the flames burned even hotter. The epicenter of Charizard's final strike had become a roaring inferno, thick enough to swallow everything inside it whole.
A second later, a pitch-black figure shot out from the fire. Mega Charizard X, covered in wounds, landed on its feet and stood tall. It looked like it could go another ten rounds without complaint.
On the other side of the field, Cloyster became visible as the flames receded. Its blue shell had gone black. The smell coming off it was almost appetizing.
The referee stared for several seconds, then raised the flag. "Cloyster is unable to battle. Charizard wins!"
The arena came apart.
Most of Charizard's wounds were self-inflicted, the cost of a fighting style built entirely around closing distance and hitting hard. Flare Blitz's recoil alone had done more damage than anything Cloyster had managed to land. That was the trade-off.
A ranged approach would have been cleaner, and against a Pokémon whose physical defense dwarfed its special defense, Fire-type moves from a distance might have ended the fight faster. But that was never the point. The sharpest spear against the sturdiest shield, and the spear had won.
Lorelei recalled Cloyster without any visible disappointment. "Your Charizard has come a long way," she said. "And this Mega Evolution is full of surprises. If Lance finds out one of Charizard's forms carries the Dragon type, he'll tear the region apart looking for a Charizardite."
"We still have a long way to go," Ash said. "Charizard winning today still depended on my power more than its own. One day that won't be the case." He paused. "Has Lance found a Dragoniteite yet?"
That goal sat at the back of both their minds, Ash's and Charizard's. Most of the battles they had won so far had been won by Aura Power closing a gap that shouldn't have been closable. The level differences were simply too wide. The Indigo Plateau Conference had been the rare exception, the one stretch where most of the team didn't need the boost.
Chimchar had been the outlier even then, a temporary addition that had pushed itself past every limit in a matter of weeks and evolved into Infernape in a timeframe that would never be repeated.
Willpower, circumstance, and opportunity had aligned perfectly for that one Pokémon. It wasn't something that could be manufactured again.
Lorelei shook her head. "Dragoniteite isn't easy to find, and Lance has no shortage of other problems demanding his time right now. He has people searching on his behalf, but nothing yet." She paused, and something quieter crossed her expression.
"Not that I'm in a position to judge. I have a Slowbro that can Mega Evolve, a Key Stone in my hand, and no Mega Stone to show for any of it."
It was the situation many trainers found themselves in. Mega Stones were appearing with increasing frequency, duplicates of already-known varieties surfacing regularly, while others remained completely undiscovered.
The underlying questions, where Key Stones and Mega Stones actually came from, why they could trigger something latent in a Pokémon's bloodline, why the bond between trainer and Pokémon was part of the process at all, none of it had been answered. That was a problem for researchers. What trainers needed to worry about was finding the right stone for the right Pokémon.
"Enough of that," Lorelei said, cutting herself off. "We still have a battle to finish. Go, Slowbro!"
A pink, vaguely unfocused Pokémon materialized on the field. Slowbro's evolution was unusual by any standard, the product of two Pokémon merging rather than one transforming, and the result was a Psychic and Water type with a defensive profile built for endurance.
No Ice type, but water and ice were close enough in practice, and having Water coverage meant a cleaner answer to Fire than a pure Ice team could manage.
Lance's career was the textbook example of what happened when a team leaned too hard into a single type.
Ash looked at Slowbro and felt the corner of his mouth pull upward. "Is Miss Lorelei looking out for me? Because that happens to be exactly the right matchup for my next Pokémon." If Lorelei had sent out anything from the upper tier of her team, Charizard would have needed to stay in and take the damage to set things up. Slowbro was Champion-Intermediate, the same tier as Cloyster, and the only other Pokémon on Lorelei's main roster sitting at that level.
After all, she was facing a young trainer who had been competing for less than a year. Bringing out her full main force would have felt excessive, the kind of thing you did when you wanted to crush someone rather than challenge them. Even in the exhibition match with Ash before, Lorelei had only used her second team's strongest, an Elite Four peak Glaceon.
The goal was a fair, well-matched duel. That was why Lorelei had chosen these two Pokémon. Ash wasn't the same trainer he had been, and using second-team Pokémon straight through would have been inadequate, so she had selected the two weakest among her primary lineup.
This turned out to work in Ash's favor. Against Lorelei's other Pokémon, he would have needed Charizard to stay in and wear the opponent down, but Slowbro was a different case.
"Come back, Charizard!"
Ash held out the Poké Ball and recalled him.
"Player Ash has recalled Charizard while facing Elite Lorelei's Slowbro! Is he concerned about a type disadvantage? Dragon against Water shouldn't create much of a liability, and Charizard still has plenty of fight left. Could Ash's second Pokémon be better suited to this matchup?"
The announcer sounded genuinely puzzled. Charizard had just taken down Lorelei's first Pokémon and was riding the momentum of that win. Pulling him back now wasn't about rest. It was a deliberate choice, which suggested that whatever Ash was sending out next was specifically suited to handle Slowbro.
The crowd had its own theories running in parallel.
"He has a second Champion-level Pokémon? That can't be real."
"He's been competing for less than a year and he has two of them? He's fifteen years old!"
"Lorelei said he elevates his Pokémon through his special ability. That's not the same as truly having Champion-level Pokémon."
"That's absurd. Strength that comes through your own ability isn't your own? Trainer and Pokémon are one and the same."
"This is shared power between Ash and his Pokémon. That's what matters."
"Forget all that, what's the second Pokémon? Is he sending Pikachu?"
Many assumed he would. Pikachu was Ash's signature, his recognized ace, and the Electric type would have a clear advantage over Water. It seemed like the logical choice.
In reality, Pikachu was still recovering. He had climbed back from Mid-level to High, but against a Champion-level opponent that wasn't enough. Even with the hat and Aura Power, it wouldn't be close.
So the second Pokémon wasn't Pikachu.
"I choose you, Lugia!"
Ash threw the black-gold Poké Ball.
Light flashed across the field, and a great black bird appeared.
Lugia. The God of the Sea.
The noise in the arena stopped completely. For a moment, the entire crowd was silent, and the silence was the kind that had weight to it. Breathing became audible. Then, a few seconds later, the arena broke into discussion ten times louder than anything before.
"What is that? Is that Lugia? The Lugia?"
"The shape matches, but why is it black? Lugia was never black."
"Have you actually seen the real Lugia? Maybe the snow-white appearance in the legends was never accurate."
"That's nonsense. The legends aren't passed down for nothing. We've seen the pictures. Lugia is white."
"We live in the Orange Islands. If we can't recognize our own totem symbol, what have we been doing? That is Lugia. But someone explain why it's black."
"Who cares about the color, someone explain why Lugia is in Ash's hands at all!"
Lugia's appearance had sent the arena into a completely different state. The legendary God of the Sea had materialized on a competition field in the middle of what was supposed to be an exhibition match.
For regions further away, Lugia was a name most people had heard without having seen much beyond it. Knowledge was thin and secondhand.
But this was the Orange Islands, Lugia's legendary home. Almost no one here was unfamiliar with the name, and most had encountered the image in some form, blurry sightings, stone carvings, old photographs with the focus gone soft. Lugia's existence wasn't abstract here. It was a presence people had grown up alongside without ever meeting directly.
And now it was standing on a battlefield, facing an Elite Four member, wearing a color nobody had ever associated with it.
Nobody had expected an exhibition match to produce something like this.