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Meganium was frozen too.
Unlike Sceptile, it had not turned away to strike a pose, which made the situation even stranger from where it stood. It had watched the whole thing. Sceptile's strike had landed clean. The Psyduck's body had been falling backward. There was no question about it.
Then, halfway down, the duck had simply stopped falling.
Like one of those weighted roly-poly toys that always rights itself no matter how far it tips, Psyduck caught itself at an impossible angle and slowly straightened back up.
Something had changed.
The dull, glazed look in its eyes was gone. In its place was a wash of soft pink light, filling both eyes from edge to edge. A surge of energy was building inside the duck's body, wild and difficult to contain, leaking out through every inch of it until a visible shell of pink Psychic energy had formed around it entirely.
Meganium did not wait to find out what was coming. While Sceptile was still finishing its pose, Meganium started pulling Grass-type energy together immediately. Whatever was happening with that duck, the right move was to hit it with Magical Leaf before it could do anything else.
But Meganium could not move.
It checked itself frantically. The pink energy that surrounded Psyduck had spread outward and was now wrapped around both it and Sceptile like a film it could not push through.
Disable. It had been hit by Disable. Neither of them could use any moves.
The feeling of being stopped without warning, unable to understand exactly when it had happened, was deeply unsettling.
Sceptile, realizing it could not even turn its body around, finally let a flicker of alarm show through its composure.
Outside the arena, the commentators were beside themselves.
"The final blow! Psyduck is down! No, wait! Psyduck is getting back up! Psyduck is standing! The miraculous comeback! Trainer Aresdra refuses to give in! Psyduck has used Disable at some point during the match! Both of Trainer Thelma's ace Pokemon are unable to move! The match is still going! Trainer Aresdra's Appeal Points are nearly gone after Psyduck's earlier performance, but can she turn this around with only 38 seconds left on the clock!"
Aresdra, the highly anticipated trainer at the center of all of it, had no idea what was happening. Her mind had gone completely blank.
Hundreds of millions of viewers were watching the livestream across the Norlandia Alliance. None of them would have guessed that the one person who actually understood the situation was a sixteen-year-old boy sitting alone in a tent on a flat mountain somewhere, watching through a small screen.
Nova was stunned.
He had used the Poke Breeding system to scan DIO's full profile. He knew exactly what the Psyduck was capable of, had gone over every detail of its extraordinary hidden ability. And even he had not seen this coming.
You really are something else, DIO. Time Stop, of all things.
Disable, known in early animated works as the "Petrifying Move," was famously associated with Misty's Psyduck from the original anime series. While it presents visually like a Psychic-type move, Disable is actually classified as a Normal-type status move. In battle, it locks down a target's moves entirely, forcing the affected Pokemon to rely on Struggle. Because real battles are not turn-based, this translated in practice to something much more complete: the target simply could not move at all, as if frozen in place.
The effect was very much like a game of Red Light, Green Light. The moment the light turned red, everything stopped.
Psyduck's ability had a specific interaction with Disable. When the headache building inside its skull reached its peak, Psyduck briefly regained clarity. During that window, the power of its Psychic-type moves increased by two hundred and sixty percent, and the reach and strength of Disable expanded dramatically along with it.
That was how a single Psyduck had managed to simultaneously lock down two ace Pokemon, both above level fifty, despite the enormous gap in strength.
Thelma, however, was not the trainer Mr. Charlie bragged about for nothing. She was shaken for half a second at most. Then she found the reason her Pokemon were not responding.
"Sceptile, Meganium, stay calm! Build up your strength and push through!"
Her voice was steady. The moment her partners heard it, their panic eased. Both Pokemon began drawing on their Grass-type energy in full, pressing against the Psychic hold from every direction, bodies trembling with the effort.
That trembling was the proof they were fighting back.
The two surges of energy hammered against Psyduck's control from both sides. Its hold began to waver. Its own body started shaking from the strain of maintaining that level of output.
Thelma's calm had done something else too. It had snapped Aresdra out of her blank stare.
She took a slow breath. Then she looked toward the Psyduck swaying on the field and spoke.
"DIO, can you hear me? Please. Throw them off the stage."
It was the right call. Even with the two-hundred-and-sixty percent boost behind Zen Headbutt or Confusion, Sceptile and Meganium had taken no damage at all. Both were at full health. With less than twenty seconds left on the clock, trying to knock out either of them through damage alone was simply not realistic.
The Contest Battle stage was much smaller than a standard battle arena. That difference was the one card Aresdra had left to play.
Inside the Psyduck's aching head, something heard her.
The brief return of clarity meant DIO could take in the whole picture. It remembered the chaos it had caused throughout the evening. It had not been fully in control of itself at the time, and it knew that. Aresdra had not blamed it once. She had chosen to trust it and bring it out onto the field anyway.
That mattered.
With whatever time it had left in this window, it was going to use it well.
Psyduck spread both arms wide.
The Psychic output surged upward by another level entirely. Sceptile and Meganium, who had been steadily pushing back, were locked down again in an instant, their resistance completely smothered. Then Psyduck raised both arms overhead.
The intensity of the Psychic energy radiating outward was so extreme that the space around Psyduck seemed to distort, a faint shimmer bending the air in every direction. A deep, heavy hum filled the arena.
And then, slowly, Sceptile and Meganium left the ground.