Whiscash opened its huge mouth, gathering itself to unleash Belch again, but before it could fire, its target was gone.
Whiscash's mind worked slowly at the best of times, and it had no idea how to process what had just happened. It needed Gilbert to tell it what to do. What looked like nonsense to Whiscash was perfectly clear to Gilbert from the platform outside the arena: Meowscarada had used Ally Switch, trading places with Whiscash in an instant.
Pulling off that kind of precise swap was rare even for Pokémon born with natural Psychic talent. Gilbert felt his unease growing with every passing second. What exactly was this cat capable of? How many more tricks like this did it have?
With the positions suddenly reversed, Whiscash had nothing in front of it to aim at. If it let Belch loose blindly, the only thing standing in its path was Nova himself, and the barrier surrounding the arena made sure no attack could ever reach a trainer directly.
"Whiscash, your target's behind you, turn around!" Gilbert called out.
There was a reason this move was called Belch. A Pokémon performing it genuinely had to belch to use it, and that wasn't something easily held back once it built up, no more than a person could will away the need to sneeze.
Whiscash barely managed to twist itself halfway around before it lost the fight to hold the attack in. The blast slammed straight into the protective barrier instead, sending a shudder through the entire arena.
Missing one attack wasn't the end of the world, though, because Meowscarada was already coming back at it. Two bursts of flower petals exploded from its sides in a fresh round of Flower Trick. Whiscash threw up a wall of Aqua Jet to shield itself, but even through the water, it felt something it hadn't expected: pain, sharp enough to register even in its sluggish mind.
That wasn't a good sign. It meant Meowscarada's attacks were hitting harder than they should have been able to. Gilbert, who knew Whiscash better than almost anyone, caught the shift in his partner immediately and understood at once that Meowscarada's damage was starting to become a real threat.
After the second Flower Trick connected, Meowscarada used its speed to lay down Grassy Terrain once more. This time, Gilbert held off on ordering another Belch. The move only had ninety percent accuracy to begin with, and timing it well took precision. With Meowscarada clearly capable of repositioning in ways that shouldn't have been possible, firing off another Belch carelessly could hand Meowscarada another opening to strike back.
Gilbert almost felt foolish. He'd declared the match decided with total confidence, and yet here was this cat, refusing to follow any of the rules he expected, getting back up again and again and somehow hitting harder each time. His carefully built plan was falling apart in real time. So what now?
No matter how sharp your read on a battle was, if your opponent simply refused to behave the way logic said they should, your plans were bound to fall apart eventually. If attacking wasn't safe, then the answer was to fall back on what Whiscash did best: grinding the opponent down through sheer endurance. It was the same approach Whiscash relied on in most high-level matches.
Without quite meaning to, Gilbert found himself sizing up the young trainer and his impossible cat the same way he sized up opponents at the Master Tournament.
"Whiscash, use Rest!"
Nova's stomach dropped. He couldn't let that move land. If Whiscash slept through the next two turns, it would heal completely, and every bit of damage Meowscarada had fought so hard to deal would mean nothing.
Fortunately, Meowscarada had an answer ready for stubborn sleepers like Whiscash. It snatched a small flower bud that had appeared at its side and hurled it straight at Whiscash just as the Pokémon began to drift toward sleep. The bud burst apart in front of Whiscash, scattering countless seeds no bigger than fingernails. They weren't physical seeds at all; the moment they touched Whiscash, they vanished as if they had never been there, and the attack dealt no damage whatsoever.
Instead, Whiscash felt its sluggish mind suddenly sharpen. The fog that had always clouded its thinking lifted, and for the first time in longer than it could remember, it was thinking clearly.
That clarity came with a price. A sharper mind meant more room to worry, and a mind busy worrying had no room left for sleep. Whiscash found itself troubled by things it had never given a second thought to before. Why did the word "Prosperity" suddenly bother it so much? Why was it afraid Gilbert might one day care more about his other partners than him? Since when had its bond with Gilbert grown so sentimental?
None of those worries actually belonged to Whiscash. They were Meowscarada's own anxieties, planted in Whiscash's mind through Worry Seed, a move that takes the user's own insecurities and roots them in the opponent, changing the target's Ability into Insomnia in the process. That explained why Whiscash suddenly felt sharper. Its usual Oblivious had just been overwritten by Insomnia.
Meowscarada had no patience left for a grown Pokémon trying to nap mid-battle, and it made its frustration plain in the way it squared up and refused to back down, daring Whiscash to get back on its feet and keep fighting.
That was more than enough to set Whiscash off. Fine, then. If it wanted to keep fighting, Whiscash would give it one more taste of Belch first.
A double Petal Blizzard crashed headlong into Belch, two massive surges of pink and purple energy colliding violently in the middle of the arena. Before the dust from the explosion had even settled, Meowscarada shot forward through the haze and used Grassy Glide to seize the advantage. Whiscash answered with Aqua Jet, using the attack to both shield itself and strike back at the same time.
By this point, strategy had stopped mattering. Both trainers might as well have been standing outside the arena doing nothing at all, because the only thing left was a straight, brutal exchange between the two Pokémon themselves. Whiscash and Meowscarada traded blow after blow for four or five more moves until neither of them had the strength left to move. What had started as a fight between two powerhouses had worn down into something closer to two exhausted fighters trading the last weak swings they had left.
This wasn't a Pokémon battle anymore. It had become a pure test of will. Both sides had reached the very edge of what their bodies could take, and from here, whichever Pokémon's spirit broke first would be the one to lose.