At that moment, every onlooker watching was completely convinced that Sandile was finished. Kinshita thought exactly the same, a wide, victorious smile already spreading across his face before the smoke had even begun to clear. The thought of walking away with a Technical Machine worth several hundred thousand in a matter of moments sent a warm surge of anticipation racing through his chest.
"Sandile, full-power Stomping Tantrum!"
Sieg's voice cut through the noise of the crowd, flat, unhurried, and utterly without emotion.
Before anyone could process the command, the silhouette standing within the dying curtain of flame suddenly moved. Sandile drove its foot down with savage, concentrated force, and an invisible shockwave tore outward along the ground beneath it, rolling forward in a churning wave of displaced earth.
It crashed directly into Flareon, which had only just finished releasing its attack and was completely unprepared for what came next.
A wave of brutal pain swept through Flareon's entire body in an instant, twisting its face into a raw expression of agony.
Before it could even begin to recover, Sandile was already moving, crossing the ground in a low, rapid dash, closing the distance with the practiced economy of a Pokémon that had ended dozens of fights mercilessly. It raised its jaws and bit down with ferocious precision.
Crunch.
Already reeling and dizzy from the initial shockwave, Flareon took the full impact without any defense and let out an involuntary, pitiful cry that echoed across the arena.
Sieg gave it no time to breathe.
"Again. Stomping Tantrum."
Hearing the command, Sandile lifted its foot once more and brought it down with even greater, more deliberate force than before.
The impact was thunderous.
Flareon's face was driven directly into the ground, cracks spidering outward from the point of contact in jagged, branching lines. This time, there was no scream. Its eyes rolled into dizzy spirals as its body crumpled and twisted awkwardly against the broken earth, completely and utterly stripped of any ability to continue battling.
Sandile pulled back from its assault and glanced over its shoulder toward Sieg, the question in its dark eyes clear and wordless.
Sieg gave a single, subtle shake of his head. He understood perfectly what Sandile was asking. Seasons of real, unforgiving combat had conditioned it to always consider finishing a downed opponent completely, to leave no margin for recovery. But Sieg's authority held it in place, steady and obedient despite every trained instinct pulling the other direction.
He recalled Sandile into its Poké Ball with a quiet word of praise, simple and sincere, and then walked directly toward the referee's notarization desk to collect the stack of anonymous bank cards waiting there, leaving the stunned crowd to piece together what had just happened on their own.
"Flareon has lost the ability to battle. Sandile wins. The victor is Trainer Sieg!"
The referee's voice rang out across the arena, and only then did the crowd truly snap back to reality, the declaration giving them something concrete to anchor the disbelief swirling through them.
Three hits. Less than ten seconds.
A few bold spectators had quietly predicted that Sieg might pull off a win; a commoner defeating a family heir always made for a satisfying story, after all. But a clean, one-sided sweep of this degree was something none of them had genuinely imagined was possible.
Not everyone was dumbstruck, of course. Scattered among the crowd were a handful of sharp-eyed individuals who had seen enough real battles to recognize the quality of what Sandile represented. Its physical conditioning and energy control had outclassed Flareon's from the very first moment. Beyond that, Stomping Tantrum was a Ground-type move, dealing double damage against a Fire-type. And though no one in the crowd could have known it, the fourteen percent damage boost from the Soft Sand had quietly tilted things even further.
Just as Sieg was tucking the bank cards into his pocket, the dazed Kinshita finally jolted back to his senses.
"N-No... something must have gone wrong!"
He lurched forward, planting himself between Sieg and the desk. A portion of those cards held his personal savings. The majority represented the training resources he had earmarked for future use. He had never been genuinely serious about training; that much was obvious to anyone paying attention, but losing that volume of money in a single sitting made something hollow and painful open up in his chest regardless.
Sieg stepped forward, positioning himself squarely in front of the desk, and raised his voice so the surrounding crowd could hear every word with perfect clarity.
"With this many witnesses present, a notarized contract on record, and an officially certified League referee standing right there, are you genuinely attempting to renege on your debt?"
The color that flooded Kinshita's face was something between fury and mortification. He stood there, frozen, as the people around him began to point and whisper in low, pointed tones. It felt like standing barefoot on hot coals with nowhere to step that wasn't burning.
He was caught entirely, unable to advance and unable to retreat with any dignity intact.
Then, cutting cleanly through the murmuring crowd, a slow and deliberate round of applause rang out.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
Kinshita, eyes still bloodshot from the humiliation of his loss, whipped his head toward the source with barely restrained fury.
"Who?!"
The rage was real, but beneath it ran a cold intention. Once they disembarked, he had already decided he would show Sieg precisely what it meant to cross someone backed by a real clan. The Takanobu family was only a newly risen second-rate name, admittedly, but handling a seventeen or eighteen-year-old nobody with no backing would be effortless. When that time came, reclaiming the Technical Machine would be the least of it. He could take everything Sieg owned if he felt like it.
Sieg, for his part, felt nothing resembling fear. He had stood before genuinely formidable names before, the Solanse patriarch among them. Looking at Kinshita now, with his aggressively expensive clothes and his loud, grasping demeanor, Sieg felt only a detached, mild contempt. The Rustboro Gym's internal database contained no entry for the Takanobu family whatsoever. He had never even heard the name before today. Offending them carried no meaningful consequence.
He was now a direct member of the League, holding Level Two clearance, backed by Rustboro Gym, and supported by the Joy family. If the Takanobus genuinely decided to make a move after disembarkment, Sieg would not particularly mind collecting an even steeper price from them than he already had.
"Elder Joy!"
"Elder Joy, this way, please!"
A ripple of commotion moved through the gathered crowd, and people shifted and parted instinctively to either side, clearing a path without being asked.
Through the gap they formed, an elderly woman in a pristine white evening gown stepped forward at an unhurried pace. The marks of age were there, written in fine lines across her face, but her features beneath them remained exquisitely refined. In her youth, she must have been breathtaking. Then again, every Nurse Joy was adored wherever she set foot; it seemed to be a trait baked into the bloodline itself.
Behind her walked a young Joy and two elegantly composed ladies, keeping a respectful half-step back.
The moment Kinshita recognized who had just entered the scene, something in his posture collapsed entirely. His shoulders drew inward. His chin dropped. The bristling fury of a moment ago vanished as completely as if it had never existed, replaced by the hunched, instinctive stillness of someone who understands immediately that they are very, very small in the presence of something very, very large. He shot a furtive glance at the elderly Joy from beneath lowered brows, confirmed she was not looking in his direction, and quietly exhaled.
Not only him. Even the head of the Takanobu family itself would bow without hesitation before this woman.
He began edging slowly, carefully backward, doing his best to dissolve into the surrounding crowd without drawing any further attention to himself.
"Lady Joy!"
"Madam Joy!"
"Elder Joy!"
The crowd offered different titles depending on who was speaking, but not a single person was bold enough to simply say Miss Joy. Her standing within the Joy family hierarchy was the kind that could flatten an ordinary second-rate clan without breaking stride.
Sieg looked from the elderly woman to Chloé standing just behind her, catching the subtle, speaking look Chloé was directing at him with her eyes. The message was immediate and clear. This was her grandmother.
He offered a calm, genuine smile and dipped his head in a respectful nod.
"Greetings, Senior. My name is Sieg."