Although Jasper grew up in the shadow of Mount Coronet, he had never entirely believed in Dialga, Palkia, and Giratina, let alone Arceus. He certainly understood why the priests of the area found it useful to keep the old legends alive, and how the pilgrims from around the world boosted the economy of the desolate, mountainous center of Sinnoh. If anything, Jasper was amazed by the fact that the rest of the world, although often using their own legends to try the same trick, accepted Arceus' claims to supremacy over all creation.
Jasper wasn't sure if he had crossed the line onto sacred ground when he found the object – the traditions of Mount Coronet always struck him as both esoteric and superstitious, and hallowed ground or not, it was the same mass of wild pokemon, tall grass, and snow. Perhaps on the mountain's outside, Jasper would be able to determine if he was below the Spear Pillar (although the extension regarding the Hall of Origin, which no man alive today has played the Azure Flute to visit, was bizarre and indecipherable) but inside the poorly mapped, labyrinthine mountain, it would take a far more pious boy than him to bother.
Later in life, Jasper would insist the tome had not been stolen – that the question of its location at the time was a moot one, for it could not be temple robbery if the priests had been unaware it existed to begin with. Some would believe him, others would protest, and the positions they would take had far more to do with their opinions of the document itself and the question of its authenticity than they did any actual evidence about his actual guilt or innocence. But for now, it was nothing more than potential treasure – although with a book this ancient, he wasn't about to sell it off without reading it first.
Jasper was able to hold off on his curiosity until he returned to his home – a cabin in the mountains – because while he couldn't tell the book's age right away, it appeared centuries old, and he was of no mind to risk damaging it by exposing its precious pages to the open air. It was a text as bizarre as it was fascinating, and the claims it made about every known pokemon were so strange as to be beyond his comprehension.
The tome was clearly a pokedex of some sort – and he wondered briefly if finding it made him one of the legendary Pokedex holders, like Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum so many generations before. But this codex was not much like those handed out by the pokemon professors – it was already completed, and offered no hint to its authorship on any table of contents. The author claimed strange pieces of information and referred frequently to human knowledge in a sense that they stood apart from it, but not until he reached the 493rd page did he have any inkling the text claimed to be personally written by Arceus almighty.
Given the plausibility of many of the other claims contained therein, he felt safe in dismissing this idea. Perhaps the world had a first cause, and had not existed from time immemorial – and given their greater age, it made sense for said cause to be a pokemon and not a human, and it being able to shift between types made a certain bit of sense as a way to originate the eighteen types. But the rest – from the drawings shown in the temples to the sanctity of the Hall of Origin and the stories told of it ruling over the gods and giving a special role to Man, to the idea of said cause being alive today and burying a pokedex in Mount Coronet – was nothing but pious absurdity.
And a book claiming, among other things, that Sinnoh was a dormant Torterra, Unown the progenitors of speech and language, Jirachi a harbinger of destruction, and that Arceus himself had lost to a heroic Smeargle's sketch was certainly not the work of a quadrupedal god's divine pen! At best, it was written by a priest to formulate old doctrines and attributed to Arceus in the manner of many religions; far more likely, it was an ancient, imaginative hoax.
The book was fascinating, and perhaps it could be Jasper's ticket to riches from some museum, collector, or temple; it seemed like a more ancient and valuable treasure than any he had found before in his fourteen-year life. But it was certainly not true.
The Battle Tower in Sinnoh had banned this pokemon, long ago. Legally, perhaps Unova's Battle Subway, where it had landed for this millennium's journey, might have done so too; if so, the prohibition had long since been forgotten.
Theoretically, the Battle Subway – like the Tower – was only for trainers. And not just any trainers; it was a place for the greatest of the great, those who found that the organized competitions, for all the fame and fortune they offered, gave them an insufficient opportunity to test their skills. Let the Elite Four hog the spotlight, and endure the constant challenges from uncompetitive trainers and the media questions; the true masters no longer had any need of such trifles. In the old days, bored champions would retire to the wilderness, often not long after winning, and other champions, equally tired of the spotlight and wondering about their abilities, would travel into dangerous lands to seek them out.
The Subway in Unova – like the Frontier in Hoenn, the Tower in Sinnoh (and its late-created successor in Kanto-Johto) and the Maison in Kalos – had grown out of these challenges, and their disparate structures reflected the disparate sites which had become the centers of these competitions.
In Kalos, it was a noble's summer estate, which she had offered to the ownership of any who could defeat her in battle – on the condition that they too relinquish it to any who defeated them. As elite trainers grew in number, and the competition grew too regular, the turnover became too rapid for the king's government to keep up – and to keep the constant challenges in check, increasing numbers of successive victories were required to gain the right to battle the Chatelaine.
In Hoenn, it was a shrine for Rayquaza which gave sanctuary to deserters from Aqua and Magma's endless wars. In an era where powerful pokemon and trainers were themselves a vital military resource, the priests learned to battle to ensure their offer of sanctuary could be more than empty words. Skilled warlords who had turned their back on violence spent their time on one-on-one struggles, and even in eras of peace, the Battle Frontier was said to have the strongest trainers in the land. The temple's rituals changed in this era, as powerful trainers from across the land lacking Aqua or Magma affiliations flooded in; most were reinterpreted into the new forms of battle which today distinguish the Frontier.
In greater Sinnoh, champions secluded themselves in a sparsely settled wilderness on the island to the north, in the cave around Stark Mountain – much as Kanto-Johto's champions had done in Mount Silver. This was an extremely dangerous island, whose wild pokemon could be as powerful as most trainers – and unlike in trainer battles, losing to a wild pokemon here was often fatal. Although the island itself was larger than Sinnoh, most of it was too cold and remote to support much of a human population; only the warmth of Heatran allowed for a settlement at the isle's southern tip. Sinnoh's champions found worthy rivals in the trainers of this village, who had been forced to train their pokemon to greatness out purely for self-defense, but the custom of seclusion in Stark Mountain led to far too many deaths along the way. Typically, it was the challengers eaten by wild pokemon on the way to challenge trainers of legend, but it was the loss of the greatest champion of the age to a freak volcanic eruption – one credited to Heatran's wrath – that galvanized the locals into action. They then built a grand tower that could be seen from Sinnoh and advertised their presence to the world, and it was rumored that the island's strongest trainer – the so-called Tower Tycoon – teamed up with Heatran himself whenever a visiting trainer won enough battles.
And in Unova, it was the underground subway; battling on moving, all but empty late-night trains added an element of skill and danger, and the threat of disruption from a local ground pokemon – most often the Excadrill, whose habitat the trains had disrupted and who the trainers were paid to protect the trains from – but occasionally Dugtrio or even Rhyperior would crash through the windows for a challenge. Perhaps Jirachi had chosen to challenge Unova because of its long tradition of accepting sufficiently strong trainerless pokemon; while legendaries elsewhere would often satiate their desire for championships by submitting to a great trainer (if temporarily, because even human lives seem very temporary compared to the lives of the gods), the power of Jirachi's wish was far too dangerous in the wrong hands.
There were those who questioned if even Jirachi could manipulate its thousand-year orbit precisely enough to land in Nimbasa City, but it was a more impressive story to think it had, and people would never refuse a good story when it came to the ways of the gods. Nor would they hesitate to spread it – and since the rise of the Internet and the Global Trade System, news had traveled fast around the world.
Especially news like this. The Battle Subway had never attracted quite the attention of the Unova League – partially because of its origins as a secret competition, partially because the dangers of televising a match in a moving train were as great as those of participating in one, but mostly because it was simply so rare for a trainer – even a champion - to win enough matches in a row to approach a milestone the public cared about. But forty-eight triumphs in a row was enough to make international news even from a human trainer – and when it came from a god seen once every thousand years, it was enough to catch the world's eyes.
When Jasper saw the news, he thought momentarily of Jirachi's entry in his codex, and its chilling opening line: "the seven days every millennium or so when Jirachi is awake are among the most dangerous in human history." But Jasper soon put these thoughts to rest; the wicked genie who twisted every wish into chaos and catastrophe bore no more resemblance to the truth than any of the other fanciful stories in this tome, from Bulbasaur bulbs offering immortality to the strange, long-forgotten, once-heretical myths repeated here about nearly every god.
That said, it was late tonight, and the match was soon; watching Jirachi battle on a train might be a nice enough way to pass the time. He wasn't much of a trainer – he only had one pokemon, and Bibarel was more a tool for exploration than a warrior (although it had proved strong enough to protect him so far) but this was a big enough match to tune in for.
The train was moving, as it always had – and despite the idea of a subway with one station for each battle providing an oft-repeated metaphor for a trainer's journey to greatness, the subway in truth ran in a seven-station loop beneath Nimbasa City. The seventh leg of the journey was the last one before any trainer could take a break – and many did, although some battled continuously - and the home of all the greatest matches, so it was also the place where the brave few willing to be reporters tended to board.
Although it was true Jirachi had won forty-eight matches in a row, it had not personally participated in all of them. As a trainer, it had to remain conscious to command its teammates; as a pokemon, it was forbidden any healing items which might restore it after a knockout, so in every battle it had entered, it had appeared last, and proved unwilling to switch in until its teammates were both knocked out.
The Clefable and Wigglytuff who accompanied Jirachi had done so since it fell from space, and had likely traveled with it on the same meteor. Clefable was a member of the ancient Cleffa asteroid colony which had often approached Jirachi's meteor, strengthened and evolved by a god's magic; Wigglytuff was one of many of its species jarred from the moon by a meteor impact, and who grabbed onto the nearest piece of space debris in an effort to descend to an inhabited world.
Clefable, now as always, served as Jirachi's lead.
The Subway Master's roster always consisted of powerful Unovan pokemon, but which ones varied between challengers – as might be expected, given that challengers were themselves often years apart. His second team, which tested a much larger number of trainers at twenty-one wins, was well-known – his first choice, however, was shrouded in mystery, and Battle Subway fans had long speculated about which retired members of his second team had been promoted to his first choice, and which were simply rotated out or given away.
He opened with Haxorus.
The green, scaly dragon stomped its black three-toed foot at the light pink fairy, and if it was unnerved in any way, Clefable's almost featureless body did nothing to express it. Indeed, the only two unnerved in the train were the two humans – the Subway Master, because this was a clearly unfavorable matchup, and the cameraman, because even though he had volunteered for the mission, the train starting to move and the large pokemon summoned had driven home the danger of the Battle Subway. The cameraman clung to the side of the train with one hand while filming with the other; the Subway Master stood calmly with perfect balance as he again lifted his pokeball.
"Haxorus, return! Go, Durant!"
This particular Clefable's ancestors may have left the moon many generations ago, but they still passed down the lunar techniques they learned there. As the armored pokemon emerged from its ball, a sphere four times the pokemon's size which glistened with the blue-white hue of moonlight slammed into the Durant. The ant smashed into the side of the train, inches from the window and viewers around the world (Jasper among them) were treated to a closeup of the Durant's injuries as the cameraman hurriedly ducked and pointed his camera up, shaking along with the train from the force of the collision.
But the subway train had experienced much fiercer fights, and stayed on track, although the announcers (broadcasting from the studio, not on board) took pains to inform the audience that if a pokemon is ejected from the vehicle in the course of the battle, it is considered to be knocked out. They also informed the more casual viewers that Clefable's attack had been Moonblast – for although legends claimed Jirachi could speak, if it had commanded Clefable's move it had done so through telepathy.
There are very few bug pokemon who can be seriously injured by throwing them into walls, and Durant's steel exoskeleton shrugged off much of the damage from the moonblast itself – an attack which might have knocked out frailer bug pokemon such as Accelgor. The Durant easily scurried back to its six feet and up to the roof of the subway car, and the Subway Master gave his Iron Ant pokemon its first order.
"Iron Head!" Durant tucked back its antennae to ensure a headfirst collision, stretched its bladed mandibles to each side, then tilted its head forward and launched from the roof of the car, following up a devastating headbutt with an unannounced but very painful spiked stab. The Clefable attempted to brace itself, and perhaps on a normal battlefield it would have succeeded; the collision pushed it back into the closed doors, and the impact with the handle finished Jirachi's lead pokemon off.
A pokeball floated out from Jirachi's left wish tag, seemingly materializing out of nowhere, and recalled the fainted Clefable. Another ball emerged likewise from the right, summoning Jirachi's Wigglytuff comrade.
The pink, roundish, rabbit-eared pokemon inflated immediately after its release, sucking in air like a balloon and nearly doubling in size.
"Quick, Durant! Knock it off balance with an Iron Head!" The ant launched again at the balloon pokemon and connected squarely at the center of the white on its chest. Wigglytuff absorbed the hit, but winced in pain and found itself pushed backwards as it exhaled like a Firebreather.
The blast of fire – shaped like the kanji for "big" as befit its vast size and power, and not dissimilar to a stick figure with diagonal legs - mostly flew harmlessly at the roof of the train, but Wigglytuff had turned its tiny mouth slightly at the last minute, and one of the attack's trailing legs of flame engulfed the steel bug's thorax.
When the flame moved on, Wigglytuff deflated to its normal size, albeit badly shaken up by the Iron Head it had suffered, and Durant lay unconscious on the train's floor.
The Subway Master next summoned Haxorus for a second time, causing the announcers and viewers the world over to question his strategy; he had already recalled the pokemon earlier in the match to avoid fighting one fairy-type, so why send it to fight another one?
"X-Scissor." he ordered softly, and as the red blades surrounding the dragon's head glistened with a swordlike shine, Jirachi and a few of the more learned members of the audience understood. Haxorus charged towards Wigglytuff's bruised center like a target, then whipped its head to the left and the blade broke the balloon pokemon's skin.
But Wigglytuff did not pop; it exploded, and when the dust settled an unconscious Haxorus lay beside its deflated opponent – one whose pointed ears made its evolutionary stage unmistakeable, but who was now barely larger than an Igglybuff.
Again, a pokeball appeared from behind the right wish tag – this time, to recall Wigglytuff to its home. Again, the Subway Master recalled his Haxorus – but this time, it was unable to battle.
"Terrakion, go!"
The rails shook. The caves trembled. Miners all across Unova stopped to pay their respects – only for an instant, but they stopped all the same, because they mined only at Terrakion's suffrance. For the god of rock – the god of caves and mountains, the Sword of Justice from the caverns, a giant, stocky ungulate with great black horns that curved downward like pickaxes, whose body was the gray of its rocky home – had been summoned. And Jirachi floated forward from its seat at the corner of the car, prepared to meet another god in battle for the first time since it landed on Earth.
"So, you already have one." Jirachi thought, the words appearing in the Subway Master's head as if they had been spoken, but they came with no sound, only telepathy.
He shrugged in response. "Legends train legends. Whenever a god feels like battling, or a trainer becomes strong enough to subjugate them, they come here. Some trainers in the Subway's history have even had three, and I think one of my counterparts around the world still does. I'm surprised you haven't fought one already."
"One god's power is enough for any man to have. Another shall claim my wish."
"You're still a wild pokemon. If you think I'm too dangerous to capture you... then prove it to me in battle! Terrakion, Earthquake!"
Terrakion reared up on its hind legs, then stomped the ground with its front ones, cracking all the way through the floor of the subway car – which, for all its technology, still could not stand up to a battle of this magnitude. Jirachi slowly waved its white hands as it twirled its long yellow ribbons, picking an attack at random – but the Subway Master would later allege that there was no true randomness against a god of luck and wishes, and it had manipulated the metronome to its will. For Jirachi stomped the floor as ferociously as Terrakion had, and the two earthquakes met in the center of the rail car, as the cameraman and subway master alike clung desperately to their seats, and both pokemon reeled from the legendary force of one another's attacks.
In far-off Sinnoh, halfway around the world, at that very moment an earthquake struck. To most residents, it was of little importance – but some lost power, and Jasper's miniature television was knocked from its perch on his desk and shattered, and the walls of his cabin didn't look far behind.
He fled his home with only his wallet, Bibarel's poke ball, and the ancient codex he had discovered earlier in the day. He had picked up the latter instinctively, but it seemed like a good enough idea – Jasper was not a boy who abandoned treasures without finding out what they were worth. The bag in which he kept most of his pokemon's supplies, such as potions and poison heals, would have to be left behind; he was unsure if he could get to the other side of his cabin to grab it without being crushed, and had used up most of its contents on the day's journey anyway.
As the earth shook, Mount Coronet itself wobbled, and beneath the sliding rocks of the mountain he thought he saw the outline of the spike on a Torterra's back, only a thousand times larger.
Jasper thought he was hallucinating – delirious from a long night buried in an ancient book and then staying up late to watch a Battle Subway match. Maybe some of the dust he had blown off the text wasn't dust – some of those old religions incorporated psychoactive drugs into their rituals, although he had never heard of lacing a codex with one.
But the claims made in Torterra's entry – that a large, sleeping Torterra becomes an overgrown mountain, and that Sinnoh was the largest Torterra of all – were all too plausible to ignore, especially after watching Jirachi's battle bring disaster to his home. If he hadn't grabbed the pokedex, he would've surely gone back for it.
If the ancient pokedex was accurate, if the Torterra named Sinnoh was waking up, he wasn't safe here.
For trainers of flying pokemon (at least, those with sufficient speed or endurance) – or indeed, for trainers of hardier water pokemon like Lapras and Wailord, who were at home in oceans and carried a human with no real effort – escape could mean going virtually anywhere in the world. Planes and boats meant the same, but that required getting to a port (whether air or sea) and he feared being caught in the chaos of a mass exodus.
There were two locations which Jasper could feasibly reach with nothing more than his feet and his Bibarel. To the south of Sinnoh was Fiore, a peaceful land dominated by Rangers where the very idea of pokemon battles was seen as barbaric. It was a land which lacked for strong pokemon, where the local authorities would be powerless to defend themselves against the chaos of Jirachi's wish, a land he was sure would soon be overcome by anarchy.
For a moment, Jasper nonetheless considered riding out the disaster there – being a pokemon trainer alone gave him a leg up on the locals, and if society was to collapse there was something to be said for making the most of it. But there were other people in Sinnoh with far stronger pokemon who would surely get the same idea. Transiting through Almia en route to Kanto or Johto was an even longer journey, and not being on a waking Torterra, although an improvement, was not in itself a promise of safety against the powers of a corrupted Jirachi wish.
But he had another option – a somewhat closer one to home. For the small village on the island north of Sinnoh was the home of the Battle Tower – and at a time like this, it was the safest and most dangerous place on Earth.
Author's Note: The Pokedex Jasper finds is indeed the Pokedex fic that can be found on my profile. A lot of people have written over the years asking permission to do something based on it some way (which is granted by default) and I wanted to try my hand at it myself.