Archeops was a powerful Pokémon, but it had one persistent limitation: its move pool offered no high-power STAB move that could make full use of its extraordinary Attack stat. For all its ferocity, Aston could do no better than Rock Slide, wearing the opponent down one hit at a time rather than finishing the match in a single decisive blow.
This time, Nova did not call for another block. He let Marshtomp stand and fight.
Archeops was still faster, even with the speed drop from Icy Wind. It landed Rock Slide before Marshtomp could complete its response, cutting off the Muddy Water Marshtomp had been building up and leaving it absorbing a clean hit with no return.
Marshtomp took the damage and steadied itself. Nova said nothing. Marshtomp began gathering energy for Muddy Water again.
Archeops straightened up. That first Muddy Water had rattled it, but the second charge had been stopped cleanly. Maybe that opening hit had been luck. Maybe this Marshtomp was not as dangerous as it had seemed.
Aston let out a slow breath. He had been worried, but perhaps Nova had simply run into a wall. Archeops was not a Pokémon most Trainers had ever faced, and even smart ones went passive when they had no framework for what they were dealing with. A second Rock Slide hit Marshtomp and the situation started to feel like it was tilting back.
Aston thought, almost with satisfaction: genius or not, raw power has its own kind of answer. Marshtomp was still a middle-stage evolution. It was not as though Nova could conjure something from nothing.
Still, a quiet unease sat at the back of his mind. In the first two matches, Nova had always had something prepared, always something shaped specifically around his opponent's weaknesses. The fact that he was doing nothing unusual now did not mean he had run out of ideas. It might mean he was waiting.
Aston's instinct told him the other shoe was about to drop.
He was right.
After the second Rock Slide landed, Marshtomp stopped trying to charge Muddy Water. It turned to face Archeops fully, and Nova's voice came across the field with a calm that had not been there before.
"Marshtomp, Endeavor!"
A shimmer of frustrated energy crackled around Marshtomp, and then it drove a fist forward, a concentrated burst of Normal-type energy that crossed the distance between them in an instant and struck Archeops dead center.
Endeavor does not deal a fixed amount of damage. Whatever HP the user has lost, the target loses the same, their HP dragged down to match the user's. Two Rock Slides had taken a significant chunk out of Marshtomp. That same chunk was now gone from Archeops.
In one hit, Archeops had dropped below half its HP.
Aston felt the realization hit him a moment too late. Nova knew. He had known about Defeatist the whole time, and he had spent two Rock Slides carefully walking Marshtomp's HP down to the exact point where Endeavor would push Archeops past the threshold. The passive stance, the absorbed hits, all of it had been preparation.
Archeops stood in the middle of the arena, and something changed in its posture. The confidence it had just recovered faded. Its wings drew slightly inward. Defeatist had activated, and the Pokémon felt it in the way Pokémon always feel these things - not as a number, but as a sudden draining of certainty.
Aston shouted across the field. "Don't back down! We can still win! Rock Slide, now!"
Archeops hesitated. The instinct pulling it away from the fight was strong, but Aston's voice cut through it. They had trained together. It knew that voice. It pushed past the fear and brought the Rock Slide down with everything it had left.
A barrier flared in front of Marshtomp.
The Rock Slide cracked against it and stopped. The sound of the impact faded, and then Muddy Water came in from directly behind the barrier, catching Archeops before it could recover from the swing.
Nova had held the block in reserve the entire time. While Archeops was still reeling from Endeavor, while the double-damage Water-type move landed on a target that had barely any HP remaining, the outcome was not in question.
Archeops collapsed.
Marshtomp stood where it had been, unbothered.
Aston stared at the arena. The match had ended so quickly he needed a moment to process it.
He had been swept 3-0 before. That was not unusual. But this felt different. Every phase of the battle had gone against him in a different way: the first match had been close and hard-fought, the second had been over before Marowak had a real chance, and the third had been a trap he had walked into with his eyes open, unable to stop it even once he saw it closing around him. Three completely different situations, and Nova had been ready for all of them.
That was the part that stuck.
From the stands - the empty stands, since there had been no audience for this match - a single pair of hands began clapping. The sound echoed in the quiet arena in a way that was equal parts dignified and slightly absurd.
Gilbert's voice carried down from the railing. "Well played. Both of you."
He stood, stepped to the barrier at the edge of the stands, and vaulted over it in one clean motion, landing on the arena floor without breaking stride. Nova watched him walk across the field and found himself doing the math involuntarily. The man was somewhere around sixty years old. That jump had looked effortless.
The protective field had dropped when the battle ended. Gilbert walked to Aston first, set a hand briefly on his shoulder, and said something quiet. Then he crossed the field to Nova and held out a neatly packaged box.
"Take it. You've earned it."