David didn't spare a glance at the Sakura Alliance members watching from the sidelines. He simply walked toward the testing machine with Kirlia at his side.
"Kirlia — activate Dark Mode. Use Dark Moon, however you like."
"Kir~"
Kirlia turned to face her Trainer, gave a quiet nod, and closed her eyes.
The change was immediate. Dark-type energy flooded outward from her in every direction, dense and heavy, pulling toward her like a current reversing course. A deep black aura rose from her body, layering over her like a cloak woven from the absence of light. It did not flicker. It settled.
Then her eyes snapped open.
The irises burned crimson.
Dark Mode — active.
"What's happening to Kirlia?"
"Something's wrong — look at it."
The transformation spread unease through the crowd quickly. Whispers broke out across the field as people tried to make sense of what they were seeing. Kirlia paid none of them any attention.
She raised one hand, palm forward, reaching toward the testing machine. The Dark-type energy already gathered around her responded immediately, surging toward her outstretched palm as if obeying a command it had been waiting for. Dark Pulse condensed in her hand, dense and controlled, moving exactly where she directed it — patient, unhurried, like a coiled force waiting to be released.
Her other hand lifted slightly, angled toward the sky.
High above the field, a faint shape appeared — a pale wheel of light, rimmed in silver, hovering in the air like a ghostly celestial body.
A crescent mark shimmered briefly on Kirlia's forehead, silver-white, pulsing in quiet rhythm with the shape above her. It was faint, but unmistakable.
Moonblast.
The effect rippled through the crowd in waves. Not just the spectators who had come to watch — even the students competing in the selection, people who trained with Pokémon daily, went completely still. The Sakura Alliance members stood among them, equally frozen.
This is absurd. Moonblast doesn't do this. How is it generating an atmospheric phenomenon? This isn't normal — none of this is normal —
The colour had drained from the faces of the Sakura exchange group.
They had already accepted that Salamence was extraordinary. They had consoled themselves with the assumption that it must be David's starter Pokémon — the one he had invested the most time and resources into. It was reasonable logic. For a new Trainer, the first Pokémon they raised almost always ended up as their strongest, simply because of how long they'd had together.
They had told themselves that the other Pokémon on David's team were probably more ordinary. That Salamence was the exception.
Then what is this Kirlia?
Does he not have a single normal Pokémon?
Kuki Genichi's expression had gone stone-cold. Jingūji Yoira stared at the field, wide-eyed, unable to look away. Amatsuki Rosa watched in silence, her gaze distant and unreadable, her thoughts somewhere else entirely.
And then, as if the sight of Kirlia alone wasn't enough, Miles said something to Luke in a low voice — the kind of aside not meant to carry — and it carried perfectly.
"It's been a while since I saw Kirlia. She's gotten so strong." He let out a slow breath. "Makes me wonder what level Zorua must be at now. You know — David's actual first Pokémon. The only one of its regional form in the entire world."
The Sakura Alliance members heard every word.
Their pupils contracted in unison.
His first Pokémon is the Zorua? Neither of these two is his starter?
Amatsuki Rosa and Jingūji Yoira exchanged a glance and leaned closer.
"A regionally unique Zorua — that's his first Pokémon?"
"I remember reading something about a Rookie Cup. His profile mentioned a Rookie Cup win somewhere in Imperial City, didn't it?"
They weren't unfamiliar with the Zorua. In truth, they had actively sought out information about it the moment news of a newly discovered Zorua regional form had broken. As Trainers, how could they not? A previously unknown variant of any Pokémon was the kind of thing that demanded attention.
They had watched footage of the Rookie Cup. They had seen David and Zorua compete.
But at the time, the Zorua itself had been the focal point of everyone's attention — the novel, the new, the unprecedented. David, the Trainer holding the Poké Ball, had barely registered. And then, when they finally had cause to focus on David directly, Salamence had been so overwhelming that it had crowded everything else out. They had latched onto it as the obvious explanation and stopped looking further.
It hadn't even occurred to them to reconsider.
The deeper issue was simply that David's reputation hadn't yet grown large enough to precede him. Even within the Cloudspire Alliance, more people could identify Zorua on sight than could name its Trainer. His influence, at this point, was concentrated in Imperial City and spread mainly among Trainer families with Superior-level connections. A Rookie Cup win was something — but Rookie Cup Champions were not rare, and Champions at that level rarely attracted much attention beyond their immediate circle. It was only because of the particular circumstances surrounding David's year that the competition had been significantly more difficult than usual. That context wasn't visible from the outside.
All of that would change. After the High School League, and certainly after his second-class Cloudspire medal was formally awarded later in the year, his name would carry differently. But that was later.
For now, the shock of what Miles had just said was still sinking in.
Out on the field, Kirlia had not moved. She stood with her arms raised, one hand gathering Dark Pulse, the other holding the weight of the sky — completely still, completely focused.
Two dense, opposing energies now stretched across the entire testing ground, reaching outward from where she stood like twin atmospheres expanding against each other. On one side, the field had taken on the quality of a moonlit night — cool, pale, unnaturally calm. On the other, the air had gone dark and turbulent, rolling with slow, surging tides of shadow.
Two forces that should have cancelled each other on contact.
Under Kirlia's precise control, they didn't.
She drew them together slowly, deliberately, weaving moon-white into pitch-black, letting neither overwhelm the other. The boundary where they met shimmered and churned, and out of that boundary, something new took shape — a moon wheel that was neither light nor dark, but both at once, its edges unstable, its interior alive with coiled energy.
Dark Moon.
The moment the form was complete, Kirlia released it.
The moon wheel shot forward and struck the face of the testing machine. Everyone on the field leaned forward, watching — because neither the Dark Pulse nor the Moonblast they had seen moments ago was anything like what previous contestants had used, and now those two forces had been combined. What would that produce?
The answer arrived without ceremony.
Gallade's Psycho Cut had left a hairline mark on the outer casing — a faint trace that the self-repairing metal had closed within seconds. Metagross's Meteor Mash had driven the machine several centimetres into the ground through sheer force without leaving a visible scratch on the surface itself.
The moon wheel cut through the casing like it wasn't there.
Half an inch deep. Clean. Unambiguous.
And then Dark Moon detonated.
The fusion of Fairy-type and Dark-type — two fundamentally opposed energies forced into contact — released as an explosion the moment the form collapsed. The shockwave erupted outward in a pulse, kicking up a dense cloud of dust and debris that rolled across the field and engulfed the nearest spectators.
"Cough — cough, cough —"
People covered their faces and turned away. The dust hung in the air for several long seconds before the wind began to thin it.
When the field finally cleared, everyone looked.
The testing machine was still standing. But the front panel had been carved open — a gash nearly a metre across, half an inch into the casing, ragged at the edges where the explosion had torn outward. The surface around the wound was pockmarked and cratered from the shockwave, the self-repairing metal already working at the edges of the damage but clearly overwhelmed by the scale of it.
A chime sounded from somewhere inside the machine. Then the speaker crackled.
"Ding — Move detected: Unknown. Current move not found in database. Measured power: 12,896. Result: Passed."