At High level Stage, a Pokémon was already considered elite by Indigo Plateau Conference standards. So far, only Ash's team and Paul's Torterra had crossed that threshold.
Nobody else in the bracket had fielded anything at that level. Without Ash and Paul standing in the way, Conway's Trick Room strategy anchored by a High level Slowking could have carried him to the championship. Gary wouldn't have stood a chance, the matchup would have been over before it started.
But Conway hadn't drawn a kind bracket. He'd entered the same Conference as both Ash and Paul, and fate had slotted him into a Top 16 match instead of a semifinal collision. Bad luck, plain and simple.
Even so, he wasn't ready to fold. The moment Slowking materialized on the field, Conway's posture changed. An ace Pokémon had that effect on its trainer, it didn't matter how dire the scoreboard looked when your strongest partner was finally in play.
"Let's go, Slowking. She's dangerous, we need to lock her down before anything else."
Slowking nodded, eyes sharp and steady. It could feel the pressure radiating from Mega Gardevoir, this was the strongest opponent it had faced since evolving. No hesitation, though. It understood the plan.
"Disable!"
Slowking's eyes flared blue. A thread of psychic energy lanced across the field and latched onto Gardevoir, whose dark form flickered with a faint azure glow. Moonblast, sealed. That instant-cast double Moonblast from earlier had been devastating, and Conway wasn't about to let it happen again.
But Disable's utility went beyond move suppression. While the energy link held, Slowking could channel additional psychic force through it, physically restraining the target, weaker than a full Psychic, but stronger than Confusion's grip.
Slowking pushed, pouring its mental strength into the bind, trying to pin Gardevoir in place.
Gardevoir didn't resist. She simply watched, as though the psychic restraint was nothing more than a mild breeze.
"Now, Trick Room!" Conway pounced on the opening. With Gardevoir seemingly locked down, this was his window. Slowking's evolved mind could handle dual-channelling with ease: maintain the Disable while tearing open warped space.
A tiny cube of distorted energy condensed between Slowking's palms, dense with spatial force. Gardevoir still didn't move.
Conway's confidence flickered. If Gardevoir were genuinely paralysed, the silence would make sense. But she wasn't struggling at all, and Ash looked completely relaxed.
Was this a trap?
He dismissed the thought almost immediately. Letting a Trick Room team set up Trick Room as bait? That was absurd. Nobody voluntarily gave a slow team its win condition. Whatever Ash was thinking, Conway couldn't afford to hesitate.
Two seconds passed. The spatial energy reached critical mass.
Slowking roared and released it. Trick Room's distortion flooded the arena, warping the boundaries of speed itself. Slow became fast. Fast became slow.
It was up.
A sharp grin split Conway's face. "Whatever you're planning, Ash, Trick Room changes the equation entirely. Slowking, Curse!"
Curse functioned differently depending on the user's type. A Ghost-type sacrificed half its health to place a devastating drain on the opponent. For anything else, it dropped Speed by one stage in exchange for raising both Attack and Defence.
Slowking was no Ghost. It took the stat trade gladly. Attack and Defence climbing while Speed fell. Under normal circumstances, losing speed was crippling. Under Trick Room, it was a bonus. The slower you were, the faster you moved. The paradox was the entire point.
Slowking's body pulsed with a dull crimson glow as the buff settled in.
"Gardevoir, Psystrike."
Gardevoir's eyes opened fully. She raised both hands, and a sphere of blazing violet energy swelled between her palms.
Conway felt it in his chest. A pressure that had nothing to do with the move's damage output. It was something deeper, oppressive, as though the technique carried the authority of the Psychic type itself. Like standing before a force of nature.
If Conway felt that at the edge of the field, Slowking felt it tenfold. As a fellow Psychic-type, watching Psystrike form was like staring into the eye of a god. Every instinct screamed the same thing: if that lands, it's over.
"Slowking, Disable! Seal it, now!" Conway abandoned all thought of offense. Stopping this move was the only thing that mattered. If Disable connected, he could recall Slowking before the attack hit. Withdrawing a Pokémon mid-exchange wasn't glamorous, but it was legal, and in Pokémon battles, every legal edge counted.
Slowking's eyes blazed sapphire again. The psychic thread shot out and wrapped around Gardevoir, sealing Psystrike from future use.
But Disable only locked moves after activation. It couldn't interrupt a technique already in progress.
Gardevoir finished charging.
Conway raised the Poké Ball to recall Slowking, but Gardevoir was faster. The Psystrike sphere, swollen to the size of a person, launched skyward as Gardevoir hurled it into the air above the arena.
Conway froze mid-recall, Poké Ball still raised.
The Psystrike hadn't hit Slowking. It hadn't even been aimed at Slowking. Gardevoir had hurled it straight up into the open sky.
What?
He wasn't alone in his confusion. The crowd murmured, announcers stumbled over half-formed commentary, and thousands of heads tilted upward, trying to make sense of what they'd just seen. A sky-shot? Against a grounded opponent? Was Ash throwing the match out of sheer overconfidence?
Then the Psystrike detonated.
Violet light split the sky like a second sun. A wall of psychic force billowed outward from the epicentre, rolling toward the stands with terrifying speed. The shockwave looked like it would crash down on the audience in seconds.
Spectators threw their arms up on instinct. In the VIP section, Lance was already on his feet, Poké Ball in hand, ready to deploy a shield. The other Elite Four members moved just as fast.
Lorelei caught Lance's arm. She tapped her chin and nodded toward the field.
A transparent blue barrier had materialised around the entire arena, shimmering faintly with psychic energy. Psystrike's force slammed into it and dispersed harmlessly, rippling across the surface.
Lance exhaled and holstered his Poké Ball. "Worry makes fools of us all. Should've known Ash had it handled."
Even at his reaction speed, he wouldn't have blocked that shockwave in time. But Ash had never been careless with collateral. Between Mewtwo's presence at the tournament and Ash's own barrier capabilities, the chances of a stray attack reaching the crowd were virtually zero. The psychic signature on this particular shield felt like Mewtwo's handiwork, and honestly, you couldn't fault the intervention. Letting a blast of that magnitude hit the stands wasn't an option.
From the spectators' perspective, it looked like nothing more than an extravagant firework. Dazzling, dramatic, and completely harmless.
It wasn't harmless. Not for Conway.
A sharp crack rang through the air.
Conway's eyes went wide. "Trick Room, it's gone?"
Shattered. The raw force Psystrike had unleashed across the arena hadn't just rattled the crowd, it had torn Trick Room apart from the inside.
The mechanics made it possible. Psystrike was Mewtwo's signature technique, and its defining trait was converting special attack energy into physical, tangible force. In battle, that meant a specially powerful Pokémon could bypass special defence entirely, dealing what amounted to physical damage. It was devastating against defensive walls.
But the applications went further. Because Psystrike manifested psychic power as a physical phenomenon, it could interact with intangible constructs, spatial distortions, energy fields, terrain effects. Trick Room was normally immune to cancellation. You either waited it out or overwrote it with a second casting. There was no "destroy" option.
Psystrike had just written one.
And Trick Room wasn't the only casualty. The Stealth Rock scattered across Ash's side of the field, the same hazard that had kept Blastoise benched, was gone too. Pulverised. Every setup Conway had painstakingly established, erased in a single move.
Gardevoir lowered her arm and turned her gaze to Slowking. The royal Pokémon stared back, stunned into stillness. For all its vaunted intellect, it couldn't process what had just happened. Trick Room didn't break. That wasn't how the move worked.
Unless your opponent had decided, from the very beginning, to let you build it, because they already knew they could tear it down.
Ash allowed himself a quiet murmur. "Mewtwo was right. Psystrike cleans the whole field." A faint grin tugged at his mouth. "Good to know I've got an answer for hazards now."
The truth was simple. He hadn't let Slowking complete Trick Room because Disable had pinned Gardevoir. He'd let it happen because Mewtwo had theorised that Psystrike could shatter warped space, and this match was the perfect opportunity to test it. If it worked, Psystrike became a universal answer to terrain effects, entry hazards, and spatial distortions, an absurdly versatile tool in any format. If it failed, no real harm done. His other Pokémon could stall out Trick Room's duration and deny a second setup.
"Let's wrap this up. Gardevoir, Moonblast."
Gardevoir moved the instant the words left his mouth. One blink she was twenty metres away. The next she was directly in front of Slowking, close enough to see the shock register in its eyes. Teleport, instant, seamless, no telegraph.
Her darkened palm rose and pressed level with Slowking's face. Moonblast's energy flared white-hot between them.
The detonation was point-blank.
Slowking's special defence was formidable, among the best of any Pokémon at its tier. It didn't matter. The level gap was too vast, and Mega Gardevoir's offensive power was operating in a class Slowking simply couldn't answer. The blast swallowed it whole.