These Pokémon whose existence was woven into the fabric of the natural world, operating at God level. And they were being dismantled one exchange at a time by a single opponent.
Mars had no name in any of Team Galactic's records for something called Mewtwo. She had no frame of reference for what she was watching.
The only explanation that fit was that Mewtwo was operating at a level above the two birds entirely, not just matching them but genuinely above them. Which raised the question of why an existence like that was sitting in a Poké Ball belonging to a fifteen-year-old.
The earpiece in her ear crackled. "Mars. Report."
Charon's voice. She pressed the piece tighter and kept her voice low. "I can hear you. What's your situation?"
"Cynthia and Lorelei have me pinned. Garchomp alone is pushing everything I have, and her other Pokémon aren't sitting still either. The title of Sinnoh Champion is not honorary. I need to know when your side finishes."
The corner of Mars's mouth pulled sideways. "You should be asking when my side collapses."
A pause. "What?"
"Two God level Pokémon, Charon. And we are losing."
The silence that followed lasted long enough that Mars almost checked if the connection had dropped.
"Those are two God Level Pokémon." Charon's voice had gone flat with disbelief. "Against one Trainer and whatever Pokémon he has with him. Explain that to me."
"His Pokémon is called Mewtwo. I don't know what it is or where it came from, but Zapdos and Moltres have not landed a single meaningful hit on it.
It froze Zapdos mid-dive and threw it into the ocean. It dodged Moltres's Dark Pulse like it was standing still and put Moltres on the ground with one Thunderbolt." She paused. "They have a God domain. Why can't they use it?"
"Because I'm not an idiot," Charon said, the irritation in his voice surfacing clearly. "The controller that keeps them in check was built from Galarian Legendary Bird data, and that data was only at Champion Peak. That I managed to build anything capable of holding two God level Pokémon at all is already working well past the theoretical limits of what should be possible. If I let them draw on their God domain, the first thing to explode wouldn't be the enemy. It would be the controller, and then it would be us."
Mars absorbed that.
There was another layer to it. The Galar form wasn't the natural state of either bird. It had been imposed on them through conversion, and the conversion was doing double duty: sealing the form of the God domain along with suppressing the type attributes.
It was an elegant solution to an impossible problem, controlling God level Pokémon without having the research base to address them directly. The cost was that the birds were operating well below their actual capacity, unable to access their full God domain output, let alone anything above it.
Mewtwo, apparently, operated at a level where that constraint made the fight one-sided regardless.
"So," Mars said. "Assuming you don't have something else ready to deploy, we're looking at a retreat."
A short silence. "I'll check what options remain. Hold your position."
Mars looked out at the field, where Moltres was still struggling to right itself and the ocean was still churning from where Zapdos had gone in.
Two God level Pokémon, and they were the ones considering withdrawal. She had genuinely never imagined being on this side of that conversation.
Mars's biggest mistake had been going after Ash the night before. If Team Galactic had secured all three Legendary Birds first, it wouldn't have mattered when Ash showed up. The position would already have been unassailable.
Instead she had moved too early, lost the initiative, and now she was watching two God level Pokémon get handled like they were sparring partners.
There was no fixing past decisions. All she could do was work with what remained.
Charon's voice came back through the earpiece before she could think further. "I'm going to use the reserve. I was saving it for when we moved on Lugia, but the timeline changes now. Hold Ash where he is. I'll deal with Cynthia and the others, take Articuno, and come to you after." The line cut off before she could respond.
Mars stood with the earpiece in her hand and an unanswered question sitting in her chest. A reserve. Something Charon hadn't told her about, something significant enough to factor into his Lugia plan. She was a commander of Team Galactic and she had no idea what it was.
Charon had always kept his cards close. It was infuriating, and right now it was also the only thing giving her any reason to hold her position rather than order a full retreat. If he had something real, she needed to buy him time to use it. That meant keeping Ash focused here.
"Zapdos, Hurricane! Moltres, Burn Up!"
Both birds burst from the water simultaneously, ready. They had been conserving themselves below the surface, waiting for the command. The churning sea hadn't affected them.
Ash had already been watching them. So had Mewtwo, which hadn't been floating in the air doing nothing during the pause. It had been building.
"Pikachu, ready?"
Pikachu left Ash's shoulder and launched upward into the dark sky. Gold light erupted from its body the moment it was airborne, electricity shooting straight up and connecting with the lightning already crackling in the storm above.
"Mewtwo, Thunder!"
Mewtwo raised both palms and drove them forward.
What came down from the sky was not a single bolt. It was a net. A sweeping lattice of golden electricity covering thousands of meters, fed by both Mewtwo's God level output and Pikachu's full power simultaneously. Everywhere it touched, the air ionized into pale violet mist. The sea surface below steamed where arcs reached it. Light bent around the densest clusters of current.
Zapdos and Moltres had already launched their combination. Zapdos's Hurricane wrapped around Moltres's Burn Up, wind amplifying dark fire and fire pressurizing the wind, the two moves merging into a towering fire tornado that churned upward through the storm. It was significantly stronger than either move would have been alone.
The tornado and the lightning net met.
There was no stalemate. One loud, ground-shaking concussion, a shockwave that threw waves dozens of meters high across the surrounding sea and sent tremors through every island within range, and the fire tornado came apart. It scattered into sparks and wind scraps that dissipated into the rain. The lightning net continued through where it had been and hit both birds at full force.
Electric arcs tore through Zapdos from every direction. It screamed, its feathers scorching black and falling away. Moltres took the paralysis and lost control of flight, the dark red flames across its body guttering down to scattered patches. Both birds dropped.
Mewtwo closed its fist. The net contracted and wrapped both of them, holding them suspended above the water, current running continuously through the lattice. They couldn't break free. They couldn't reach the ocean below to recover.
Mars listened to the birds screaming and said nothing. A combination of two STAB moves from two God Pokémon had been broken by a single non-STAB attack. She had no framework for how that was supposed to happen.
If this continued, she wasn't going to hold long enough for Charon to arrive. She might not even have a clean path out.
Ash watched the two birds suspended in the crackling net with something quieter than satisfaction in his expression. A faint blue light had been moving in his eyes for the past several minutes.
Aura Power, searching.
The control device keeping both birds locked into their converted forms wasn't on the surface of their bodies. He had checked that at the very start. That left one other place it could be.
The birds had to be exhausted enough to stop actively resisting before his Aura could penetrate far enough to find anything inside them. That was what the last several exchanges had actually been for.
There. Both of them.
"Mewtwo, Psychic. Pull those devices out."