The damage ledger was simple. Annihilape had taken one Psychic. Alakazam had absorbed a Phantom Force and a Brick Break.
By all rights, Alakazam should have been in worse shape. Phantom Force was super effective against it, and Brick Break piled on top of that. A Pokémon as physically frail as Alakazam shouldn't have been standing.
But Reflect had halved Phantom Force's damage, and Fighting-type moves only hit Alakazam for resisted damage regardless. The numbers worked out closer to even than they had any right to.
Annihilape, on the other hand, had eaten a Calm Mind-boosted, super-effective Psychic with no defensive investment to cushion it. Its strength had always been in its fists and its speed. Durability was never part of the package. That single Psychic had carved away more than half its stamina.
One more clean hit and its debut match would end in defeat.
Gary's pulse quickened. He could see it. The way Annihilape's stance had widened just slightly to compensate for unsteady legs.
'This could be the day.'
Not beating Ash. Gary wasn't delusional. But taking down even one of Ash's Pokémon would be a milestone. Throughout the entire Indigo Plateau Conference, through every private spar and public match, Ash had never lost a single team member. Not even when he fielded his reserves. He rotated constantly, read the flow of battle three moves ahead, and pulled his Pokémon before they ever reached the danger zone.
But he couldn't do that here. Annihilape had just evolved. Recalling it without a single knockout would wound its pride and shatter the confidence it needed to grow into its new form. Ash would push for the win. Gary was sure of it.
And that commitment was Gary's opening.
"Alakazam, Psy Beam!" Gary opened with something new. The Bug-type energy beam lanced across the field in a zigzagging helix, super effective against Annihilape's Ghost typing. If it connected, the confusion chance could end the fight on the spot.
"Phantom Force." Ash's voice was tight, focused. Annihilape dissolved into shadow a half-second before the beam reached it, and Signal Beam scorched a trench through empty ground.
Annihilape was battered, but Alakazam wasn't exactly fresh either. Without Reflect up, one clean Phantom Force would put the Psychic-type to sleep permanently. Annihilape's raw offensive power operated well above its tier. It hit like a Pokémon two levels higher than its ranking suggested.
"Reflect, get it up now!" Gary barked. Protect was useless against Phantom Force. Only the damage-halving wall gave Alakazam a chance to survive the incoming hit and fire back.
Alakazam's spoons pulsed blue and the shimmering pink barrier materialised around it. Just in time.
Annihilape erupted from the ground directly beneath Alakazam, driving a Ghost-energy-wreathed fist upward into its chin. The uppercut pierced through Reflect's mitigation, halved in power, halved in the spectral energy coating it, but still hit hard enough to launch Alakazam skyward.
Gary didn't flinch. This was the plan.
"Ally Switch!"
On its last thread of stamina, Alakazam's eyes flashed. Space twisted, and in an instant the two Pokémon swapped positions. Alakazam flickered to where Annihilape had been standing on the ground. Annihilape materialised in Alakazam's place: twenty metres up, momentum killed, hanging in empty air with nothing beneath its feet.
The disorientation hit immediately. One second Annihilape was driving upward through solid ground with a fist cocked. The next it was floating, weightless, staring down at an arena that had suddenly rearranged itself. Its limbs flailed for a foothold that didn't exist.
"Psychic, everything you've got!" Gary roared. This was it. The whole match funnelled down to this single moment. One clean shot at a stunned, airborne target with no way to dodge.
Alakazam raised its bent spoons from the ground, eyes blazing blue, and fired.
"Annihilape, Rage Fist!" Ash's voice cut through the chaos like a blade, and it was the only thing Annihilape needed to hear. The panic vanished. It twisted midair, oriented itself downward, and swung.
Rage Fist wasn't a single punch. Its power scaled with every hit Annihilape had taken during the battle. Each blow it had absorbed fuelled the next strike, compounding fury into force.
What had started the match as a Beginner-tier technique was now something else entirely. Every punch that rained downward carried the force of a Fire Blast. And Annihilape wasn't throwing one.
It was throwing a barrage.
From below, Alakazam unleashed Psychic. An invisible wall of raw mental energy surging upward. From above, Annihilape's fists hammered down like a meteor shower, each impact trailing black ghostly fire.
The two forces met in the space between them.
The arena shook.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
Explosion after explosion ripped through the air as fist-shadows collided with psychic force. Shockwaves peeled outward in concentric rings, battering the stands and forcing spectators to shield their faces. The ground beneath Alakazam cratered and split. The air above Annihilape burned violet and black.
For three seconds, it was a stalemate.
Then the balance broke.
One fist punched through the Psychic barrier. Then another. Then a third. The wall of mental energy fractured and collapsed, and the remaining barrage of Rage Fist hammered through the gap and slammed into Alakazam.
BOOM.
The detonation shook the entire stadium. Dust erupted from the impact point in a towering plume, swallowing the field whole. Gary's eyes went blank. He couldn't see a thing through the cloud, but he didn't need to.
Annihilape drifted down lightly, landing on the cratered field without a sound. The dust cleared in slow curtains, revealing Alakazam sprawled on the ground.
Its body was battered beyond recognition, limbs bent at wrong angles, spoons shattered beside it. For a human, injuries like that would have been fatal. For a Pokémon, they were survivable, but only just.
Rage Fist thrown by a furious Annihilape left no room for restraint. Even knowing a single hit would end the fight, the rage kept pouring. That was the nature of the move. It didn't have a half-power setting.
"Alakazam is unable to battle. The victor is Annihilape!" The referee's flag cut the air. He almost said Primeape out of habit before catching himself. The name was still that new.
Gary recalled Alakazam instantly. Inside the Poké Ball, a Pokémon's condition froze: injuries didn't worsen, consciousness didn't fade further. Without that safeguard, Gary would have forfeited the rest of the match on the spot and sprinted to the Pokémon Centre.
He held the ball for a moment, voice low. "You were incredible, Alakazam. I won't let your effort go to waste."
He pocketed it and drew his next choice without hesitation.
"Your turn. We win this with speed!" The capsule spun through the air and burst open. A massive, regal hound wreathed in a flowing mane of cream and amber fur landed on the field with a thunderous bark.
Arcanine.
One of Gary's aces. In earlier rounds, its blistering speed had bailed him out of tight corners again and again. Besides Blastoise, Arcanine was the Pokémon that had carried him to the semifinals.
"Arcanine." Ash's expression tightened. He glanced at Annihilape. "Watch yourself. This one's fast."
Annihilape was running on fumes. One clean hit from anything would finish it. Against a speedster like Arcanine, the logical play was an immediate switch.
Ash didn't reach for a Poké Ball.
He wanted to see how far Annihilape could push itself.
"No switch?" Gary's eyebrow rose. Surprised, but not really. Ash could be surgically pragmatic when the situation demanded it, but more often he followed his instincts, fighting on for his Pokémon's pride even when the numbers said to pull back. "That's so like you. But don't mistake my Arcanine for an easy mark. Let's finish this fast. Extreme Speed!"
Up in the stands, Brock frowned. "Extreme Speed? But that shouldn't work on Annihilape. It's a Normal-type move, and Annihilape is part Ghost. Gary should know the typing by now. Ash practically announced it."
"Watch closely." Professor Oak chuckled beside him, eyes gleaming with grandfatherly pride. "This is something Gary developed on his own. He's been saving it."
"A custom technique?" Misty leaned forward.
Arcanine vanished. Not a blur. It simply wasn't there anymore. Afterimages flickered across the field like heat mirages, three, five, eight of them, scattered in every direction. Impossible to track.
Ash's eyes moved constantly, scanning the field. He couldn't pinpoint Arcanine's real position, but he knew this wasn't ordinary Extreme Speed. Gary was layering something on top of it.
"Now! Flare Blitz!" Gary roared.
Arcanine materialised mid-charge, its entire body engulfed in a roaring sheath of blue-white flame. The heat distorted the air around it. It was moving at Extreme Speed velocity with Flare Blitz power, a fusion technique that should have been mechanically impossible.
The crowd gasped. In the VIP section, Steven sat forward in his seat.
Extreme Speed pushed a Pokémon past its physical limits. If base speed was a hundred, Quick Attack spiked it to two hundred. Extreme Speed pushed four hundred or higher. It was a full-body, all-out burst that consumed every scrap of concentration. Layering a second attack on top of that kind of movement was like trying to solve a math equation while sprinting off a cliff. The body and mind couldn't handle both.
Quick Attack plus a secondary move was already considered elite-level execution. Extreme Speed plus Flare Blitz was in another dimension entirely.
That was why Professor Oak looked so smug. His grandson had mastered something that most trainers couldn't even conceptualise.
The fusion technique had limitations. The physical strain on Arcanine was enormous, and it could only manage a handful of uses before the toll became crippling. But for a single, decisive blow against a wounded target? It was perfect.
'Come on, Ash. Dodge? Protect? Show me what you've got.'
Ash did neither.
"Endure!"
A flare of white energy erupted across Annihilape's body.
Flare Blitz hit like a comet. A pillar of fire erupted skyward from the point of impact, turning the arena into a furnace. The shockwave blasted outward, scorching the ground in a ten-metre radius and forcing the front rows to shield their faces from the heat.