Chapter 1: A Fresh Start
Part 1: Aether Arrest
Alfa stepped forward moving closer to the smiling figure of his twin brother, gaining speed with each step until he was moving at a full out sprint. He crashed into the glowing form of his sibling, overcome with joy, at least before he realized where he was.
"Is this… the afterlife?" he asked, almost afraid of the answer.
"Yes… or rather, the pathway to the two sides of the afterlife. It's been so long!" Ice replied, embracing Alfa, "However, this is not the time nor the place to catch up. You see, we have a problem. No one is getting to the aether or the nether. When they step out into the passageway, they're supposed to be able to walk on the void to the judgment chamber. Instead they're getting sucked in. This corridor of stone is the gateway here. I had just arrived and managed to avoid stepping over when I saw what was happening. Everyone's stuck between the aether and the nether, and those who've seen the void, well they aren't around."
"Well then there's only one way to find out what's going isn't there." Alfa stated.
"There is, I just wanted to wait for you. It has been a while you know." Ice answered. "Shall we?"
"Yes." Alfa replied, walking to the edge, and turning around with his brother.
"On three wouldn't you say?" Ice suggested.
"Yes, why don't you start?" Alfa said.
"One." Ice began.
"Three." Alfa interjected, leaping off backwards, his brother following having expected as much. Alfa twisted around so that he was falling feet first into the gaping void below. A few seconds later, he hit the ground falling onto his side from the speed. He looked over his shoulder. Ice was lying there next to him. All of a sudden everything went dark and Alfa got the feeling he was being carried somewhere in a giant hand. He felt his head ache for a second before Ice's voice sounded in his head. Apparently that was possible in the afterlife.
'This hand… it's a Regigigass. Probably the spirit of one from ancient times, or a recently deceased one.' Ice was thinking towards him.
'So either a Regigigass has gone mad or someone's controlling it.' Alfa thought back.
'The latter's more likely. But the question is that if it is the latter, then who's controlling it?' Ice admitted in his thoughts.
'Hey! That's what I was gonna think! You know, if we keep this up, someone's going to think we're twins.' Alfa joked. He could tell that somewhere in Regigigass's other hand, Ice was smiling. All of a sudden, a dull glow broke through the hand surrounding him. Realizing that Regigigass was opening its hand was going to drop him, Alfa braced himself, not knowing how high up he was. He fell a few feet, landing on his feet this time. He looked around but Ice was nowhere to be seen. He looked up to see that Regigigass's other hand was still closed.
"And the other one?" a voice sounded from somewhere. Presumably the person controlling Regigigass. Alfa had a feeling he knew that voice… and he was dreading who it probably was. He looked forward as Regigigass's other hand uncurled and Ice fell to the floor. Sitting on a throne made of bricks and grass on a raised dais, which Alfa realized to his horror was a Bastiodon struggling to hold it up, was a man around 4' 11", wearing a red cloak over a yellow shirt, black pants and a red waistcoat. Alfa looked up at his head. Yellow hair, shaped to look menacing, but instead looking foolish was held up by evidently enormous amounts of hairspray adding another foot and a half to his height was perched on top of a round thin face with round glasses in front of the bloodshot, greyish blue eyes of his captor:
Mr. Kincaid.
Alfa stepped forward but Kincaid began to speak.
"No moving in the afterlife!" He snapped, as the Regigigass put its hand around Alfa. "Sound familiar?" He cackled. He may have regained some sense, but traces of the insanity that had sent him to his death remained evident. Alfa looked around instead of replying. The floor roof and walls of the enormous cave they were in were made of a dull red stone, and looking around, he noticed many other souls, both human and Pokémon, huddled near each other. Massive amounts of light came from small fires and enormous pits of lava.
"Now you may have been informed off how I died Alfa. If not, it may take further explanation." Kincaid began, with the air of someone explaining to someone why they couldn't get a new phone for their birthday.
"Yeah, you choked on your first meal in the psychiatric prison." Alfa taunted him.
"Yes, chicken. Now when you enter the afterlife, your body is exactly as it was before it died. Now you were hit with a spear that killed you the instant you came into contact with it, so the spear isn't here. It took me a while to die with the chicken in my throat, so when I arrived here, the chicken was still in my throat. I managed to get it out. Now the physics of the afterlife suggests that if a creature is already dead, and its bodily form is brought into the afterlife again, then the afterlife should start to unwind and collapse. Soon, the judgment pavilion will also be gone!"
The Regigigass was uncurling its hand slowly.
'Ice, you listening to all this? If you are reply to this, the Regigigass is leaving, so the minute we're free, make a run for the chicken… it's next to Kincaid's throne, and burn it.' Alfa thought, directing his thought's solely at Ice.
'Game on. Be ready.'
"… and I have an army bent to my will here, and soon…" Kincaid continued ranting, not paying attention to them. The hand lifted from around him and Alfa broke into a run, aiming at the nearest obstacle that could stop Ice from getting to the chicken: Kincaid. Alfa sprinted through the cave, running onto a rock and leaping to avoid the Bastiodon, straight onto Kincaid's chest. Alfa landed with force, clamping his hands over Kincaid's mouth, regardless of how much he loathed it. If Kincaid couldn't give orders, no one would stop Ice. He turned his head and looked over at Ice as he dropped the chicken into a lava pit, shouting triumphantly.
Alfa let go of his former captor's mouth and ran straight to his brother. They were free!
A few hours later…
Alfa and Ice stepped through the golden gates to the aether, greeted by and angel.
"Welcome… we thank you for saving the afterlife from destruction."
"What's that golden arch thing over there?" Ice asked the angel. Gesturing towards an intricately carved teen foot high golden arch.
"That is the gateway to life. If humans ever find a way to bring back the deceased, the arch will fill with light, and the name of the one being drawn back will burn in the sky." The angel replied, smiling.
All of a sudden, the arch filled itself with light. Alfa glanced to the sky to see who was being drawn back. He felt like his heart was stuck in his throat. It was his name in the sky. Before he had a chance to move, he was sucked into the gateway. The last thing he saw was a look of shock on Ice's face.
-/
Part 2: New Life
"ICEEE!" Alfa woke up screaming his name, not accepting the fact that he had been separated from his brother a second time. He instinctively sat up still screaming fighting against all the medical cords binding him back. He saw some people in the back of the room, but they were vague figures and he was unable to make out who they were. He kept on going like that for a few hours until he had finally calmed down and was functioning at full capacity. All of a sudden, Kellyn's face came into view.
"HE'S AWAKE!" Kellyn shouted out, running towards him.
"Kellyn!" Alfa replied, reeling in shock with the fact that he was alive. For the past few hours he had been obsessed with his second separation from his brother. Now he was lucid and back to reality.
"Alfa! Stay in the bed!" Kellyn said to him as he sat down on the edge of the bed. "Oh my god Alfa. We were worried it wasn't going to work, that you would die!"
"Worried that what wouldn't work?" Alfa questioned him. Kellyn hesitated before answering.
"That's more for Isaac to explain. Why don't I go fetch him?"
-/
Isaac sat down to begin his explanation.
"Okay, now Alfa, when you arrived here you were nearly dead. There was a spear in your chest and we barely had a heartbeat. In short we kept working to keep you alive. Then the slight problem arose that when we finally managed to remove the spear without guaranteeing your death, more than half the muscle tissue in your body was dead. Um… so we replaced it with synthetic muscle tissue."
At this Alfa spurted out the water he was drinking at the time being.
"I have prosthetic body parts!?" He cried.
"No. No. Nothing like that. You know what tissue is in biological terms. We've been developing synthetic muscle tissue for limb repair for a long time now. We replaced your muscle tissue where it was dead with the synthetic tissue. Your body and your skin is still your own though." Isaac explained.
"How much of my body?" Alfa asked, afraid of the possible outcome.
"Um… both your legs, arms, and your entire back as well as the muscles covering your heart and lungs." Isaac answered.
"Anything else different about me?" Alfa asked.
"Okay, so moving on. Now we had some problems with the diamond in your heart. From constant contact with your blood, the carbon was eroding out and would have killed you soon. So we removed it and replaced the irreparable gash with, again, synthetic muscle tissue, which is what the heart is made off. Don't worry, I've worked around your Ionix device. Your new capture rings are silicon… And um… that's it. Any questions."
"Just the one. How long have I been out for?" Alfa asked curiously.
"Um…" Isaac swallowed before spitting it out as quickly as possible. "Three months."
"THREE MONTHS!" Alfa exploded.
"Yes. You're being discharged today. Kellyn and the others are coming to get you. I've told them to come get you on doduo's because I we need to test out the actual muscles and see if they work properly."
-/
A few hours later…
"Guys, why don't you go ahead to the union, I'll catch up in a minute." Alfa said to them as they mounted they're doduos. As soon as the others were a few meters away, Alfa broke out into a full on sprint. He glanced up to see how far behind he had fallen. There was no one in front of him. He looked to his right, where everyone was staring at him from their doduos. He had no idea how far he could go. And there was nothing stopping him.
-/
A few weeks later, after Alfa is back up to times.
Alfa stepped into his new, or rather, old home in Altru Park. Kellyn, Keith, Wendy and Sven were still living there, and now he would take his room back. He couldn't bring himself to live in his old house in Snowbelle city in Kalos. Not after the battle.
Everyone was sitting at the table. It was dinnertime and Alfa had just arrived. His things had been sent there earlier in the day and he had unpacked before going to the union. As he sat down at the dinner table Kellyn started speaking.
"Up until now, I've been heading the union, but it's where you belong." He said.
"Kellyn… I will take the mantle from you. But not now. I'm going off to travel through Hoenn, get to know myself again. When I get back thought, I will take the mantle from you. Don't think I won't." Alfa replied with a smile.
The following week, when Alfa stepped off the train into Hoenn, he knew that he would be himself again after this. Smiling, he set off.
