The ground roared.
Jagged boulders, each as tall as a person, ripped up from beneath the arena floor like they'd been summoned from the depths of hell. With a howling rush of air, they slammed down around Gyarados, sealing off its key paths of movement.
In an instant, a crude but deadly ring of stone caged the golden leviathan in.
"Rraaagh!" Gyarados snarled, startled by the tremors and flying debris. Its huge body twisted violently, trying to smash apart the rocks blocking its path.
"Now! Rock Slide!" Brock's command followed like a hammer blow—no hesitation, no gap.
Onix's massive head reared back. Above it, a grindstone-sized slab of rock formed in midair, edges sharp as blades. With a low, heavy whistle, it dropped like a meteor, aimed straight at the golden Gyarados whose movement had just been stalled by the stone prison.
"Water Gun, sideways!" Ash's pupils shrank. He barked the order out.
Gyarados heaved its body to the side, jaws opening again.
This time the water cannon didn't target Onix—
It targeted the base of one of the rocks blocking its escape.
Reality was very different from the games.
In the games, an attack move could only "attack."
Here, a move could attack, defend, dodge, reposition—
You could do a lot more with the same name on the move list.
"Shhh—!!"
High-pressure water hammered into the stone at point-blank range, and Gyarados's huge body slammed into it at the same time.
"Crack!"
The rock split apart.
"BOOM!"
The falling boulder brushed Gyarados's arched spine and crashed into the spot where it had been just a second earlier. Stone shards fanned out like shrapnel, screeching against golden scales and carving a few white lines across the armor-like plates.
"RRAAAH!"
Pain, and the relentless barrage of stone, pushed Gyarados closer to the edge.
The old wound on its neck that hadn't fully healed throbbed angrily.
"Keep going! Water Gun! Don't stop—soak the whole field!" Ash shouted, a sheen of sweat beading on his forehead.
Onix's attacks were heavy, brutal. Each dodge was a close call.
In this cramped stone cage, Gyarados's massive body felt clumsy and restricted.
"SSSSHHHAAAA—!!"
Onix was like a tireless rock tank, grinding through the battlefield. In the not-so-open prison of stone, every turn of its body whipped up a howling wave of pressure.
Its stone tail, as thick as a tree trunk, swung like a battering ram, each blow carrying enough force to shatter a cliff face. Strike after strike crashed toward the Gyarados that kept trying to flood the field instead of trading blows.
"THUD! BOOM!"
Stone smashed into gold again and again, the impacts echoing through the Core like drumbeats. The sound rattled eardrums, chest cavities—everything.
Water sprayed wildly with every hit, mixing with splintering rock and Gyarados's raw, pained roars.
The floor was getting wet—
like a muddy field after a heavy rain.
But Gyarados's injuries were piling up just as fast.
Golden scales were scraped and cracked, some peeling up at the edges. In a few places, thin beads of bright red began to seep out.
"RRAAAWWW——!!!"
One especially vicious tail strike slammed into Gyarados's flank, sending a wave of agony through it. The pain, stacked atop the suffocating frustration of being forced to just tank hits, finally snapped the fragile thread of "reason" its evolved brain had been clinging to.
It had been enduring the pain.
Forcing itself to listen to Ash's orders.
But now?
Now it couldn't.
The red in its eyes suddenly erupted into a full inferno of rage.
Any hint of restraint was consumed in an instant.
All that remained was destruction.
Tactics.
Commands.
All of it shattered.
Its giant head snapped back, throat convulsing. Deep in its maw, a violent orange-red light bloomed, thick and blinding, surging together like molten metal poured into a cannon.
The air itself twisted under the heat, sizzling and whining.
Even from the edge of the arena, Misty felt a smothering wall of scorching air slam into her.
"Oh no—Hyper Beam!" Ash's face blanched.
At this range, in this state—
There was no way to interrupt it in time.
"Onix! Iron Tail, full power—aim for its head!" Brock's voice cut across the battlefield like an icicle. Calm to the point of terrifying.
He'd been waiting for this exact moment of loss of control.
"SSSHHHAAAA——!!!"
A cold metallic sheen coated Onix's massive tail in an instant, turning stone into steel. The weight and power behind it swelled to an almost absurd level.
Its huge body snapped, twisting with explosive force no one would expect from something that size. The steel tail tore through the air, screaming, carrying the momentum to pulverize anything in its path—
And it whipped straight toward Gyarados's head, right as the Hyper Beam formed in its mouth.
Time seemed to freeze.
Then—
"BOOOOOOM——!!!"
The golden Gyarados's Hyper Beam finally fired.
But in the same heartbeat, Onix's full-force Iron Tail smashed directly into its lower jaw.
CRACK!!!
The sickening crunch of bone snapping was swallowed up by the collapsing roar of exploding energy.
The orange-red beam jerked upward, knocked off course at the very moment of its birth.
Instead of blasting straight ahead, it skewed upward, a runaway cannon shot—
And slammed into the Core's high stone ceiling.
"RUMBLE-RUMBLE-RUMBLE——!!!"
The ceiling rocked under the blast. Rock vaporized and shattered.
Countless fragments came raining down like a stone storm.
Good thing this was the highest-grade battlefield.
If they'd been in a standard arena, the Gym could've started getting quotes for a full rebuild.
Gyarados, meanwhile, was smashed out of the air.
Its gigantic body, wrapped in golden armor, was swatted out of its coil like a toy struck by a god's hammer.
Onix's Iron Tail was no joke.
Thirty tons of rock turning into thirty tons of steel, swinging at full speed—
That was basically the same as getting hit by a fully loaded semi-truck.
If Gyarados weren't also a huge, durable monster, that hit alone would've turned a normal Pokémon into a smear.
"THUD——!!!"
The entire Core trembled.
Where Gyarados slammed down, the stone floor spiderwebbed with cracks.
Its massive head lolled to the side, jaw twisted at a wrong angle. Black smoke seeped from its mouth. Blood flowed from split lips and nostrils, mixing with the water puddles on the stone and running in thin red streams.
The red in its eyes guttered out, leaving only bottomless pain and confusion.
Its enormous body twitched once, twice—
Then went limp.
Silence.
…Even for a Gyarados, that hit meant serious injury.
The whole arena fell still.
Only the soft rattle of falling stone fragments, and the lingering hum of spent energy from the Hyper Beam's impact, filled the vast space.
Murky water crept quietly around Gyarados's collapsed form.
The blood in it was a sharp shock of color.
The referee raised his flag, face expressionless. His voice cut through the silence like a knife:
"Gyarados is unable to battle!"
A beam of red light shot out, engulfing the fallen behemoth.
"You did great, partner," Ash murmured to the Poké Ball as it returned.
"If you'd like, we can send it to our emergency unit," Brock called across the field. "Those injuries are fairly serious."
Injuries in Gym battles were normal.
Every Gym had emergency facilities and standard medical equipment on hand.
In fights with a big power gap, both sides could afford to pull punches.
But when the gap was small?
Holding back became almost impossible.
That was just how it was.
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