Ash hadn't told anyone about Mewtwo's ability to Mega Evolve. There was no particular reason to announce it, and keeping strong cards hidden until they were needed was a habit he had picked up from watching better Trainers operate.
Charizard's Mega Evolution had been held back the same way. It was simply good practice.
The mechanics of it were genuinely unusual, though. Mega Evolution worked by awakening ancient genes, pulling a Pokémon toward something like an ancestral state.
Mewtwo was an artificial Pokémon, created in a laboratory from modified DNA. It had no ancestors in any meaningful sense. If the logic were followed to its end, the only ancestral reversion available to Mewtwo would be toward Mew itself.
That was part of what had made the sight so startling for both Lorelei and Cynthia, the combination of a God level Pokémon Mega Evolving at all, and the question of how it was even possible.
Whatever the mechanism, the result was real and it was in front of them.
The more immediate concern was the situation taking shape above them. Only the two converted Legendary Birds had appeared so far.
Charon, Mars, and the rest of the Team Galactic members were unaccounted for, which meant they were almost certainly already moving toward Articuno.
Charon had said as much before they had escaped the submarine. If he could convert and control Moltres and Zapdos, he had the method and the intent to do the same to the third bird.
Mewtwo held a real chance against two. Against three, those odds collapsed.
There was also the broader problem Cynthia had flagged. These three birds are legendary. Their existence was woven into the natural order of the region. The storms surrounding Shamouti Island, endless and punishing in a way the island had never experienced before, were already evidence of what happened when two of the three fell out of alignment with their natural state.
If Articuno followed, the disorder would spread across the entire world.
And that was exactly what Team Galactic wanted. Force all three birds into chaos, and Lugia would surface to answer it. That was the trap. Every piece of this operation had been pointing toward that single moment.
Cynthia understood it immediately. "We have to find Articuno before they do." She looked at Ash one more time. "Hold here."
"Go."
Misty and Serena both glanced back at Ash as they followed, the worry on their faces visible and unspoken. They didn't argue about staying. They knew what they could and couldn't contribute in a fight at this level, and adding themselves to Ash's situation would have made things worse, not better.
Following Cynthia and Lorelei was the right call.
The moment the group cleared the area, both birds screamed and attacked.
Moltres came in wrapped in dark red flame, the fire carrying something that felt less like heat and more like concentrated anger given physical form. Zapdos came from above, trailing sounds like thunder, talons aimed directly at Mewtwo as it dropped like a stone.
"Teleport."
Mewtwo stepped out of existence for an instant. Both attacks passed through empty air. The shockwaves from the missed strikes hit the ground hard enough to crack stone. An Aura barrier had already formed around Ash, absorbing the residual force before it reached him.
Pikachu, still on his shoulder, had been watching both birds closely from the moment they appeared. It spoke up quickly.
"No electricity," Ash confirmed, listening to it. "Not even a trace of electric Aura on Zapdos. Same for Moltres. Those flames look like fire but there's no fire energy in them at all. Just anger. Something like a dark-type signature."
Pikachu's sensitivity to electrical energy was absolute. If it said Zapdos hadn't thrown an electric move, then Zapdos hadn't thrown an electric move. The Eye of Insight confirmed the rest.
After the conversion, Zapdos had lost the Electric type entirely. Moltres had lost Fire. In their place, the Galar forms carried Dark and Fighting.
The moves they had just used were the signature moves of those forms. Fiery Wrath from Moltres, concentrated malice given the shape of flame with none of its heat.
Thunderous Kick from Zapdos, a Fighting-type strike moving fast enough to produce the sound of thunder, carrying a secondary effect that degraded the target's defenses on contact.
Ash didn't have detailed knowledge of the Galar forms specifically. What he had was the Eye of Insight and whatever he could read in real time. That would have to be enough.
"Moltres, Taunt! Zapdos, Thunderous Kick!"
Mars's voice cut across the island from above. Ash tracked the sound and found her standing on top of the surfaced submarine, holding a megaphone. Somehow she had gotten there while everything else was happening. He filed the detail away.
The effect was immediate. Both birds, which had been attacking on instinct, snapped into coordinated action. In front of Moltres, a giant phantom hand materialized and made a slow, deliberate taunting gesture toward Mewtwo.
Mewtwo felt it land, a sharp surge of anger rising from nowhere, and with it the uncomfortable awareness that reaching for any status moves would feel impossible.
Simultaneously, Zapdos took its stance and dove again, talons charged with crackling energy, dropping straight toward Mewtwo like a stone.
Sealing off the tricky options on one side while driving in the attack from the other. Mars's battlefield instincts were genuinely sharp. The gap in raw strength had made her easy to capture, but that didn't mean she didn't know what she was doing.
"Doesn't matter," Ash said. "Mewtwo, Psychic on Zapdos."
Mewtwo raised one arm. Its eyes lit up in pale blue. It pinched its fingers gently toward the bird dropping out of the sky.
Zapdos stopped.
Not slowed. Stopped. Mid-dive, fully charged, carrying all the momentum of a God level Pokémon pushing its output to the limit, and it was simply hanging in the air like something had grabbed it by the throat.
Mars stared.
She had already accepted that Mewtwo was operating at a comparable level to the two Legendary Birds. That was the only explanation for how it had held them at all.
But catching a God level Pokémon mid-charge with raw Psychic, against the full kinetic force of a committed dive, was not something a same-level Psychic-type should be able to pull off. The momentum alone should have overwhelmed the hold.
"Into the sea."
Mewtwo flicked its wrist. Zapdos dropped straight down and hit the churning water below with a crash that sent spray twenty meters in every direction. The impact wasn't just the fall. Psychic had been running through Zapdos the entire time, eroding from the inside. The damage was real.
"Moltres, Dark Pulse!"
Mars pivoted immediately, not wasting time on Zapdos. She had what she needed to know. Mewtwo was Psychic-type at its core, not just a Pokémon that happened to know Psychic moves. That made Moltres, carrying the Dark type after its conversion, the natural answer.
Moltres screamed from high above and dark red energy gathered in front of it, thick and pressurized, with no heat to it at all. Just malice made visible, dense enough to distort the air around it as it built. The wave it released swallowed the sky above the island and drove downward.
Mars allowed herself a moment of confidence. Psychic-types had no answers for Dark-type pressure at this scale. Even if it didn't finish Mewtwo outright, it would leave it badly damaged.
"Dodge."
Mewtwo was gone before the wave arrived. It left afterimages behind, its actual body already somewhere else entirely, moving with the effortless speed that Mega Evolution had added on top of everything else.
The Dark Pulse hit the ocean surface where Mewtwo had been standing. Black waves surged dozens of meters upward, scattered with dark red light, and then the sea swallowed it.
Taunt had locked out status moves. It hadn't locked out speed, and at Mega Mewtwo Y's level, Dark Pulse at that velocity might as well have been standing still.
"Thunderbolt. Hit Moltres."
Mewtwo's eyes went cold. Electric current wound itself around its body in spiraling gold, building in a second, and then it released. A pillar of lightning as thick as a tree trunk drove toward Moltres with a sound like tearing air.
Moltres had just spent its Dark Pulse. It had nothing left to answer with and no time to clear the distance. It spread its wings instinctively, but the Thunderbolt was already through them before the motion was complete.
The current hit center mass. Moltres seized up in the air, wrapped in crackling gold, its dark red feathers scattering in every direction as the electricity tore through the malice-aura that had been clinging to its body and threw it into chaos.
It fell.
Mars watched it go with an expression that had gone completely blank.
Two God level Pokémon, coordinated attack, and this was the result. She had known Mewtwo was strong. She had not understood what strong meant until right now.