"Blisse."
Out on the field, Blissey let out a faint, almost inaudible cry. None of the gentle warmth from earlier was left in it. Only exhaustion.
She tried to push herself upright, but even after the Soft-Boiled restoration, her body had been gutted by the flame. Soft-Boiled could restore half her HP, but with Charizard's raw attack stat, a single Flare Blitz layered with Tough Claws was almost enough to wipe out a full health bar.
Blissey's stamina was formidable, but against a powerful physical attack like that, even her maximum HP was a small number. Raw HP wasn't the same thing as defensive strength. With Blissey's pitifully low physical defense, facing a strike from a Charizard like Ash's, with Tough Claws on top and Flare Blitz landing directly, even being a tier higher than her opponent didn't save her.
Under everyone's watching eyes, Blissey slowly closed her eyes, her head tipped to one side, and she lost the ability to battle.
"Roar!"
Charizard let out a long, ringing roar. Scorching flames climbed into the sky around him, broadcasting his current excitement. Even though the round had finished fast, Blissey had given him real trouble. On top of that, her level had been a tier above his. The fact that one strike had been enough to take her out surprised even Charizard himself.
"How is that possible? Blissey, Dad's Blissey, her HP is so high! How can she be defeated in a single blow?" Max's face was a study in disbelief. He muttered the words to himself as if saying them aloud might make them untrue. He simply couldn't accept this reality.
In the past, whenever his father used Blissey against another Trainer, there had never been a scene of a one-shot. The standard pattern was the opposite.
Opponents would burn through every resource they had and still only manage to scratch Blissey. It was common for an opponent to grind themselves into the ground trying to take Blissey down, while Blissey gradually milked their stamina dry and then used Soft-Boiled to refill.
After enough rounds, the enemy would crack while Blissey remained mostly fresh. The standard play, even Max knew it by heart, was to use Minimize to slip enemy attacks, then counter through the opening, and once the enemy's stamina dropped past a threshold, use Soft-Boiled to fully restore. From there, the enemy was effectively toyed with to death. The Pink Demon, that was Blissey's legend.
In Max's memory, his father's Blissey had never been defeated. Today she'd not only been defeated, she'd been one-shotted. That Charizard was beyond reasonable.
Was Ash really only fifteen? How could a fifteen-year-old raise a Pokémon this terrifying, stronger than the Pokémon his father had spent over a decade training? It didn't track.
"Max, don't get yourself worked up. The battle isn't over. You might rattle Dad like this." May patted Max's shoulder, signaling him to settle down. Going by Max's posture, he was about to charge into the arena to check on Blissey.
In that moment, he simply couldn't believe Blissey would lose like that. But that was the cruel reality. Blissey really had been killed by Charizard's Flare Blitz in a single hit.
Pokémon like Blissey, who were built around towering HP, once they ran into something that could one-shot them, lost most of their value. Blissey's offense wasn't strong. Even her special attack was only moderately effective. Trying to win purely through offense was fantasy.
To beat an opponent, Blissey had to rely on grinding attrition, using Soft-Boiled to ride out exchanges. That was the only real game plan.
Unfortunately, running into a Charizard with this much burst was just bad luck. In its normal state, Charizard hitting Blissey with a contact attack still couldn't have one-shotted her. Even taking a full Flare Blitz, with Tough Claws, would have cut about a third of Blissey's HP, not all of it.
Without Tough Claws, without an inflated attack stat, without the level gap closing, fighting Blissey on even terms would have been impossible. A pity, then, that with Mega Evolution stacking all of that on top, Charizard only needed a single landed move to lock the round down.
Norman sighed quietly and recalled Blissey.
"Thank you for your hard work, Blissey. I'm sorry. The mistake was in my commands." After apologizing through the Poké Ball, Norman drew his last one.
"Honestly, before fighting you, Ash, I didn't think I'd be pushed this far. To be precise, I didn't think you'd push me this far without using that boosting technique of yours."
The technique Norman was referring to was Aura fusion. Though Ash had won the first two rounds, an experienced Trainer could see plainly that Lucario had only beaten Kangaskhan by borrowing on Ash's unique power. Otherwise, how could a High Level Pokémon defeat an Elite Four? Norman had been mentally prepared for Ash to pull out that boost.
If Ash had used Aura fusion, even Norman wouldn't have been able to counter it cleanly. He'd have had to fight all-out, and the final outcome would probably have been defeat.
Instead, Ash hadn't used Aura fusion at all, and had still beaten two of Norman's Pokémon. On one hand, Norman had underestimated Ash, assuming that as long as Aura fusion stayed unused, he still held the advantage. On the other, he had overestimated himself, thinking that even if Ash did use Aura fusion, he could still put up a fight.
The final result was this: even without that boost, with his own Pokémon down to one and Ash's not exactly in top condition either, Ash had still taken two of his.
To be fair, that polite framing was generous. In practice, Ash's Lucario had effectively lost combat capacity, and Charizard's stamina had taken a real bite as well. Charizard was Ash's ace, after all, so a measure of overperformance was natural. Now that Ash's ace was already out on the field, Norman's turn to counterattack had arrived.
"Next is my last Pokémon."
Norman threw out the final Poké Ball.
A flash of light, and a large Pokémon appeared on the field. It looked like a chimpanzee, brown fur draping loosely off its frame. From its face and overall posture, it radiated laziness. Its bulk should have been imposing, but the slumped stance robbed it of any real menace.
This was Norman's ace, the Lazy King of Hoenn. Slaking.
Slaking was a Pokémon with absolutely terrifying species stats. Even pseudo-legendary species couldn't match Slaking on raw species power alone. In base stat total, Slaking was the highest-ranked non-Legendary, and unlike a pseudo-legendary, raising one wasn't an enormous undertaking. Yet despite all that, no one had really managed to fully train one to its ceiling.
The reason was simple. You could successfully train a Slaking, but actually using one was draining beyond belief. Slaking's ability was Truant, meaning after one attack the user had to skip the next turn entirely. In effect, every attack a Slaking threw out functioned like a finisher with a mandatory cooldown. That single trait alone gave most Trainers a permanent headache.
On top of that, once a Slakoth's evolution line hit Slaking, the Pokémon's personality drifted toward outright sloth. It didn't refuse to train altogether, but spending twenty hours a day flat on its back was the standard baseline.
Counting in all the other small distractions, even half an hour of focused training a day was a battle. Despite this, Slaking didn't require as much pure training as a pseudo-legendary to reach its ceiling.
The catch was that nobody dared to seriously try. Hard to use in battle, exhausting to train, lazy beyond reason. Without a Trainer of exceptional skill, the species was simply impossible to control.
Norman happened to be exactly that kind of Trainer. He hadn't only raised a Slaking. The Slaking was his ace.
Ash glanced at Slaking's tier and confirmed it. Champion Mid. Compared to the rest of Norman's team, Slaking really did stand head and shoulders above the rest.
"Ace against ace, is it? Then I'll bring out my own ace. Charizard, come back first." Ash recalled Charizard.
The move surprised Norman and May both. Why was Ash recalling Charizard? Was Charizard not Ash's ace? That couldn't be. A Charizard this strong, and not his ace? Then what on earth was?
"The final battle is yours, Pikachu." Ash turned to Pikachu at his feet and said it firmly, handing off the final round to the Pokémon he trusted most.
Ash basically treated every one of his Pokémon as equals, and none of them got preferential treatment under normal circumstances. That was the general rule. Within the team, though, every Pokémon knew that Pikachu was a little different.
He was Ash's original partner, and Ash's most deeply trusted Pokémon. Regardless of whether Pikachu was the strongest on the team in raw terms, in critical moments, he was always Ash's last card. Just like in this match.
"Pikachu?" Seeing him take the field, Norman blinked. He hadn't expected Ash to switch Charizard out and put Pikachu in. Ash's Pikachu was strong and famous as an image, sure, but his actual accomplishments were a long way behind Charizard's.
The public knew Ash's Pikachu had several unique moves, but in the face of absolute power, those tricks were illusions. No matter how strong a Pikachu was, there was a ceiling. How was a Pikachu supposed to compare to a Mega-Evolving Charizard?
When Pikachu stepped onto the field, the children on the sidelines lit up. Ash's Pokémon all fell squarely within their preferences, either striking or adorable, every one of them appealing. That said, even the kids couldn't picture this cute little thing producing enough firepower to compete with the massive frame on the other side of the arena. They simply weren't on the same scale.
"Come on, Mr. Norman. One last battle!"
"One last? I don't think so. I'll have Slaking defeat the rest of your Pokémon too." Norman said it as undeniable fact.
When Ash said "one last battle," it meant Ash thought he could close this match out by defeating Slaking. Norman wasn't going down that easily. Whether it was Pikachu, Charizard, or even that nearly spent Lucario, Slaking could roll over all of them.
"All right then. Pikachu, go!" Ash took off his cap and tossed it into the air. Pikachu leapt up and let the cap settle onto his head.
"Partner form from the very start? Ash is going to bring out his full firepower right away." Misty crossed her arms, analyzing the field seriously.
"What's partner form? Does putting Ash's hat on actually change something about Pikachu?"
"Mm-hm. The biggest difference with Ash's Pikachu is that once the hat goes on, he undergoes some genuinely miraculous changes. Not only can he use moves that don't exist on the commercial market, his various stats and even his level get raised." Misty nodded.
Hearing that, May, Max, and the surrounding children, who didn't understand the mechanics but knew it sounded extraordinary, all gaped in astonishment. How was that just a trick? That was practically cheating.
"On top of that. Aura Resides Within Me." Ash crossed his arms in front of himself, murmured the words under his breath, and a powerful Aura flowed into Pikachu's body. Pikachu's power surged in a single moment.
With the recent breakthrough behind him, with every kind of boost piling on, Pikachu's strength was now on a par with an ordinary Champion-level Pokémon. In effective strength, he was even a step above Slaking. In the past, Ash had always been the one fighting against opponents at a higher level, including just a moment ago.
"So, that's the power that defeated Lorelei. Let me see it for myself, Ash. Slaking, Giga Impact!"
Norman felt the surge of Pikachu's power and immediately understood. This was the same boost Ash had used against Lorelei. Norman didn't hold back either, opening the round with Slaking's own ultimate Normal-type move, Giga Impact.
Slaking crouched slightly, then suddenly leapt up, its massive foot hurtling down toward Pikachu, the air screaming around its descent.
"Pikachu, Iron Tail!"
Ash's command left everyone stunned. He wanted Pikachu to meet Slaking head-on? No way. He couldn't possibly mean that.