"The attack looks like Surging Strikes, but it's different," Mustard said, watching carefully. "It's more aggressive, but there's no defense at all."
He thought about this more. With this 360-degree attack that hit everywhere, enemies couldn't fight back unless they attacked head-on. So when you use Savage Strike moves, you don't need to defend at all.
Damn, Mustard thought. This move might be even stronger than my Rapid Strike Urshifu's best attack.
He felt pretty defeated. John's Urshifu had looked at just two old scrolls and learned two special moves, and both were better than his own Pokemon's signature techniques. Was this thing some kind of fighting genius?
The funny thing was, he had given John that Kubfu in the first place!
John was studying the move he called Thousand Flowing Forms. Like Surging Strikes in the games, it always hit the target. But while Surging Strikes hit two to five times, this move seemed to go on forever.
In real life, the Savage Strike Urshifu's technique was way more than just five hits, it was an endless series of attacks.
When the long attack finally ended, the Rapid Strike Urshifu wasn't hurt at all. That made sense since it was almost 20 levels higher than its opponent. Big explosive attacks like Godslayer Strike might cause some damage if you weren't careful, but moves with lots of small hits like Thousand Flowing Forms didn't do much damage per hit. Against an old master of the Rapid Strike Style, they were still pretty weak.
"Your Urshifu seems to mix both Rapid Strike and Single Strike styles," Mustard said. "Maybe we should call it the 'All-Around Style.'"
John smiled and shook his head. "Don't worry about names yet. Let's try the next special move."
"There's another one?!" Mustard's eyes went wide. "Didn't it only look at two scrolls?"
John shrugged. "Who says you can only learn two moves from looking at two scrolls?"
Mustard couldn't argue with that. His own Pokémon couldn't even learn one special move after reading both scrolls.
"How many special moves has your Urshifu learned?" he asked.
"Only three. This is the last one."
Mustard told his Rapid Strike Urshifu to keep defending.
"Urshifu," John called out, "use the final move, Infinite Savage Form!"
John's Savage Strike Urshifu slowly got into a fighting position. Air started moving around its body in circles, pulling energy from everything around it. This was gathering aura power, like charging up for a big attack.
"Building up energy?" Mustard guessed. "So this is also a Single Strike Style move?"
When the energy was fully charged, it covered the Urshifu like a bright golden coat. This reminded John of the Terastal thing from the Paldea region, when a Pokemon was about to use a Tera move, energy would cover their whole body and make them shine.
In fighting games, this would be called "powering up."
The Savage Strike Urshifu stared at its target with scary intensity. For a moment, the Rapid Strike Urshifu felt like it was being hunted by a wild animal. This feeling was different from when the Savage Strike Urshifu used Godslayer Strike before.
Before, it had been nervous and sweaty. Now it was just pure fear.
Remembering how powerful the last attack was, the Rapid Strike Urshifu quickly put up Wide Guard and Protect, then got ready to defend.
The Savage Strike Urshifu attacked in the next moment.
It started with Quick Attack, appearing right in front of its opponent. The Rapid Strike Urshifu's vision got blurry, and suddenly there were Savage Strike Urshifu surrounding it from all sides!
Is this fake?
No, it's all real!
Using its aura power and special senses, the Rapid Strike Urshifu could tell that all eight Savage Strike Urshifu were completely real.
Are these copies?
Before it could figure it out, a storm of attacks hit from everywhere.
Godslayer Strike came from the front, Thousand Flowing Forms from behind, Spiral Aura Spheres from the left, and Blaze Kick from the right. Eight different attacks all hit at the same time from eight directions.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The sounds of explosions, hits, and energy blasts all mixed together. In just a few seconds, the Rapid Strike Urshifu's Wide Guard broke, its Protect shield was destroyed, and then the real damage hit.
In that short moment, the experienced Pokemon was completely beaten.
Both Mustard and John watched in shocked silence. The fight had been very quick, but they saw exactly what happened.
The Infinite Savage Form was basically a gang attack, the Savage Strike Urshifu had split into eight copies and attacked from all directions at once.
John could see parts of Greninja's copy strategy in this move. It seemed like his Kubfu had really combined the best parts of many different fighting styles. When the eight copies attacked, they used different moves with no set pattern.
But all the attacks had one thing the same: they were incredibly fast and brutal.
If the speed of Godslayer Strike and Thousand Flowing Forms was rated as 1, then when using Infinite Savage Form, it was 2 or even 3 times faster.
Even with a 20-level difference, this was crushing speed.
'Infinite Savage Form...'
John noticed that the move description also said "always hits" and "always hits weak spots." Maybe "Sure-Kill Style" would be a better name.
So was being super fast the only good thing about Infinite Savage Form?
"Is this +4 priority?" John said, his mouth twitching slightly.
Looking at the attack speed his Savage Strike Urshifu had just shown, there were only a few moves that could be faster than Infinite Savage Form.
[Priority +4!]
In the games, no matter which tough trainer you fought, this Urshifu would always attack first with this devastating move. Who could handle that?
He carefully read the full description of Infinite Savage Form:
[After using this move, the user goes into a "rage" mode and creates seven equally angry copies to attack one target. Attack moves are chosen randomly. The move always hits and always hits weak spots. (This cannot be stopped, and attacks won't end until the target can't fight anymore.)]
To compare: Quick Attack only had +1 priority, Extreme Speed was +2, Fake Out was +3, and only moves like Protect had the same +4 priority as Infinite Savage Form.
For really strong Pokemon, unless they were speed specialists, the gap wouldn't be impossible to deal with. But few opponents could handle this move's combination of always hitting, always hitting weak spots, and going first every time.