Slowbro pushed itself off the ground with its arms. Despite the damage it had taken, its movements were steady, whether from Trick Room's influence or something stubborn in the Pokémon itself.
Icy blue energy began condensing in front of it before it had even fully risen, and the rain falling around it started converting to hail within the spreading cold. The ice energy was strong enough to pull the weather itself toward it.
"Lugia, Hurricane defense!"
Ash's expression tightened. Ice wasn't Slowbro's primary type, but the speed and precision it was displaying were every bit as sharp as its Water-type output, setting aside the rain boost.
That kind of proficiency with a non-primary type was rare. It required deep affinity between the Pokémon and the move, the kind that developed naturally between Water-types and Ice, given how closely the two were related.
Lorelei had cultivated that connection thoroughly.
The Ice Beam launched forward in a cold blue line. Lugia reacted instantly, a vortex of wind erupting around her body at full speed.
The Hurricane barrier howled outward, mixing rain and hail into its rotation and grinding the falling ice to powder on contact.
The Ice Beam struck the storm wall and the cold began spreading through it immediately. The rotating air hardened at the edges, ice crystals forming across the surface in layered sheets.
The wind wall didn't collapse, but more than half of it was frozen solid, leaving a strange structure of intertwined ice and moving air holding the line.
The ground beneath had gone completely smooth with ice, spreading several meters outward from Lugia's position. The hail bounced off it in sharp, ringing clatters.
Flying-type energy and Ice-type energy were a bad matchup in the best of circumstances. Combine that with Slowbro's proficiency and the level gap working against Lugia, and the Ice Beam should have shattered the defense without difficulty. Instead it was being held at the perimeter.
The reason was simple. Lugia's command of the Flying type went beyond what her current level suggested. It had carried over fully from before Team Galactic's modifications, and because Yveltal also carried Flying-type energy, that connection had only deepened.
Her physical constitution and mastery of air pressure were enough to absorb the counter-typing, even at a tier disadvantage.
"The legends really do mean something," Lorelei said, genuine admiration in her voice. "Blocking Ice Beam with Flying-type control alone." She paused. "Then let's try this. Slowbro, Blizzard!"
Blocking Ice Beam and blocking Blizzard were different problems. Blizzard hit harder, and in a rain environment, it gained additional power. Slowbro would freeze the surrounding moisture into the attack as it launched, making the snow curtain heavier and colder than any Blizzard thrown in dry conditions.
Slowbro tilted its head and the temperature dropped sharply. Powder Snow began appearing throughout the cold wind sweeping the field within seconds, and then the full Blizzard came, a wall of ice and driven snow that filled the arena from edge to edge.
"Lugia, Aeroblast!"
Ash gave the command as the field turned white around them. Lugia's wings spread wide, the great black shape rising above the storm. Then the wings came down.
Aeroblast gathered the air currents above and below simultaneously before detonating them outward. The sound alone shook the field. Two forces met in the middle of the arena, a black vortex of compressed wind on one side and a curtain of driven ice and snow on the other, and neither gave immediately.
The collision was deafening. The two storms wrapped around each other, black air currents and icy blue snowfall twisting together and pulling apart repeatedly. The vortex ground ice crystals to mist at its edges. The Blizzard crept along the airflow in return, freezing the outer layers of the black pillar and casing it in ice shell after ice shell.
The ground below them was caught in the middle, the thick ice layer cracking apart under the shockwaves and refreezing instantly from the cold, then cracking again. Mewtwo's barrier protected the audience but didn't cover the field itself. The terrain was being destroyed in real time.
Ash's fists were clenched at his sides. The energy drain through his connection with Lugia was telling him what his eyes were still catching up to. Aeroblast had given everything it had. The Blizzard hadn't slowed.
The rain kept feeding it. Every drop of moisture in the air was fuel, and the snow curtain kept growing heavier as the seconds passed. The black vortex slowed. The Blizzard expanded into the opening, pulling surrounding water into itself, and then pushed through the outer edge of the vortex entirely.
The black air currents were compressed, frozen, and shattered.
Residual wind and cold rushed toward Lugia. The damage was manageable, but a thin layer of ice had formed along the edges of her wings, and each wingbeat was slightly heavier than the last.
The field had gone completely white. Ice several inches thick covered every surface, and the air itself felt brittle enough to crack. Minutes ago it had been a sea of fire. Now it was a frozen landscape.
Alan's voice carried over the stunned crowd. "Slowbro actually broke Lugia's signature move in a direct clash! That is the standard of an Elite Four Trainer. No matter what type a Pokémon is, in Lorelei's hands, it becomes a weapon. That is what separates the top tier from everyone else!"
The crowd was still processing it. The battle had shifted so many times in such a short span that people had stopped predicting what came next. Slowbro had looked finished after that Dark Pulse. Now it had turned the whole field into its territory and forced Lugia's Aeroblast to break apart in the open air.
Even Lorelei, composed as she was, let a quiet smile cross her face.
It was a meaningful moment beyond the score of a single battle. Aeroblast was a divine technique in the truest sense. Calling it powerful undersold what it was. And yet a Slowbro, through disciplined training and a Trainer who understood how to draw everything out of it, had beaten it straight on. That said something real about what human effort could accomplish.
It connected to something Ash's Charizard had demonstrated earlier in a different way.
The Sacred Fire that Charizard carried was Ho-Oh's power, divine energy filtered through a Pokémon still well below the level where such power naturally belonged.
At lower levels, that kind of energy was overwhelming precisely because of the gap between what the move represented and what the surrounding opponents were capable of handling. A sliver of divine power in a low-level fight was enough to decide everything.
But that advantage compressed as the levels rose. Champions already operated close enough to that ceiling that divine power stopped being a trump card and became one factor among many.
Before Mega Evolution, Cloyster had been winning that fight even against Sacred Fire. It was only the combination of Mega Evolution's boost, the enhanced flames, and the level push from Ash's Aura that had finally tipped it. Charizard hadn't won on divine power alone. It had needed everything working together.
Slowbro breaking Aeroblast was proof of the same principle from the other direction. Training taken to its absolute limit could contend with power that was never meant to belong to something at that level. The gap between human effort and divine strength was real, but it was not fixed.
"Slowbro, freeze it!"
Lorelei pressed forward immediately. Inside Trick Room, Slowbro still had complete initiative, and Lugia's brief stiffness after the Aeroblast collapse left an opening that wouldn't last long.
A Champion-level Pokémon didn't lose sharpness as its stamina wore down the way weaker Pokémon did. Whatever Slowbro had left, it would spend without hesitation.
The Blizzard began condensing again. Lugia was locked in place, and anything she built toward a counterattack would cost time she didn't have. One step behind meant every step behind.
The thought that this was over had just begun to form in Lorelei's mind when Lugia's body erupted.
Pitch-black energy poured outward from Lugia in every direction. The ice coating her wings shattered instantly. The rain falling from the sky dissolved on contact with the dark energy rising from her body. The clouds were swept away entirely within seconds, and just like that, the rain was gone.
Then Trick Room became visible.
It hadn't expired. The transparent cubic structure still had enough time for two or three more moves, but it was showing itself now, its boundaries sharp and clear, and the sight of it sent a chill through Lorelei that had nothing to do with the temperature.
"REEE!"
Lugia's cry tore across the arena. Rings of dark energy spread outward from her body in slow, deliberate pulses, carrying something that felt less like a move and more like a presence.
Wherever the energy touched, things simply ceased. Hail gone. Snow gone. Trick Room's structure dissolving at the edges, peeling apart layer by layer as the dark energy reached it, until nothing of it remained.
"What move is that?!" Lorelei's composure slipped for just a moment.
She had been thrown off completely again. They had been one move away from closing this out.
"This is Lugia's other power." Ash's voice was tight with focus. "It carries the Flying type, but it also carries something else entirely. Lugia, use Oblivion Wing!"
Oblivion Wing.
The signature move of Yveltal, the God of Destruction.