What separated Legendary Pokémon from everything else wasn't just their stats, their talent, or how rarely they appeared in the world. It was their Signature Moves.
That distinction belonged almost exclusively to Tier 1 Gods and a handful of Mythical Pokémon. Tier 2 Legendaries didn't carry them.
What Tier 2 possessed was a longer lifespan than ordinary Pokémon, higher stat ceilings, and generally stronger natural talent, but no move that was theirs alone.
Entei was the exception, inheriting a fragment of Sacred Fire through its shared origin with Ho-Oh upon resurrection. But that was exactly what made it exceptional among its tier.
Every Signature Move carried something that couldn't be replicated. Ho-Oh's Sacred Fire could reduce everything in its path to ash or call back life from the dead depending on the intent behind it. That was the God of Nirvana's nature expressed through a single move.
Aeroblast worked differently. It compressed air beyond any natural limit and released it in a single detonation, and on contact it became something more than a blast.
Countless air currents turned into cutting edges that found the weak points hidden in an opponent's body, angles and vulnerabilities that no deliberate aim could locate.
As long as Aeroblast connected, the damage it dealt was beyond what any conventional measure of power could describe.
But if it was intercepted before reaching its target, that effect vanished entirely.
That was one reason Aeroblast had been stopped. The second reason was simpler. Lugia had been charging something else the entire time.
Oblivion Wing carried the Power of Death. When Yveltal used it, the move caused living things to wither at the point of contact, drawing their life force inward and converting it. Everything it touched was pulled toward silence.
The current Lugia obviously couldn't channel that at Yveltal's scale, but the power was present in her origin, woven into what she had become through Team Galactic's modifications, and it ran deeper than even the power of the sea she had originally carried.
Aeroblast was nominally a Flying-type move, but its real engine was Psychic-type energy. Without that foundation, it couldn't reach its full potential. Lugia no longer carried the Psychic type. That was the other reason it had fallen short.
Oblivion Wing was classified as Flying-type as well, but the Power of Death saturating it told a different story. The dark energy that had erupted from Lugia and dissolved Trick Room in under a second was proof enough of what the move actually was.
With Trick Room gone and the spatial rules back to normal, the Power of Death continued spreading across the field. The cold wind circling through the arena evaporated the instant it made contact, drawn inward and converted to fuel for what was coming.
Slowbro pressed forward regardless. A few drops of sweat had formed on its brow from the pressure of the death energy around it, but they evaporated before they could fall. It continued building the Blizzard.
The freezing wind rose and rose, and the Powder Snow spiraling through it would have been enough to end the fight if it found its mark.
Lugia brought her wings down.
Black and red energy unfolded from the movement like burning wings, each stroke sending distorted air currents rolling outward across the field.
The dark red light threaded through the black was Yveltal's Power of Destruction in visible form, carrying the unmistakable pressure of something that did not negotiate with what it touched.
The Blizzard met it and came apart.
Ice and driven snow that had been enough to crack Aeroblast apart dissolved on contact with Oblivion Wing, broken down into base energy particles before any of it could reach Lugia.
The freezing wind that had been tearing across the field a moment before was swallowed whole, pulled into the black and red current without leaving so much as a drop in temperature behind.
Alan's voice had gone unsteady. "That Blizzard, the same one that stopped Aeroblast, was just erased. What kind of move is that?"
On the field, Slowbro stood fully exposed as the Oblivion Wing closed the distance. The Power of Death pressed in from every side, and even a Pokémon as naturally unreadable as Slowbro registered what was in front of it.
"Protect!"
Trick Room was gone, but Protect's priority answered before anything else could move. The Blizzard had bought a fraction of a second, and that fraction was enough. A blue barrier materialized in front of Slowbro, thin but absolute.
Oblivion Wing hit it and the barrier began to fail immediately. The same protection that could hold against ordinary Divine level output peeled apart against the Power of Death like frost against an open flame. The barrier collapsed, and the black and red shockwave hit Slowbro directly.
Slowbro left the ground in a wide arc. The light in its eyes went out completely, and its rounded body began to shrivel as the Power of Death went to work, pulling life force inward and feeding the move that had just landed.
Short of Xerneas's life energy, even Pokémon of equivalent divine standing didn't absorb Oblivion Wing without consequence. Champion-level strength wasn't enough to change that.
Slowbro hit the ground.
The match was decided.
"Slowbro is unable to battle! Lugia wins!" Alan's voice carried a slight tremor as he made the call. "The winner of this exhibition match is Ash!"
The stands erupted.
Nobody had seen that ending coming. Slowbro had held every advantage in the field and still been swept aside. More striking was the shape of the victory overall.
Ash had walked out of this match with both his Pokémon still standing, neither of them pushed to their limit. No grinding war of attrition, no desperate last-second reversals on his end. He had beaten two of Lorelei's main Pokémon in clean, back-to-back fights.
That was Elite Four Lorelei. A Trainer with Champion-level strength, twenty-five years old. In most other regions she would have been a Champion outright. Kanto simply produced too many exceptional Trainers for her to sit at the top, but nobody questioned her caliber.
A few months ago, Ash had thrown everything he had at Lorelei's second-string Pokémon and couldn't pull out a win. Now he was defeating her main roster without losing a single Pokémon of his own. The word fast didn't cover it. What Ash was doing didn't fit inside any normal framework for how a Trainer developed.
Charizard had gone from fighting to a draw against Elite Four Peak opponents to defeating a Champion-Intermediate Cloyster in just over three months. The wall between Elite Four and Champion was one that typically took the most talented Trainers years to push through even slightly. Ash had treated it like a suggestion.
But if the Charizard fight was shocking, the second battle had been something else entirely. Lugia's type reveal, Aeroblast being stopped, the appearance of a move nobody in the arena had a name for.
The momentum had swung back and forth until the very last exchange. Nobody had known who was going to win until Slowbro hit the ground.
Lorelei had lost, but there was no version of this that felt like a defeat she should be ashamed of. She had faced a mutated Legendary Pokémon carrying a Signature Move more destructive than Aeroblast, and she had pushed it to its limit. That was the honest account of what happened.
Ash finally let his shoulders drop. The tension in his body unwound slowly as Oblivion Wing's aftermath settled across the field.
The truth was that Oblivion Wing wasn't the more destructive of the two moves. In raw power, Aeroblast still surpassed it. What made Oblivion Wing different was what it did on contact, pulling the opponent's energy inward and converting it, either feeding it back as stamina or extending Lugia's own endurance.
Against living opponents and energy-based attacks, it was in a category of its own.
Lugia had begun charging Oblivion Wing at the same moment she launched Aeroblast. Running two Signature Moves simultaneously was the real gamble.
If Aeroblast alone had been thrown at full strength, the outcome would likely have been a draw. Slowbro's Champion-Intermediate level exceeded Lugia's boosted output, and with the weather advantage it had built, it could sustain Blizzard far more cheaply than Lugia could sustain her Signature Moves.
One exchange might have gone Lugia's way. Two or three would have worn her down.
Ash had chosen to sacrifice Aeroblast deliberately, absorbing what came back from its failure as the cost of landing Oblivion Wing clean. It had worked. The results confirmed the decision was right.
Both sides recalled their Pokémon and met in the center of the field. Lorelei extended her hand and Ash took it.
"That was a genuinely wonderful match," Lorelei said, and she meant it. "You've come further than I expected in a short time." Her gaze drifted to the Pikachu sitting on Ash's shoulder. "Now I'm wondering where this one actually stands."
If there was an undisputed ace on Ash's team, it was Pikachu, and everyone who followed Ash's career understood that. Before Cynthia had gone missing, she had mentioned to Lorelei that Pikachu had pushed her Togekiss to its limit and lost by the narrowest of margins. Togekiss wasn't a weak Pokémon by any measure.
And since then, a Charizard capable of defeating Champion-Intermediate opponents had emerged from the same team.
"There'll be a chance," Ash said. "Pikachu's been looking forward to battling you too. Once all of this is settled, let's have a rematch."
Lorelei gave his hand a firm shake. "It's a promise. Next time I won't hold anything back."