Solar Beam — a Grass-type move with a base power of 120. Because Meganium was a Grass-type Pokémon, it received a same-type attack bonus, pushing the effective power of that Solar Beam to 180.
The advantage is mine.
Both moves connected at the same moment.
As it happened, the type matchups were perfectly balanced in both directions. Meganium, as a Grass-type, had double resistance to Ground-type moves. Nidorino, as a Poison-type, had double resistance to Grass-type moves. Neither side had an edge over the other in that regard.
It was as fair a clash as a battle could get.
The resulting explosion was enormous, a shockwave bursting outward from both sides of the field at once. When the smoke finally settled, both Pokémon were still standing — but only just. Meganium could barely hold itself upright on its front legs, its hindquarters too spent to lift off the ground. Nidorino's entire body trembled, its pale purple fur singed and smudged from the impact.
For a few long breaths, neither Pokémon moved.
Then Meganium's forelegs buckled. It swayed once and went down, losing consciousness as it hit the arena floor.
Charlie raised the red flag on Nova's side, signaling the end of the match.
At the sound of the referee's whistle, Nidorino finally gave in as well, sinking to the ground with heavy, laboured breathing. It had pushed itself to the very limit.
Nova and Thelma moved at the same time, recalling their Pokémon into their Poké Balls without a word before heading straight to the Gym's infirmary.
"I don't get it."
The Pokémon were already in recovery, being treated by the medical equipment. Thelma stood in the middle of the treatment room, arms crossed, staring at Nova with a hard look on her face.
"Solar Beam was clearly the stronger move. Meganium had more HP than Nidorino. So why did your Nidorino outlast it?"
Nova was still coming down from the battle. That had been the closest thing to a loss he had experienced, and his head was still catching up.
Charlie placed a hand gently on top of Thelma's head.
"It comes down to Nidorino's Hustle ability. Hustle lowers the accuracy of Nidorino's physical moves to eighty percent — but in return, it boosts the power of those same moves by one and a half times. So Meganium was not taking a Stomping Tantrum with a base power of one hundred and fifty. It was taking a move with an effective base power of two hundred and twenty-five. Even with Meganium's higher HP, it could not withstand that."
Thelma let out a slow breath.
"I see where I went wrong now."
Charlie's smile widened. He only ever needed to give her a nudge in the right direction — she always found the rest herself.
"Tell me."
"I lost because of how I used the abilities. My plan to use Leaf Guard to shut down Nova's poison at the start was sound. But I moved to Light Screen too quickly. If I had let Meganium take the pressure from Nidorino's special attacks a little longer — brought it down to around a third of its HP — Overgrow would have activated. With that boost, I might not have won, but it would have been a draw at least."
Nova, who had been standing quietly off to the side, spoke up.
"Your strategy wasn't actually wrong, though."
Thelma looked at him.
"Stomping Tantrum had an eighty percent chance of hitting. Your Solar Beam landed cleanly. If that move had missed, Nidorino wouldn't have survived the next turn — and we both know it. You pushed me as far as anyone has. I got lucky. That's the honest version of what happened."
Thelma pulled a face at him, more amused than annoyed. "Alright, stop trying to be generous. Luck counts for something too. If I had a strategy that should've worked and still lost, then my strategy wasn't good enough. Simple as that."
She paused, then added with complete confidence: "Next time, I'll win."
She had said something like that after every loss. But this time, Nova actually believed her. If Nidorino did not come into their next battle meaningfully stronger, it would not just be a close loss — it would be a one-sided one. That was the reality of going up against someone whose battle sense was as sharp as Thelma's.
The pressure of that was something Nova had not felt quite like this before.
There was another truth he had been sitting with, too. Nidorino had given everything it had as a first-stage Pokémon, and the training system had already been pointing Nova toward the same conclusion — Nidorino needed to evolve. Asking a first-stage Pokémon to keep pace with fully evolved opponents was pushing things too far. The gap in base stats alone made that a losing battle over time.
The advanced Pokémon treatment unit pulsed with a soft green light, signaling that both Pokémon had made a full recovery.
Thelma picked up both Poké Balls from the tray and held Nidorino's out to Nova.
"Stop spacing out. We're going to eat. I said I'd pay, and I meant it."
About fifteen minutes later, the three of them were in a taxi heading toward a well-known barbecue place on the pedestrian street in Goldenlight City.
Max, who oversaw the Luma Gym's interns, politely excused himself at the door, mentioning dinner waiting at home — and perhaps sensing that staying would mean watching his young charge spend a lot of money.
Nova and Charlie, on the other hand, had no such restraint.
The two of them picked up the menu and started ordering immediately — grilled Tauros steak, oven-roasted duck with leek, crispy pork chops, and cod hand rolls. The table filled up quickly.
(A note on the ingredients: all of the above was synthetic meat, produced through genetic cloning technology. No Pokémon were harmed. More on that below.)
Thelma watched the platters arriving one after another, gripping her wallet tightly, silently calculating the damage.
From the founding of the Norlandia Alliance onward, the Pokémon Welfare Law had been in place as a globally recognized standard.
Among its core provisions: domesticated Pokémon are granted basic rights within the League. The natural food chain is acknowledged only in the wild, where Trainers in genuine survival situations may, on rare occasions, hunt Pokémon with stable wild populations for food. But domesticated Pokémon are never to be preyed upon, and humans are not permitted to raise or slaughter Pokémon as livestock.
In practice, this meant that the food on the table was not what it might appear to be. Certain Pokémon contributed to the food supply in ways that caused no harm — Slowpoke tails, for instance, regrow naturally and have long been considered a delicacy. But for species like Tauros, the approach was different: high-quality tissue was replicated using advanced genetic cloning techniques, allowing for clean and cruelty-free production of meat with all the flavour of the original.
The concept was not entirely unlike the lab-grown meat that had begun emerging in Nova's original world.
Back there, Nova had never warmed up to the idea. He had kept it at arm's length.
Here, though, he did not hesitate. Pokémon were intelligent beings — no less so than people. Sitting down to a meal of real Tauros meat would have felt completely wrong to him. These were individuals with thoughts and feelings, not livestock.
But the cattle raised on farms back in his original world were a different matter entirely. They were not Tauros. And so Nova ate without a second thought, reaching for another piece of grilled steak without any guilt weighing on him at all.