"Sigma, Future Sight."
The air was dry, crackling with electricity and power that shot out from the spoons in the battered Alakazam's claws. Its eyes glowed white and the star on its forehead pulsated gently, a sure sign that another psychic attack was building.
Rubble was strewn around the gym, remnants from the recent battles the building had suffered. The bodies of still-warm beasts lay amidst the concrete chunks and fragments of glass, and dust motes sparkled grimly in the outdoor spotlights that pierced the darkness through broken windows.
A young woman was standing behind the Alakazam. Blood dripped from various cuts that covered her body through torn slits in her clothes. Her face was stained by tears, but her eyes remained cold and hard.
"This is the end, Giovanni," she hissed at the injured man lying on the ground across from her, her voice rough and low. "You have nothing left now." Her left hand tightened on a small red and white orb, its companions lying shattered on the broken floor. Sigma's pulsing star grew brighter and stronger.
But the older man said nothing, the grin on his face only growing larger with every word she said. His gaze shone in the sparse and flickering light as his eyes flitted over the carnage around him.
"You have done well, child," Giovanni said, flicking a streamlet of blood away from his brow and straightening up from the floor. His injuries appeared worse than the woman's, but there was no hesitation in his movements as he stood. "To remain...intact, after all this? You have far more to boast about than most trainers who have faced me in the past.
"None of my opponents have been able to wipe out so much of my team as you have," he said, sneering as the young woman glanced away, tears threatening to spill over once again. "Why waste your weeping on failures? They deserved to die, if they could not fight to survive." Giovanni eyed the defiant Alakazam, spoons still shaking with power. "At least you know you have trained one worthy beast."
"One more than you have, you monster," the young woman cried.
Giovanni's grin broke into laughter, the gutless, breathless kind that nearly made him choke from all the grit floating in the dry air.
"Oh, child," he wheezed, "that's where you're poorly mistaken."
Her streaming eyes, dead from her deeds, grew wider.
"What do you mean?" she whispered. "They… I killed them. All of them. I ordered it and I saw it happen, each and every single death."
Silently reaching into his tattered coat, Giovanni pulled out a small, glimmering object that caught in the light. It was a Silph scope, with a number of tiny metallic attachments to it that whirred softly, somehow audible against the increasingly loud sirens approaching in the distance. As the object started to glow, he quickly touched a bloody finger to his ear, his pupils darting briefly to a cavity in the wall before settling back on the young woman.
"I know I have just applauded you for have gotten this far in your challenge. But the few men and women who have surpassed me in rank have never faced me in battle." He fiddled with the object's attachments as he spoke. "So far none have claimed victory from me in my own gym, and you will not be so different, child. When you have grown as old and as powerful as I have, you learn some new tricks." The Silph scope in Giovanni's hand began shaking in tandem with the ground beside him, and the young woman tensed beside her Alakazam.
"I would rather die than end up like you," she hissed. She began raising her left hand in command.
"Then I shall be happy to help you," Giovanni said calmly. He pointed the Silph scope at her just as a desecrated body rose from the ground, scattering rubble and dust all around it, its mouth glowing even brighter than Sigma's star. The Alakazam's eyes grew round.
"Hyper Beam."
In the instant Giovanni's mouth formed the words, Sigma teleported just besides the young woman, the force of his movement knocking her back behind him. The bright white beam, at least a foot in diameter, shot directly at the Alakazam instead. There was a flash, several new splatters of blood, and a thunderous crash that drowned out screams of pain. In that instant, a single, gasping chest was rising and falling spastically, desperately, as a wave of uniformed people swarmed the mostly empty gym. Some tended to most of the young woman remaining on the ground, and the rest spread out in search of the criminal that had left a path of destruction behind him.
Amidst the shouting and the shining lights, a single ghostly figure rose from the ruins of the gym, a pale glowing violet against the stars.
