"When exactly did that Greninja set up those clones?"
"Every time I look, the moment that Greninja clears its Poké Ball, it's just standing right there under the downpour."
Vio had tracked the movement down to the arena. Watching Greninja's afterimage violently shatter under Politoed's strike, he turned his head toward Drayden, his brow furrowed in deep thought.
"I failed to map the micro-movement myself," Drayden admitted, his expression serious. "But the absolute combat parameters of this Politoed are exceptionally high. For a Trainer to refine a standard, common species straight into the elite tier of the Champion rank..."
"N is indeed an extraordinary individual." Drayden openly praised the young king's caliber.
"Your Greninja's baseline reflex loops are remarkably fast," N noted, lifting his eyes to lock his gaze onto Feng Che.
Feng Che's expression remained thoroughly cold as a secondary, fluid silhouette of Greninja materialized on the absolute opposite end of the massive arena.
"Politoed, maintain full-field pressure! Use Fake Out again!"
Politoed's physical vessel immediately dissolved into the standing water, vanishing from visual tracking, while Greninja seamlessly extended two shimmering water blades from its webbed palms.
Politoed's dark, webbed palm aggressively slapped down toward Greninja's position, but Greninja cut a clean counter-vector with its fluid blades. The moment the individual parameters collided, Politoed's balance buckled under the kinetic friction. With a sharp splash, its form dissolved into thousands of stray water droplets that scattered into the air.
Right at that exact millisecond, dozens of duplicate Politoed phantoms erupted concurrently from the flooded floor.
"My Politoed possesses an exceptional affinity for mimicking specialized techniques. The precise Water Clone layout your Greninja just executed has already been perfectly mirrored and indexed into my partner's arsenal," N declared with a trace of pride. Every single partner on his active roster held a unique, highly specialized combat parameter.
"Greninja, clear the field with Water Shuriken."
Greninja smoothly snapped five to six liquid blades from its palms, the spinning projectiles instantly perforating the illusionary Politoed copies. The water proxies violently dissolved into harmless splashes of liquid, vanishing into the pool.
Further out, the true Politoed remained submerged beneath the water line, its pupils rapidly tracking and scanning Greninja's every single micro-movement to copy its baseline data.
Unclenching its webbed hands, hundreds of spinning Water Shurikens suddenly manifested around Politoed's coordinates. Within a fraction of a second, the entire upper airspace of the colossally massive arena was heavily blanketed by a whirring matrix of fluid shurikens.
With a sharp flick of its wrists, Politoed launched the massive barrage.
"This Politoed is indeed an exceptionally thorny asset, capable of seamlessly replicating and adapting Greninja's signature layouts on the fly," Feng Che calculated internally.
"Greninja, use Cut."
Greninja crossed its water blades, throwing a devastating, cross-shaped slash straight toward the incoming barrage. A brilliant blue arc of kinetic energy sliced across the field, cleanly bisecting the whirring shurikens dead-center.
Politoed: This Greninja's mechanical execution is staggering—but I can continuously replicate and siphon your techniques without limit.
Politoed: As long as I can extract and utilize your own parameters against you, your line stands zero statistical chance of overriding my vanguard.
Politoed's eyes locked onto Greninja's palms, only to find a hyper-compressed, violently spinning sphere of fluid mass suddenly condensing within its webbed grip.
Greninja: Hmph. Let us see how long your calculated arrogance sustains your composure. Let us see if your primitive replication matrix can even hope to parse this specialized layout.
Greninja hurled the compressed orb.
The spinning sphere violently detonated mid-transit, unleashing a catastrophic, high-velocity torrent of surging water that roared straight toward Politoed's lines like an unleashed flash flood.
Politoed: Quack?! What kind of technical formulation is this?! Why does a compressed sphere of water violently fracture to generate an unmanageable tidal wave?!
Politoed: What are the underlying physics governing this mass expansion?!
Politoed discovered to its sudden panic that its copying parameters were completely unable to index or mimic the structural mechanics of Greninja's specialized technique.
"What on earth... There are actually kinetic moves my Politoed's database fails to mirror?" N's composure fractured slightly, his brilliant intellect thoroughly stymied by the data anomaly.
"Politoed, counter with Surf!"
Driven by the non-stop downpour, the accumulation of water across the arena floor had already reached a depth of roughly two meters. Dozens of Politoed clones seamlessly synchronized their elemental output, churning the environment into a series of massive tidal waves that roared toward Greninja.
Greninja steeled its grip on its fluid blades, delivering a heavy, downward cleave right into the absolute center of the oncoming wall of water. The colossal wave was violently split into separate, harmless channels, and the surrounding Politoed proxies were instantly pulverized back into fine mist.
"Politoed, lock the coordinates with Whirlpool!" N commanded seamlessly.
A massive, churning vortex violently opened across the flooded floor, its spatial suction rapidly expanding to pull Greninja into its crushing center.
"Greninja, use Water Shuriken—Maximum Compression Mode."
Following Feng Che's precise directive, a pair of hyper-compressed, rotating spheres manifested within Greninja's grip. It slammed the orbs dead-center into the heart of the vortex, the localized detonations releasing two towering geysers of high-pressure water that completely neutralized and flattened the spatial suction of the Whirlpool.
Before N could re-align his layout, Feng Che's secondary command cut across the field.
"Greninja, flash-freeze the floor with Ice Beam!"
Greninja slammed its palms heavily against the water's surface, unleashing a tremendous wave of absolute-zero cryogenic energy. Within a single micro-second, the entire two-meter-deep reservoir covering the arena floor was flash-frozen into a desolately thick sheet of solid permafrost.
Politoed failed to execute a micro-evasion in time, its lower extremities instantly locked tight within the solid ice matrix.
"The execution velocity of your Greninja's Ice Beam is staggering."
"To think my Politoed would be completely locked down within the permafrost."
"However, this works out perfectly for our operational parameters. Politoed—awaken your true physical potential!"
N snapped his fingers with a sharp crack. A succession of deep, thunderous, echoing frog cries violently vibrated through the permafrost as a massive structural fracture tore across the ice sheet.
Politoed's muscle fibers violently expanded, its entire anatomical build swelling with hyper-dense, heavily muscled proportions as it broke free from the ice capsule like an absolute physical juggernaut.
Its large eyes snapped open, completely saturated with a volatile, unyielding fury. Stamping its webbed foot heavily against the permafrost, it sent a massive web of jagged fissures tearing across the arena floor. Moving at an astronomical velocity that outstripped standard species metrics, it closed the distance to throw a devastating punch straight toward Greninja's chassis.
Deprived of the window required to map a clean evasive vector under the sudden acceleration loop, Greninja was forced to raise its water blades to anchor the impact.
Subjected to an immensely crushing, raw physical weight, Greninja's blades shattered, and its vessel was violently launched high into the upper reaches of the cavern. Before it could stabilize its airborne balance, Politoed materialized directly behind its blind spot via an instantaneous burst of speed.
Locking its heavily muscled fists together, Politoed delivered a brutal, downward hammer-fist strike dead-center against Greninja's back. With a deafening, structural boom, Greninja's form shot downward like a kinetic missile, crashing heavily through the frozen floor below.
"This Politoed has completely mastered advanced martial arts application and Close Combat vectors... Truly phenomenal," Vio remarked, watching Greninja absorb the brutal physical press.
He had never once imagined that a common, baseline species could be refined into a high-tier brawler of this caliber under N's hand.
"Feng Che, do you find yourself experiencing a wave of profound shock, wondering how on earth a Politoed can seamlessly execute top-tier Close Combat mechanics?"
"The explanation is simple: my Politoed dedicates a minimum of three hours every single day strictly to the refinement of its physical martial arts loops," N shared, unmasking his specialized training curriculum.
"Furthermore, when entering its Frenzied State, its raw muscle output and kinetic parameters scale exponentially for a brief duration."
"I suggest your Greninja sit back and thoroughly absorb the absolute weight of my partner's raw strength!" N laughed triumphantly.
"My Greninja's parameters are nowhere near that fragile," Feng Che replied with absolute calm.
Politoed plummeted back down to the broken ice basin, unleashing a relentless, rapid-fire barrage of Close Combat strikes directly against the collapsed Greninja. The solid permafrost was violently pulverized into fine snow dust under the sheer ferocity of the fists, filling the ambient airspace with a dense screen of flying ice shards.
Yet, right at that exact millisecond, Greninja's pristine, completely unmarred silhouette stepped calmly out from a structural alcove on the absolute opposite end of the arena.
"When on earth did you execute a Substitute loop?! Your Greninja hasn't sustained a single shred of statistical degradation?!" N's face froze, his eyes widening in pure disbelief as he parsed the telemetry.
"My Greninja has not been touched by a single blow since the inception of this exchange," Feng Che explained with a cool composure. "From the very first micro-second of that physical rush, your Politoed has been passionately beating a mere decoy proxy."
"Hmph! Close the distance and break its core! Go, Politoed!"
Having successfully mapped the true target coordinates, Politoed wasted zero time, pivoting its heavily muscled frame to launch a direct, high-velocity punch straight toward Greninja.
Boom! Rumble!