Ash's read on the situation had been fast. Yveltal carried Dark and Flying typing, and that attribute had clearly transferred to the shadow it had spawned.
Psychic was useless against it, which was why Lugia's attack had passed straight through. Electric, however, was super effective against Flying. The decision took less than a second.
It was the wrong call.
Both Thunderbolts hit the shadow dead on and it simply came apart, fragmenting into scattered pieces that the electricity passed through harmlessly before reforming. What the bolts actually struck was Lugia. The damage landed on the God of the Sea instead of the shadow, and worse, the disruption made the shadow's remaining intrusion easier.
The fragments swarmed back together and pushed into Lugia's body through the openings the electricity had created.
Lugia's screams cut off.
The white feathers darkened, spreading from the edges inward until the entire enormous form had gone black. A Shadow Lugia, enormous and still, hanging in the sky above Shamouti Island.
It drifted obediently toward Charon when he raised his hand.
"The God of the Sea belongs to Team Galactic."
Lorelei stared upward. "That's God Leve. How was there almost no resistance? Yveltal's power is genuinely that much stronger than Lugia's?"
"It wasn't just raw power." Ash kept his voice steady. "That shadow was carrying something else inside it, something specifically designed to suppress Lugia. It hit the power suppression first and then moved in behind it. That's why it went so fast."
Charon glanced at him with something that might have been genuine curiosity. "You continue to surprise me. I'll have to wonder later how a boy your age knows things like that." The curiosity disappeared. "For now, you need to be dealt with quickly. You're the kind of problem that compounds if left alone."
He stepped down from Articuno and stood beside Mars. Both Articuno and the darkened Lugia turned toward Ash and the others and let their presence expand outward.
The pressure hit like a physical weight dropping from above. Misty and Serena went to their knees immediately. Lorelei staggered. Even Cynthia was forced down, one knee on the ground, her expression locked in concentration as she fought to stay upright.
The combined pressure of two God Level Pokémon, one of them at Peak, was something none of them had experienced before.
Ash's body bent under it. He didn't go down, but he felt every pound of it. His eyes stayed clear.
In the back of his mind, another conversation was already running.
He had flagged the situation to the Chat Group the moment he understood what they were dealing with. The reply had come back fast.
Champion Ash had assessed the situation in a few lines and agreed to step in. This would be the second time. The first had been the fight against Koga, where Bulbasaur had briefly carried Venusaur's power and hit at a level that shouldn't have been possible for its form.
The mechanism behind it didn't follow any logic Ash had been able to work out, and Champion Ash hadn't been able to explain it either. It was simply what the Chat Group did.
Defeating a temporarily suppressed but still functional God Level Peak required at least a High God Level answer. Champion Ash had accepted, which meant he had something on hand that fit. Ash just didn't know which Pokémon yet.
The switch completed quietly. The pressure of two God Level auras was still pressing down on everything around them, but the version of Ash now standing in that storm had been in situations like this more times than he could count. It registered as serious, not overwhelming.
He took in the darkened Lugia above them and spoke to himself as much as anyone else.
"Yveltal's power as the entry point, and a suppression device built specifically to target Lugia underneath it. That's what dropped it from Peak to High God Level. Team Galactic's technical capability is something else entirely, whatever the timeline."
Champion Ash took in the scene in a glance. Yveltal's power was genuinely formidable, but the fact that Team Galactic had engineered a suppression device capable of bringing down a God Level Peak using human technology was its own kind of terrifying.
That capacity for ingenuity was exactly why humans held the position they did on this planet.
Though that wasn't how it was supposed to work. The natural order wasn't one side ruling the other. Humans and Pokémon were meant to coexist, to help each other forward.
Looking down on Pokémon from a position of assumed superiority wasn't just wrong in principle. It actively prevented Pokémon from reaching what they were truly capable of.
Team Galactic didn't care about any of that. Complete control and complete rule was the only outcome they were working toward.
Champion Ash set that aside and looked around at the others.
Cynthia and the girls were all pinned to the ground under the combined pressure of two God Level Pokémon. He pushed his Aura outward and the pressure lifted. Not entirely, but enough.
Cynthia got her breath back. Lorelei steadied herself. Serena was breathing hard, her eyes wide, coming down from what had genuinely felt like the edge of dying. She had never been close to anything like this before.
Champion Ash's gaze moved to Mewtwo, who was holding her position nearby on guard. Something quieter came into his expression for just a moment.
"Though it's a different timeline, it's rare to get to fight side by side again. And this time, the opponent suits us well."
Mewtwo looked at him with open confusion. "Ash, what are you talking about? I don't understand."
"Nothing." Champion Ash waved a hand and snapped his focus back to the two birds bearing down on them. "The opponent is moving. Get ready, Mewtwo!"
Mewtwo pulled her attention back to the fight. She gathered herself to push everything she had into the coming impact, and then felt something happen inside her that she hadn't initiated.
Power rose through her body from somewhere she didn't recognize.
Mid God Level. High God Level. God Level Peak.
It climbed through all three in the span of a breath and kept building. Mewtwo had no framework for what was happening, but the power was real and it was hers, so she used it. Psychic erupted outward from her and formed a barrier in front of her.
Articuno slammed into it. The impact produced no movement in the barrier whatsoever. Articuno bounced off its own momentum and spun, disoriented, nearly losing its flight.
Shadow Lugia came through the barrier.
The barrier hadn't been built for Dark type. Shadow Lugia passed straight through it, Aeroblast already building on its wings, dark air currents pulling together into something that made the sea below surge into waves dozens of meters high. The pressure from the move still forming was enough to make the entire area tremble.
Shadow Lugia released it. The storm energy came apart from its wings and drove toward Mewtwo like a mass of compressed sky.
Mewtwo raised her palms and pushed back.
The Aeroblast stopped.
Not deflected. Not overwhelmed. Stopped in the air, held in place by pale purple Psychic that spread from Mewtwo like something with weight to it.
The storm at the center of the move strained against the hold, and then Mewtwo tightened it. The violent air currents compressed.
The energy at the core of Aeroblast, which had been enough to rearrange a coastline, was squeezed smaller and smaller until it came apart into nothing. Not even a shockwave remained.
Silence.
Charon's glasses had slid to the tip of his nose. "How is that possible. That was Lugia's Aeroblast. How was it blocked like that. What is that Pokémon? Why haven't I heard of it?"
The composure he had maintained through the entire operation was gone. He looked genuinely panicked.
Mars was staring. "How are you dozens of levels stronger than five minutes ago?"
She had watched Mewtwo fight the two converted birds. It had been dominant, yes, but the power had tracked as being in the same rough tier, Initial God Level, maybe a little above. What had just crushed Aeroblast was God Level Peak. The Psychic Mewtwo had used was not inferior to what Lugia had released in its natural state earlier. If anything it had been stronger.
No Pokémon jumped three full tiers in a matter of minutes. That wasn't how anything worked. Not training, not medicine, not anything she had ever seen or studied.
On Ash's side, Cynthia and the others were equally lost. They had just gotten out from under the pressure of two God Level Pokémon and braced for an attack that could have leveled the island, and instead Mewtwo had crushed it like it was nothing.
When did she become this strong? That was God Level Peak Lugia's signature move.
Shadow Lugia's crimson eyes carried no understanding of what had happened, only the mechanical instruction to continue. Its controlled body began pulling together another move. Mewtwo was already moving, crossing the distance to Lugia in an instant, a deep blue sphere condensing in her palm.
Aura Sphere.