Ash had run into Trick Room before, back at the Indigo Plateau Conference. Even with a level advantage that should have made it irrelevant, the move had boxed him in at every turn.
He had gotten through it that time by brute force, having Gardevoir exploit a move to shatter the spatial effect outright. Without that, even Gardevoir's level alone wouldn't have been enough to crack a space-type move.
That option wasn't available now. Against a Champion-Intermediate Slowbro, even Psystrike wouldn't dent Trick Room. Mewtwo could do it, but that wasn't what this battle called for.
Lugia had no path to forcing Trick Room open either, not at her current level. That kind of power belonged to the Divine level, and she wasn't there yet. Legendary or not, the move's spatial rules didn't bend for her.
Trick Room worked simply enough in principle. It could be reversed by using Trick Room again, or it expired on its own. Neither of those options was immediately useful.
In hindsight, Ash had noticed something was off about Slowbro earlier. It had taken the Dark Pulse without trying to dodge or counter, which was strange even accounting for the Light Screen it had set up.
He had assumed it was sitting back and absorbing the hit to bide time. He hadn't guessed it was using that time to charge Trick Room while the hit landed.
And the Dark Pulse itself had been a probing move, not a full committed strike. Lugia had held back deliberately, ready to adapt to whatever Slowbro did next. The one scenario Ash hadn't prepared for was Slowbro doing absolutely nothing back.
Lorelei had read the probe and played directly into it.
"Trick Room is up and the momentum has completely shifted!" The announcer's voice rang out across the arena. "Contestant Ash has brought out the legendary God of the Sea, but this particular God of the Sea hasn't finished growing yet. Could today be the day Elite Four Lorelei pulls off a god-slaying?"
The crowd was buzzing with an energy that surprised even Ash. The Orange Islands had a deep relationship with Lugia. Most residents here had grown up with her as a figure of genuine reverence.
But reverence and the desire to watch something powerful get knocked off its pedestal weren't mutually exclusive. There was something in people that found the fall of a high-standing figure more compelling than its victory. Even some of those who believed in the God of the Sea were watching now with something that looked a lot like anticipation.
"One last piece," Lorelei said. "Slowbro, Rain Dance."
Clouds formed in the clear sky above the field. Within seconds, rain was falling, contained entirely within the arena's boundaries. Slowbro could have blanketed the whole island if it wanted to. There was no reason for that kind of excess. The field was all that mattered.
Rain, Light Screen, Reflect, and Trick Room. All of it active at once. Every environmental factor was pointing in Lorelei's direction.
Ash looked at Lugia. "They set up a lot. But we've been in worse spots than this."
Lugia called back without hesitation.
"Then let's push through it. Dark Pulse again!"
Lugia tilted her head, dark energy condensing in her mouth once more, and launched it.
"Dodge it and use Hydro Pump!" Lorelei's expression tightened.
Absorbing hits indefinitely wasn't the plan, even with Light Screen. Taking the first Dark Pulse had been a calculated sacrifice to get Trick Room up. Now that it was running, there was no need to stand still.
The dark wave tore through the falling rain, scattering it on contact. An instant before it reached Slowbro, Slowbro was simply gone. It reappeared at Lugia's side with a dense column of water already building in its mouth.
Under Trick Room, Slowbro's normally glacial speed had become its greatest weapon. Lugia, fast under any normal condition, was now the slower of the two.
The Hydro Pump erupted at point-blank range, the surrounding rain folding into it and swelling the column wider. There was no time to maneuver.
"Protect!"
A dark barrier snapped up around Lugia and held the torrent back. Water crashed outward in every direction. If that had connected directly, the rain boost alone would have made it hurt badly.
"Slowbro, Calm Mind."
"Lugia, Nasty Plot!"
Calm Mind raised special attack and special defense by one stage each. Nasty Plot skipped the balance entirely and pushed special attack up by two stages at once. One side was building a fortress. The other was loading everything into the next strike.
Lorelei's brow furrowed as she watched. Something about Lugia's move selection wasn't sitting right with her. Dark Pulse she could explain away as a type-targeting choice against Slowbro's Psychic typing. But Nasty Plot was also a Dark-type move.
Although it can raise special attack by two stages, for a Psychic Pokémon, it's far less comfortable than using Calm Mind.
The key difference wasn't just power. It was time. A Psychic-type Pokémon using Calm Mind took roughly half a second. Using Nasty Plot took twice that, a full second at minimum.
Some Psychic-types couldn't even learn Nasty Plot at all. Lugia could, being a Mythical, but choosing it over Calm Mind made little tactical sense for a Psychic-type. That had been Lorelei's read, and it had cost her.
She had barely finished the thought when Ash called out ahead of her.
"Lugia, Dark Pulse!"
The same move, but the Nasty Plot boost behind it made it a completely different weapon. Power condensed in front of Lugia and the field itself shuddered.
The spectators outside the barrier felt it too, a deep pressure rolling off the arena even through Mewtwo's shield.
Slowbro had only just finished its Calm Mind when the Dark Pulse hit.
"How did it move that fast?"
Lorelei's voice came out louder than she intended. Under Trick Room, Slowbro had every speed advantage in the world, and it still hadn't been fast enough to react.
The Dark Pulse punched straight through the Light Screen and drove into Slowbro with the force of something solid. Slowbro's head dropped. The light in its eyes dimmed.
Its shell let out a sharp crack under the energy impact, and then its heavy body was thrown backward at alarming speed, crossing the field until the shell struck the outer barrier hard enough to send visible ripples spreading across its surface.
The barrier held. Slowbro bounced back several meters and crashed down onto the rain-soaked ground, sending water and debris in every direction.
All of Lorelei's setup, undone in a single exchange.
The crowd fractured into noise immediately. Some were marveling at Lugia's raw output. Others were quick to point out that the power belonged to Ash as much as to Lugia. A sharper observation cut through the rest of the chatter, raised by someone in the stands who actually knew the legends.
The God of the Sea was a Psychic-type. That was the basis of Lugia's connection to the ocean, the ability to manipulate currents through psychic force rather than direct elemental control.
And yet this Lugia was throwing Dark-type moves with the precision and speed of someone working within their natural typing. For a Psychic-type, Dark was the worst possible territory. The two were fundamentally opposed, the way Water and Fire were opposed. A Psychic-type that moved faster using Nasty Plot than Calm Mind wasn't just unusual. It was a contradiction.
Lorelei had arrived at the same conclusion.
"This Lugia isn't Psychic and Flying-type, is she," she said. It wasn't quite a question.
Ash didn't see any reason to keep it hidden. "Dark and Flying. Those are her actual types. Dark-type moves are her home ground."
That explained everything at once. The speed of Nasty Plot, the comfort with Dark Pulse, the way every move in Lugia's set had been chosen around Dark-type synergy.
If Lorelei had thrown a Psychic-type move at Lugia at any point, she would have figured it out immediately. She hadn't, and now she had taken a serious hit before the picture came together.
"Team Galactic didn't just change her appearance," Lorelei said. Something between admiration and disbelief moved across her face. "They changed her typing entirely." She held the thought for a moment, then let it go. "You've been full of surprises today, Ash. But now that I know what I'm working with, things change."
Her expression settled back into focus.
"Slowbro, Ice Beam!"
She finally reached for Ice-type moves.