"Latios, use Tailwind and change the wind direction," Tobias ordered.
He'd figured out why Charizard was keeping pace with Latios. The Tailwind that Latias had set up earlier was still lingering on the field, and Charizard was riding it. If he could reverse the wind, the speed advantage would disappear.
"Don't let it! Charizard, Heat Wave!" Ash called out.
Charizard beat its wings hard, sending a blast of scorching wind across the field. With the existing Tailwind carrying it forward, the Heat Wave reached Latios almost instantly and engulfed it.
Latios gritted through the damage and managed to finish setting up its own Tailwind. The air currents on the field shifted, and Charizard's speed boost faded.
With the speed advantage gone, Ash didn't have many options left except to keep swinging.
"Dragon Pulse!"
Charizard fired a dragon-shaped blast of energy. Latios blocked it with Light Screen, absorbing most of the damage behind the shimring barrier.
"Thunderbolt," Tobias said.
Latios fired a bolt of lightning. Charizard swerved to dodge. A second bolt ca. Charizard dodged again. But the third one clipped it, sending a shock through its body.
"Hit it back! Flathrower!" Ash yelled.
Charizard endured the jolt and fired a stream of flas. It connected with Latios, but Light Screen dulled the impact.
The two kept trading blows after that. Thunderbolt against Flathrower, back and forth. The problem was obvious—with Light Screen active, Latios was taking far less damage than Charizard was. If the exchange dragged on, Charizard would go down first.
Ash knew this, but he didn't panic. He watched the aerial fight in silence, eyes tracking both Pokémon carefully.
Then another Thunderbolt caught Charizard clean.
It let out a pained cry and dropped out of the sky.
Dawn couldn't watch. "Is it over?"
Brock and Barry didn't answer. Neither of them could bring themselves to say anything.
Bang!
Charizard hit the ground and a cloud of dust kicked up around it.
Latios descended and hovered above the field, looking down at the crash site. When the dust blew away, Charizard was lying flat on its back.
But its eyes were wide open. Bright. Defiant. Still burning with fight.
"Char…!"
It let out a low growl, and the fla on its tail suddenly surged. The fire doubled in size, blazing with raw intensity.
Blaze had kicked in.
"Ash's Charizard has activated Blaze!" the comntator shouted. "It's not over!"
The crowd went wild.
"Co on, Ash!"
"Take Latios down!"
"Forget the bet, just win this thing!"
After Pikachu had already beaten Suicune, the audience was completely invested. Nobody was going to count Charizard out now.
Tobias acted quickly. Blaze wouldn't last forever, and a weakened Pokémon was still a weakened Pokémon.
"Luster Purge."
Latios fired a beam of pink psychic energy at Charizard.
"Flathrower!" Ash shot back.
Charizard's Blaze-boosted flas t the Luster Purge head on. The two attacks didn't cancel out cleanly—instead, the Luster Purge seed to react with the fire like a volatile substance, and the whole thing detonated. A thick cloud of smoke ballooned outward and swallowed both Pokémon.
Gary, watching from the player tunnel, recognized the scene imdiately.
It looked exactly like the Silver Conference. Back then, his Blastoise and Ash's Charizard had settled things in smoke just like this. Ash had a habit of deciding things in the fog.
On the field, Tobias sensed sothing was off.
"Latios, Psychic. Blow the smoke away."
Latios's eyes glowed blue, and a pulse of telekinetic force scattered the smoke in an instant.
What it revealed made Tobias go still.
Charizard wasn't on the ground anymore. It was on Latios's back, arms locked around its neck in a chokehold.
"Psychic! Shake it off!" Tobias ordered imdiately.
Latios glowed again, trying to wrench Charizard away with Confusion. Charizard's body was lifted slightly, but it held on with everything it had, refusing to let go.
"Charizard, keep holding on! Dragon Pulse—fly up!" Ash ordered.
Tobias blinked. Dragon Pulse to fly up? What kind of command was that?
The next second, Charizard opened its mouth and released a torrent of dragon energy. But instead of firing it as a projectile, the energy wrapped around both Charizard and Latios like a cocoon.
"Woo!!"
Latios scread. The dragon energy was burning it from all sides. Its concentration broke, and Psychic cut out.
Charizard seized the opening, flapped its wings, and rocketed upward with Latios still trapped in its grip. The swirling dragon energy ford into a spinning, dragon-shaped spiral around them—it looked almost exactly like Dragon Rush, but this wasn't a charge.
Tobias's eyes went wide. "No—!"
"Charizard! Seismic Toss! End it!" Ash roared.
"ROAR!"
Charizard's cry echoed across the entire stadium.
It flipped in the air, locked Latios against its chest, and dove straight toward the earth. The dragon-shaped energy coiled around them as they plumted, spinning faster and faster until they looked like a golden-scaled teor falling from the sky.
BOOM!!
The impact split the ground open. Stones and debris flew outward in every direction, and a shockwave rippled across the field. Black smoke rose from the crater, but the lingering wind blew it apart quickly.
When the dust settled, the result was clear.
Charizard was standing on top of Latios, one foot planted on its back. It raised its head and let out a long roar.
Latios was underneath it, eyes swirling, completely out.
"Latios is unable to battle! Charizard wins!" the referee announced. "The winner of this match is Ash!"
Gary let out a quiet breath.
"Sa old recipe."
Ash really did love ending things with Seismic Toss. But compared to the fla-wrapped version from the Silver Conference, this one was on a completely different level. Wrapping it in Dragon Pulse energy turned the move into sothing brutal—a dragon-type finisher that no Dragon Pokémon could afford to eat.
"Charizard has defeated Latios!" the comntator was practically screaming.
Up in the stands, Barry was just staring.
"Is this… what Ash actually looks like when he's serious?" He'd always figured he and Ash were close in ability. That illusion was completely shattered now.
Dawn shook her head slowly. "I had no idea his older Pokémon were this strong. I've been traveling with him all this ti and I never knew."
Brock just smiled.
"Ash was never weak," he said. "He's been a Trainer for over three years now. Every League Conference he's entered, he's reached the main tournant using Pokémon he caught fresh in that region. He's always had this kind of strength—he just never needed to show it until now."
Brock had watched Ash's journey from the very beginning. Reaching the main rounds of a League Conference wasn't easy. Doing it repeatedly with teams built from scratch in each new region was sothing else entirely.
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