Drake's Electivire was down, but it wasn't out. And Drake was already recalculating.
The math didn't work. Thunder Punch carried double the base power of Mach Punch. Electivire had the level advantage. It specialised in raw attack power. In a straight fist-to-fist exchange, it should have dominated.
It hadn't. Infernape had matched it, outlasted it, and broken it open with precision targeting. Whatever Ash was doing to his Pokémon, it went beyond simple stat inflation. The fighting instinct, the escalating speed, the tactical awareness to find and exploit a weakness in Thunder Punch's form. That was training. That was craft.
"Fire Punch! Don't let it recover!" Ash pressed the advantage without hesitation.
Infernape's right fist ignited. Crimson flame wrapped around the knuckles and climbed past the wrist, the heat raising the ambient temperature across the entire field. Infernape shot forward, trailing an arc of fire through the air.
"Protect!"
Electivire raised both hands from the ground. An emerald barrier snapped into existence, catching Fire Punch at point-blank range.
The collision shook the arena. Flames clashed against the green shield, sparks and embers scattering in every direction. The barrier trembled but held. Protect was absolute within its tier. Unless a move was specifically designed to bypass barriers, nothing at this level could break through.
The barrier pulsed and expelled the remaining force. Infernape was knocked backward by the recoil, stumbling on the loose sand before regaining its footing. The fire on its fist guttered and died.
"Thunderbolt, now!" Drake's voice was ice. The opening was there: Infernape off-balance, guard down, still recovering from the pushback.
Electivire surged to its feet. The sluggishness from Close Combat vanished as electrical energy flooded its limbs. Golden lightning coiled around its body like a living thing, building for a fraction of a second before erupting outward in a torrent aimed at Infernape's centre mass.
Infernape couldn't dodge. The recoil from Protect had stolen the half-second it needed to move. The Thunderbolt hit clean.
The cry of pain was sharp. Electricity locked Infernape's muscles, its limbs seizing, fur standing on end. Golden current crawled across its skin as the attack drove it backward and slammed it into the sand. The fierce aura that had been radiating from its body collapsed in an instant.
Ash felt it through the Aura Connection. A jolt of sympathetic pain that bent his body forward. He caught himself before his knee touched the ground and straightened.
Infernape's stamina was at the floor. Aura Connection boosted power output, but stamina remained locked at its natural tier.
But the edge was where Infernape had always been most dangerous.
"Huff... huff... huff..."
Infernape pushed itself up from the sand. Slow. Trembling. Half-kneeling, arms braced, head down.
Drake opened his mouth to order a follow-up strike.
He stopped.
Something was building. A pressure rolling off Infernape's body that had nothing to do with Aura Connection and everything to do with a furnace being stoked past its safety limits. The air around the fire monkey shimmered and warped.
"What is..."
Infernape threw its head back. Arched its spine. Braced both hands at its waist.
Fire erupted.
Not the controlled flames of Fire Punch or the managed burn of Flare Blitz. This was raw, unfiltered, volcanic. The blaze that consumed Infernape's body turned the sand beneath it from beige to glowing red in a single second. Heat rolled outward in visible waves that struck the protective barriers around the audience and made them shimmer.
The transparent shields held. Without them, the front rows would have felt like they were standing at the mouth of a forge.
Electivire took two involuntary steps backward. Every instinct in its body said the same thing: do not touch those flames. The fire pouring off Infernape now wasn't the kind that burned. It was the kind that erased.
"There it is." Misty clenched her fist, eyes blazing. "Infernape's Super Blaze."
"Super Blaze?" Serena, hearing this term for the first time, was a bit confused. She knew about the Blaze ability, but what was Super Blaze?
"It's a unique version of Blaze," Misty explained, keeping her voice low enough for Serena alone. "Ash calls it Super Blaze. Standard Blaze boosts Fire-type moves by fifty percent when HP drops below a third. Infernape's version doubles the boost. One hundred percent increase to fire power."
Serena stared at the field. "That exists?"
"It gets worse. Or better, depending on your perspective. Super Blaze also raises Infernape's physical and special attack output along with its speed. But it gives nothing to defence or stamina. The power increase actually accelerates stamina drain. And since the trigger threshold is thirty percent HP or below, activation starts a countdown that's already running short."
The trade-off was brutal. Enhanced Blaze turned Infernape into a glass cannon loaded with nuclear warheads. Maximum firepower, minimum time, zero margin for error.
On the field, Drake studied the transformed Infernape with grim focus. "So this is the real thing. I'd heard about it. Seeing it is different." His fists tightened. The advantage he'd gained with Thunderbolt had evaporated in the heat washing off Infernape's body. "This Blaze is on a different level from any Fire-type I've faced."
"The real fight starts now." Ash's voice carried across the sand. "Infernape, Flare Blitz!"
Blue flames erupted across Infernape's body. Not orange. Azure, the colour of fire that had transcended normal temperature limits. The heat distorted the air around it, bent the light, and drew a visible flinch from Electivire twenty metres away.
"Protect!" Drake went defensive. Head-on against this Infernape was suicide. Earlier, Thunder Punch had lost to Mach Punch in a straight exchange. Against a Blaze-boosted Flare Blitz, even Thunder wouldn't be enough. The play was the same as before: block with Protect, wait for the recoil to stagger Infernape, then punish.
The emerald barrier materialised in front of Electivire.
Drake allowed himself a fraction of confidence. Strategy over power. The battle was his.
Infernape hit the barrier like a comet.
The shockwave flattened every standing grain of sand on the field. Blue light and green light warred against each other, filling the arena with a dual glow that made the audience squint. For a moment, the green held.
Then a sound cut through the roar. A crack. Thin, sharp, unmistakable.
Lines split across the surface of the Protect barrier.
Drake's confidence died in his chest. Protect was supposed to be absolute within its tier. Unbreakable by any attack that didn't carry a specific barrier-bypassing effect. Infernape's Flare Blitz was cracking it.
The barrier held. Barely. The recoil expelled Infernape backward, its blue flames dimming as it tumbled through the air. But the damage to the shield was visible. Everyone in the stadium had seen the cracks.
Electivire dropped to one knee behind the barrier, panting. The impact had transmitted through the shield and shaken its body. Its arms trembled.
"Thunder! Hit it while it's airborne!"
Drake wasn't going to waste this window. Infernape was tumbling, unable to redirect, unable to dodge. One Thunder and the match was decided.
Electivire gathered every volt it had. The golden lightning that had been coiling across its body converged into a single pillar of concentrated electrical force. It fired straight up from Electivire's head, splitting the air, scorching sand into glass, bending toward the spinning form of Infernape.
"Flame Wheel!"
In the air, Infernape converted its tumble into a spin. Intentional, controlled, accelerating. Blue fire surged from its core and wrapped its body into a rotating wheel of azure flame. The wind generated by the spin sucked up dust and debris from the arena floor.
Thunder met Flame Wheel at the apex.
The arena went silent for one heartbeat. Then the detonation hit.
Golden lightning chewed at blue fire. Electric fragments scattered like sparks from a forge. The crackling was sharp enough to hurt the ears. But the Flame Wheel kept spinning. Super Blaze poured more power into the rotation with every turn, and the blue fire burned hotter and brighter under the boost, pushing forward against the lightning column.
The thunder held. Flame Wheel pushed. Thunder cracked. Flame Wheel surged.
The lightning shattered.
Blue fire fell like a meteor.
Electivire looked up. The azure disc of spinning flame reflected in its widening eyes.
Impact.
The detonation buried the field in smoke so dense it swallowed everything. The shockwave rattled the protective barriers and sent vibrations through the stadium seating. The audience gripped their armrests.
Silence. Then the smoke began to thin.
Two figures on the field. One flat on the ground, black and yellow, motionless. One standing upright, the small flame on the back of its head flickering but alive.
The victory was decided.