The two Ice Beams had cancelled each other out. The pool at the center of the field was the only real casualty, now a flat sheet of ice.
"Lapras, Ice Shard!"
"Use Ice Shard!"
Clusters of sharp ice fragments condensed around both Lapras simultaneously and launched outward. Size, quantity, trajectory, nearly identical. They met in the air and shattered against each other in a continuous clatter, ice raining down across the frozen surface below.
Ash was starting to understand why Drake's Ditto was so difficult for challengers to deal with. It wasn't the Pokémon itself. It was the Trainer behind it.
Drake's approach was methodical. Mirror the opponent's moves first, gather information through equal exchanges, then use that information to diverge at the right moment.
When stats were level and the moves were the same, draws were almost guaranteed, which meant no meaningful cost while Drake mapped out exactly what he was working against. It was a clean, efficient system.
It also had a blind spot.
"Lapras, use Thunder!"
"We'll use Thunder too!"
Lapras carried the Water and Ice typing, and Thunder sat within its learnable range. If it connected, the damage would be severe and not the kind of hit that could be traded away evenly.
Drake processed this in under a second and made the logical call. Mirror the move. Ditto had more stamina than Lapras due to the level gap. If both Pokémon took a Thunder hit, Ditto would absorb it and Lapras might not. Press the stamina advantage, let the gap do the work.
Both Pokémon froze.
No thunder clouds formed. No electricity gathered. Neither of them moved.
Then Lapras's body lit up with golden lightning, the current building naturally and without any visible struggle.
On Drake's side, Ditto stood locked in place, its face showing the strain of trying to produce something it couldn't reach. The move simply wasn't there.
Drake stared.
"Now, Thunderbolt!"
Lapras released the current cleanly and it landed square on Ditto. The electricity tore across its body, Ditto shrieking as golden arcs jumped across every surface of its borrowed form. The barrage continued until Lapras eased off, leaving Ditto standing with wisps of smoke rising from its body.
Drake was quiet for a moment. Then: "I see. Your Lapras doesn't actually know Thunder. You called it specifically because you knew I would mirror it, and you knew Ditto can't use a move the opponent hasn't learned.
Once Ditto was locked trying to execute a move that didn't exist in Lapras's kit, you switched to Thunderbolt and struck clean."
Ash smiled and snapped his fingers. "Exactly right. My Lapras doesn't know Thunder, which is also why I was confident she would understand what I meant when I called it. The move she actually knows is Thunderbolt. Mr. Drake, you really do pick things up fast."
Lapras had grown quickly over the past weeks, but not quickly enough to have learned Thunder yet. Thunderbolt sat comfortably within her current range. Thunder was still in the territory she was working toward, not ready to be drawn on. The gap between the two moves was exactly the gap Ash had exploited.
The bond between them wasn't at the level of his connection with Pikachu. If it had been Pikachu, the moment Ash called a move it didn't know, it would have immediately read the intent and responded on its own.
Lapras had hesitated for a moment before the penny dropped. Still, she had gotten there, and she had moved fast enough to land the hit cleanly.
"Press it, Lapras! Freeze-Dry!"
Freeze-Dry was an Ice-type move with one unusual property: it hit Water-type Pokémon for super-effective damage, bypassing the resistance that Water types normally had to Ice.
A Lapras, which would ordinarily take Ice damage at a quarter of the expected value, would eat a Freeze-Dry at full effectiveness.
Lapras drew a long breath and released a frigid beam that hit the still-recovering Ditto directly. The special energy in the move worked into Ditto's form, and Ditto cried out again.
"Ditto, pull yourself together! Use Thunderbolt!"
"Lapras, use Freeze-Dry again!"
Serena, watching from behind Ash, frowned. "Why is he using an Ice-type move instead of Electric? Ice-type moves should only deal a quarter damage to Lapras. That's an eight-fold difference compared to Thunderbolt."
She had been studying the type chart under Ash's guidance and had it reasonably well memorized. Lapras was Water and Ice. The math clearly favored Electric over Ice against that typing. So why was Ash going back to Freeze-Dry?
Misty opened her mouth to explain. The field answered first.
Both Lapras began charging simultaneously, one building cold, the other gathering electricity. A second later, Freeze-Dry had already left Lapras's mouth and was crossing the field. Drake's Ditto hadn't gotten Thunderbolt off.
Drake's expression tightened. He had seen it too late.
Freeze-Dry tore into Ditto again. The charged Thunderbolt collapsed, the interruption knocking Ditto backward into a protruding rock. It slid down, its body releasing a brief flash of light, and its Lapras form dissolved back into the familiar pink shape of Ditto itself.
"Ditto is unable to battle! Lapras wins!"
The referee flagged the result the moment the transformation reversed. In standard match conditions, Ditto only reverts to its original form when it can no longer fight.
The crowd was quiet for a moment, catching up to what had just happened. The first match had ended almost before it felt like it had started. Drake had barely gotten his footing.
"See it now?" Misty asked, glancing at Serena.
Serena stared at the field. "I don't understand."
"It's straightforward. Lapras is Water and Ice-type. When it uses a move that matches its own typing, the power goes up and the release speed is faster than a non-STAB move.
Ditto transformed into Lapras and matched every stat, but when both Pokémon go for different moves, Lapras will always fire an Ice-type move faster than it fires an Electric-type one. Ditto has the same body but no type advantage on Electric, so it couldn't outrace Lapras to the shot."
"That's why Ash didn't use Thunderbolt," Serena said, working through it. "Because a faster move beats a stronger one if the stronger one doesn't land."
"And about that eight-fold difference you were calculating," Misty added. "Freeze-Dry is special. It hits Water-types for super-effective damage regardless of their secondary typing. Against a Water and Ice Lapras, it doesn't get reduced. It lands at full effectiveness."
Serena nodded slowly. Honestly, this was the most a Pokémon battle had made sense to her in weeks. The earlier exchanges on Shamouti Island had involved things that could have removed small islands from the map.
Watching Lapras and Ditto trade Ice Beams over a frozen pool felt comparatively civilized, and with Misty walking her through it, she could actually follow the logic.
"Well played, Ash," Drake said, recalling Ditto with a measured expression. "I'll admit I was rattled by your earlier trap and took my eye off something basic. I shouldn't call it carelessness, because that lets me off too easy. You set the pace of that exchange deliberately and I let it happen. Genuinely impressive."
"Lapras gets most of the credit," Ash said, smiling at his Pokémon. "She trusted me enough to follow that call even knowing an Electric-type move was coming at her. That's not nothing."
Drake reached for his next Poké Ball. "Go, Kecleon!"
A green, lizard-like Pokémon landed on the field. Kecleon, the Color Swap Pokémon. Its most notable feature in casual conversation was its ability to shift the color of its body to blend with its surroundings. Its most notable feature in a battle context was more complicated.
Kecleon had two possible abilities. The first was Color Change, which caused its type to shift to match whatever type of move had just hit it. The catch was that the shift happened after the damage was already calculated, meaning Kecleon had to absorb a Fire-type hit as a Normal-type before it could become a Fire-type. Uncontrollable and reactive, it offered limited real value in most situations.
The second ability was Protean. Rather than changing type in response to being hit, Protean changed Kecleon's type to match whatever move it was about to use, and it did so at the moment of the attack, meaning every move it threw also received the same-type attack bonus. Compared to Color Change, Protean was in a completely different tier of usefulness.
Drake's Kecleon had Color Change.
Ash studied it for a moment, then recalled Lapras and reached for his own second Poké Ball.
"Snorlax, let's go!"