With Snowscape still blanketing the arena, the surrounding temperature stayed well below freezing. Ice floes continued to drift across the pool's surface, keeping the Ice-type energy in the field dense and readily available. Cloyster drew on it without effort — the Icicle Spear barrage formed almost instantly and streaked toward Zorua in a continuous stream.
"Agility!"
The little fox moved. Her small frame darted across the limited platform in a blur of afterimages, weaving between each ice spear with almost contemptuous ease. Not a single shard made contact.
The opposing Trainer adjusted quickly.
"Cloyster — Icicle Crash! Cut off her space!"
Ice-type energy gathered overhead and crystallized into heavy columns that came crashing down across the platform. Zorua slipped between them, but the damage was done — the fallen columns now cluttered the already-small surface, shrinking the area she had left to work with.
The Trainer pressed the advantage.
"Keep going — Icicle Spear, non-stop!"
Cloyster locked in. Empowered by the Snowscape and its Skill Link ability, it became something closer to a siege turret than a Pokémon — ice spear after ice spear condensing and launching in rapid succession, filling the air between them until there was barely a gap to see through.
That's a lot of ice spears, David thought idly.
With the platform blocked by fallen ice columns and Cloyster pouring everything into suppressing the space, Zorua had run out of room to dodge. The only option left was to hold the line directly.
"If there's nowhere to dodge, don't bother. Zorua — Psychic, full force!"
"Zorua~!"
Psychic erupted from Zorua's body like a wave breaking outward. It spread across the space in front of her and caught every incoming ice spear in its grasp — suspending them mid-flight, motionless, locked in place as though time had stopped for them alone.
David watched and nodded quietly. Psychic was genuinely one of the most versatile tools available once it reached a certain level of mastery. Intercepting a barrage of projectiles mid-air was almost routine for Zorua at this point.
"Send them back."
The suspended ice spears reversed direction all at once and shot back toward Cloyster at full speed.
"Shell Blade — destroy them!"
An ice-blue blade of light extended from the protrusions along Cloyster's shell. It began to spin in place, the blade sweeping outward in wide arcs. Each returning ice spear that reached it shattered on contact — broken apart into glittering fragments that scattered through the frozen air around Cloyster's spinning form. Under the arena's lights and the still-falling snow, the effect was genuinely striking.
In a Contest setting, David thought with mild amusement, Zorua would be losing points right now for making her opponent look that good.
Contest rules were a different world from standard battles. If your move ended up showcasing your opponent's Pokémon instead of your own, you paid for it in the scoring. It was the kind of nuance that caught first-timers completely off guard — straightforward battles had their complexities, but Contests layered on an entirely separate set of considerations.
He set the thought aside.
Cloyster's strength, he noted seriously, was genuinely solid. With Snowscape active and the arena's Ice-type energy at its richest, it was performing close to the level of Gym Leader Gianna's Roserade when David had faced the Hundred Flowers Gym. Not quite at the peak of a Professional Stage One Pokémon — not quite Tsareena — but close. The opposing Trainer knew what she was doing.
It wasn't enough.
"Zorua — Dark Pulse, then Shadow Sneak barrage."
After the brief back-and-forth, David saw no reason to continue stalling. Zorua's Nasty Plot boost had been sitting unused long enough.
A burst of dense dark energy surged from Zorua and crashed directly into Cloyster just as it finished its Shell Blade rotation and came to a stop. The dark pulse detonated against the shell's exterior with a sharp crack. Cloyster cried out, rocked by the impact.
"Cloyster — withdraw and use Icicle Spear!"
The shell snapped shut. Cloyster retracted and began to spin again, launching another volley of ice spears as it rotated.
It didn't matter. Shadow Sneaks, each one dense with dark energy and boosted by Nasty Plot, punched straight through the incoming ice spears and hammered into Cloyster's withdrawn form one after another. Withdrawing boosted its Defense — but Shadow Sneak was a Special-based dark attack. The shell offered very little protection against it.
The stamina Cloyster had already burned through held the answer. It lasted a few exchanges and then fell.
Second match: Zorua again.
David glanced at the scoreboard, then back at his Pokémon. The opposing Trainer's lineup was clear enough in its logic — she was good, genuinely, but the gap between her Pokémon and Zorua's current level was real.
He decided to keep Zorua on the field for the third match as well.