From Oak's perspective, both of these two were monsters among monsters.
One had been a Trainer for half a year and could already go toe-to-toe with a Champion. Even without leaning on his unique abilities, he'd raised one of his Pokémon to Elite Four Level. The other was much the same. Gary didn't have Ash's frightening knack for fighting above his weight, but holding an Elite Four level Pokémon after only half a year of journeying was already an outrageous achievement.
Since when had Elite Four level Pokémon been this easy to raise? In Oak's era, even a genius Trainer would typically be around twenty-five before they trained their first Elite Four level Pokémon.
Even he, called the most talented person in the history of the Kanto League, had only raised his first Elite Four level Pokémon at around twenty-one. That era had been different. There was no way to obtain or pre-train Pokémon ahead of time, so it had taken him six solid years to assemble nearly a full team of Elite Four level Pokémon.
The talent he'd shown then had been unprecedented, and the League had once thought it would never be repeated. The facts proved otherwise. The times kept progressing, and so did the talent that the times produced. This was the era of the young.
Cynthia, Lance, Leon, the new-generation Champions had long since broken his old records, and now still-brighter new stars were rising. These two young men had been raised under his own eye, one the son of his student, the other his grandson. With these two monsters in play, Oak believed it was only a matter of time before Pallet Town, or even all of Kanto, was restored.
On the field, the first exchange ended with Charizard holding a slim edge. Blastoise's growth this past month had been startling, but it still didn't measure up to the current Charizard.
Pokémon battles weren't only a contest of raw strength, though. External factors mattered too.
"Blastoise, Rain Dance!"
"Charizard, Thunder Punch!"
Gary wanted to lean on the weather to lift Blastoise's strength. Under rain, Water-type moves were boosted and Fire-type moves were weakened, a double-edged buff in Blastoise's favor.
Ash didn't bother to contest it. He ordered Charizard straight into Thunder Punch. If Gary wanted the rain, let him have it. After Mega Evolution Charizard wasn't only a Fire-type anyway. If Thunder Punch hit Blastoise hard enough to break the Rain Dance, all the better. Either way it wasn't a bad trade.
"Roar!"
Charizard loosed an angry cry, the toothed wings on its back beating once, and shot forward like a streak of black lightning, closing on Blastoise in a heartbeat.
Blastoise had its eyes closed, communing with the power of nature. The clear sky began to fill with black clouds sweeping in from the horizon at a speed easy to see with the naked eye.
Charizard swung Dragon Claw, golden lightning crackling around its talons, and slammed it down into Blastoise's shell.
Boom.
The lightning detonated on contact. Hairline cracks spread across Blastoise's tough shell, and the pain ripped a roar out of it, but it didn't break off the channel for a second.
Under Blastoise's effort, a strong wind kicked up across the field, dragging gravel and stray grass from the edge of the arena into the air. The light dimmed. The next second bean-sized raindrops poured down, drumming a wet rhythm across the ground.
The Rain Dance was up.
Thunder Punch had done real damage, cracking Blastoise's shell, and it still hadn't stopped Rain Dance from going off. That kind of toughness made both Ash and Charizard look at the turtle sideways.
Thunder Punch wasn't just a type advantage move either. Once Charizard X had evolved, its physical attack had risen sharply. Where the regular form leaned heavily on special attack, Charizard X was a dual hitter, with both special attack and attack genuinely punishing.
Stack the Tough Claws ability on top, and its attack power could rival some Elite Four Peak level Pokémon. Even with all of that, Thunder Punch hadn't knocked Blastoise out, hadn't even interrupted Rain Dance. The damage resistance was no joke.
The instant the rain touched Blastoise's shell, the turtle launched its counterattack out of the curtain. Pale-blue water surged around its body, and the waves spread fast under the rain, gathering the falling drops into a massive tidal wave that erupted forward without resistance.
"Blastoise, Surf!" Gary called.
Blastoise launched the move and Gary called for it almost in the same instant. The synergy between them wasn't a step behind the one between Ash and Pikachu. To act on what the Trainer wanted before the command was even spoken was the kind of bond that nearly reached one mind, one body.
The tidal wave bore down through the rain. Its crest stood several meters high, sweeping up gravel and mud, the dull, rolling roar of a moving wall of water slamming toward Charizard. At that distance and with that timing, Charizard had no chance to slip it. He could only meet it head-on.
"Charizard, Dragon Claw!" Pressed for time, Ash could only answer with Dragon Claw. Both he and his Pokémon were used to attacking without defending. In a moment like this, Protect would have been the better call, but what suited Ash and Charizard wasn't the best move, it was the one most natural to them.
Clang.
The emerald Dragon Claw smashed into the crest of the wave. The heavy Dragon-type energy crashed into the pale-blue water and was torn apart by the surging current in an instant. Mixed into the spray were fragments of the shattered Dragon Claw, and Charizard was hurled back.
The hastily condensed Dragon Claw couldn't hold up against the immense Surf riding the rain. A brutal force traveled through Charizard's talons and into the rest of him. The push of his wings was crushed in an instant, and his body was flung back through the air like a kite with its string cut.
He tried to right himself in mid-air to land cleanly, but the rain-boosted Surf was simply too much. He was washed back the entire way, finally crashing into the barrier and sliding down it once the ripples faded.
"That's some defense! Taking a Thunder Punch straight on and still pulling off Rain Dance into Surf, what kind of training did you put Blastoise through?" Ash, usually the one drawing the awed looks, was the one doing the marveling this time.
Blastoise's strangeness was beyond Ash's expectations completely. No one knew Charizard's attack power better than him. By all rights, Thunder Punch stacked with Tough Claws should have stopped Blastoise from finishing Rain Dance, or at minimum made it impossible for Blastoise to follow up with another move.
Yet every action Blastoise had taken had outpaced what Ash thought possible. If Charizard hadn't been part Dragon-type, that Surf might have done real damage.
"What Blastoise and I went through this past month is unbelievable even to us. Its level might still be behind your Charizard, but in pure defense, even High Elite Four Level defensive Pokémon can't compare with my Blastoise." Gary said it with a flicker of pride.
His Blastoise wasn't what it had been before.
Ash activated Eye of Insight again, looked Blastoise's stats over carefully, and found that its defense had actually climbed to S-rank. Not only defense. Its HP and special attack had also reached S-rank.
If he remembered right, Gary's Blastoise had decent talent before, but it had been nowhere near triple S-rank. Plenty of A-rank stats, sure, and A-rank was still a world apart from S-rank. Yet now Blastoise had three S-rank talents, and Gary had successfully trained every one of them to the peak of its current stats. Blastoise's progress wasn't just in level. Its stats were on a completely different tier than before. What in the world had happened in a single month?
"Our turn to counterattack. Blastoise, Hydro Pump!" The exchange between the two didn't run long. With Charizard still on the ground, Gary pressed the attack.
And this time he opened up with a heavy Water-type finisher.
"Blastoise!"
The angry roar rang out, and a layer of thick, almost solid water wrapped around its body. Deep blue currents flowed across its surface, surging as if alive.
Hydro Pump was one of the most powerful physical Water-type moves. Its raw power could match Flare Blitz, and it also rode the Mega Launcher boost. On top of that, it was raining, and rain lifted Water-type moves by fifty percent. Even for a Blastoise that wasn't particularly built for physical attacks, this Hydro Pump carried devastating force.
As the Hydro Pump took its final shape, Blastoise rocketed forward like a cannonball. The rain in the sky pulled in toward it, layering more weight onto the water already coiled around its frame. The current grew fiercer by the moment. Charizard felt it too. A force that could genuinely threaten him was closing in fast. If he ate this move clean, even with Dragon-type damage reduction, he might not hold.
"Charizard, Flare Blitz." Ash's voice cut in. Charizard didn't hesitate. Searing flame erupted across his body.
Funny enough, Charizard knew Protect.
Both Ash and Charizard knew that throwing up Protect was the best option here. As long as they blocked Blastoise's peak strike, Blastoise's momentum and energy would drop off a cliff. Seizing that exact opening to flip the match was the cleanest scenario they could have asked for. For the two of them, reaching that ideal play wasn't difficult either. They chose to clash head-on anyway.
Defending was the optimal choice in the moment, but it wasn't their choice, the same way they'd chosen Dragon Claw to meet Surf earlier. If they defended, they wouldn't be Ash and Charizard.
Scalding flame burned hard across Charizard's body. Azure fire wrapped him completely, and any rain within three meters of him vanished into steam the instant it crossed the line. Even in the downpour Charizard's flame didn't dim. Rain did weaken Fire-type moves, true, but it depended on who set the rain and what kind of flame was facing it.
If the weather had been called by a Legendary Pokémon like Lugia, even Charizard wringing every drop of his current strength wouldn't have been able to fight the suppression. The flame would lose half its power regardless.
If the flame had been an ordinary Fire-type's move, then against Gary's Blastoise and Rain Dance more than half its power would have been carved off. Charizard's flame wasn't ordinary, though, and Blastoise hadn't reached Legendary tier. This level of rain wasn't enough to suppress him.
The instant the flame finished forming, Charizard shot forward like an arrow off a bowstring. Two azure figures closed on each other in mid-air, and slammed together.
A deafening blast tore across the field. Fire and water crashed into each other, throwing up huge clouds of steam, only for the shockwave of the impact to disperse the steam the moment it formed. Visible waves of force rippled out from the center of the field. Gravel was hurled meters into the air, and the curtain of rain tore open into a ring-shaped clear patch before the next sheet of rain rolled in to fill it.
The azure flame and the deep blue water tore at each other at the point of contact. The shriek of steam evaporating cut sharp and high, and the two sides locked into an eerie stalemate.
The stalemate didn't last. Under the double boost of Mega Launcher and the rain, Hydro Pump only grew more violent. The blue flame around Charizard was pushed back inch by inch, swallowed layer by layer, until only the last shell of fire stood between him and the water. Once that last barrier broke, this exchange would end with Charizard's defeat.
"Don't fall here, Charizard! Give it everything!"
Ash's shout rolled across the field. Charizard gritted his teeth and squeezed the fire inside him for everything it had.
Everything. Right now, without Ash's help, he was already giving everything.
Don't be fooled by the azure of the flames. He was already drawing on the power of Sacred Fire. This was Flare Blitz at his absolute limit. Without it, there would have been no way to put up this kind of force under rain in the first place.
"Face the reality, Ash. This match belongs to me. Take him down, Blastoise!" Gary's voice rose, and the surge of his certainty seemed to push more power into Blastoise. It looked like the straw that would finally break Charizard.