Ash's Charizard arrived alongside Liza's Charizard, the two of them circling high above the arena. Even from that altitude, Ash's Charizard felt it before he saw it, a heavy draconic pressure rolling off the field, thick with dragon-type energy and the sharp bite of fire.
The moment he spotted Joe's Dragonite below, he went still. The aura, the breath, the energy signature. That Dragonite shares blood with someone close.
...
Down on the field, Joe's voice was tight. "Dragonite, are you okay? Can you keep going?"
She couldn't afford to lose. If she did, she'd be separated from Dragonite, and beyond that, she had no idea what Ash intended to do about the Stone family. All of this had come from her own choices, her own arrogance.
You convince yourself you're untouchable, she thought bitterly. And you dig your own grave without realizing it.
"Aooo~" Dragonite steadied himself and nodded firmly. The ancient genes in his bloodline gave him something beyond raw strength, a perseverance that only sharpened under pressure. He would not admit defeat.
"Then show him." Joe exhaled. "Hurricane!"
"ROARRR!"
The roar that followed was pure fury. A violent tornado erupted from Dragonite's wings and tore upward, wide enough to swallow the arena whole. The clouds above began bending inward, spiraling toward the vortex, and the air pressure across the entire field dropped sharply.
In the stands, Sabrina grabbed the railing. Liza braced against her seat. Even Elder Kabu had to anchor himself against the pull.
"He's Ash's Dragonite's son, isn't he," Sabrina muttered, silver hair whipping across her face. "I've seen Dragonite at the Draconis estate trained for decades. None of them hit like this at his age."
...
Ash had been about to order Gardevoir to use Shadow Ball and break it apart. Then he stopped.
His eyes narrowed slowly. Something was wrong.
Joe's Dragonite's eyes had gone red, fully red, pupils swallowed by a bloodshot crimson haze. His movements carried that unstable, swaying quality, not exhaustion, but something deeper switching on.
Outrage.
Ash's jaw tightened. Of all the moments to awaken it.
Outrage was the final, desperate technique of Dragon-type Pokémon. Once triggered, the user's power surged to its absolute peak across every stat simultaneously. Speed, strength, move intensity, all of it spiking into a state most opponents simply couldn't match.
The cost was complete loss of control.
Most Dragon Pokémon lost themselves entirely when Outrage activated. A rare few could hold onto some thread of consciousness. But Joe's Dragonite had only been training for a year, and this was his first time awakening it. Expecting him to control it now was asking the impossible.
In a sanctioned match, Outrage was a prohibited move precisely for this reason. Any damage caused after the trigger point came with penalties.
...
The Hurricane surged wider. The antennae on Dragonite's forehead crackled, bleeding arcs of electricity upward into the stormclouds gathering overhead. The sky itself was answering him.
"RRROOAAARR!!!!!"
Elder Kabu moved without hesitation, his hand closing around Joe's wrist. "Miss, we need to leave. Now."
"I'm not going." Joe planted her feet, eyes locked on her Dragonite. "He'll hear me. He always hears me."
...
"Gardevoir, return." Ash recalled her cleanly, then looked up at Charizard still circling above with Charla beside him. "Charizard, bring Charla down. Now."
Charizard folded his wings and dropped, landing hard in front of Ash. Ash stepped forward, took Charla gently by the arm, and opened a spatial vortex without a word, guiding her through it before she could ask anything.
"She's in my pocket dimension," he said to his Charizard, who had landed nearby and was watching the rampaging Dragonite with quiet intensity. "Charla's safe. Don't worry."
He rolled his shoulders and looked up at the rampaging Dragonite, the hurricane still climbing, lightning threading through the stormclouds above.
Charizard stepped up beside him, wings spreading, flame flickering at the tip of his tail.
"Dragon Tail."