The referee's arm slashed down.
"Battle start!"
"Raichu! Show this little runt what real power looks like!" Lt. Surge swept his arm forward, his voice booming through the Gym.
His round, stocky Raichu dropped into a battle stance, its body crackling with dangerous golden electricity. The pressure it gave off was overwhelming.
Ash's Pikachu, however, didn't charge straight in like many had expected.
It simply landed lightly near the edge of the field—
and the tip of its tail brushed the ground, almost unnoticed.
Above all else, it could not afford to take Raichu's full-power Electric attacks head-on.
And it had another job:
start loosening the ground.
"Oh? Too scared to get close, boy?"
Lt. Surge's grin widened. He'd more or less figured out Ash's plan.
Lightning Rod?
Sure.
That was the correct idea.
But could the kid keep it up?
He barked out a laugh, pushing the pressure harder with his words.
"Looks like your little electric mouse's got the same guts as you—none!"
"A real powerhouse doesn't flinch and skitter around!"
Lt. Surge actually approved of the tactic—
but his mouth was never going to be polite.
A Pokémon battle is never just a clash between Pokémon.
The fight between Trainers had already started.
They couldn't have their Pokémon physically attack the opposing Trainer in an official match—
but there was no rule against trash talk and psychological warfare.
"Talking big doesn't mean anything.
The one standing at the end is the only one who gets to say anything."
Ash's eyes never left the battlefield, his tone so calm it was as if he hadn't heard the taunts at all.
"Pikachu—Swift!"
He glanced briefly at Lt. Surge.
He could play the talking game too.
"If you brag early and lose anyway, that's just embarrassing, isn't it?"
"Celebrating at halftime isn't what a mature Trainer does."
"Like you said—someone who flinches back isn't a real powerhouse."
"And whoever loses doesn't get to say that line."
Ash was trying to hit back with his own "verbal moves."
Mutual mind games.
"Piii—kaaaa—chuu!"
Pikachu exploded into motion the moment Ash spoke.
His words were the trigger:
The plan had begun.
The small yellow body burst forward with incredible speed, becoming a streak of golden light zigzagging across the field in a tight Z-pattern.
As it ran, Pikachu darted in and out of Raichu's range, tail flicking—
launching star-shaped bolts of light one after another.
Swift could fire many projectiles at once.
But it could also fire just one or two at a time.
"Cheap tricks," Lt. Surge snorted.
He'd already seen through what Ash was showing him.
Once a battle really started, all a Trainer could do was issue broad commands and trust their partner's training.
Fine-tuned micro-management simply couldn't keep up with that kind of speed.
That's where preparation mattered—
the daily training regime
and the strategy briefing before the battle.
Those were the true marks of a Trainer's quality—
not just their reaction in the heat of the moment.
Raichu roared, discharging a thick blast of electricity from its cheeks.
Thunderbolts lanced out, slamming into the incoming stars.
Explosions boomed in rapid succession as Swift and lightning collided midair—
golden light and white sparks blooming into shockwaves that rippled across the field.
But after a few exchanges, Lt. Surge's rough brows began to pull together.
Something was off.
Pikachu's movement pattern was slippery and unpredictable.
Every Swift flew in from an annoying angle, forcing Raichu to constantly adjust its aim and angle for its Thunderbolt.
Each of those Thunderbolts cost far more energy than Pikachu's light little stars.
If Raichu tried to snipe each Swift precisely, it would almost never hit.
So to maintain a decent hit rate, it had to fire wider, thicker bolts—
more like lifting up a huge shield of electricity.
And that meant one thing:
its energy expenditure was way higher than Pikachu's.
Raichu couldn't just stand there and eat the attacks either.
So every Thunderbolt not only detonated Swift in midair,
it also tried to nail Pikachu itself.
But Pikachu was too fast, too erratic—
and every explosion of Swift served as a buffer layer, like reactive armor on a tank.
Even when a little electricity slipped through, Lightning Rod and grounding through Pikachu's tail bled the power off harmlessly into the earth—
Sometimes even charging Pikachu up instead.
Electric-type mirror matches were always a hassle.
Pikachu flitted and wove around the arena, the golden blur bursting into short stops and turns—
every pause accompanied by one or two more stars.
Raichu, on the other hand, despite its overwhelming strength, had become a heavy turret—
standing its ground, forced into inefficient defense and burning through its stamina with every massive blast of lightning.
"Tch…" Lt. Surge clicked his tongue.
This Raichu wasn't one of his true main partners.
In raw speed, it simply couldn't compete.
Up in the stands, hushed whispers began to spread.
The Trainers who had come expecting to see a quick, brutal one-sided stomp now stared, wide-eyed, as that nimble Pikachu ran circles around Raichu, playing it like a fiddle.
Each collision of Swift and Thunderbolt felt like it was eroding Raichu's chances by another tiny fraction.
On Ash's side, he stayed cool as ice.
The kiting strategy was working perfectly—
the scales of victory slowly tipping in their favor, fraction by fraction.
But…
would it really be that simple?
Had Lt. Surge seriously never considered this scenario?
Of course he had.
"Gotta hand it to you, boy—you're not bad."
Lt. Surge finally spoke up again, a grin tugging at his mouth.
"But this battlefield has limits."
"Raichu, calculate Pikachu's movement vector!"
"Once its movement is pinned down—Electroweb to lock the field, then a full-power Thunderbolt!"
Lt. Surge knew Lightning Rod had limits.
Overload the circuit with enough power, and you burn through anyway.
Right now, Pikachu's biggest problem was the confined space.
In the wild, it could retreat forever.
In a Gym battle?
There were walls.
All Raichu had to do was push forward, and the field Pikachu could run in would shrink, meter by meter.
Once its movement was compressed to a minimum, Electroweb would seal the zone—
Electric-type energy shaped into a tangible net of lightning.
Unlike raw Thunderbolt, it wouldn't simply dissipate into the ground through Lightning Rod.
Scientific? Not really.
But very Pokémon.
Under Surge's orders, Raichu took the hits, shouldering the occasional Swift like a lumbering war machine as it began to advance.
Pikachu's Swift output stayed deliberately sparse.
One or two at a time.
The point of the move wasn't damage spam—
it was to force Raichu to keep discharging electricity,
to widen the gap in energy efficiency between the two sides.
It wasn't meant as a full bombardment.
That was the role Pidgeotto was being trained for.
"Pika!"
Pikachu's gaze stayed razor-focused.
It fired a volley of Swifts to divert Raichu's attention and obscure its line of sight,
then suddenly skidded hard, changing direction in an instant, slipping past a probing Thunderbolt by a hair.
Its little paws dug into the ground.
A burst of explosive power launched it into the air.
"Pikaaa—chuu!"
It twisted midair, body rolling gracefully.
Its tiny feet planted for just an instant on Raichu's thick neck,
using its bulk as a springboard—
Flipping away while firing another close-range string of Swift right into the gaps opened by Raichu's last attack.
Boom!
Boom!
Whoosh—!
Swift hammered into Raichu's exposed weak spots.
The larger Electric-type grunted, new burn marks and scuffs appearing along its body as its steps faltered for a moment.
A wave of gasps rolled through the stands.
That counterattack had been too fast, too sharp.
But Raichu's stamina and defense were monstrous.
It shook its head hard, eyes turning even fiercer.
It was hurt and it stung like hell—
but for the sake of victory, it forced itself to endure and kept pushing forward.
And that was exactly what Pikachu wanted to see.
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