"Salamence — Dragon Pulse!"
David had not taken his eyes off the Gallade across the field. Amatsuki Mei was not someone he could afford to treat casually, not in the state Salamence was currently in.
Among everyone present, David was the only one who could be fully confident in a win. Luke had closed the gap significantly since Metang's evolution into Metagross — he would give most opponents real trouble. But Willow and Emma were not quite at that level yet.
Well — Emma was a special case. It depended entirely on Togetic and whether fortune decided to favor her at a given moment. A lucky run from Togetic, with Serene Grace doing what it could do, was the kind of variable that gave even experienced trainers pause. Even David would not have dismissed it outright.
The class representative was capable, but he had started behind the curve and was still catching up. In time, perhaps. Not yet.
Amatsuki Mei, as the ace of the Sakura exchange team, was demonstrably in the upper tier of the Sakura Alliance's younger generation. Whether or not she sat among the very strongest few, she was not far from that group. David had not felt this kind of interest in a while — which was, in itself, a reasonable measure of where she stood.
The Dragon Pulse left Salamence's mouth and surged forward — a dense, churning orb of deep purple energy that gathered itself into a shape like a roaring dragon as it traveled, building pressure as it closed the distance between them.
Across the field, Gallade stood still.
He closed his eyes. His breathing slowed and steadied, calm and deliberate, as if the incoming attack was simply background noise.
"Sacred Sword."
Two words. That was all Amatsuki Mei said.
The moment the command reached him, Gallade's eyes opened. Everything he had been holding quietly in check came forward at once — a focused, sharp intent that radiated from him without any wasted motion. Both arm blades ignited in brilliant white light. He brought them down in a single, clean arc.
The blades moved faster than the sound of the cut.
The Dragon Pulse — still shaped like a raging dragon mid-charge — met the Sacred Sword and split cleanly in two. The purple energy scattered outward in fragments, dissolving silently into the air and leaving behind only a brief scatter of glimmering light where it had been.
For a moment, the arena was very quiet.
Then the crowd reacted all at once.
It was the first time. Through every one of the battles that morning, not a single opponent had managed to neutralize one of Salamence's attacks directly. Every Dragon Pulse, every Flamethrower, every Dragon Rush had landed or forced a defensive response. This was the first time someone had met an attack head-on and simply taken it apart.
The Sakura delegation's supporters below, who had been watching loss after loss pile up since morning, erupted. The cheering was immediate and loud, the kind that comes from a crowd that has been waiting a long time for something to cheer about.
The Cloudspire side was not about to be outdone on home ground. Led by Luke, Willow, and Emma, the students from First Middle School raised their voices in return, calling out for David.
The atmosphere in the arena, which had been quietly deflating with each successive defeat, sharpened back into something genuinely competitive.
Good. David allowed himself a slight smile. He was not annoyed that the Dragon Pulse had been cut down. If anything, this was exactly what he had hoped for.
"Full power Flamethrower — dive and cover!"
Salamence needed no further instruction on how to use it. The Flamethrower was the move it had carried the longest — sharpened since its days as a young Bagon, refined through each stage of evolution, and now carrying a trace of the Fire God's power within it. It was not Salamence's type, but it had been used so often and so well that the distinction barely mattered in practice.
Salamence opened its maw, and the flames that came out were not a clean directed beam. They poured out — viscous and wide, rolling forward like something molten, covering ground the way a true Fire-type move would. With Salamence's size advantage giving it range, one Flamethrower functioned less like a single strike and more like a sweeping blanket of fire.
So you can cut through a Dragon Pulse. Let's see what you do with this.
"Swords Dance — then Aqua Cutter!"
Still minimal words. Amatsuki Mei's commands were concise by design.
Azure-blue water flowed across Gallade's arm blades, coating them cleanly. He began to move — not retreating, but spinning, fluid and controlled, his body turning as Swords Dance brought his speed and power up another level. As he spun, the water on his blades whipped outward and spread, building a surrounding curtain of rapidly cycling water that caught the first wave of Salamence's fire and held it back.
The water and flame fought briefly at the edge of the curtain — and the curtain held.
For that first wave, at least.
Gallade was not under the illusion that this would last. Salamence's Flamethrower, once sustained, did not simply stop — it could maintain itself for long enough to reduce the entire battlefield to scorched rubble if given time. The water curtain had bought him a window. That was all he needed.
The moment Salamence drew breath between surges, Gallade was already gone.
Teleport.
He reappeared directly in front of Salamence — close range, inside the reach of those massive wings, where the Flamethrower was useless.
"Psycho Cut!"
The blade formed from pure psychic energy, sharpened further by the Swords Dance boost and amplified by STAB, materialized in a flash of pale light. It came down hard and fast toward Salamence.
Salamence reacted.
Air Cutter.
Not the ranged version — a close-quarters adaptation, sharp winds compressed and riding directly along Salamence's wings. The enormous wings became blades, and it met the Psycho Cut head-on.
The two strikes connected with a sound like steel on steel — a sharp, clean clash that rang across the arena.
"RAAAUGH!!!"
Salamence snarled, the sound deep and raw. The exchange had not gone in its favor. The Psycho Cut, stacked with Swords Dance and full STAB behind it, had pushed through the Air Cutter. The psychic energy tore through the compressed wind shield and caught one of Salamence's wings. Scales cracked. A visible injury.
Salamence threw its head back and roared again — not in retreat, but in fury.
The wound had done nothing to dampen the aggression behind its eyes. If anything, it had added to it.