The sounds of whirring blades startled Cynthia awake. She fumbled in the darkness for the Poké Balls on her nightstand, her arm heavy and numb. Not even the hot, adrenaline-laced blood in her veins could keep her from knocking everything on the nightstand over.

She looked out the window and shielded her eyes; two blinding lights blasted through her window. Her bare feet tread over her thin nightgown, which she slipped off just before laying down for the night earlier. She wrapped it around herself and ran out of her bedroom.

"Not those damn Galactics again," she muttered. Her hands slapped the walls blindly until she found the light switch. The roar of the chopper blades grew and echoed against the halls. Cynthia covered her ears and ran for the back door, watching as her haggard reflection stared back at her in the glass.

Her hands threw the door open, and she ran in the dark of her back patio toward her garage. She cursed under her breath; her Poké Balls still lay on her nightstand. If those Galactics found her Garchomp, or Lucario…

The moonlight made her silky nightgown gleam in the night. Anyone with half-blind eyes would see her, exposed and alone, especially anyone who would want to attack her. She hid behind a bush, trembling against the cold March winds. Her frayed, thinning blonde hair whipped every which way, and she tried to keep it straight.

"Cynthia?" a man's voice called.

She froze. The voice wasn't too deep, but still instilled a chilling sense of authority. The voice, cold as steel, washed a cool sense of relief over her. She stood and walked back toward the house.

"Steven?" she called back. "What the hell are you doing?"

A tall, slender shadow appeared from the side of the mansion. In the pale moonlight, Cynthia could make out Steven's short, platinum hair, the gleam of his tidy work suit. A fraction of a grin sparked from his lips. Behind him, the lights on the chopper dimmed, and the blades slowly whirred to a halt.

"I didn't wake you, did I?" Steven chuckled.

Cynthia jogged up to him and punched him in the arm. "I thought it was Team Galactic, you ass! You had me scared half to death!"

Steven ruffled his hair and laughed nervously. "That's my bad. Thought you would like your own personal escort to the –"

"Personal escort?" She asked, leading Steven through the back door into her kitchen. "For what?"

He hopped onto the counter and sighed, swiping a banana off of the counter. "Lance called an emergency League meeting about an hour ago. He was still in Kalos for the offensive, so by the time he called it you would've been dead asleep."

"Whuh?" Cynthia glared at the clock on her stove. 1:03 AM. "I'm surprised that you're not with him. But why'd he call a meeting?"

The chopper lights shone to life again. Steven strode to the front door and flung it open. "Give me a damn minute, will ya?"

Cynthia heard a pilot shout something incohesively as Steven slammed the door shut. "Guy's a pushover," he said. "But anyways, the entire League is being called in by sunrise to discuss transgressions for the Syndicate Alliance." He took a bite out of the banana.

"But the war's not over!" Cynthia protested.

Steven grinned slyly and swallowed his bite of banana. A devious glare shone from his grey eyes.

"You're screwing with me, right?" Cynthia said. "No way! I mean, the offensive wasn't even in full force –"

"They surrendered," Steven said bluntly. "All six of them at once." His grin grew wider as he leapt off of the counter toward the bathroom. "They musta known they were no match for us! Lucky them. . ."

"But. . . but the Kalos offensive. . ." Cynthia trailed.

"Never mind that!" Steven said. "Just get your pokémon and get ready to leave!"

Cynthia felt her legs tremble, her mind spinning in circles. Years of fighting against the Syndicate Alliance…and it just stopped? Was the League really too much for them?

She stumbled back to her bedroom and slipped her faux fur jacket over her nightgown. Her bony fingers could barely grasp her Poké Balls to pocket them. After hopping into a pair of slacks, she held her head in one hand and sighed. The beginnings of a migraine formed in the center of her brain, and she winced.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," she mumbled to herself. "Transgressions?"

"Almost done?" Steven yelled. "We need to hightail it out of here if we wanna make it to the League on time!"

She straightened her hair haphazardly with her hands and found Steven, leaning against the front door, his foot tapping against the floor impatiently. "Yeah, sure," she said, filing past him out the door. The helicopter roared to life again, its blades slicing the wind methodically.

"I could've gotten there myself, you know!" she shouted, climbing into the chopper. "All you had to do was call me!"

Steven smirked and climbed in gracefully, taking the seat across from her. "That, Cynthia, would have been far less exciting!"


He nudged Cynthia on the shoulder to wake her. "We're almost there," he whispered.

Cynthia stirred and rubbed her eyes, standing to stretch her cramped limbs. Her legs had scrunched against her neck while she slept, and she almost fell back to her knees, they felt that stiff.

"What time is it?" she moaned, glaring at the morning sun blasting through the fish-eyed windows.

"Almost eight AM," Steven said. "Made it to Kanto right on time."

Cynthia leered at the window and groaned. Dozens of reporters and photographers, armed to the teeth with cameras and microphones, crowded against the immaculate landscaping near the League building's entrance. Bright camera flashes reflected off of the building's golden pillars like explosions, only with the clamorous shouts instead of thunderous booms.

"They knew we'd be coming," Steven muttered as ground crews shooed the paparazzi away from the descending chopper. "They always gotta hear from the big shots when so much as a gym leader gets hitched, much less when we win a war."

The helicopter landed abruptly, and Cynthia flung the doors open with a smirk. Her feet didn't even find solid ground before a horde of camera lenses and microphones blocked her vision of the League building's mahogany doors.

"Any comment on the treaty that led to the Syndicate Alliance's surrender?" one reporter shouted, poking a microphone at her face.

"No comment," she muttered. "Everything at this point is up in the air." She strode past the mob effortlessly with a wave of the condescending hand, while Steven wrestled past jumpy teeny boppers, their hands outstretched with pens and notepads.

"They're like animals out there," Steven said when they entered the building. "I think that's the fourth time this year I lost a lock of hair."

Cynthia chuckled, and the massive doors behind them shut with a low thud. The shouts of the reporters outside vanished, and all that she could hear were the hushed whispers from the chamber ahead of her.

"They're probably about to start," Steven said, taking her hand and rushing forward. Cynthia stumbled alongside him, her heels clacking against the tiled floor and echoing across the halls. The marble gargoyle statues that lined the velvet walls glared at her threateningly, like the eyes of Medusa piercing her heart.

She shuddered and walked through the doors, gasping at the sheer size of the conference chamber. Even after countless meetings here, it always made her feel…small. Six rows of long, wooden tables stood from one end of the room to the other. The farthest, on Cynthia's right, was raised on a high platform and faced all of the other rows. The Champion's Panel.

In the center of the five chairs, Lance struggled to keep his eyes awake, his heavy head cradled in the palm of his hand. His dark red hair drooped and sagged like the bags under his darkened eyes. Next to him, Diantha waved curtly, a vague grin on her face.

Steven climbed the stairs up to the platform and took the seat next to Lance. "Looks like almost everyone's here," he said.

Cynthia took the seat on the end, right next to Steven, and gazed at the assembly. All twenty of the Elite Four League members occupied the first row, but only half of the row behind them was filled with the Gym Leaders from Kanto. Misty Waterflower, a young, orange-haired woman of twenty-four, brushed her hair in front of a pocket mirror, her lips pursed in concentration.

The whispers in the chamber seemed to grow by the minute. Cynthia scanned the faces of everyone in the chamber. Some look bored, and even from the other end of the room she could see Olympia yawning.

But she found too many frowns for her own comfort. She could see Maylene's worried, frantic expression just by the movement of her lips. In front of her, Wattson spoke in a hushed, anxious whisper, the intensity of his frown growing and growing.

Steven tapped on Lance's shoulder, and the Indigo League champion shook himself awake. "Settle down, everyone!" he shouted. "We need to begin as quickly as possible."

"But not everyone's here yet!" a man shouted. Cynthia squinted and saw Crasher Wake standing.

"No matter. I'm not one for waiting," Lance said. The whispers slowly died to a simmer, and hundreds of eyes trained themselves on the Champion's panel.

"Good," said Lance, grinning a little. "Now, as I'm sure you've all heard, the Syndicate Alliance signed a treaty proclaiming their surrender. We –"

A score of raucous cheers erupted within the chamber. Lance growled and pounded his fist onto the table. "Settle down!" he cried. "We can celebrate later."

The cheers died as quickly as they began.

"While we haven't discussed full terms of surrender with the heads of the Alliance just yet, today we need to discuss how we can deal with the six syndicates after the fact. I'm sure that each region has different ideas as to how we can go about this, but for the sake of swiftness we should make a decision today."

On the other end of the Champion's Panel, Diantha flagged Lance down. "Where are the enemy forces now?"

"For the time being, any member known to be affiliated with a syndicate is presently held in confinement at detention centers across their respective regions." He paused. "But they're all overflowing as a result, so we need to think of alternative arrangements, and quick."

At first, silence. Each gym leader on the floor exchanged awkward glances with one another, lips twitching and heads frowning.

"Why can't we just keep them locked up?" asked Brock from the second row. "I mean, most of them aren't anything more than common criminals." Behind him, Volkner snuck into the chamber quietly, hurriedly taking his seat with his fellow gym leaders.

"On the long-term, I think that could work," said Alder. "But where the 'ell are we supposed to fit 'em all now?"

From the third row of gym leaders, Brawly jumped out of his seat. "I say we execute every last one of them! Those Magma and Aqua bastards nearly wiped out half of Hoenn, and they don't even make up half of the Syndicate Alliance!"

Brock's face reddened, and he turned to Brawly. "You wanna kill what could be thousands of people? These are human beings we're talking about! Maybe what they did was wrong, but –"

"They deserve it!" Brawly fired back. "I mean, look at what the Rockets were able to do to Kanto, and the Plasmas to Unova!"

The shouts between the two men turned into belligerent rambling. Falkner had to physically separate them a second later when Brawly leapt over the table to tackle Brock.

"Both of you settle down!" Lance ordered with a pointed finger. "I will not tolerate disorder." Brock sheepishly returned to his seat, while Brawly grunted and sulked to his.

Cynthia shuddered. "I think Brock is right," she said. "I don't wanna kill any of these people." She turned to Alder, with a faint shadow of a smile. "But we can't really put the grunts of all six syndicates anywhere, at least without spending money on new facilities." Next to her, Steven held his chin in his hand, staring blankly at the ceiling.

"The people should get to vote!" said Marlon. Almost a hundred necks craned to the back of the room. "If we can't decide, then let's let them!"

"Vote between what, life and death?" Karen cried. "The Syndicate Alliance has hurt so many people that the citizens would create a mob mentality against them! They'd be no better than we are right now!"

Four gym leaders all spoke at once, and soon the entire chamber apart from the Champion's Panel blazed with angry shouts and loud, passionate fervor.

Lance and Cynthia only watched, scowling as people rose from their seats to shout others down. Diantha hopelessly screeched for everyone to please, oh pretty please calm down, but no one bothered to even look at her. The ornate walls almost trembled under the heat.

A loud boom startled everyone into silence. An Exploud on top of the Hoenn gym leaders' table huffed and puffed, one of the cannons on its head fuming with smoke.

"Return!" said Norman, and a beam of red light swallowed the Exploud whole. "I'm bringing him out every time shit like this happens, got it?" he said to the others.

"Thank you, Norman," Lance said.

Alder threw his hands into the air. "If we're gonna act like savages when it comes to this, we may as well just let those damn grunts kill each other!"

Steven calmly smiled, his eyes glazed over in a near trance. "That's it, actually."

Cynthia frowned. "Come again?"

He stood. "Let's let, no, let's make the grunts from the syndicates kill each other off! Hell, we can even televise it!"

"He's crazy, right?" Misty said. "We can't actually do that, can we?"

Lance said nothing, instead turning slowly to Steven. "Elaborate," he drawled.

"I think this could work for everyone here," he said. "See, I don't think we should kill all of them. But if we make a few kill each other off, we can scare any rebels into submission. It's almost like we're ending war altogether!"

"By making people kill each other?" Cynthia cried. "This is a terrible idea!"

"I think it sounds interesting," Brawly muttered. "As long as we're telling them to fuck off some way, somehow, then I'm down."

Steven nodded and turned to Cynthia. "Wouldn't you wanna get some payback against those Galactic scum?

"Yes, but not like this! And your plan doesn't even solve the overpopulation in the detention centers!"

The Hoenn champion paused. "It's television, Cynthia. People are gonna eat this up like it's a day at the races. And you know what the people do with sports? They bet money, Cynthia." His arms outstretched to point to the entire chamber. "And I think we all know what we can spend that money on."

Cynthia sputtered in disbelief. "I refuse to stand behind this! Lance, you're not gonna think of allowing this atrocity, are you?"

The dragon master shrugged and yawned. "You have to admit, he's kinda right."

She gulped and scanned the crowd. A few appeared in deep thought, as if the idea of young adults killing each other off was too complex for a gym leader's mind. But more of them, too many of them, nodded or voiced their agreement.

"So what, we just let a dozen or so of these guys off each other and call it a day?" Viola said.

"No," Steven said, shaking his head slowly. "Let's make it two dozen. And even then… every year. Every year, we pick twenty four of those Alliance bastards and throw them into a death trap."

"You're mental!" Cynthia cried to Steven. "They surrendered with hardly a fight, and you're gonna do this to them?"

He said nothing, staring at Cynthia curtly. Then, he grinned devilishly and faced the rest of the Champion's Panel. "One of them lives."

An eerie calm swept over the chamber. No one spoke, no one argued. For a few seconds, the whole earth stood still.

Lance cleared his throat. "You mean there's gonna be a winner? Like a game?"

"Exactly," said Steven. "Make it fun for the people watching on TV, deciding who's gonna make it and who won't! It's a win-win for everyone!" He pointed to Brawly. "People who want these guys dead get to see them die, but it's not like we're killing all of them!"

"How are we gonna be able to pay for something like this?" shouted Blaine as he stood. "The League is already in massive debt because of the war! Where the hell are we supposed to get funding for this?" He spoke with a boiling, ancient anger, like it had bubbled over the course of the meeting. His face grew redder than a beet, his burly mustache twitching erratically.

"Well, you're right," Steven said, awkwardly motioning to Blaine, "we're gonna be in the hole for a while. But we can make so much money off of these games that we'll be drowning in money in a decade, tops! It can't hurt to be in debt for a little while, right?"

Blaine sighed. "I just don't think it's practical, is all."

"I'm all ears for any other ideas you might have!" Steven said. Blaine stared him down for a second with tense, fiery eyes before sighing again, taking his seat.

Lance slowly nodded. "All in objection to Steven's proposition, say nay."

Cynthia shouted "Nay!" and stood, her hand raised into the air. An awkward silence followed; not a single person had opened their mouths.

Steven snickered. "And all those in favor?" he asked. "A simple show of hands will suffice."

Every person in the room, from the Champion's Panel to the very back of the room, raised their hand to the ceiling, a few with polite, delicate smiles. Cynthia stood on tiptoes to find someone, anyone, who agreed with her.

No one did.

"It's settled, then," Lance said, standing up. "Steven, I'm leaving you to head the games. No one is to find out about this until the time is right. You have three months, understood?"

Steven grinned and shook Lance's hand. "You've got it, Luxforde. You're not gonna regret this, I swear."

One by one, the gym leaders began to file silently out of the chamber, mumbling to one another excitedly. Cynthia shrunk into her seat, her mind racing violently. Steven moved past her without a word, but she could see the thin, vicious smile under his stone-cold façade.

She took a breath and struggled to accept the unacceptable: the Games were on.