On the field, Pikachu's body erupted with lightning brighter than anything before it. The air itself crackled with electricity. Suicune could only watch helplessly as the charge swelled and the moment closed in.
All it could do was try to mobilize the energy still left inside it and force itself back to a functional state. If it could shake the lock-up, it could fall back on Protect, and there might still be a way to turn the fight. If it couldn't recover in time, and the move landed clean, even a Legendary Beast would be in genuine danger.
"Pika pika pika pika!"
Pikachu's cry rang through the arena. He shot forward like an arrow off a bowstring, condensed gold lightning gathered into a thick pillar around his small frame, gouging a trench into the ground as he charged.
10,000,000 Volt Thunderbolt slammed into Suicune's abdomen, the gold flash swallowing the Legendary Beast's huge frame in an instant. A violent detonation rolled across the land as the electric storm raged free.
The energy tore through Suicune from the inside, the gold lightning staining its entire body the same color, and thick black smoke poured out across the arena until Misty and the others could barely make anything out.
They could only catch glimpses of lightning leaping inside the smoke. Every hand on the sidelines was clenched. They all knew this was the strike that decided the match.
After a long beat, Suicune's roar slowly faded. The smoke thinned out. Everyone could see Suicune's massive body shaking in convulsions under the current. The pale blue aura around it had vanished entirely. Its pale blue fur was singed dark in patches, and its limbs could no longer hold its weight. It collapsed heavily to the ground.
Pikachu stood a short distance away, paws planted, panting, watching. After Suicune fell, he finally let his tense body sag, even a small wave of dizziness washing through him.
This battle, fought right after he'd clawed his way back to his old level, was his.
Both fighters had been at Champion level. Both had carried a similar type advantage. Yet this battle had ended in the exact opposite of the recent loss to Togekiss. Even without a Trainer commanding it, Suicune's raw strength had been far above Togekiss's.
At the same Champion level, a Legendary Pokémon naturally had an edge over a non-Legendary, and Suicune's stats sat especially high even within the Champion tier. Suicune was an exceptional individual on top of everything else, which meant it could realistically match, or even surpass, Cynthia's Togekiss.
Ash's face suddenly broke into a grin. The tension all over him eased.
"We won, Pikachu!"
"Pipika, that's it!" Pikachu turned, stood up on his hind paws, and stretched out a paw toward Ash, the two of them snapping into their familiar victory pose.
Mewtwo brought the barrier down. Misty and the others rushed onto the field. Serena caught Pikachu out of the air before he could fall. Misty and Brock moved to support a visibly exhausted Ash.
It had been a long time since Ash had layered both powers at once. Partner form stacked with Aura fusion gave Pikachu absurd, top-tier combat output, but the drain on his stamina ran high to match.
On his own stamina pool, a single 10,000,000 Volt Thunderbolt would have drained Pikachu completely. The reason he'd been able to hold out this long was that his stamina was bridged with Ash's, and Ash's drain was several times Pikachu's.
If Ash's stamina was 1000 points and Pikachu's was 10 points, and a single 10,000,000 Volt Thunderbolt cost 50 points of stamina to fire, then Pikachu only paid 1 point of it, while Ash paid the other 200 from his pool. That was a rough comparison.
A 10,000,000 Volt Thunderbolt didn't actually need that much stamina, but every one of Pikachu's moves cost Ash several times what they cost Pikachu, which was why a god level being could still end up this thoroughly drained.
"Are you all right, Ash?" Misty asked, worried.
"I'm fine, just tired. Let's go check on Suicune first." Ash shook his head, let go of Misty's and Brock's hands, and shook himself loose to clear the fatigue from his head. He walked over to where Suicune lay.
"Pika pika." Pikachu, slumped weakly in Serena's arms, spoke up.
"Don't worry. Suicune's fine. Our last attack was powerful, sure," Ash said, reassuring him. "But Suicune isn't some ordinary Pokémon either. An attack at that level might leave it unable to keep fighting, but doing fatal damage is a long way from that."
He crouched down and rested a hand on Suicune's body. Viridian Power surged through him, and Suicune's injuries began to mend.
In less than five seconds, Suicune's eyes snapped open. Its dulled body briefly glowed faint blue before the light faded again. Once the healing finished restoring its consciousness, instinct took over and Suicune tried to summon the power inside itself, ready to keep fighting. Then it registered the warm, continuous flow of energy mending it from within. That was the only reason it was able to come back to itself at all.
Which meant the battle was over. It had lost.
Suicune's gaze on Ash turned complicated.
Honestly, before it had ever set eyes on Ash, and even after seeing him in person, it had never imagined that, in the end, the one who failed the test would be itself.
Lord Ho-Oh's wisdom was vast, but perhaps even Lord Ho-Oh had miscalculated this time. How could he have possibly sent a young man who'd only just come of age to take the trial? A Trainer in their twenties or thirties might have stood a real chance. At Ash's age, reaching Champion level was supposed to be impossible.
And yet, right from the start, Ash had handed it a shock. The kid didn't only have Champion-level Pokémon. He had a god level one. If that god level Pokémon had been the one to fight, Suicune wouldn't have lasted a single round before going down. There was no denying it.
Legendary Beast or not, only a being at god level could truly be called a god. So if Ash had used Mewtwo, passing the trial would have been trivial.
But Suicune was also absolutely certain that the god level Pokémon wasn't something this young man had raised himself. To cultivate a god level Pokémon at this age was something even a god couldn't manage. Even so, that Mewtwo still counted as Ash's combat power. And Ash had chosen not to use it. He'd used a Pikachu.
In the human world, Suicune had seen at least a thousand Pikachu, maybe three thousand. It had never seen one this strong.
Above all, this Pikachu was stronger than any other Pikachu Suicune had ever encountered. He still hadn't reached Suicune's own level, but calling him the King of all Pikachus wouldn't have been an exaggeration.
Then this Pikachu, for reasons Suicune still couldn't account for, had ratcheted his power up further, soaring from his original Elite Four level all the way to Champion level.
Set aside how absurd a major-and-minor tier jump like that was on its own. In theory, a Pokémon stretched up to a tier that way couldn't possibly stand toe-to-toe with one that had reached it naturally. Yet this Pikachu's ability and his level weren't merely matched. His ability had outpaced his level.
A Pikachu forcibly pushed from Elite Four to Champion level had walked up to Suicune in a direct confrontation and beaten it.
If they hadn't still been in the middle of the fight, Suicune would have been frozen in place, doubting its own existence.
Up until now, only Suicune had ever been the one fighting opponents above its own level. Since when did the role reverse? And this wasn't just any cross-tier battle. The gap was a chasm.
No wonder this young man was the one Ho-Oh had chosen. This kind of potential, this kind of ability, this kind of strength. If even Ash didn't qualify to become Ho-Oh's messenger and the one to challenge Ho-Oh, then no one in the world did.
'Young man, you have passed the first trial of the three Legendary Beasts. Please keep this proof safe.'
As Suicune's voice rolled out, a blue light rose from its body. Ash instinctively reached up and caught it. In his palm sat a single scale, roughly the size of his hand.
So this was the proof Suicune had mentioned, the token marking a completed trial of the three Legendary Beasts. Holding it, he could swear the thing felt like a sphere of water in his hand. It was clearly a hard scale, yet it gave that exact sensation. Anything that came from a Legendary Beast was something else.
'Once you have gathered all three tokens from the three Legendary Beasts and placed them with the Rainbow Wing, you will be guided to Lord Ho-Oh's location.'
"Got it. The other two of the three Legendary Beasts are Entei and Raikou, right? When will they show up?" Ash slipped the scale into his backpack and asked, curious.
'They will come to you when the moment is right. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe a few months from now. Within half a year at the latest, they will appear in front of you. The other two tokens carry significant benefits for your Pokémon's stats, and the boost is especially noticeable before they reach Champion level.'
"That much? Thanks, Suicune!" Ash's eyes went wide.
Something dropped from a Legendary's body always had effects of one kind or another, but Ash hadn't expected the gift Suicune was handing him on its own initiative to come with that kind of upside. In theory, the only use of this token was supposed to be locating Ho-Oh and challenging him.
The Ho-Oh-trial tokens had additional uses on top of that. A little ridiculous, frankly. And genuinely useful.
Blastoise was the one starter without a Legendary item. Among Ash's Kanto starter trio, Venusaur carried Xerneas's Tree of Life branch and Charizard carried Ho-Oh's Rainbow Wing. Blastoise had nothing. A Suicune token would even that out.
Sure, Suicune's tier was a notch under those two, since they were tied to Tier 1 Legendaries while Suicune was a Legendary Beast, but it was infinitely better than going without. From now on, Blastoise would at least have a Legendary item of his own.
"What was that? What did Suicune say, Ash? Is the blue thing the token?" Misty blinked her clear, water-bright eyes at him.
Suicune communicated in the Pokémon language rather than telepathy, so apart from Ash, who understood the Pokémon language, no one in the group could follow what Suicune said.
Ash gave a quick summary. When Misty and the others heard what effects the scale carried, their faces lit up with astonishment. A Legendary Beast's gift really was a different class of item entirely. Not just several times stronger than anything on the market.
Ten minutes later, after Ash finished tending to Suicune, the worst of its injuries had recovered. The rest, Suicune could mend on its own. It formally said its goodbyes to Ash and the others.
From here it would continue traveling the human world, observing what unfolded and reporting back to Ho-Oh. If Ash eventually defeated Ho-Oh, Ash wouldn't only gain Ho-Oh as one of his Legendary Pokémon. He would gain command of Ho-Oh's three strongest Legendary Beast subordinates as well.
That was a matter for later. For now, even though Suicune had been beaten, it couldn't yet attach itself to Ash's side.
Watching Suicune's retreating figure, a flicker of reluctance crossed Misty's eyes.
For her, a girl who loved Water-type Pokémon, Suicune was an absolute idol. Not only was it a Water-type, it was also breathtakingly beautiful and magnificent in form. What aspiring Water-type Master Trainer wouldn't dream of catching one?
Unfortunately, this particular Suicune couldn't become a Pokémon partner to anyone. There wasn't only one Suicune in the world. The one Ash had fought was the strongest of them, and also the foundational one, attached directly to Ho-Oh's throne. It would only become the Pokémon of whoever subdued Ho-Oh. Any other Suicune in the world, though, could be caught and partnered with if you could beat it.
Misty couldn't take on this Suicune herself, of course. She didn't have the strength to defeat the trial-version Suicune. That didn't stop her from quietly setting a new goal for the trip. She'd find a Suicune somewhere along the road. If it was an Elite Four level Suicune, with some effort, she was confident she could beat one. She had work to do for the rest of the journey.
After watching Suicune leave, Ash and the others continued on toward New Bark Town. Ten minutes later, they finally reached their destination, the starting point of their trip to the Silver Conference. New Bark Town.
"Silver Conference, here I come!"