Before they set out on their journeys, Gary and Ash had been evenly matched, and you could even argue Gary had the edge. Beyond raw strength, Ash had been behind Gary in just about every category.
The moment they hit the road, that reversed entirely. It was as if Ash had been struck by a sudden enlightenment, sweeping forward without pause and leaving Gary in the dust within months. Since starting his journey, Gary hadn't beaten Ash once, a scenario that would have been impossible in the old days.
What is a rival? Two sides on even footing, trading wins and losses back and forth. That's a rival. As things stood, Gary could only really be called a childhood friend of Ash's. Calling him a rival was a stretch.
But after that fortunate turn this past month, he'd finally caught up. And in this moment, he was about to score his first win against Ash since their journeys began.
As the water around Blastoise surged again, it became the straw that finally broke Charizard. The current swallowed the azure flames whole, and Charizard's body was on the verge of being completely overrun.
In that exact moment, a black light flashed across Charizard. The light didn't fade in a blink. It clung to him for a long beat. And once it appeared, the water that had been unstoppable a second ago was suddenly held back.
Before Blastoise and Gary could react, the Charizard who'd been at the end of his rope was standing again, scalding black flame erupting from his body.
"Black flames?"
"Black flames!"
Grandfather and grandson shouted at the same instant. The fire burning on Charizard was nothing anyone in Pallet Town had ever seen before.
Generally, a flame's color is red. Push the temperature high enough, and the color shifts to blue. Pokémon with special flames like Ho-Oh release multicolored fire. Black flame, though, had never been seen on any Pokémon, never appeared in the world at all. Or at least, not in anything Professor Oak had ever heard of.
A Ghost-type Will-O-Wisp leaned toward black, but that flame was obviously different from ordinary fire. It wasn't a color shift from temperature, it was a flame carrying special abilities. The same went for Ho-Oh's Sacred Fire. Sacred Fire wasn't colorful because the heat was extreme. It was colorful because the Sacred Fire itself was that way by nature.
The black flames on Charizard were a different story. These were flames formed by extreme heat. Even with Mewtwo's barrier in the way, Oak could feel how monstrous they were.
You only had to look at Blastoise to understand. Hydro Pump had been moments away from crushing Charizard, but the second the black fire ignited, the water pressing in on him began evaporating at speed. The light rain falling from the sky turned to vapor before it could even reach the ground.
Charizard had unlocked a new power. There had been signs of it before, back when he was facing Lorelei, although at the time neither Charizard nor Ash had registered the brief black flicker. Because Ash and Charizard had been in perfect sync during that match, Ash had felt that when Charizard met Cloyster with Flare Blitz, the mass of flame around him had shifted in some way at the final moment. That shift had been what let Charizard topple Cloyster.
After that, though, Charizard had never managed to call up that power again. Ash had guessed it could only be triggered when Charizard was pushed to the absolute brink, and no Pokémon since had been able to push him that far.
In this match, the upgraded Blastoise and Gary had finally driven Charizard to the edge, and from that desperation, the hidden power had finally come out.
Once the flame erupted, Ash also realized what the power was at its core. It was the result of the Sacred Fire and Charizard's own flame fully merging. Charizard's previous biggest trump card had been converting his own fire into Sacred Fire to power his moves.
The blue Flare Blitz from a moment ago had already been drawing on Sacred Fire. The outer color simply hadn't changed. That alone meant Charizard had gradually been making the Sacred Fire his own, not just borrowing from Ho-Oh.
The black flame now burning on him was the product of full fusion, of folding Sacred Fire entirely into his own fire. Its power surpassed even Sacred Fire. It was Charizard's exclusive flame.
"Black flames. Then let's call them Amaterasu Flames. Go, Charizard! The win is ours! We keep winning, all the way to the top of the world!" Ash clenched both fists and shouted.
A Trainer's voice could become a Pokémon's strength. It had worked for Gary a moment ago. It worked for Ash now. Under his shout, Charizard's flame exploded outward. The black inferno swept across the battlefield. The dark clouds overhead were scattered by the heat, the rain stopped, and the sky cleared back to open sun.
Without the rain boost the water swirling around Blastoise grew weaker. On Charizard's side, with the rain's interference gone, the black inferno on the field and on his body burned hotter than ever. The momentum had shifted, and Blastoise couldn't hold up against the Flare Blitz any longer. His entire body was swallowed by the flames.
The deafening blast carried from the field up into the clouds. Oak knew the aftermath of the explosion wouldn't spread past the barrier, but he still raised a hand on instinct to shield himself, then realized what he was doing and lowered it after a few seconds.
The dust on the field slowly cleared. Charizard, blackened head to claw, stood on the pitted, scorched ground, breathing hard. The flame-shaped marks on the sides of his mouth, like dragon fangs, had nearly faded to nothing. That last strike had used up almost everything he had.
Flare Blitz came with recoil damage, and stacked on top of what Hydro Pump had done to him, his condition was rough. Standing was a struggle. But Blastoise was in worse shape.
Blastoise was sprawled on the ground, reverted out of Mega Evolution back to his normal form. There wasn't an inch of him that wasn't charred. He looked like a lump of burnt coal. By the look of him, he hadn't merely lost the ability to battle. He'd almost lost his life on top of it.
"Blastoise is unable to battle. Charizard wins." Mewtwo glanced at Blastoise and raised an arm, calling the match.
As its voice echoed through everyone's minds, the barrier on the field came down. Mewtwo shrugged and used its Psychic to stabilize Blastoise's condition.
In his current state, Blastoise might not have survived the trip to a Pokémon Center. There was no Pokémon Center in Pallet Town. The most they could manage was basic treatment at Professor Oak's Laboratory, and the injuries Blastoise had taken weren't something basic treatment could repair.
Without Mewtwo on hand, Blastoise really would have been in serious danger.
"Blastoise, are you okay?!" Gary rushed to his Pokémon's side, only to find Blastoise's condition was better than he'd feared. The external injuries looked severe, but Blastoise had its eyes open and was even managing to sit up on its own.
"Blastoise…" The Shellfish Pokémon stared at its own flippered hands in a daze. A moment ago, it had been knocking on death's door, yet somehow its body had recovered enough to sit upright. By every instinct it had, an injury like that should have meant three or four days flat on its back. Who had done this?
"I gave it some basic treatment, but that's the best I can manage. Let Ash handle the rest with his Viridian Power," Mewtwo said, walking over to explain why Blastoise was still in one piece.
Hearing it had been Mewtwo, Gary's expression eased. No wonder Blastoise looked halfway decent. Still in no shape to keep battling, but a long way from blacking out.
"It seems Ash won this round. But Gary..." Professor Oak let out a relieved breath now that Blastoise was stable, then clasped his hands behind his back and asked, with studied casualness, "where exactly did you disappear to this past month? You've come back a different Trainer."
Gary was his grandson, and the level he'd shown at the Indigo Plateau Conference was a matter of public record. To have made this much progress in a single month was, frankly, extraordinary. A fifteen-year-old commanding Elite Four–caliber Pokémon was a once-in-a-century phenomenon, and this year, Pallet Town had somehow produced two of them.
Ash's growth, outrageous as it was, could at least be traced step by step. Gary's curve, on the other hand, didn't add up. One month of progress equaling two or three months of normal training meant he'd clearly stumbled onto something.
"Let's head back to the lab first. Ash, I'm leaving Blastoise to you," Gary said. He had no intention of hiding anything from his grandfather, but Blastoise still needed treatment, and the conversation could happen just as well over a recovery machine.
Between Ash's Viridian Power and the equipment at Professor Oak's Laboratory, Blastoise would do at least as well as it would at a Pokémon Center. Ash had already shown Gary how miraculous Viridian Power was, a legendary ability, top-tier in every sense.
Back at the lab, Ash worked in tandem with the recovery machines to treat Blastoise's injuries while Gary began to tell his story.
"You're not going to believe this, but, I inherited the power of another version of myself. From a parallel world."
The words hit like a thunderclap. Ash's hands jerked, and he nearly cut off his Viridian Power mid-flow. He clamped down, but his palms wouldn't stop trembling, and his pupils had gone pinpoint.
Professor Oak's face openly registered disbelief. Parallel worlds were the stuff of theory, at every fork in the road, the version of you that took the other path was a hypothesis, not a person you could meet. No one had ever produced evidence that such worlds were real.
Even someone as well-read as Professor Oak instinctively recoiled at the claim. But the Gary in front of him wasn't the old Gary, the arrogant, all-talk-and-no-substance kid who used to throw his weight around. This Gary didn't lie, and certainly not about something like this.
As for Ash, well. Ash was in no position to call anyone crazy.
Nobody in this room understands parallel worlds better than I do.
The Chat Group living in his head, the one that linked his mind to every parallel version of himself, was the open secret behind ninety percent of everything he'd achieved. No, scratch that. Ninety-five percent. Ninety was being too generous to himself. The remaining five percent he'd grant his own potential, since not even a god-tier cheat like the Chat Group could turn a complete dud into a champion. Five percent was fair.
Ash had buried that secret deeper than anything else in his life. Not even Pikachu knew. And here was Gary, just blurting it out across the lab bench.
Why does he get to be the straightforward one? When did I become the schemer in this friendship?
Should he confess too?
"That's right. The power of a parallel world." Gary pressed on, oblivious. "After I finished on Dragon Island, I was on my way to New Bark Town, I'd planned to train in Johto and enter the Silver Conference. But somewhere on the road, I got pulled into something like a Dark Void. And inside it, I received a set of memories. His memories. Another me, from another world."
"In that world, I'm not called Gary. I'm called, Blue. And it only took him two years to reach Champion level. He's the youngest Champion the world has ever seen."