The Ice Punch launched Kecleon backward. It tumbled across the rocky field a dozen times before friction and gravity dragged it to a stop. The blow had forced it out of its invisible state, its colour-shifting camouflage stripped away by the sheer impact.
Kecleon was still conscious, but its condition was bad. Drake could see that. What he couldn't see was how any of this was happening.
Kecleon was fast. Its attack speed was sharp. Under normal circumstances, the Force Palm should have landed first. Snorlax shouldn't have been able to turn, locate an invisible target, and throw an Ice Punch before Kecleon's strike connected.
But it had. Because Ash had called it.
Drake conceded that Ash's reaction time was extraordinary. The boy had read Kecleon's position and warned Snorlax in the fraction of a second between the shimmer's arrival and the strike. And Snorlax had trusted that warning without hesitation, pivoting on command.
Even so, the physical execution defied the species. Snorlax had turned its entire body and thrown a punch faster than a Kecleon one rank below it could attack. Speed like that didn't belong on a Pokémon built like a living boulder.
Ash's Snorlax wasn't just good for a Snorlax. It was fast by any standard.
"Snorlax, Mega Punch!"
Ash threw a fist forward in sync with his command, his body mirroring the motion as if he were fighting alongside his Pokémon. Snorlax crouched and launched itself skyward.
The crowd gasped. A thousand-pound Pokémon reaching that height looked like a special effect. Physics said it shouldn't work. Snorlax's legs said otherwise.
"Kecleon, get up!" Drake's voice cracked across the field. Kecleon lay where Ice Punch had left it, struggling to respond. The damage had locked its muscles. Even its trainer's shout couldn't override the body's refusal to cooperate.
A shadow fell over it. Massive. Round. Getting bigger.
Snorlax came down like a dropped planet.
The impact shook the stadium. Dust erupted in a column that swallowed the entire section of field. The sound was less like a punch and more like a small building hitting the ground.
When the dust cleared, Snorlax was sitting on Kecleon. Kecleon's eyes were spinning. Whether it had been knocked out by Mega Punch on the way down or by the sheer mass of Snorlax's landing was a question for philosophers.
Body Slam plus Mega Punch, delivered simultaneously.
"Kecleon is unable to battle. Snorlax wins!"
Drake recalled Kecleon with a steady hand and a voice that carried more respect than frustration. "You did your best. The opponent was just unreasonable."
That was the truth of it. Snorlax was supposed to be a slow, heavy tank with massive HP and crushing attack power balanced by poor speed and mediocre defence. Ash's Snorlax had the tank stats and the speed and the defence. No weak points. No exploitable gaps. A complete all-rounder wearing the body of a species that had no right to be one.
The outside world called Ash a freak trainer with freak Pokémon. Drake was starting to understand why.
Two Pokémon down, and Ash hadn't fielded a single team member from the Indigo Plateau Conference. Everything was new. If these were Pokémon Ash had caught in the month since the Conference ended, the growth rate was terrifying. If they were older captures he'd held in reserve, the depth of his roster was equally alarming.
Drake didn't dwell on it. He drew his next Poké Ball.
"Go, Onix!"
The rock serpent materialised on the field. Grey stone segments linked into a massive python, each boulder worn smooth by years of battle. This Onix was stronger than the first two. Initial Professional Level. The real fight started here.
Ash studied the Onix for a moment. Then he raised a Poké Ball.
"Good work, Snorlax. Come back."
He made the switch without hesitation and threw his third choice.
"Crystal Onix, I choose you!"
The roar that followed silenced the stadium.
An Onix emerged on Ash's side of the field. The same serpentine shape. The same massive frame. Nothing else in common.
Drake's Onix was grey stone, rough and weathered. Functional. Built by nature from whatever rock was at hand.
Ash's Onix was transparent. Ice-white crystal from head to tail, every segment catching the light and refracting it into pale rainbows across the arena floor. Where Drake's Pokémon looked like something the earth had assembled from spare parts, Ash's looked like something a god had sculpted from frozen light.
The Crystal Onix's arrival turned the stadium into a wall of noise.
"What is that? An Onix? Why is it made of crystal?"
"No offence to Chief Drake, but his Onix looks like a rough draft next to that thing."
"Crystal Onix. That's what Ash called it. The name fits."
"If its body works like a normal Onix's, the crystal segments regenerate and harden as it grows stronger. You could pick up the shed pieces and sell them. That Pokémon is a walking mine."
The discussion was inevitable. A Pokémon this visually different from its species, appearing in public for the first time, was going to generate talk. This wasn't a Shiny. Shiny Onix was gold. This was something else entirely. A variant, possibly unique, possibly a regional form nobody had documented.
Drake studied the Crystal Onix with the sharp eye of a career battler. The beauty registered. He acknowledged it.
"Stunning Pokémon you've got there. Makes mine look like a pile of gravel." His voice carried admiration without any loss of edge. "But battles aren't beauty contests. Strength decides the outcome."
"Agreed." Ash's eyes burned with excitement. "Crystal Onix, this is your first real battle. Let's make it count."
His eyes closed. Deep blue aura surfaced across his skin and flowed outward, channelling into the Crystal Onix's body in a steady stream. Aura Connection. The bond technique he'd established with the Crystal Onix just yesterday.
When Ash had caught it in the cave, Crystal Onix sat at Mid level. Weeks of dedicated training, Ash's cooking, and genuine partnership had pushed it to Peak. Still short of the Elite Level Onix standing across the field. Too wide a gap for a fair fight.
But Aura Connection changed the equation. With Ash's power flowing through it, Crystal Onix's effective strength surged to Elite. Not enough to overpower Drake's Onix outright, but enough to compete. Enough to make the fight real.
"ROAR!"
Crystal Onix's cry shook the arena, its body pulsing with deep blue light. It had received this power in training. This was the first time it felt it in battle, with an opponent in front of it and a crowd around it. The difference was electric.
Drake's brow tightened. He hadn't seen what Ash did, not the mechanics of it, but his instincts told him something fundamental had shifted. The Crystal Onix's presence felt heavier than it had ten seconds ago.
The intuition of an experienced trainer was rarely wrong.
"Crystal Onix, Ice Beam!"
Ice-blue energy condensed in the Crystal Onix's jaws and fired in a beam that seemed to freeze the air it passed through. Drake didn't waste time being impressed.
"Onix, Dig! Get underground!"
Drake's Onix reared and plunged headfirst into the arena floor, punching a hole through the rocky surface and vanishing beneath it. Fast, but not fast enough. The Ice Beam caught the tip of its tail before it disappeared, frost spreading across the last few segments.
Glancing damage, but damage.
"Fast." Drake's tactical mind was already recalculating. A normal Onix couldn't use Ice Beam. The speed and power of that beam marked it as a STAB move, which confirmed the Crystal Onix carried the Ice type. Combined with its Steel-type appearance, the matchup dynamics were nothing like a standard Onix mirror.
Intelligence won battles as much as power did. Drake filed the data and adjusted.
"Crystal Onix, find it. Iron Tail."
Drake frowned. Find it? Onix was underground, burrowing through rock, constantly moving. Without seismic sensors or ground-penetrating psychic ability, locating a subterranean target was guesswork at best.
Crystal Onix closed its eyes. The aura flowing through its body from Ash's connection doubled as a detection system, mapping the ground beneath the field the way sonar mapped the ocean floor. Onix's movement underground was a bright signature against dead rock. Nowhere to hide.
Crystal Onix's tail gleamed silver. It swung its long body across the field with surprising speed for its mass, the serpentine motion carrying it toward the frozen pool near the centre. It stopped, reared its tail, and brought Iron Tail down like a battering ram.
The ground cracked. Then shattered. The impact force drove through metres of rock and hit something alive. A muffled cry of pain erupted from beneath the surface.
Drake's expression went tight. His Onix had been moving underground. Constantly shifting position. And the Crystal Onix had pinpointed it on the first attempt.
Under the force of the blow, Drake's Onix couldn't maintain its burrow. It erupted from the broken ground, body marked with fresh damage, stone segments cracked and chipped.
The Pokémon with the level advantage. The one that should have been controlling the pace. It hadn't landed a single hit. Every move had been read, countered, or evaded. Meanwhile, it had been tagged by Ice Beam and hammered through solid rock by Iron Tail.
Drake looked at his battered Onix, then at the crystal serpent glowing with borrowed aura across the field.
Is this reasonable?