Galar.
Leon smiled mysteriously as he recalled his Cinderace.
One hit.
That was all it took for Ash's Pikachu to knock out one of his most powerful Pokémon, and that too a Pokémon specifically chosen to counter it.
In his long wait at the top, Leon had often caught himself worried that there was nothing more to learn about battles. He'd been like Ash, young and bright and growing, at least once upon a time. But his ascent to the peak of the World Championships had taken much of the magic out of battling. After all, there were only so many pulverizing victories he could take before it grew boring.
The routine.
Leon absently wondered if the roaring crowd around him ever noticed how dull his battles had become, since he reached the pinnacle.
Rillaboom to get an early knock-out. Dragapult to force the opponent's Pokémon in, one-by-one, and weaken them. Then Rillaboom again to clean up. Charizard would be sent out in case of an unanticipated outcome, or perhaps a tough ace. Sometimes Leon didn't even need to use Gigantamax.
He had already used it in this battle. Twice.
With a grin, he readied his last Poké Ball, feeling his usually calm heartbeat pick up. He pushed the rote, for-show strategies that he always used against Raihan out of his mind. Time to focus, to improvise.
He hurled the ball, watching it ballerina-dance over the battlefield. "Charizard, it's Champion time!"
Maybe it was always going to come down to this. Pikachu and Charizard; their partners. His great orange dragon emerged from the ball with a bellow, all wings and claws. Tremors shot through the field as it landed. It blew a line of flames into the air like a starting whistle.
Ash didn't miss a beat. "Pikachu, Quick Attack!" The electric mouse coiled up its hind legs, storing energy as if a spring. Its face sparkled with latent speed. In an instant, Pikachu was surging forward, the air bending to accommodate its rushing, stretching form.
Charizard dodged, almost without hearing the command. Its spun, momentarily disoriented as Pikachu was nowhere in sight.
"Above you!" "Iron Tail!"
Pikachu was barreling down at Charizard, its tail spinning faster and faster, until it was a whirring blade of destruction. But it wasn't the only one with a tail. Charizard spun around, throwing its weight behind its body as it lashed out at Pikachu. Both tails met evenly, hard steel meeting tons of force. Pikachu struggled to hold the position for a moment, before adroitly vaulting backwards. Its feet slid on the ground as it tried to handle the impact.
Charizard rose, taking to the familiar sky. It confidently spread its wings wide, feeling the air between coalesce into eddies and rings. Sunlight glinted off its claws as its face was thrown into shadow.
"Charizard, Air Slash!" Leon barked.
The powerful muscles on Charizard's shoulder flexed, drawing the wings back to take in more and more air. A flap. Suddenly, high-pressure wavefronts were bearing down on Pikachu. Impact craters blasted open on every side, sending rippling shockwaves. The mouse grimaced, but it withstood the blow. Its paws slipped slightly as currents of air threatened to lift it off the ground.
Leon took the chance to strike while Ash was preoccupied. "Great Blaze!" A burst of fire erupted from Charizard's mouth, spewing onto the battlefield. The flames cast a sinister glow on Charizard's face, highlighting its sharp teeth.
"Electroweb!" Ash ordered, thrusting his hands out like a shield.
Ash's reply was unusual; Leon had expected a traditional attacking counter like Thunderbolt. The logic soon became clear as the net bloomed to cover the entire battlefield. The flames closed in on Pikachu, but they couldn't reach it. Charizard's raging wildfire was momentarily held at bay as the net sagged under pressure. It wouldn't hold.
"Run for it, Pikachu!" It yelped, and scampered away as fast as its legs could carry it. Narrowly behind its tail, Electroweb broke, sending cascading waves of fiery thunder to chase it. The dust cleared. Impossibly, Pikachu had scurried out only slightly singed.
The stadium seemed to inhale simultaneously.
It struck Leon that this was already a truly great battle.
"Thank you, Ash. You've pushed me so far, made me even stronger," Leon said earnestly. It had been a while since a battle had offered him such a challenge. "Let's burn brighter and brighter until our very last blow!" Leon declared with his voice rising, all fired up. Charizard roared, throwing its fangs forward at Pikachu.
After a few seconds to breathe and stretch his legs, Ash replied. "We've kept on growing stronger all thanks to you. This battle… Everything since me and Pikachu met… all our journeys have led to this!" Pikachu slapped its cheeks, stray bolts of excitement leaking out.
Leon smirked, reminded of his own youthful bravado during his first battle with Sonia.
Charmander had been so small then, its tiny embers barely beginning to form. It was hard to believe how far Charizard had grown, towering over the ghost of its past self. But there was one thing that hadn't changed, no matter how many years of adventure they triumphantly lifted over their heads. A hunger for a worthy opponent.
"Let's raise our power higher, Charizard!" he shouted in excitement. As if reading his mind, his partner lifted the sizzling fire at the tip of his tail and beat it against the ground. Waves of heat rose around them, warping the air and provoking heavy drops of sweat to run down his forehead.
Blood surged into Leon's veins, vibrating with life and sharpening his focus. The rush was familiar, yet distant. Was this what battle used to feel like?
In the before times?
There was no more holding back. He felt like a 10-year-old once more, barely having left Professor Oak's lab before running into a young girl named Sonia. Even though that was a simple battle, devoid of the commentary and the stadium and the world's eyes, it had been intense. His little salamander dodging her tiny Rookidee's attacks. It would have seemed quaint to almost any of the spectators cheering, but that battle had given him more of a thrill than the entire World Coronation Series.
Until this battle, that is. Now, he was reminded of what Sonia had taught him a lifetime ago. It was the hole in all the hollow battles he had fought as Monarch: the joy of having more lefst to learn about battling.
A whipcrack. The air shattered and Pikachu gushed forward earth evaporating before its paws as it drew nearer to the thunderclap and Charizard was reeling the life hammered out of its stomach – shock.
Leon was falling through memories. A flap of Rookidee's wings unleashing scythes of air that bore down on Charmander slicing his nascent fire into sparks and hitting his chest with slaps of pressure leaving him alive by the skin of his fangs.
"Ancient Power!" With a grunt Charizard broke the field into pieces hurling boulders into the air and dropping them like a hailstorm Pikachu jumped onto the first boulder narrowly dodging another and nimbly hopping up the boulders like stepping stones until he was on top of the arena – dominating.
"Rookidee, fly up!" came Sonia's delicate voice breaking out of his recollections and onto the battlefield juxtaposed with the huge stadium the banners of victory and it rose and it rose and it rose until Leon was all too cognizant of its height advantage and perhaps even worried.
Leon called for Air Slash the spirit of Sonia giving him strength and Pikachu's tail hardened into shining iron spinning to attack like gleaming bird-talons that cut into his consciousness but he shook himself into the present willing Charizard's wind-sword to break the blade of Pikachu as they struck and again neither relenting – equal.
Pikachu descended to attack like a bird swooping down and Leon saw it – the opening.
"Great Blaze!" he shouted with the voice of a young boy and he heard a young boy respond reflexively with a Thunderbolt but the flames closed in reflecting in Pikachu's tiny pupils as they widened in worry realizing that it wasn't going to be enough and fire and fury assaulted the mouse from every angle until its legs failed it.
Pikachu's eyes flickered open briefly, making Leon wonder in awe if the battle would still go on yet. It stood for a moment, growling. A heartbeat. It fell over.
Leon felt a faint sense of disappointment.
Ash curled his hand into a fist, and his eyes hazed over. Memories seemed to play in his pupils, far too numerous for his age.
Was it over already?
Gradually, Leon's hairs began to stand up, one by one. He recognized the odd sensation that they weren't alone in the stadium. Inexplicably, Leon looked up, as if expecting to see Rookidee flying overhead. Ash and Pikachu smiled, as if greeting old friends.
It seemed he wasn't the only one lost in nostalgia.
A hundred invisible hands, claws and beaks lifted Pikachu's front paw up. Then its other paw. Its hind legs rose on their own, summoning energy from somewhere he couldn't imagine.
Wind blasted his face, forcing him to shield his eyes. Leon turned to Pikachu, mouth hanging open. Unbelievably, it was standing again, bolts of electricity radiating outwards like sun-rays, ready for battle. The atmosphere crackled with unrealized power. A hundred colors blended into the yellow of Pikachu's electricity, like a hundred souls surging forwards as one.
"Now there's the Ash and Pikachu I was waiting for!"
"We're gonna bet it all on this attack!" Ash exclaimed, propelling the attack forward with his fist.
Lightning built up on Pikachu's tiny body outshining the stars in the heavens above until it was unbearable red and black spots in his eyes shaking the stadium with supernova pulses that forced him to answer the only way he knew how:
"It's Champion time!"
Leon flung his cap aside and finally it was just him stripped of ornament like the very first time a boy and his Charmander stepped into the flames of battle only to get burned and he knew. This was the battle. This was the one. Just like the first time.
Leon bent over in concentration, thrusting his face towards the action.
Charizard surrounded itself with flames like a hulking beast of fury with eyes burning menacingly Leon roared like an inferno consuming everything in sight and Charizard roared in friendship and triumph and passion blazing brighter with every sweltering breath that filled his lungs with fire spewing out in guttural screams that tore the arena in two him and Charizard against Ash and Pikachu with everything they had every spark that bloomed into flowers of flame every spark that elongated into lightning-blades surrounding them as they charged forward warping the ground underneath the distance disappearing between their heads clashing the purest test of willpowercouldhewithstandorwoulditbelikeSoniaagain – blinding phosphorescent light.
It took a moment before he could see again.
But Leon felt it long before he saw.
Charizard lay motionless on the ground, eyes popping grotesquely. On reflex, it let out one last ember of acknowledgement, as if it was a Charmander once more.
Leon tilted his head in momentary disbelief.
"Charizard is unable to battle!" Words he had not heard in years.
The arena reentered his field of view, clamoring in shock and ecstasy. Leon looked up, at the meaningless banners, at the television cameras, at the toughest opponent he'd ever fought. A small sigh passed his lips. This final battle had reminded him so much of his first battle against Sonia at the very beginning, and now the scorelines matched as well. Defeat, defeat. This had been the one, after all: his second loss.
"Thank you," he whispered. To his faithful partner Charizard, who had stood with him regardless of victory or defeat. To Sonia, who stopped his initial childish tears of defeat from extinguishing his nascent battle-spark. And to the latest young Monarch, who had proved that he could always burn brighter and brighter, until the very end.
At last, Leon stood straight, feeling the world's weight leave his shoulders.
Prepare for a battle
That'll make our bones rattle!
To watch the air itself bend
To feel our hair stand on end
To denounce the evils of fire and fame!
To extend our reach and take our aim!
Leon!
Twerp!
Pikachu blasts off at the speed of light
You better win this fight!
Meowth! That's right.
A/N: Yes, I admit I might have added the postscript poems because I realized there were too many important viewpoints and not enough weeks. Just one more chapter left for one more episode. It feels unreal.