Shadow Lugia's typing had shifted to Dark and Flying after Yveltal's power took hold. That made Psychic moves useless against it, but it also meant Fighting type moved from being heavily resisted to landing at neutral effectiveness. At this range, Aura Sphere was the most natural answer Mewtwo had.
Fine energy patterns rippled across the surface of the deep blue sphere in her palm, radiating a pressure that made the air around it feel dense.
"Hah!" Mewtwo drove her palm forward.
The Aura Sphere hit Shadow Lugia square in the chest. The impact rang through the sky like something enormous being struck. Lugia's body was thrown backward, the dark aura coating it stripped away in large portions by the hit as it let out a cry and tumbled toward the sea. Its wings beat frantically but couldn't arrest the fall.
It hit the water with a crash that sent waves dozens of meters into the air and ripples spreading across the entire surrounding sea.
Lugia floated on the surface, body twitching, the dark aura around it visibly dimmer. The hit had done real damage.
Aura Sphere wasn't Mewtwo's STAB move and it wasn't super effective. It didn't matter. The power gap between Mega Mewtwo at God Level Peak and a suppressed Lugia was simply too wide. Even a Lugia operating at its natural full strength wouldn't have fared well against Mewtwo in this state.
Every gaze on the island turned toward Ash, who was standing in the wind with a calm expression. The disbelief on their faces was complete. Mewtwo had just one-shotted Lugia.
In his own mind, Ash was having a conversation nobody else could hear.
"Your Mewtwo is genuinely something else! She one-shotted Lugia!"
"My Mewtwo once challenged Arceus. She was beaten badly, but she still put up resistance. Among God Level Peak Pokémon, she sits a tier above the other Gods, Rayquaza being the exception. After Mega Evolution, she is in a category of her own."
"But don't credit this entirely to Mewtwo's strength. Lugia's own internal resistance contributed to how fast it went down. Lugia is one of the top existences in the world. Even controlled, it isn't simply a puppet."
Ash understood immediately. "Lugia's consciousness is still there. It's been fighting back against the control this whole time."
"Yes. It's only temporarily suppressed, not truly broken. If Team Galactic has no follow-up method to reinforce the control, Lugia will break free on its own.
The Yveltal power they used has no anchor. Once it's consumed, it's gone. Controlling a God Level Pokémon burns through energy at a rate you can't imagine, and even using power of equivalent level, the window before Lugia regains full consciousness wouldn't exceed thirty minutes. It was already fighting back from inside."
Ash let that settle. Even without intervention, Lugia would have eventually returned to normal. The problem was that by then, everyone on the island would already be finished.
And that was assuming Charon had no way to replenish the Yveltal power. He obviously knew the limitation. Taking Lugia back to their facility and reinforcing the control was exactly what would happen if they let him leave with it.
The reason Charon had coveted Lucia Jr. in the first place connected to this directly. Lucia Jr. had undergone a complete type replacement, her Psychic typing fully erased and replaced.
What had been done to the adult Lugia was only suppression. Team Galactic's current research wasn't advanced enough to replicate the permanent conversion on a God Level Peak Pokémon, which was why they needed Lucia Jr. as a reference sample.
She was the proof of concept. She was also, as a small deity carrying the essence of two gods, a significant combat asset for whatever they were building toward.
Their decision to target Lucia Jr. first had cost them everything. It had delayed their timeline, triggered the intervention that brought Ash into the picture, and now resulted in the God of the Sea floating face-down in the ocean.
Charon stood on the shore with his glasses at the tip of his nose, staring.
"Why did Lugia go down that fast. That makes no sense. Who is that Pokémon." He was talking to himself. Then something shifted in his expression. "Wait. Mewtwo. I know that name." He thought for another moment. "The Team Rocket data we acquired. That's the Clone Pokémon they made from Mew's genes. But their records said it disappeared after reaching Champion level. How is it standing in front of me at God Level Peak?"
He had seen the name in files seized from Team Rocket, classified even within that organization. The records had been sparse. A Clone Pokémon built on Mew's genetic template, the stated goal being the creation of the strongest Pokémon in existence to serve as a tool for world domination.
Charon had dismissed that ambition at the time. Mew was surrounded by legend and mystery, but against a genuine God in a straight comparison, mystery didn't hold up.
Building the strongest Pokémon in the world out of Mew's genes had struck him as wishful thinking.
Charon was revising his opinion of Team Rocket's research in real time. He had written off their Mewtwo project as overreach. He was no longer confident in that judgment.
Even accounting for Lugia's suppressed state dropping it from God Level Peak to High God Level, getting beaten that completely still required the opponent to be operating at Peak level. There was no other way to read what he had just watched.
"Things aren't looking good." Mars swallowed. "Should we take Lugia and pull back?"
Charon was quiet for less than a second. "Yes. We retreat, regroup, and come back with a better approach. We have no answer for that Pokémon right now."
It was the first time he had agreed with Mars on anything during this operation. Facing Mewtwo at this level, he could acknowledge without embarrassment that the failure wasn't entirely Mars's fault.
Two Initial God Level Pokémon who couldn't access their God Domain powers hadn't been enough. Three who could access them probably wouldn't have been enough either.
What Charon didn't know was that the Mewtwo Mars had originally faced was only at Initial God Level.
On Cynthia's side, the atmosphere was something close to the aftermath of a near-death experience being quietly processed.
Cynthia had felt, for the first time in her career as a Champion, completely powerless. Facing a God Level Peak and a God Level Initial simultaneously, with no equivalent answer on her side, the situation had looked unsurvivable. Something had shifted in her in that moment, a craving for greater strength that she hadn't felt this acutely before.
And then Mewtwo had crushed Lugia's Aeroblast like compressing air, and all of that dramatic internal reckoning had become instantly unnecessary.
She didn't know whether to laugh or be embarrassed. She quietly set those thoughts aside, though the desire for stronger power stayed.
"When did Mewtwo become this strong?" Lorelei asked, genuinely puzzled even as she felt relieved. She had more context than the others. She had witnessed both of Mewtwo's earlier battles alongside Ash.
Mewtwo's growth from the first to the second had already been remarkable. But God Level Peak wasn't something that happened in a short window, no matter what was accelerating it. God Level tiers didn't collapse into each other that quickly.
If they did, there would be far more God Level Peak Pokémon in the world than actually existed. Three months from Initial God Level to Peak was not a realistic progression by any framework she understood.
"Was Mewtwo very different before?" Serena asked, genuinely curious. She had no real baseline for any of this beyond knowing that Mewtwo was clearly beyond anything ordinary.
"Three months ago she was around Initial God Level," Lorelei said. "Even with very fast progress, reaching mid God Level in three months would have been the outer limit of what seemed possible. God Level Peak in that same window is simply not something that should happen."
"It's Ash," Cynthia said with a small smile, not particularly troubled by the inconsistency. "He always has methods for increasing a Pokémon's power that don't follow the normal rules. I have no idea where he finds them, but by now I've stopped being surprised that he does."
"That's true. That's Ash for you," Lorelei agreed after a moment. There was something to that. The name alone had become shorthand in the Pokémon world for results that didn't make sense by conventional standards.
Nearby, Misty was watching Ash from a distance with an expression that didn't try to be anything other than what it was. Stars in her eyes, unguarded. This was the person she had chosen to believe in. He always stepped forward first, and he had never once made her regret it.
"It's time to finish this, Mewtwo," Champion Ash said, his eyes on Lugia still floating in the water. "Extract that power from its body."
The strike hadn't ended Lugia's ability to fight completely. What it had done was burn through a layer of the Yveltal power on the surface, which had allowed Lugia's own consciousness to push back harder.
The reason a Pokémon with Lugia's HP was lying slumped in the water wasn't heavy injury. Lugia's own will was fighting the control from the inside, and that internal conflict had temporarily immobilized it.
With Lugia not actively resisting, Mewtwo could go in by force and pull the contamination out directly.
Mewtwo raised her arm.
"Enjoy this," Charon said coldly.
He closed his fist around a small black orb and crushed it.
Lugia's crimson eyes snapped open. The sound it made was deafening, a scream that spread across the entire sea area in every direction. The power inside its body detonated all at once.
God Level Peak. Full output. Restored in an instant.
Champion Ash's expression shifted. "He burned all the dark power at once to shorten the remaining control time and spike the output. Mewtwo, switch forms!"
He raised his wrist. The Keystone lit up with seven-color light.
Mewtwo's body erupted with it, brilliant and complete, the light of transformation.
Everyone went still. Cynthia stared. Even Charon, in the middle of calculating a retreat, stopped.
It could still change forms?
The light faded. What stood in Mewtwo's place was more than twice the size of the form they had just been watching. Every line of the new body read power rather than speed, muscle and mass built for force rather than precision.
Mega Mewtwo X.