Sieg had already sorted the battlefield before anyone moved.
Cynthia had Garchomp. The Commander's Sub-Elite Four Sharpedo was the only thing on the other side that could match that, and matching it was Cynthia's problem. His side of the room was the Mightyena pack, and the pack was a coordination problem before it was anything else.
The Pokédex entry on Mightyena was fairly specific: groups of roughly ten, strict internal hierarchy, total compliance with the pack leader's direction, methodical cooperative pursuit. The word methodical was the key. A Mightyena pack operating as a coordinated unit was genuinely dangerous. The same pack cut loose from active command and operating on instinct was a different animal entirely, and the Commander had one Sharpedo to focus on and nowhere near enough attention left over to be running six Mightyena as well.
Break the formation first. Then pick them off.
"Honchkrow, Tailwind."
"Crawdaunt, Brick Break."
"Sharpedo, Crunch."
"Pelipper, Rain Dance. Full output."
The wind hit first, and every Pokémon on Sieg's side felt the difference immediately, the air itself suddenly cooperative in a way that turned movement into acceleration. Crawdaunt was already into the Mightyena cluster before the last command had finished, and the Brick Break that opened the fight didn't need to be especially well-placed to do what it needed to do, which was scatter the group's geometry before they had time to set it.
It worked. The Mightyena broke apart in three directions, and the coordination that made them dangerous dissolved into individual reactions.
The strongest one came back at Crawdaunt directly, which was approximately the outcome Sieg had been hoping for. Crawdaunt and one Mightyena in a straight exchange was not a competitive match. Crawdaunt and one Mightyena while Swords Dance was running was even less of one. The claw came down on the top of the Mightyena's skull with the kind of force that communicated a clear physical hierarchy, and the Mightyena's head shape briefly stopped being quite the right shape before it found the ground.
"Abdomen," Sieg said. "Canine species, the head and legs hold; the middle doesn't. Hit the abdomen."
Crawdaunt adjusted without hesitation, and the follow-up Crabhammer that connected with the strongest Mightyena's midsection produced an immediate and involuntary response from the target, a low, sustained sound that said the hit had found exactly what it was supposed to find. The Mightyena tried to answer with Thunder Fang, the electric charge already building in its teeth.
"Hydro Pump, close range."
Crawdaunt didn't move back. It moved forward, wrapping itself in water and hitting the Mightyena with the full output of Hydro Pump at a distance where the spread was effectively zero. The collision drove the Mightyena back and off its feet before the Thunder Fang had properly formed.
On the other side of the room, the rain was starting to fall.
Pelipper's Drizzle had activated the moment it entered the chamber, but the Rain Dance layered on top of it thickened the effect dramatically, the thin mist becoming actual falling water that collected on every surface and ran along the glass walls and gathered in the low points of the floor. The Mightyena that were still functioning shook their coats and moved differently, slower, the wet fur weighing them down by a small but real amount.
Crawdaunt moved differently too. The water lit something up in it, the familiar sensation of its best element flooding in from the outside and amplifying everything that was already running.
"Swords Dance. Then Dragon Dance."
Crawdaunt went through both in sequence, each one pulling the parameters further. Attack spiking on the first, Attack and Speed both climbing on the second, until the buffs stacked against each other, and the result was something that occupied the same physical space as a Crawdaunt but produced energy readings that didn't quite fit the frame around them.
This was the version of Crawdaunt that Sieg had been building toward since before the voyage. The setup cost time, which was always the vulnerability, but the Commander was occupied with Garchomp, and the Mightyena were operating without coherent direction. The time had been available.
On Sieg's side of the chamber, Sharpedo was working the gaps, Swift Swim turning each pass into a blur that the untrained Mightyena couldn't track effectively. Honchkrow was overhead keeping pace in the air, Dark Pulse threading down through the spaces between physical engagements, not heavy enough to finish anything on its own but enough to keep the Mightyena off-balance and hesitant. The harassment gave Crawdaunt room, and Crawdaunt used every inch of it.
The last few Mightyena, already carrying accumulated damage from the layered assault, caught a simultaneous Crunch from both Crawdaunt and Sharpedo and stopped moving.
Sieg looked at them briefly, properly down, not regrouping, and turned his attention to the other side of the room.
Cynthia was losing.
Not dramatically. Not in the way that suggested the gap was unbridgeable. But Garchomp had been hit multiple times by Ice-type attacks, and the compounding effect of that was visible in how it was moving. Ice Fang, Ice Beam, Blizzard, the Commander's Sharpedo had apparently been built specifically for this type of matchup, its move pool a concentrated answer to the Dragon/Ground combination that Garchomp represented. Four times effective, each hit, every time.
And Garchomp's best answers were off the table.
The drilling platform was the problem. Draco Meteor meant energy discharge at a level that the glass walls and the old structural steel around them were not designed to contain. Earthquake was obvious. The chamber was a hundred meters underwater, held together by engineering that had been sitting without maintenance for years, and using either of Garchomp's signature moves inside it was a calculation that ended with everyone in the room on the ocean floor. Cynthia knew this. It was why she was working with Air Slash and Dragon Claw and managing the distance instead of simply ending the fight.
It was a constraint the Commander had apparently planned around.
"Crawdaunt," Sieg said. "Sharpedo."
Both looked at him.
He pointed at the Commander's Sharpedo.
They moved.