Nova almost laughed.
Archeops cut an impressive figure, standing on the arena with the kind of presence that made inexperienced Trainers lose their nerve before the battle even started. He could understand why. Its build, its feathers, the way it carried itself - everything about it looked like something that had survived the ancient world by being very good at ending things.
But Nova knew what that image was hiding.
Archeops had exactly one ability: Defeatist. While its Attack and Speed were genuinely fearsome, the moment its HP dropped below half, both its Attack and Special Attack were cut in half instantly. A Pokémon that dominated opponents who could not outlast it, and crumbled against anyone who could. Fearsome when ahead, fragile when pressed.
If you did not know that going in, Archeops would punish you badly. If you did, the path through the battle became much clearer.
Nova could have left Aqua on the field. Trading hits with Archeops while chipping it down to half HP was a workable plan. But he had a better one.
He called Aqua back, gave her a moment, and sent out his Marshtomp.
Across the field, Aston watched the Marshtomp take its place and felt the first quiet edge of doubt. Nova had switched out again, and his expression carried the calm of someone who had already seen the end of this.
That could not be right. Archeops was rare enough that even most researchers in the Norlandia Alliance had only read about it in academic papers, papers that never made it into general school libraries or public databases. Aston himself had only learned about Defeatist by raising Archeops from an egg, one he had stumbled across during an expedition into an Ancient Secret Realm with a senior Trainer. He had watched it hatch and evolve. That was the only way anyone could have known.
A fifteen-year-old rookie had no business knowing any of this.
What Aston could never have guessed was that Nova was not a native of this world. In the life he had lived before, Archeops had been a game entry, its stats and ability listed in plain text for anyone to read. The things this world was still piecing together through slow academic research had already been compressed into data and handed to players to experiment with.
Nova knew exactly what he was looking at.
The third match began.
Aston's strategy was simple and aggressive: finish Nova's team before Archeops crossed the halfway point on its HP. He had done it before. Comebacks with Archeops were possible when you moved fast and hit hard, and even a genius rookie backed by Elite Four Gilbert was not going to walk through Aston without a fight.
He thought briefly of the Nidoking he had seen at the cross-country race, the one that had torn through the narrow pass. That was clearly Nova's real ace, held back for the Elite Four match. Fine. Let him keep it.
"Archeops, Rock Slide!"
"Marshtomp, Protect!"
Aston bit back a noise of frustration. Another Protect. He had half a mind to say something about it.
A thought crossed Nova's mind at almost the same moment. Protect once and the opponent panics. If he had opened with Toxic from Nidoking, Aston would have had a much worse evening.
But in practical terms, the reasoning behind Protect was simple. Archeops moved fast and hit hard. A priority move that absorbed the attack cleanly was the correct answer, not because it was cautious, but because it set up what came next.
Rock Slide cracked against the barrier and scattered. Aston steadied himself. Protect could not be used back to back reliably, that was a known limitation. The second move was his.
Except Marshtomp moved first.
The barrier that had absorbed Rock Slide had not been Protect. It had been Detect, and the difference mattered. The moment the block landed successfully, Marshtomp did not wait for a command. It opened its mouth and fired a torrent of Muddy Water directly into Archeops.
Archeops took the hit square and stumbled backward, wings spreading for balance. Water-type damage hit its Rock typing hard, and the mud was disorienting on top of it, getting into its feathers, clouding its eyes and nostrils. It shook itself and backed away, putting distance between itself and Marshtomp, reassessing.
The little thing was harder to deal with than it looked.
Archeops did not wait for Aston's next command. It made a decision on its own, splitting into a spread of after-images as it used Double Team, filling Nova's side of the field with identical copies.
Nova had expected something like this. Archeops was fast and it knew it was at a disadvantage up close. Creating decoys to buy space was the natural response.
"Marshtomp, Icy Wind."
Marshtomp drew in a breath and let out a sustained gust of cold air across the field. Wind does not distinguish between a real target and an illusion, and the after-images scattered and dissolved as the cold swept through them, unable to hold their shape against something that moved like weather rather than a directed attack. Every copy came apart.
Archeops itself caught the tail end of the blast. The Icy Wind did not hit hard, its power was not the point, but a fine layer of frost settled into the outer feathers along its wings, stiffening them slightly, slowing the rapid beats that gave it such extraordinary speed.
Archeops shook off the frost and steadied. The damage was minor. Its speed had taken a small hit but it was still fast, still dangerous, still above the HP threshold where Defeatist would kick in. The match had not slipped away yet.
It raised its head, and at the same moment Aston called out his next command.