I sit in a café in Hearthome City, looking at the streamers and bunting that decorate the beautiful metropolis. The five-times-named "Most Desirable Place to Live" is in the middle of its Spring Festival, a fortnight of parades, events and celebration at the natural beauty that surrounds the city. Hearthome is still in the midst of reparations from the disaster last year My interviewee, former Chief of Police Silas Kemp, steps out of an ageing car and walks across to meet me. His expression is unsmiling and austere. I shake his hand, and we sit and place orders in relative silence.

(He looks around himself.)

Beautiful, isn't it? Hearthome, I mean. Really lives up to its name. It might be a city but it's got none of the smog of, say, Saffron or Rustboro. I love this city.

(He looks at me almost accusingly.)

But you're not here to talk about Hearthome, are you? You're here to talk about what happened last year. The "Coronet Incident" as they're calling it now.

(He jabs a finger at the summit of Mt. Coronet, just visible over the buildings.)

Well, I might have been Chief at the time but I really know about as much as you do.

It was the Chimecho who noticed it first. Did you know that? The Chimecho that float around this city aren't just for show, they were our alarm at the time. We didn't know that, of course. It was mid-afternoon. I was at this god-awful conference thing on the top floor of the Silph building. I went out to get away from the reporters for a few minutes, and I was looking out the window. There was this Chimecho floating past. It sort of...turned around and smiled at me. I think it rang, but I couldn't hear through the triple-glaze. I was watching it, and then suddenly it just...stopped. In mid-air. It went completely rigid and just hovered in one spot and stared ahead, like...

I thought it was just Pokémon being Pokémon. Was I ever wrong.

What happened after that?

I went back to the conference. The press pack was drifting away and I sort of started talking to Jess. That's Jessica Walters, my secretary. She was fantastic. Just brilliant.

So we were talking and then there was what sounded like a thunderclap but so, so much louder. The entire building shook. A couple of us fell and Jess screamed. We ran to the window and...I've just never seen anything like it. The sky...it was...it was like blood.

And then?

Fire. Lightning. Coming from the sky, that awful bloody sky. And things were happening too, terrible things. I looked around, and Jess and about three other people...they were caught in this big globe of...of red, and...they were screaming, and they were...their bodies were...

If this makes you uncomfortable...

No, I'm fine. Their bodies were...warping, changing, bending, it was like...you know when you go to a fairground and you see yourself in the Hall of Mirrors? Like that. Distorted, and bent. And then...then they were sucked into the redness and disappeared. Gone. Jess...just vanished. I looked out the window and I could see these big red spheres everywhere, some in the sky, some on the ground or on the rooftops or some sticking out of the sides of buildings. The buildings were shaking and where the red spheres came, everything inside them disappeared. And the lightning just kept coming down, like no storm I'd ever seen.

What did you do?

(chuckles mirthlessly) What do you think I did? I ran. Just ran down the stairs as fast as I could, nearly knocked over people on the way, and they were running just like me. Halfway down, someone just vanished, right in front of me. Just...gone. I think it was a journalist or something, I don't know. A little further down I heard this scream and I looked back and half the stairwell had just...changed...it had turned upside down and shifted and distorted, just like Jess, and it was...glowing, the same colour as the sky. I just kept running with everyone else

And then, I got out into the courtyard. People were running and there were cars on fire. I guess they had been struck by the lightning or something. I looked up, running on adrenaline, trying to see where the red sky was coming from. I saw Mount Coronet, and the summit was just cloaked in darkness, like all the light had just left it.

And then...then it happened.

"The Pulse"?

Well, that's what they call it now. The darkness sort of...undulated and shone...I don't know how darkness can shine, but it did. And then this big circular pulse, like the sky but darker, tore itself from the darkness and flew out at an angle. It was headed right for Hearthome.

And?

I ducked. Then just as I looked up, the pulse hit the Silph skyscraper head on.

First it looked like nothing had happened. The pulse just went through the building and kept on going. Then...then it fell.

What fell?

The top half of the building. It had been cut, totally cleanly, across the path of the pulse. It just...slid, almost like you see in cartoons. It slid and then it fell, right on top of a smaller office building just beside it. So many people were up there, so many people were in the building it fell on. It can't have been the only building to have been cut, but I was there. It was all so...calm. It didn't even make a noise as it went through.

It didn't even make a noise. Not until it hit the ground. There was silence, just for a moment. Then as the dust came up, the screaming started. Only this time it was so much louder. I was screaming too. I just lay there, curled up against the fountain in the courtyard. I just waited for it all to stop, pushed myself against the wall, and cried like a baby.

A month after the crisis I lost my position. I was deposed with immediate effect by the emergency government. They called it "early retirement", said I had suffered "trauma" and needed to take time off. Paid for my health plan and everything.

I don't care, though. I know what I am to them. Damaged goods. Everyone who was there, "damaged". We saw things that shouldn't be possible.

(he smiles sadly)

But hey. What good is an old cop, huh?

A total of 62 buildings either collapsed or had to be demolished because of structural instability caused by the Pulse. 10713 are confirmed dead, with 723 missing, presumed dead. In whole or in part, the body of Jessica Walters has never been recovered.

An interjection from the author:

I started thinking about what the results of an angry Palkia in particular could be, and the result (after voraciously devouring World War Z) was this little fic. Please review—any and all criticism is highly appreciated. Thanks.