"Is that Double Team?"
"But it doesn't look like it."
"Volcarona, use Flamethrower to disperse the white mist!"
Volcarona beat its wings, and four dragons of pure flame manifested around them. The fire dragons roared as they plunged into the dense white mist. However, with a succession of sharp swish sounds, the dragons violently collapsed into stray sparks.
"How bizarre."
As the white mist expanded further, Volcarona grew increasingly agitated. It unleashed a massive Fire Blast. A stellar orb of roaring fire surged into the thick fog, but the projectile was instantly extinguished, failing to emit even a single sound.
"I have never witnessed something so unnatural."
"Wait, look closely at the ground—has the flowing magma completely stopped?"
"You're right. The white mist is still expanding, and a heavy downpour is still cascading from the sky."
"Does anyone else feel like it's getting exceptionally cold around here?"
The onlookers whispered anxiously among themselves.
"Rain?"
Hearing the murmurs of the crowd, Alder raised his head, squinting as he glared at the non-stop downpour. He deduced that the absolute source of the white mist was the heavy storm clouds hovering overhead.
Pointing directly at the dense canopy, he barked to his partner, "Volcarona, use Sunny Day on those clouds!"
A blinding radiance instantly erupted from Volcarona's frame, the piercing light momentarily forcing back a portion of the thick fog. A brilliant orb of solar energy shot into the upper atmosphere, only to be swallowed whole by the heavy storm clouds.
"Curse it... Sunny Day actually failed to override the rain?! How is this possible?!" Alder froze in absolute shock.
"Hmph! Volcarona, use a maximum-output Fire Blast to tear those storm clouds apart!" Alder commanded, his eyes cold as ice.
A gargantuan sphere of fire condensed inside Volcarona's maw, countless sparks swirling at a manic velocity around its perimeter. It continuously compressed the volatile thermal energy before expelling a tremendous blast of fire. Once the compression reached its absolute physical limit, Volcarona launched the massive Fire Blast.
The colossal kanji-shaped inferno was swallowed directly by the clouds. A fraction of a second later, the dark canopy turned a brilliant, burning crimson as a deafening explosion rocked the sky. A massive mushroom cloud of smoke and fire tore right through the storm clouds, violently ripping them open. Streams of liquid fire cascaded downward from the upper atmosphere.
"Hurry, everyone! Deploy Hydro Pump to neutralize those falling meteors!" Drayden's face paled. He immediately directed the native Dragon-type Pokémon to launch a unified barrage of Hydro Pumps. It seemed Alder harbored zero reservations about flattening Opelucid City to the ground.
Though the clouds were heavily fractured by the blast, it fell far short of Alder's intended goal to completely clear the storm.
"Volcarona, maintain the offensive! Use Fire Blast again!"
The moment the words left Alder's mouth, thousands of razor-sharp ice shards erupted aggressively from the white mist, hurtling toward Volcarona like a hail of high-velocity bullets.
"Volcarona, use Flamethrower!"
Volcarona was forced to abort its charge for the Fire Blast. It whipped its wings, generating a towering pillar of fire that resembled a blazing dragon, swallowing the ice shards whole. Under the blistering heat of the dragon-like flame, the shards slowly melted into liquid water.
Right at that exact millisecond, Greninja's secondary assault arrived. Hundreds of spinning Water Shurikens, entirely remolded into solid ice, tore through the dense white mist.
There is definitely a trick hidden within this fog. Otherwise, why would Greninja remain securely hidden within the mist without showing its face? Alder thought, stroking his chin as he analyzed the situation.
"Volcarona, use Bug Buzz!"
Volcarona beat its wings rapidly, emitting a sharp, ear-piercing screech. With a loud crack, a massive structural fracture tore through the center of the icy shurikens, shattering the projectiles into fine dust.
"Volcarona, charge straight into the mist and maintain Bug Buzz!" Champion Alder growled through gritted teeth. He decided to have Volcarona force a direct encounter to deliver a definitive, lethal blow.
However, Alder had overlooked a critical environmental detail: the localized temperature had been continuously plummeting, and the ground was heavily encrusted with thick ice crystals.
The moment Volcarona plunged into the dense fog, a blood-curdling shriek of agony echoed across the arena, and the frantic flapping of its wings came to a sudden, absolute halt.
"Volcarona! What happened in there?!" Alder called out frantically, but the white mist remained dead silent.
"Look over there! The white mist is beginning to disperse!"
"I can finally see what was hidden inside the fog!"
"Heavens... Volcarona has been completely frozen into a solid block of ice!"
The League investigators murmured in sheer disbelief. The display made Champion Alder feel as though every shred of his dignity had been utterly dragged through the dirt.
He snapped his gaze toward the clearing fog, finding the battlefield heavily littered with massive ice spires. Volcarona's wings were completely impaled by the jagged permafrost, its entire physical vessel locked tight inside a colossal block of ice.
"Damn it! Impossible! How could my Volcarona lose to a filthy, wretched frog?!" Alder hissed, his face contorted with rage as wisps of pitch-black miasma began to bleed heavily out from his body.
Feng Che immediately sensed the volatile power of the fiend radiating from Alder's frame. He caught sight of a colossal, dark red phantom materializing right behind Alder's shadow.
"What on earth is that?! Why is a gargantuan entity rising behind Champion Alder?"
"It bears a striking resemblance to Groudon... Why is a silhouette like that hidden inside his shadow?"
"Something is seriously wrong with the Champion!"
The League investigators flanking Alder scrambled backward in absolute terror, distinctly sensing the sinister, corrupt black aura rolling off his body.
"This is the divine majesty I have borrowed from a god! Volcarona, awaken an even greater reservoir of power and obliterate this foul, ugly frog!"
A massive bolt of black lightning tore from the heavens, striking the frozen Volcarona squarely. A glowing Omega symbol ($\Omega$) burned vividly across its hide as the ice block ensnaring its frame violently shattered into a thousand fragments.
Its orange wings expanded to a terrifying scale as infinite streams of black miasma spilled from its body. Having completely lost its cognitive sanity, the Sun Pokémon roared wildly, expelling pillars of black fire that hammered ruthlessly against the environment.
Thousands of massive magma lances erupted from the earth as the previously cooled, dark volcanic rock began to churn and liquefy once more.
"Greninja, Primal Reversion mode!"
Greninja was instantly wreathed in a high-velocity torrent of swirling water currents, six brilliant pillars of light condensing into a grand matrix behind its back.
"That is the authority of Kyogre... How can a standard Pokémon house the divine parameters of Kyogre?!" the dark shadow behind Alder suddenly spoke, its voice rich with dark intrigue. "Fascinating. Truly fascinating," the Earth Fiend observed in a calculating register.
"Earth God, please lend me your divine majesty to execute these rebellious traitors!" Champion Alder bellowed, clutching the artifact pendant around his neck with white-knuckled intensity.
A massive flood of black miasma poured out from the pendant, continuously driving Volcarona's parameters to a terrifying height.
"Volcarona, use Flamethrower!"
A torrential downpour of black fire erupted from Volcarona's maw, the flames reshaping into a hundred massive dragons that lunged viciously toward Greninja. Greninja moved with blinding speed, executing high-velocity jumps across the churning magma field, a heavy shroud of water currents anchoring its webbed feet to cleanly shield it from the searing thermal damage.