How should an Elite Four trainer fight a rookie who still had so much to learn?
Should he simply crush the kid using the raw strength gap between their Pokémon?
No. At least, that wasn't how Gilbert saw it.
Beating a rookie down with overwhelming power would only make people think he was leaning on his seniority, using years of experience to bully someone younger. It wouldn't show them the real difference between trainers. Worse, some cocky rookie might walk away thinking that if he ever got his hands on a Pokémon as strong as an Elite Four member's, he could win too.
What Gilbert wanted Nova to understand wasn't the gap between their Pokémon. It was the gap between trainers, the kind of gap that showed up in quick thinking and battle strategy.
"This match is decided," Gilbert said.
Whiscash's health had dropped below half, and the moment it did, the Sitrus Berry it had been hiding in its enormous mouth finally went down its throat. A Sitrus Berry was one of the held items allowed in official battles. Once a Pokémon's HP fell below fifty percent, it could eat the berry to recover a quarter of its maximum health on the spot, making it the most reliable recovery item trainers used in real matches.
If restoring health were the only reason, though, Gilbert wouldn't have bothered baiting Whiscash's HP down so precisely. The real reason was that eating the berry satisfied the condition for unlocking a brutal Poison-type move.
The instant Nova saw Whiscash pull out the berry, he called for Meowscarada to use Flower Trick, hoping to knock it out of Whiscash's mouth before it could finish. But Whiscash was built for swallowing things whole, and a fist-sized berry disappeared down its throat as easily as a grape.
With a quarter of its health restored, Whiscash shrugged off even the quadrupled damage from Petal Blizzard and the follow-up pursuit attack that came after, staying solidly in the fight. And now that the berry's effect had triggered, its next attack would hit far harder than anything it had thrown at Meowscarada so far.
"Whiscash, Belch!" Gilbert called.
Belch was the strongest special Poison-type move in the game, but it came with a catch. A Pokémon could only use it after eating a berry during that same battle, and only while still feeling the effects of being full.
In the wild, meeting that condition was simple. Toss enough berries at a Pokémon and it could eat its way into using Belch whenever it wanted. Official battles weren't so generous. Every Pokémon could carry only one held item, and there were strict rules about exactly when that item could activate, like a Sitrus Berry only triggering once HP dropped below half. Because the setup was so restrictive, Belch rarely showed up in serious competition.
Rare didn't mean weak. Once the condition was met, Belch could swing an entire match, and Meowscarada, being part Grass-type, would take double damage from it.
Gilbert had spent the early part of the battle playing defense for exactly this reason, baiting Nova into a position where Belch would land before he ever saw it coming. It was a complete tactical win. Even without the gap in level and raw strength between the two Pokémon, a Whiscash that successfully set up Belch could turn a losing battle around on its own. Add in the enormous difference in level and power already separating Whiscash from Meowscarada, and the outcome was hardly in doubt.
When Gilbert said the match was decided, he meant it.
Whiscash opened its huge mouth and let out a roar like rolling thunder as a thick, foul-smelling cloud of poison gas rolled across the field. The gas slammed into Meowscarada along with the force of the sound itself, and the combination of poison and shockwaves sent its vision spinning. Its eyes rolled back as its legs buckled beneath it.
Whiscash had every advantage. Its level towered over Meowscarada's by a wide margin, and on top of that gap, it had clearly trained far beyond what a Pokémon of its kind should have been capable of, its raw power pushed to an almost unnatural degree. A Poison-type attack with that kind of base power would have staggered even a fully healthy Meowscarada. Against one already worn down from a long, grueling fight against a much stronger opponent, it should have been the final blow.
Meowscarada crumpled to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. It looked like the battle was about to end right there.
Nova's hands curled into fists at his sides. He braced himself to run onto the field the second the referee called it, ready to scoop Meowscarada up himself. It never liked going back into its Poké Ball after a hard battle. It liked being carried back in his arms.
But the referee didn't say anything.
Nova blinked back tears and stared at the field, and that was when he saw it. Meowscarada, who should have already been knocked out, was forcing its trembling body back up onto its feet.
Inside, Nova was screaming at it to stop, that this wasn't a battle worth pushing itself this hard for. But out loud, he didn't say a single word. He knew that telling Meowscarada to give up now would only insult how hard it was fighting for him.
Meowscarada loved him fiercely, and that love was carrying it past what should have been its limit. It refused to lose, no matter who stood across the field from it.
Gilbert stared at the scene, caught somewhere between impressed and baffled. Is this kid's Meowscarada really still standing on one HP? That shouldn't be possible.
Nova found himself thinking back to something he'd once read, about Pokémon that fought on through sheer attachment to their trainers even past the point their bodies should have given out. He'd never given those words much weight before. Now, watching Meowscarada refuse to fall, he understood exactly what they meant, and his chest tightened with something he couldn't quite name.
"Whiscash, Belch, one more time!" Gilbert shouted.
"Meowscarada, dodge it, then hit back with Flower Trick!" Nova called.