At Aaron's command, Greninja's cross-shaped pupils narrowed.
Still surrounded by the golden energy of Sage Mode and the Tailed Beast Cloak, he brought his palms together.
A series of bursts sounded across the snow.
More than a dozen identical Greninja appeared around the battlefield.
"Grenin!"
"Grenin!"
The Shadow Clones spread out at once, surrounding Sandslash from every direction.
Then they attacked.
Dozens of Water Shuriken flew from their hands, each marked with a small stylized frog seal. The spinning blades streaked through the air like blue bullets, converging on Sandslash from all sides.
"SLASH!"
Sandslash reacted immediately.
Silver Steel-type energy coated its claws.
Metal Claw!
Its arms became a blur.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
One Water Shuriken after another shattered beneath its claws, bursting into droplets that scattered across the snow.
With Slush Rush doubling its Speed in the falling snow, Sandslash managed to destroy every projectile before one could touch it.
But the shuriken themselves had never been the real threat.
The little black frog seals remained.
Even after the water dispersed, the marks drifted down around Sandslash and settled across the battlefield.
Sandslash did not understand their purpose.
All it knew was that Greninja's attack had failed.
A smug look appeared on its face.
That was it?
After the Rasengan and the enormous Rasenshuriken from earlier, these weak little projectiles were almost insulting.
Then the space beside it rippled.
"...!"
A golden figure appeared without warning.
Greninja.
There had been no charge.
No approach.
One instant, he had been several meters away.
The next, he was right beside Sandslash.
And in one hand spun a white-blue Sage Art: Rasenshuriken.
"SLASH!"
Every instinct in Sandslash screamed danger.
It whipped around and drove a Metal Claw toward Greninja with all the speed Slush Rush could give it.
SWISH!
Its claws passed through empty air.
Greninja vanished.
Sandslash's eyes widened.
Almost simultaneously, another spatial distortion appeared on its opposite side.
Greninja was already there.
The black frog seals scattered around the battlefield were not decorations.
They were anchors.
Marks for Flying Raijin.
Inside the Flying Raijin: Water Shuriken Formation, Greninja could jump instantly from one marked location to another. There was no path to follow, no movement for Sandslash to intercept. He simply disappeared from one point in space and reappeared at another.
Sandslash had extraordinary speed.
But speed meant very little against teleportation.
And that was only half the problem.
Greninja's reflexes were already exceptional.
Combined with Sage Mode, his sensory abilities allowed him to read Sandslash's movements almost the moment they began.
Spatial movement plus superior reactions.
Within the formation, the combination was brutally effective.
Any opponent whose reactions could not keep pace with Greninja would be trapped in a kill zone, forced to attack empty space while Greninja chose exactly where and when to strike.
Unless Sandslash had some way to lock down space itself—or stop Greninja from reacting altogether—it had no real answer.
And Sandslash had neither.
...
Greninja appeared silently at its flank.
Sandslash was still turning toward the position he had occupied an instant earlier.
Then it felt the attack coming.
Its head snapped sideways.
Too late.
The spinning blades of the Rasenshuriken struck first.
CRACK!
The hardened ice protecting Sandslash's body shattered on contact.
Fragments exploded away from its armor.
For the first time since the battle began, genuine fear appeared in its eyes.
Greninja's expression did not change.
His arm drove forward.
Sage Art: Rasenshuriken!
BOOM!
The technique detonated against Sandslash at point-blank range.
Thousands of microscopic wind blades erupted inside the blast.
They tore through the remaining ice armor.
Then through the body beneath it.
"SLAAAAASH!"
Sandslash screamed.
There was anger in the cry.
Fear.
And, finally, regret.
It had spent the entire battle treating the humans and their Pokémon as insignificant creatures that could be killed whenever they became inconvenient.
Now it could do nothing but watch as the Rasenshuriken tore it apart.
The attack did not simply cut flesh.
Its wind blades destroyed on an almost cellular level, shredding Sandslash faster than its body could withstand.
The scream ended.
Its body broke apart inside the storm of wind.
Then even those remains were torn smaller.
And smaller.
Until there was nothing recognizable left.
No body.
No bones.
Not even fragments scattered across the snow.
The Alpha Pokémon that had ruled this part of the secret zone was gone.
Sandslash had never imagined that the creatures it had dismissed as beneath its notice would be the ones to kill it.
If it had understood what Aaron and Greninja were capable of from the beginning, it would never have emerged from beneath the snow to steal those Frostfruits.
By the time it realized that, there was nothing left to regret.
...
The golden energy around Greninja gradually faded.
Sage Mode ended.
The Tailed Beast Cloak disappeared with it.
A moment later, Frog Boss was back to his usual pitch-black appearance, standing in the snow with the same half-lidded, utterly unimpressed expression he wore for almost everything.
He returned to Aaron's side without any sign that defeating a mid-stage Class Champion had required much effort at all.
Aaron smiled.
"Nicely done, Frog Boss."
"Grenin."
Greninja gave a short croak and looked away.
The response could only be interpreted one way.
Was that supposed to be difficult?
Aaron chuckled.
"Yeah, yeah. Come on. Let's head down."
Greninja followed as Aaron made his way down from the ridge toward the rest of the expedition.
...
The people below were still trying to understand what they had just witnessed.
From their perspective, Greninja had disappeared.
Then reappeared beside Sandslash.
Then disappeared again.
By the time their eyes finally caught up, that enormous windmill-shaped sphere had already struck.
And Sandslash—the Class Champion-level Pokémon that had torn through Grant and Ryan's teams, killed several members of the expedition, and nearly crushed everyone beneath a massive Icicle Crash—had simply ceased to exist.
They had expected a battle.
A real one.
They had imagined Sandslash and Greninja trading attacks across the mountainside, each forcing the other to reveal more of its strength before one finally came out on top.
Instead, once Frog Boss went all out, the fight ended almost immediately.
One decisive attack.
And an extraordinarily brutal death.
No body remained.
No bones.
Nothing.
Several expedition members stood frozen in place, their jaws hanging open.
"That's it...?"
"He killed it?"
"With one attack?"
Another person stared at the empty patch of snow where Sandslash had been standing.
"There's not even anything left."
A few people instinctively drew sharp breaths.
In the already freezing forest, the air suddenly seemed even colder.
They had spent the last several minutes terrified of Sandslash.
Now they were beginning to wonder whether they should have been more terrified of the frog.