Hammerlocke Stadium.
Wallace recalled his fainted Starmie.
He looked at Ash with even greater admiration.
"Ash, I never expected you to spot this move's weakness so quickly."
Starmie could use Rapid Spin to move swiftly across water, or across the ground after Rain Dance.
The move had never failed him.
Even many Pokémon faster than Starmie had fallen to it.
But Wallace knew the move had a weakness.
That was why he had never used it before.
At least, not in the Master League.
He had never imagined that on its very first outing,
Ash would counter it outright.
It worked on the same principle as Yuan Daying's Blue Butterfly Cloud-Wandering Body-Step: all those flashy movements at the start made him impossible to touch...
But the final dunk still had to head toward the basket.
Likewise, Starmie's Waltz required it to stop.
Otherwise, the recoil from any move would make it lose control of itself, and could even cause it to hurt itself.
Wallace had only discovered this weakness through practical testing.
Yet Ash had spotted it in such a short time.
Wallace could not help marveling.
"What astonishing battle instincts."
"What an unpredictable opponent."
Even Lance and the others lacked Ash's unpredictability.
Backstage, Lance and the others were still discussing how to solve the problem, while Ash had already supplied the answer.
Lance's solution was simple enough...
Overwhelming firepower, total coverage.
Who cared how well it could slide? Just knock it out.
Starmie's move certainly looked impressive.
But against Dragonite's Hurricane...
It would all amount to nothing.
Draco Meteor could cover a wide area too.
But none of them had considered Ash's solution.
Ash's astonishing unpredictability, combined with years of practical battle experience and this past year of studying the fundamentals...
The Ash of today had undergone a complete