The broadcast director clearly caught Stelle's unbridled enthusiasm, cutting straight to a close-up of her waving the banner on the stadium's jumbotron.
Watching the feed, everyone familiar with the Astral Express crew chuckled. Up on the judges' dais, Himeko glanced over at her two colleagues, Welt and Dan Heng, who were both hanging their heads in desperate denial, and could not suppress an amused smile.
It was an affectionate, knowing laugh shared across the arena.
Embarrassing as Stelle's antics were, the sheer absurdity broke through the heavy tension gripping March 7th. Her worries over her opponent's formidable strength melted away, allowing her attention to lock squarely onto the battle at hand.
Opposite her, Argenti offered his trademark knightly salute, his emerald eyes brimming with vivid anticipation.
"Come, bear witness to Pure Beauty, Milotic, Roselia!"
That look in his gaze—was he truly anticipating what she might bring to the table?
Seriously? My rival is cheering me on to give him a harder fight?
I must be overthinking this, right?
March muttered under her breath, yet swept up in the chivalric cadence of his words, she threw her own Poké Balls forward without hesitation:
"Soar across the frost and gale, Beautifly, Articuno!"
Watching from the competitors' lounge, Sushang stopped in her tracks. The realization hit her like a splash of cold water: that sudden surge of focus she had felt in her own semifinal match had been intentionally coaxed out by Argenti.
Was the man fearless, or simply reckless? To go out of his way to offer his rival a helping hand on stage...
Seeing March enter the exact same heightened state, Sushang could think of no other explanation.
"Haha! That Argenti is truly something else. I must share a pot of tea with him once the festivities conclude."
In the VIP box, Jing Yuan slapped his knee and let out a hearty laugh.
The figures presiding over the tournament possessed sharp insight. A display like Argenti's might have seemed like an accidental quirk the first time around, but seeing it repeat made his intentions obvious.
Argenti was intentionally elevating his opposition's game, deliberately driving up the difficulty of his own trial.
All he sought was the Pure Beauty he championed, just as he had proclaimed during his opening performance.
To most spectators and judges, his knightly persona was simply theatrical flair.
Only Julian understood the truth. Just as Argenti insisted that every word and deed of his was genuine, his pilgrimage for Beauty was as real as the armor on his shoulders.
That uncorrupted conviction was precisely what earned Jing Yuan's respect.
Such pure spirits were rare in any era.
Across the panel, the other adjudicators watched the red-haired knight with growing admiration.
"Articuno, Snowscape! Beautifly, unleash Hyper Beam!"
Drawing on her previous clashes, March moved instantly to reshape the arena, cloaking the stage in snow to claim the environmental initiative.
Beautifly's physical defenses were brittle, so she opened with a concussive blast of raw power to pin down the opposition, buying Articuno the room it needed to establish winter weather.
"Milotic, Hydro Pump! Roselia, weave the Petal Blizzard!"
A surging torrent wrapped in a swirling ring of petals met the blazing beam head-on. The water column absorbed the brunt of the destructive blast, while the razor-sharp storm of petals spun out of the spray, targeting Beautifly without losing momentum.
Grass-type techniques dealt little true damage against an insect's carapace, but absorbing a clean strike would bleed style points. Having entered the finals with lower baseline marks than Argenti, dropping points early would severely narrow her path to victory.
Fortunately, March had anticipated the counter. She had directed Beautifly to ascend toward a high, distant vector before the floral squall could close in.
Simultaneously, Articuno blanketed the stadium in heavy, falling snow. With an expansive sweep of its crystalline wings, the legendary bird conjured a fierce icy gust, scattering the incoming petals and screening Beautifly's retreat.
"Oh?"
Argenti's eyes brightened. That level of tactical calculation had never shown up in March's earlier rounds.
Her growth surpassed his expectations, unfolding before his very eyes.
Is this your answer to my devotion, Idrila?
Argenti cast aside all restraint, stepping forward with total focus.
"Roselia, seed the gale with Petal Blizzard! Milotic, lift the Twister!"
"Rosa!"
"Mina..."
Milotic coiled and launched a roaring cyclone across the stage floor. Roselia scattered thousands of luminous petals into the vortex, transforming the gale into a howling funnel of floral blades that tore straight toward March's perimeter.
Facing the howling wind, March opened her mouth to order a counter, only for the words to stick in her throat.
Her roster relied heavily on Ice and Flying techniques.
Blasting a twister with raw force carried the immense risk of feeding the vortex, expanding its kinetic power rather than dispersing it.
Wait... that's not true! As long as we command the thermal flow, we control the gale!
A flash of inspiration struck her mind, and she called out with sudden clarity:
"Articuno, blanket the core with Blizzard!"
"Beautifly, the moment your strength returns, disrupt them with Bug Buzz!"
Articuno exhaled a freezing gale of sub-zero wind. True to expectations, the icy draft was drawn into the funnel, swelling the cyclone into a roaring winter storm.
The piercing chill radiating from the frozen vortex stung the skin of everyone in the front rows.
Yet as the temperature plummeted around Articuno, the pressure gradient shifted. The twister paused in its tracks, its rotation bending back toward Argenti's side of the ring.
March might have been green in conventional tactics, but when it came to manipulating ice, cold, and thermal drops, few possessed a deeper natural affinity.
Air naturally flowed from cold, dense zones toward warmer pockets. Reversing the thermal balance allowed her to steer the storm's path.
Beautifly was still recovering from the heavy recoil of Hyper Beam, but once its energy stabilized, it prepared to send sonic pulses through the wind to break the enemy's formation.
"Roselia, cast Magical Leaf to suppress Beautifly!"
"Milotic, let us cool the field as well—Ice Beam!"
Both sides poured raw elemental power straight into the central maelstrom, compounding its frosty bite. Shards of crystalline frost flew outward from the perimeter, dazzling yet deadly.
Because of the cyclone's sheer mass, Beautifly and Roselia's projectile attacks canceled out within the swirling wall, both using the barrier to shield against stray ice shards.
Fed by high-tier techniques from four directions, the twister expanded uncontrollably, ballooning until its outer walls scraped the boundaries of the stage.
Neither trainer had intended the collision to spiral to this scale. Letting it run unchecked would tear the stage apart without offering an advantage to either side.
While they still held their grip on the elements, detonating the structure was the only clean play.
"Articuno, Sheer Cold! Beautifly, Solar Beam!"
"Milotic, Hydro Pump! Roselia, unleash Solar Beam!"
All four combatants released their ultimate strikes simultaneously, blasting the swollen funnel from opposite vectors. Sweat traced the temples of both trainers, their eyes locked on the ignition point, while the entire stadium rose to its feet in collective awe.
Barely a handful of people across the cosmos had ever witnessed such raw elemental density contained within a contest ring.
For ninety-nine percent of the audience, the spectacle was unprecedented. Four ultimate moves detonating in unison painted the sky in an overwhelming tapestry of light, frost, and roaring thunder.
Milotic's water deluge flooded the spinning vortex, turning it into a towering waterspout. A heartbeat later, Articuno's absolute freezing wave crashed through the core, locking the roaring torrent into solid ice in the span of a breath.
BOOM!
Twin radiant pillars of solar energy struck the frozen spire from opposite angles, instantly detonating the structure into millions of shimmering fragments.
The icy funnel disintegrated, breaking the snowstorm and filling the air with a cascade of sparkling frost crystals that drifted gently toward the arena floor.
March had been bracing for the structural fallout, but as a stray ice crystal touched her forehead and melted into a drop of cool water, the fog clouding her thoughts suddenly cleared.
The missing piece she had struggled to grasp for rounds finally clicked into place.
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