He'd actually beaten Cetitan.
"Jason!"
Gast and Iron Valiant's voices came from behind.
They rushed over, trying to help Jason up.
"Don't come."
Jason rasped, stopping them.
"The battle isn't over yet."
His gaze cut through the swirling snow and locked onto the last man standing.
Grusha hadn't moved.
He glanced down at the fallen Cetitan, then at Jason, who could barely stand. Slowly, he recalled his partner.
He had to admit—Jason was strong. Probably the strongest Trainer he'd faced. The other gym leaders had praised him to the skies before, but Grusha hadn't thought much of them.
He hadn't expected Jason to take out four of his Pokémon all by himself.
Without another word, he threw his final Poké Ball.
No crash, no burst of cold.
A light-blue Pokémon with cottony wings floated gently down to the field.
Altaria.
It looked gentle, even frail—forming a stark contrast to the hulking Cetitan and roaring Beartic from before.
"Huh?" Gast slowed, puzzled. "It's that one again."
Jason gave a bitter smile inside.
Looking at the Altaria, every alarm bell he had was screaming.
"That's his ace."
His thoughts raced. If nothing goes wrong, he's going to Terastallize that Altaria—Ice Tera, most likely—and I've got nothing left in the tank.
He couldn't even gather enough strength to fire off Bitter Blade anymore.
And Grusha clearly wasn't giving him a breather.
Grusha raised his right hand. A device on his wrist held a jewel that shone with prismatic light.
Tera Orb.
"You're the last one," Grusha said—eyes on Altaria, but gaze cutting through it to Jason. "Answer my resolve, Altaria!"
His palm pressed to the Orb.
"Terastallize!"
"Arng!"
Altaria let out a clear dragon cry as a beam of light dropped from the sky and wrapped around it. Amid the falling snow, energy began to crystallize.
The cottony wings hardened into ice-feathered blades. The blue body was encased in thick, transparent ice armor.
Most dazzling of all was its head.
A huge, glittering crown of ice crystals formed from nothing.
Terastallization—Ice.
Its original Dragon/Flying typing vanished, replaced by pure Ice.
"Whoaa!" Gast gawped. "It transformed! So pretty! But—Jason, be careful! He's Ice now—you've got the type advantage!"
Jason was speechless. Advantage, my ass. If he hadn't farmed so many Pokédex entries and boosted his HP base stats, he'd have gone down ages ago.
He eyed the ice-crowned Altaria.
"His Ice Tera will supercharge those Ice moves…"
Grusha had already raised his hand. There'd be no openings.
"Ice Beam!"
On command, Altaria opened its mouth. A searing, needle-sharp beam of compressed ice-blue power shot straight for Jason.
"Move!"
Dragging his injured left leg, he threw everything he had into hurling himself to the side.
Boom!
The beam hit where he'd been kneeling a heartbeat before. The rock and snow there flash-froze into a single, enormous ice block in a tenth of a second.
"That was close—" He'd barely gotten halfway back up when—
"Moonblast!"
Grusha gave him no time at all.
Altaria's crystalline wings flared; a pink energy sphere blasted toward him.
Thump!
Jason could only cross both blades to block. The impact flung him again; he smashed into an ice boulder, armor shards scattering across the ground.
"Dragon Pulse!"
Altaria's movepool was no joke. From overhead, a dragon-shaped shockwave came screaming down.
"Damn it!"
Under that rain of long-range fire, he had no way to get close. All he could do was roll and dive behind cover, dodging as best he could while his stamina bled away.
"This can't go on…"
Crouched behind a chunk of rock, panting, he gritted his teeth.
"I can't even get near it."
"It's in the air, I'm stuck on the ground, and it's a turret. In this state, how do I fight it?"
"Am I really going to lose here?"
His awareness started to fuzz.
"No… no way."
"I—I can't lose here."
"I promised to avenge Liko."
A strange, stubborn conviction surged up from somewhere deep.
In his eyes, the dead fire sparked back to life—just a little ember. Was that the fire of resolve?
He ignored the next Moonblast Altaria threw. He ran straight through its explosion and burst from behind the rock.
"Hurricane!"
Grusha saw him charge and ordered at once. Altaria beat its ice wings; a Blizzard fiercer than any Beartic had summoned earlier tore across the entire field.
"Useless!" Grusha shouted. "In my Hurricane, you won't even know which way is up!"
But—
Inside that wall of white, a figure flickering with faint flame forced its way forward.
Jason lowered his head and charged straight toward Altaria.
"Impossible…"
For the first time, Grusha's composure cracked.
"He can still run in a straight line inside my Hurricane?"
"Finish it! Ice Beam!"
Altaria gathered everything it had left—its crystal crown blazing. A massive Ice Beam, several times thicker than before, blasted at the charging figure.
Jason stared straight at the incoming beam. He knew he couldn't dodge. And he didn't intend to.
"Now!"
He brought his shattered left blade and his still-intact right blade together. The last scraps of his fire, the last bit of Ghost power—he poured everything into the tip.
"I don't care what kind of Ice Tera you are—"
"I'm breaking through!"
Bi—
tter—
Blade!
Fire and ice met dead-on at the center of the summit.
Boom!
His flames were snuffed the instant they hit the beam; even with type advantage, he was too hurt. In the clash of raw energy, he was overwhelmed. The blue beam swallowed the fire and kept coming for his chest.
"It's over," Grusha thought.
But the blade carried more than fire.
It carried regret.
The will of a Ghost.
The flames died under the ice—but a thin violet-black Ghost edge broke through the shell. That spectral blade punched straight into the heart of the Ice Beam.
Under Grusha's stunned stare—
Under Altaria's puzzled gaze—
the Ghost blade fought upstream, carving through meters of frozen light. And in the very last instant, when its energy finally ran dry—
Tink.
A tiny sound.
The very tip of that blade tapped Altaria's shimmering Tera crown.
Crack.
A fine fissure spread across the ice.
The next second, it raced over the whole crown—and along Altaria's crystal shell.
Bang!
The Tera shield shattered.
"Arng—!"
Altaria gave one last cry as the light went out of its eyes. It fell from the sky and thumped softly into the snow.
The battle was over.
Jason finally couldn't hold himself up any longer. All light vanished from his armor. He pitched forward—
but at the last moment, he drove both broken swords down into the snow in front of him.
He dropped to one knee.
He did not fall.
The summit wind stopped. The shattered Ice Tera Altaria lay quietly in the snow, unable to battle. Jason's figure stayed in that half-kneeling pose, both ruined blades embedded in the ice, keeping him from collapsing.
Frostpoint's peak fell into a strange silence.
"…6"
The "cheer squad" at the back was quiet too. Gast hovered, mouth hanging open, at a loss for words. Iron Valiant's optics stopped flickering; he seemed to be processing.
Jason had actually won.
Miraidon dropped its head, a low electric rumble coming from its throat. "Interesting. Being able to take down five strong Pokémon alone… he has earned the right to ride on my back."
"Jason…" Gast called softly.
He didn't answer—just panted.
"Haa… haa… haa…"
He was completely spent. The mighty armor was cracked and punctured all over; the wound in his left shoulder still leaked black mist—cold and Dark energy chewing at him from within.
He barely had the strength to lift a finger.
Grusha stood at the other end of the field. The calm and the icy focus were gone, replaced by something else. He hadn't expected Jason to actually beat his entire team solo.
He looked from the kneeling Ceruledge to the Altaria in the snow.
1v5.
From Frosmoth's setup,
to Beartic's brute force,
to Weavile's Tailwind ambush,
to Cetitan's Thick Fat armor,
and finally the Ice Tera finishing blow from his ace Altaria—
Grusha's tactics. Grusha's team. Grusha's full power.
All of it had been carved through from start to finish by a single Pokémon.
Silently, he recalled Altaria. He took a long look at Jason's still-breathing figure.
"You win," he said.
There was a note of fatigue in his voice he didn't even notice himself.
He pulled out the Frostpoint badge from his pocket—ice-blue, catching the mountain's faint light in his gloved hand.
He didn't walk over.
He just tossed it.
"Catch."
The badge traced a shallow arc in the air toward Jason.
Jason lifted his head, watching it come. He wanted to raise a hand to grab it—
but his body had reached its limit.
In the instant before he fell, that shattered armor came apart.
Black shards and purple flames blew away in the wind. The Ceruledge form collapsed.
Pop.
He reverted to his true self.
A soft, pink, jelly-like Ditto.
With the armor gone, all the pain the Ceruledge form had been suppressing crashed into him at once.
"YEOW—aaaaaaah!"
A scream rang across the summit. Jason flattened into a "puddle" in the snow. The badge landed with a soft plop on top of him.
"Ow ow ow ow ow—!"
He wriggled feebly across the snow. "My left shoulder! My left shoulder! That bastard Weavile went way too hard! And my waist! Cetitan's hit was trying to break me in half!"
"Jason!"
This time Gast and Iron Valiant couldn't hold back—they shot forward at once.
"Jason, are you okay?!" Gast hovered over the puddle, circling in panic. "Are you going to melt? Why are you spread out like that?"
"Jason," Iron Valiant knelt and poked the pink blob with a finger. "Are you alright?"
"Don't touch me! I don't want to move at all right now—let me lie here for five minutes…" Jason groaned weakly.
Miraidon ambled over as well. It lowered its head and sniffed at him.
"Hmph. Still alive. Tough little thing."
"Tough—haa—tough your—haa—tough," Jason panted back.
He lay there like a pancake in the snow, completely still, enjoying post-battle "sage time."
"Alright, alright," Gast said, relaxing a little now that he could still argue. "It's over! We got the badge! Jason, you were amazing! Let's go down the mountain and get ice cream! My treat!"
"Wait."
His voice came, faint.
"What?"
"Don't rush… we haven't done the most important thing yet."
Under the eyes of Gast, Iron Valiant, Miraidon—and Grusha, on the other side—
Jason started to wriggle, painfully.
A small piece of his goo separated from the "puddle," trembling as it formed into a crude "hand." That hand reached into his own body and pulled something out.
A Rotom Phone.
The summit went silent again.
Grusha stared, confused, at the Ditto.
What kind of phone-addicted Ditto was this?
"Jason?" Gast asked, her tone shifting. "You're this exhausted and you still want to play on your phone?"
He cleared his throat. "At a time like this, of course I have to record it!"
Still sprawled in the snow, he lifted the phone up.