After all, that Red Gyarados from the old anime had been on his wishlist for a long time.
While Sieg was quietly mapping things out in his head, Null stopped walking without warning and turned around, his expression serious.
"Shadow. I've already submitted a request to the organization to promote you to Senior Commander. Pass the combat evaluation, and you'll get the benefits that come with the rank, along with the authority to mobilize regular members."
Sieg's expression shifted. Senior Commander.
The people who held that rank were almost universally elite-level fighters, and a good portion of them were borderline pseudo-Elite Four strength. The step above it was Executive Candidate, which was exactly where Null himself stood.
Worth noting was that Sieg hadn't been the only one making progress lately. Null's main partner, Dragonite, had also broken through to pseudo-Elite Four level during this period. Apparently, it happened right inside the base, and the violent surge of energy that came with it had drawn a crowd of onlookers. Word had spread pretty quickly through the regular grunts after that.
That breakthrough was also why Null had managed to defeat every other Senior Commander stationed at the base, and why Archer had personally signed off on promoting him to Executive Candidate.
Sieg pushed down his excitement and asked, "What does the evaluation involve?"
Null paused briefly. "Survive fifteen minutes against my Dragonite."
The arena Sieg arrived at was the same one where he'd taken his Squad Commander evaluation. The memory of that Flygon unleashing Draco Meteor was still fresh in his mind. He found himself wondering what had happened to that Flygon afterward. It had clearly been used for some kind of experiment.
"You can use as many Pokémon as you want. No restrictions on battle rules. I'll be using one Dragonite."
Null reached up to his chest and unclipped a Poké Ball marked with the Team Rocket insignia. In a flash of red light, a round, deceptively soft-looking Dragonite appeared on the field.
A wave of pressure rolled off it immediately, washing over the surrounding space.
Dragon Aura.
Sieg's eyes narrowed. Not just because of the sheer force radiating off the Dragonite, but because of what Null had just said. No restrictions.
He thought it over for a moment, then sent out Crawdaunt, Sharpedo, Murkrow, and Umbreon.
These four were his strongest right now. The first three had all reached Elite level. Umbreon was sitting at level 39, just one step away from the threshold.
"Dragonite, Dragon Claw."
Null gave the order first, calm and flat, clearly looking to take the initiative early. His target was Murkrow, still airborne. The Dragonite was going straight for air control.
The moment Null's words landed, Dragonite's small, almost comically angel-like wings snapped open and beat with shocking force. It shot toward Murkrow at a speed that was genuinely hard to follow with the naked eye. Both claws glowed with a sharp emerald light, a massive Dragon Claw building between them.
"Murkrow, catch the wind and keep moving. Don't trade hits head-on."
"Umbreon, Helping Hand."
"Crawdaunt, Sharpedo, Ice Beam!"
The numbers were on Sieg's side, and he wasn't going to waste them. He went straight for the swarm.
With Murkrow boosting the team's speed through Tailwind, at least they didn't have to worry about getting steamrolled on that front.
Two beams of freezing cold light shot upward toward the Dragonite. Null's expression didn't change. If his Dragonite could get hit by something that obvious, it would deserve to retire.
The Dragonite tilted slightly in midair, and despite its round, almost chubby frame that should have made it look slow and clumsy, it slipped past both beams without any visible effort. Then it poured even more energy into the Dragon Claw and brought it down toward Murkrow.
"Umbreon, Wonder Room."
A pink, cube-shaped field of energy condensed in front of Umbreon and spread outward rapidly, blanketing the entire arena in a faint shimmer. In an instant, the defensive strengths inside the field were swapped around; Umbreon's powerful Defense transferred over to Murkrow.
Sieg's plan was straightforward. He was going to stack both of his core strategies onto Murkrow at once and bet everything on it.
"Crawdaunt, Swords Dance!"
"Sharpedo, hold the Speed Boost going!"
"Umbreon, use Shadow Ball to harass the Dragonite and buy us time!"
The commands came fast, and his team executed them without hesitation. They had run this setup enough times that it was second nature.
Umbreon launched pulses of dark Shadow Ball energy up at the Dragonite, disrupting its pursuit of Murkrow just enough to buy the others the time they needed.
Null didn't know exactly what Sieg was building toward, but he knew better than to just let the setup keep stacking.
"Dragonite, Twister."
Dragonite broke off its chase and swept its wings back hard, generating two massive spiraling columns of wind that tore downward toward Crawdaunt, who was still in the middle of its Swords Dance.
Sieg didn't flinch. "Umbreon, use Protect."
Umbreon leapt to the front of the field and threw up a vivid green barrier just in time.
"Dragonite, Dragon Claw."
Null's voice came again immediately. Dragonite shifted without losing any momentum, the enormous emerald Dragon Claw coming down directly onto the Protect barrier. The shield held for exactly one second before it shattered completely.
Umbreon took the full force of the hit and went flying backward twenty feet before slamming hard into the wall. When it hit the ground, its eyes had rolled into spirals. It was out cold.
One hit.
Sieg knew why. Umbreon had transferred its own Defense through Wonder Room, leaving itself exposed. On top of that, the level gap between a pseudo-Elite Four Pokémon and a high-level Pokémon was simply enormous.
He looked over at Umbreon and felt a genuine pang of something. The wound Dragon Claw had left was deep and jagged, Dragon-type energy still crackling at the edges of the gash.
It was one of the rare moments where Sieg's composure actually cracked, even slightly. He prided himself on staying cold in battle. Emotion made trainers sloppy, and sloppy trainers showed openings. He knew all of that.
But he also knew what Umbreon had always been for this team. The one who bought time. The one who absorbed the hit so everyone else could keep going.
"I won't let your effort go to waste," he said quietly.
"Murkrow, Snatch."
Murkrow, which had been circling high above and maintaining Tailwind, folded its wings and dove. It swept in low and tapped Crawdaunt and Sharpedo in quick succession, barely grazing on each.
The power that Crawdaunt had built up through Swords Dance was pulled away in an instant. The Speed Boost state running through Sharpedo's body faded out just as fast.
All of it flowed into Murkrow, fully absorbed, and made its own.
In a single moment, Murkrow had Tailwind at its back, Swords Dance fueling its strikes, and Speed Boost pushing its legs. Wonder Room had already covered the one thing it was missing, swapping in Umbreon's defensive strength to fill the last gap.
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Right now, Murkrow had no weak links.
It let out a sharp, excited cry and fixed its gaze on the Dragonite across the field, every bit of it ready and hungry for what came next.