"We've got multiple breaches down in the lower corridors! It looks like they tunneled in!" Bryonny reported quickly.
"I want Serena moved down to the second mega bay now." Aliana ordered over the phone. She still hadn't found Calem. At least Shauna had answered her cell phone when called. Calem had the bad habit of letting the damn thing ring endlessly and ignoring everyone. This was the worst time for it to happen now, though.
"Serena's still unconscious and under medical care. Her doctors are suggesting against-"
"I don't care what the doctors say! If we don't move her she'll be as good as dead within the hour! At least next to Gyarados Red she'll have a protector." Alianna had search half of everywhere at this point. He wasn't in the apartment, wasn't in the school area, and anywhere else might as well be a giant guess. She cursed. Lysandre used his own child as part of this experiment to save the world, and then expected everyone else to take care of him like he wasn't the boy's parent. Maybe if that arrogant old bastard took responsibility for his progeny once in his life they wouldn't be in this mess. Maybe she wouldn't be scrambling through the endless halls and corridors of the base looking for his kid when the red headed man could have just called for his boy that would have jumped if he said so.
Explosions rocked the ceiling sending dust falling from the rafters.
"Security personal are engaged in combat, I've got reports of gunfire and pokemon attacks in all outer sectors! We're locking down the command center now!" A pause, Bryonny was barely keeping it together. "How can we do this? How can we fight other humans?"
Aliana stopped running for a second. "Divine, humans, pokemon, whatever. There's one thing I know and that there's no difference between the lot of them. If someone is trying to kill you, you do the sane thing and fight back. War is hell, you know that, I know that. So pull yourself together!"
"R-right. Yes mam!" Bryonny acknowledged. "Transmissions form the southern hub have been interrupted. The west side launch tunnel has been overrun."
"I knew it, they're going for the megas. You lock down those hubs as soon as Serena gets there. I'm on my way with Calem right now!" She hung up. If they really needed her the phone would call right back.
She turned the corner, then another, then climbed the back stairs. Lo and behold here he was, the first child, curled up into a ball, muttering nonsense to himself. She didn't have time for this. As she approached, she heard footsteps from the other hall, and the telltale cocking of a gun.
"First child found. What do you want me to do sir?" Shit. She pulled out her own gun and booked it.
"Right, eliminating". The two soldiers pointed their barrels at the head of Calem. The boy didn't even flinch, nor more, nor react. What was wrong with this kid? Did he not have an ounce of self-preservation in his body?
"Sorry kid, nothing persona- "She cold clocked him in the jaw with a pistol whip before he could even finish the phrase. The second one turned on her, apparently as shocked to see her come out of the shadows of the second hallways as his partner was to feel cold steel knock his jaw out of alignment from nowhere. She tumbled out of his way and fired several shots. Two at the one still standing, and two more to the one with a broken jaw. They both fell flat onto the ground. Their Pokémon, which were guarding the hallways turned in fear and anger. An arcanine is supposed to be a lucky creature, the large dogs were prized for their majestic orange and black stripped fur coating. Aliana shot two in the head before they could roast her in flames. In another life, that would have brought her 14 years bad luck. She didn't care now, not like she even had 14 years left to live.
"Hey, no offense taken."
FLARE was resisting. As General Surge predicted, the tunneling teams he sent in were able to break into the outer layers of the complex without problem. They had fallen for the ruse of the surface troops and placed most of their units close to the true exits. As of now his men were washing through the complex. He had standing orders to not shoot anyone attempting to surrender, but those quickly fell through. War was never pretty, never regimented, and never turned out the way one expected. As a great man once said, no amount of tactics nor strategy ever survives first contact with the enemy. Reports from the men in the inside were that the battles had turned bloody. It was only going to get worse, though, as they made their way deeper into the FLARE headquarters. Lysandre had lied on the schematics, the inner tunnels and corridors possessed bulk head doors that would take quite some time to break though.
Standard protocol was to use explosive ordinances and blast their way as deep as they could, but he gave one order above all during this engagement: that no explosive was to be used at all. Did it cripple his men? Sure, but the idea of waking the slumbering beast which laid within gave him nightmares.
At night, his dreams returned him to his gym in Vermilion City. Being a gym leader was no slouch, as pokemon trainers from all over constantly challenged him and his staff to pokemon combat, in the hopes that they would earn their thunder badge and be one step closer to the pokemon league. He specialized in electric types, a tradition of the city's gym even before he took it over after the war. It was fun, actually. Gyms were designed not only to check the strength of a person's pokemon, but also their minds. The league encouraged its leaders to design elaborate traps and puzzles for people to work through. His entailed utilizing his little-known degree in engineering, which is got thanks to a grant from his military service. Electromagnetic fields permeated the gym, invisible to the eye, but not to the touch. By scattering them around the building he created an entirely invisible labyrinth that constantly shifted and changed when challengers rerouted the complex's power lines. They weren't deadly, but they shocked any of the fools who just decided to waltz right on through.
Being the leader was one of the better parts of the job, he still had to deal with the daily minutia of civic duties to the city, but it was a nice life, a quiet life. He chuckled remembering one challenger who came into the gym wearing a full rubber suit; the girl walked right through the place completely unaffected by the security system. Was it cheating? He absolutely didn't think so and were it not for the rules requiring that she battle him, he would have given her the badge right then and there. He always meant to try and find out what became of her, he would have definitely hired her as one of the gym trainers if she ever dared to ask.
Yet that was then, in another life, another time. Now he was back on the battlefield, conducting missions which the council stressed were with the fate of the world on the line. He didn't want to believe their story at first, especially since it came from Elite 5, who when he stopped by for meetings during his gym leader days always had a bit of a comedian streak to her. But they stressed it was all true, ever word. Well, every word except the lies.
Second Impact was not a meteor. That was a story told to the press, a fabrication to keep the public from learning a far worse truth. The meteor cover was used to explain not only the scope and scale of the destruction, but to make it seem like it couldn't wouldn't happen again. A cataclysmic event that only occurred last 65 million years ago? Little Timmy and his mother might be homeless now, but that would be fixed in the future, and they need not worry about another striking the earth. Celestial events just didn't happen like that.
2 years prior to the event, roughly 7 years ago now, a man name Cyrus lead a terrorist organization known as Galactic in the Sinnoh region. They weren't widespread, and much smaller than others like that which appeared in his own region of Kanto, but their members were fiercely dogmatic. Sinnoh as a whole was more religious than most regions of the world, which didn't help in quelling the organization. Cyrus believed he had a way to summon Arceus himself into the world, and claimed he would rewrite the universe in his image, in an attempt to rid the world of all pain and suffering. With his followers behind him, he ascended the sacred mountain Coronet, but was promptly dealt with by the local authorities. Officially his story ended there.
Unofficially, Cyrus was never caught. The raid on Mount Coronet left his organization in shambles. The problem with basing one organization on dogmatic zealotry is that when one can't prove their beliefs, doubt destroys the cause. What happened next was only known due to the efforts of the Lookers, the international intelligence agency that dealt with the cleanup of the event. Cyrus escape the mountain top, but he wasn't empty handed. He didn't attain the power of God itself, Arceus, but he found something valuable none the less. These were dubbed the Mount Coronet Scrolls, an ancient collection of texts and treatise which among other things told the location of what was referred to as the 'seeds of life'.
Second Impact was direct result of his folly. Summoning what little remained of his organization, he and his followers enacted a pilgrimage to the farthest corner of the world. There at the South Pole they encountered the creatures Xerneas an Yveltal, frozen as if in the midst of destroying each other for the past unto millennia. Second impact was the result of them awakening dead gods.
General Surge had one task. To stop it from happening again.
There was no need for Lysandre to be in the command center. While he was the head of FLARE, the day to day operations of the organization were normally taken care by Xerosic. He was a firm believer in delegation, and swore that anything that needed his direct supervision wasn't run by competent people. FLARE was competent. Xerosic, Dr. Celosia, Aliana, and the rest of the staff more or less oversaw themselves while the project was in full swing. It was better that way. Back when he worked in the private sector, he had research teams that constantly and consistently failed to make any progress on their projects unless he went over every single detail. It was cumbersome, held up development, and in his mind, the researchers didn't deserve their jobs.
Even now, with the base on full alert as the world bore down on them, FLARE was in motion. Xerosic barked orders left and right, which as he could tell gave the insurgent forces hell. The council's attempt at taking over the porygon system that ran FLARE was a resounding failure, thanks to the work of Dr. Celosia. She might be a traitor, but she was perfection incarnate when it came to computer science.
He knew what this was about, and expected it for a while now. The Elites were too conservative, always erring on the side of tradition over progress or discovery. Bill's creation of the pokemon storage system took eons to be approved for use on a global scale, with some of the members thinking it to be sacrilege or inhumane to the creatures they stored. He hated backwards thinkers.
The Megas project was his child. To fight gods, what would one use but a great devil? The discovery of Yveltal was one of those moments which changed the course of history. Most saw only the destruction the seeds brought, but he saw opportunity. Yveltal's body, even in its dormant state, was toxic to pokemon, yet to humans, it was as normal as water. He found that its blood, which when purified and refined, could enact great changes.
He got up out of his command chair, and demanded the grunt at the exit let him through. She gave him a questioning look, after all the command center was supposed to be in tier 1 lockdown, but nobody questioned Lysandre within FLARE and did not regret it. Her hesitation lasts naught but a moment, and she quickly entered the release code into the keypad. Xerosic took notice of the director making his way into the halls, but did not try to stop him.
Shauna was waiting for him. When the attack began, he ordered her down to the antechambers of the base. He wished, that he had more time, but it was now or never. Had he done this within his own schedule, he would have waited for Shauna to be 100%, but reality never matched expectations. Not since Yui showed him the painful truth of the world.
The elevators still worked. One benefit to the underground complex was that even in the midst of crisis, everything was designed for function just fine. The trip was quick, and he soon found himself in his office, with Shauna awaiting him inside. Lysandre could have put his main working area anywhere. Part of the base extended topside, and even though the city streets were still and the buildings were partial ruined, the view of Lumiose was grand. Lysandre didn't care about that. His office was down below, overlooking a large holding area. He chose this specific room because of its proximity to the seeds.
Shauna stood in the office, looking into its windows and down below. He could tell where her gaze lie, onto the sleeping form of Xerneas below. The red headed man wondered, could she see what the sleeping god saw? Could she hear what the sleeping god dreamed? Xerneas lied dormant, encased within a glass and steel containment unit. The creature wasn't alien in form, it resembled any deer-like pokemon, though when one looked at it, their eyes seemed to play tricks on them. At first it seemed stale, with muted blues and greys coloring its hide, culminating in silver tipped legs and grey antlers. Yet the more one looked, the more its form changed and danced. First, were the antlers, slowing up surely erupting in a multitude of color, as if they contained an hundred million tiny points of like, all different and mimicking the hues and shades of the rainbows. This brilliance then surely made its way down to its coating, engulfing the creatures in a symphony of light only the eyes could see, and which cast no shadow. What secrets did the creature hold, what knowledge did its radiance foretell?
On the opposite side of the holding bay named terminal dogma stood a giant, black egg, which pulsated ever so slowly with a deep red light. This was Yveltal, in its dormant form. Some of the Elites questioned the logic of keeping the two seeds together in such close proximity, was it not their awakening that destroyed the world? Truth there was to that mode of thinking, but Lysandre's glibness won out. When the council learned about the real cause of Second Impact, they had to act. Letting the two seeds stay within the South Pole was no option, and letting the run rampant was even worse. Through some manner of science and psychic sorcery, the two seeds were quelled, at least for foreseeable future, but they needed to be contained.
Their first move was to a research facility in Johto. The idea was to study them, to try and learn more about just what these beings were. Were they pokemon? Or something more? That was two years ago, and no coincidence with the first attack from the divines. They hunted the two seeds. Anywhere the council moved them, a divine was sure to follow, and destruction came with them. Even the strongest trainers, and the full might of the military was no match for such powerful beings. By this time, Lysandre's mega project was nearly complete, and he proposed an idea to the Elites. Let him protect the seeds, and he would fight fire with fire.
With the megas, humanity scored its first win against the heavens.
"How are you feeling, Shauna?" Lysandre asked the young woman. All the megas in the project were unique, and even Y and X were nearly complete opposites despite coming from the same species. The partnered trainers were no different. Serena's hot headedness matched Gyarados Red flawlessly. His son, though, was a disappointment. Shauna's uniqueness came from birth.
Historians and archeologists have always had a hard time classifying pokemon and where humanity fit in to the geological time scale. Currently pokemon taxonomy focused as much on the species affinity as it did their entomological origin. Pokemon seemingly adapted themselves to their environments, which caused strange cases. Within the breedable egg group of the dragons and reptiles, you had nearly every single elemental type variety. Heck, even between crocodiles, one had the opposites of the water-loving feraligatr and the water-phobic krookodile. In past centuries, one of the prevailing ideas was that humankind were an offshoot of a former psychic type primate. Mental powers in pokemon aren't uncommon, but in humans they were extremely rare. In Kanto, there was a famous gym in Saffron City led by a mesmerist known for her hypnotic power, Sabrina. She considered herself the forefront on human psychic research, and is part of the reason why children in grade school get tested nowadays for traces of the gift.
Shauna was gifted. Her scores were incredible, and it showed in her strange and uncanny ability to dream glimpses of the future. She was reported to have dreamt a week in advance that a fire would burn her house down while she was 5, but back then nobody took the child's visions seriously, and her parents lost their lives as a result. Perhaps her gift was the cause, but she grew up more emotionally stunted than her peers. Getting the girl to talk was a struggle in and of itself, it was like she knew what everyone would say before they'd say it. Lysandre saw her potential, and took her under his wing, as the perfect partner for the mega Y. He wondered if she knew how this all would end today.
"I feel them. Their pain." she responded quietly, barely above a whisper.
"War is always pain." Lysandre walked over to the girl and took her by the hand. "It's time for us to do something about that. Come, let's make it all better."
The radio chatter wasn't promising. The military forces had taken a gamble and managed to storm their way into the terrarium bays, though they had taken over the wrong one. Y had long since been dead, and though its cage remained, it was empty. It was only a matter of time before they got to Gyarados Red and X. Aliana listened in to the device she stole from the bodies of the soldiers she had killed. The plan was to separate the partners from the megas.
"This is it Calem. Are you going to run away or are you going to fight alongside X?" she barked at the boy. He didn't respond, just sat there, curled up in a ball, his head buried within his knees.
"If you sit there and do nothing you're already dead!" She yelled.
A whisper, so light she barely realized that she heard it, came from the child. "Help me, Serena…"Aliana fumed.
"Hiding behind the skirts of a little girl won't get you anywhere! Snap out of it, Calem! Giving up halfway is worse than never trying at all!" She grabbed him by the arm, and pulled. "Come on! Get up." He hung there like a ragdoll, limp in the wrist and without any of his own volition.
"Move it!" she yelled, her words having no effect on the boy. Calem had only been getting worse and worse in the time she knew him. X was strong, far stronger than the other two megas, but Calem was unreliable. By the time of the 5th Divine, Calem and X had been relegated to support behind Serena and Shauna. Serena took to the fight like a fish to water. No so Calem.
X was destructive. Their battles resulted in more and more of the city going to rubble over time. True, not all of it was his fault, as the divines called little for the creations of man. Yet Calem seemed to internalize it all.
"I deserve to die…" another hushed whisper from the boy's mind. Suicide wasn't the answer to anything, nothing good came from death. She first noticed it weeks ago. One of the last divines was Volvanion, a living island which spewed magma like it was missiles and commanded the waves. The creature was shaped like a giant turtle with a volcano growing out of its back; trees and beaches lined its shell. Lumiose isn't too far from the ocean, but the island pokemon myth tore its own new waterway from it to the city. The three kids were deployed that day, with Serena immediately empowering her mega. They had a plan, created by Xerosic. Gyrados Red had an affinity for water, and could survive the island's onslaughts better than the others. It was to lead Volcanion into a valley away from the city, where X and Y laid waiting, accompanied by an elaborate series of traps.
This… didn't go as planned.
Volcanion wasn't easy to lead, nor control, it spewed indiscriminate destruction everywhere. Even with the power of her parent mega, Serena was caught within one of the islands eruptions. Calem went berserk, and the power of his ring fueled the mega evolution of X. She saw it in them, during their side glances at each other at the breakfast table, or at night when neither wanted to leave the living room to go to bed until it was too late. And yet, on the surface, the two bickered endlessly.
X broke the plan and charged the divine. The fight got ugly from there, and Shauna with Y tried their best. But even with all their power, even the megas were not immortal. Y died, burned alive, and the psychic backlash sent Shauna into a coma for a week.
"Just leave me here…" Calem barely said. Aliana had had enough.
"Like it or you're still alive, so get moving and do something!" She dragged him through the halls by his arm, not caring if the action caused him pain. "You can die later."
Aliana checked her cell. Bryonny had been texting her updates of the base's situation. The entire west wing was under their control now, and it seemed like the only way to X now was the anterior service tunnels. It would have to do. Eventually, her dragging of the boy turned into leading him firmly by the hand, as Calem finally got up and walked on his own two feet.
"I only learned this recently, but you deserve to know too." She began. The trip through the tunnels wasn't quick as the elevators. "The part that you do know is that the divine, they attack here because we lured them to. They want Xerneas, and we're here to stop them from getting to him. If they did, Third Impact would surely occur as the seed awakens. What you don't know is why."
"You see Calem, mankind and pokemon are vastly different lifeforms. Its only through millennia of contact that we've learned to life in harmony with each other. Xerneas and Yveltal, they don't know that. Each of us came from one of the seeds, with Xerneas being the seed of change and evolution, the progintor of all pokemon on this earth. Yveltal, likewise, begat man. We came from its blood. First impact wasn't the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, but Yveltal arriving on earth, a world already dominated by Xerneas's ilk. The two battled endlessly, until they struck each other a mortal blow. But dead gods do not die, and in strange aeons sleeping lie." Calem remained silent.
"Perhaps somewhere, out there in the vastness of space and time, there exists a world filled with just pokemon, or just humanity. Maybe they wouldn't have the problems we've had to face down here. But you don't live there, Calem, you live on earth. I want you to know the real reason for the megas existence, the real reason you are here. You, together with X, are to become the new divines, and it'll be up to you to fix this broken world."
The megas were at their core, pokemon. Lysandre and his team had designed three. The first two were X and Y, and they were clones of the devil known as Mewtwo. Back decades ago in Kanto, the mafia don Giovanni funded a research project to create himself the strongest pokemon. He somehow managed to get a hold of a strand of DNA from the being Mew, a mythical creature said to be the DNA link between all pokemon. The project created many genetic failures, creatures unable to maintain solid form for long, but able to clone themselves into just about anything. These were called dittos, and unfortunately have been sort of an ecological plague in parts of the world. However, one success was created, a powerful psychic creature named mew's second.
Giovanni instantly lost control of the pokemon, and due to its high intelligence, became a nightmare to the region. It was too young to understand and control itself, but emotionally highly unstable, and that resulted in a mass killing machine. It was only stopped by what some considered sheer luck, as the trainer Red, a prodigy, managed to wear it down enough for the recently created master ball to capture it.
Lysandre did not make the same mistakes Giovanni did. With the help of the porygon systems, he and his team were able to patch most of the inconstancies within mewtwo genetic code, and created two variants of the creature, which became X and Y. But those weren't the only megas produced. One of the strongest pokemon known to man is the sea serpent Gyarados, this draconic terror is a nightmare to sailors out on the open seas, where the creature is known to grow to 50 meters in length. A pack of the beats have been known to cause typhoons out at sea when they rage. The disconnect between the terror of its adult form, and the timidity of its juvenile self is massive, however. All Gyarados start off a Magikarp, a fish barely capable of doing anything. Gyarados adults release thousands of eggs into the ocean at a time, and barely one in that lot make it to adulthood. It's odd for the creature to be both at the bottom and top of the food chain within the same species.
Out of all the possible candidates, Lysandre chose this species for its genetic potential. If something so harmless could become something so terrible, what were to happen if science pushed its evolution even further?
Thus the third mega, Gyarados Red was created. The genetic tampering required to allow the creature to mega evolve changed its scale hue from the normal deep blue into a scintillating red. When it was filled with the power of the mega ring, the creature became mighty. Quite a few known divines possess psychic power, and mental assaults were common. While X and Y were quite adept as resisting them, Gyarados red was designed to be completely immune. In the taxonomic classification of pokemon species known as dark, each one exhibits a strange quality. Their brainwaves fluctuate and different frequencies than most creatures, and their patterns and habits enact strange quirks. Gyarados Red was engineered with these traits in mind, a creature that absolutely countered the power of the divines.
Of course, this made finding a partner for it all the much harder. How could a human expect to sync with a creature who was unsyncable? How could a trainer understand a creature designed to be unfathomable? Out of all the breaks and discoveries within the project, Lysandre considered the discovery of Serena to be the luckiest.
Emotionally, Serena was damn that had long since burst. She was willing and loved being the partner to Gyarados Red, but dealing with her was like dealing with a 2 year old that didn't understand how to act normally. One minute she was bubbly and happy, the next she was as furious as monsoon season. It wasn't entirely her fault, though, she had a metal disorder. Hyper Manic Bipolar was her official diagnosis. Like all the kids when they were young including Shauna, she too took the psychic sensitivity tests, though she failed them in literally every single category. The girl was about as gift as a box of rocks, according to normal standards. Lysandre saw differently. What he had was not a psychically-deprived child, but a young woman whose mental processes matched that of dark classified pokemon.
Gyarados Red was ready by the time of the 4th divine attack, and Serena have moved to Lumiose City and the FLARE base soon before. Like Calem, she lived under the roof of Major Aliana. What was it about the situation that irked her so much? Serena quickly rose in prominence after being added to the megas project as their most important asset. She and Gyarados Red performed far more than anyone's expectations even dared to dream. Their first divine attack, against the moon duck Cresselia was a testament to the term lightning blitz. Cresselia set up psychic screens that blocked literally anyone from entering, and gave X and Y a hell of a time fighting it. Gyarados Red and Serena waltz right through the barriers like they were made of water, and helped pin the divine long enough for support to arrive and finish it off.
Serena acted like she was better than the rest. The star child, the prodigy. Academically, her illness gave her a learning disability, but that meant she only absorbed information differently than others. When the curriculum was adapted to her, she excelled and drew straight As in all her subjects. Between divine attacks, the megas partners were still children, and they attended a special school in the base. Serena loved to rub it in the face of Calem when she did better than him, which was constantly. She tried to do the same with Shauna, but the second girl just didn't care. Or she cheated, and gleamed the answer to the tests from the future, which wasn't fair at all.
Calem was a moron in her eyes, an idiot, undeserving of the power of the mega ring. How come in angel fights she more often than not had to save his ass? She would have been better off without him. Before mew, the penultimate divine was Diancie, a crystalline fairy. Diancie was nigh invincible, its diamond body too hard to penetrate with normal attacks. Calem and X worked alongside Gyarados Red and Serena. Despite all their experience, and all their training, the two teams got in each other's ways like two sets of chords tangling together. With the loss of Y, the need for the two of them to work together increased greatly, and at Xerosic's suggestion, Serena and Calem took ballet.
Ballet isn't like other forms of dance. Club dancing relies on moving one's body anyway that felt natural, the act of moving more important that the moves themselves, most dances used these principles, and most people who profess they like dancing just like the combined feeling the endorphins give alongside the music. Ballet is a more regimented dance, almost like a musical number. The dancers play their parts in tandem, each movement by the participants enhancing the performance of the other, and one false move by any dancer could ruin the piece.
Diancie was diamond given motion. While it flew in asynchronous patterns and shone light refracted within its body and focused into near laser like proportions, it still had one weakness shared in all crystals; the shatter point. Kaguya was the first to figure it out, after running quick simulations on its body through the porygon system. If a single, powerful blow were to touch it just right, the divine would collapse like a thousand shards of glass. This is where the ballet came in. Both knew their orders, both knew the steps. As awkward as it was, a young girl dancing with a young boy, the two had a job. The dance went off, and X was able to launch Gyarados Red straight at Diancie, shattering it. Yet, Calem missed the last step, and Serna was send flying, the shards of Diancie piercing her.
It was Calem's fault she almost died, his fault she spent a week in bed, undergoing surgeries and healing from pokemon. The jerk.
But that was just an excuse. She was perfect, wasn't she? The prodigy, best at everything, partner to the greatest Gyarados that ever lived. And she almost let herself die, all because she put her trust in someone who didn't deserve it.
She didn't want to want to die.
She didn't want to want to die.
She didn't want to want to die.
She didn't want to want to die.
She didn't want to want to die.
Didn't they know she was hurt? That she was broken? That she wasn't the person she and they thought she was? Yet they thrust her out of bed and into the hangar bay, with the pokeball containing Gyarados Red in her hands.
She didn't want to want to die.
Crash.
Bryonny freaked out. The loud bang and smoke knocked her from her chair, and immediately after bullets and blasts of elemental energy started flying. She ducked under her desk and the panic set in. A Rhydon, a subterranean dwelling rhinoceros which stood on two legs had charged through the walls, bending steel and girder like they were clay. The enemy believed they had thought of everything. Rhydon spent their lives digging tunnels through solid rock, and steel needed only a little extra effort for the creature to destroy.
"Damn, they got it!" Albin cursed. The command centered was tiered, with the insurgents below them on the lower floor. He pulled a gun from under the command console. Guards on the sides threw pokeballs and shot their weapons. The battle had come to the very heart of FLARE.
"I figured we could hold them longer than this. Guess they got serious with the rhydon charges." Kaguya spat. Bryonny sat frozen. Albin thrust a gun in her face.
"Take it! Throw your pokemon out!" he barked. She looked at him and tears formed.
"I can't! I can't kill humans and pokemon!"
"You idiot! You fight or you die!"
Above them in the third tier of central command, Xerosic sat down in his chair. Whatever Lysandre was planning he needed to do it quick. Using kids was his first concern when he was told about the mega project, but Lysandre talked him into it. And now they were both unreliable and unable to fulfill their duty. On his console, he entered a command.
Down in the sever room, a certain doctor watched the feed of the battle raging within central command. She noticed a distinct absence of a certain figure. It was starting, she knew it. And she would do anything to stop it.
Soldiers flooded into the hangar bay. She couldn't make out their faces, as each was covered by a helmet and visor, making them the ideal picture of the faceless mook in her mind. Guns were pointed at her, with laser beads dancing all over her body. She stood then, hair falling all over her fact. How could she do anything? Half her body was still broken, with casts and bandages covering her limbs. She wasn't Calem, but what was she really? The Serena that existed within her own heart had always been invincible, stronger, determined, and perfect. Who could look at her now, and say that those two were anywhere near the same person?
"Unit 7 Reporting! Securing the east launch bay now!" one of the soldiers stated. Behind them their small continent of pokemon guarded their backs and the door.
This was it.
"Target found! We have the third child! Commencing Termination."
She didn't want to want to die.
Or did she?
Humans are the only creature capable of hating its own self. Animals have questionable consciousness. They know they exists, and they do not question that fact. Why is it that humans deny the idea of living? All being experiencing the pain of life, the suffering, the struggle, yet the will to live on drive them. The cutifly, a pokemon native to the island chain of Alola, lives for months in its juvenile form, only to undergo its metamorphic evolution into a rimbombee, a being with no mouth to even feed itself. Its entire life is a build up to just one week in its adult form, where it strives above all else to ensure the continuance of its species and mate. Never once does it question the nature of its existence. Humans are granted decades, a century if lucky, to live, love, learn, and experience life. Yet so many of them fall to self-hatred and depression.
The ball erupted from her hands. The shockwaves of power radiated off it like hurricane force winds. Those within the room were knocked clear off their feat, trigger fingers going wild and firing bullets at random. Gyarados Red appeared, the terror of the sea serpent engulfing the room, surrounding its partners entire form. Its roar as if a million predators rose up and turned their voices unto the skies, filling the room with intimidation. This was the horror of the sea given form, the alpha predator of the ocean deep.
In the moment, she knew. She was never alone. Gyarados Red looked at her, pokemon to girl. In the wild, would it not have killed her outright, eaten like just another lower member of the food chain? There were movies about that, a famous series years ago called Jaws, about a Gyarados that hunted innocent beach goers with abandon. Yet, over the millennia a strange bond had been forged between human and pokemon, the bond stronger than something meager like friendship or companionship. A Trainer and their pokemon were two halves of the same whole. The head and the hands. Working in unison to become greater than the sum of its parts. In that moment, the young human woman met yes with the great beast. There was a reason they worked so well, beyond understanding each other on some primal level. Her fire matched its fire, her drive matched its drive. She was Serena. He was Gyarados Red. They were the definition of mega.
"I won't die! Not here! Not now!" the girl screamed as the hangar erupted in sheer draconic rage.
How fitting was it that the base filled with the sounds not of battle, but of music at that time? Classical, with full orchestra accompaniment echoed from every speaker. It was as if very FLARE base itself heard the fire reignite within the very soul of Serena and said 'Yes! I shall play you into infinity! This sound shall be the soundtrack to your glory!' Atop his back she rode, her mega ring glowing with a light unseen before now, its intensity the fury of a ten thousand suns. As she burst through the hangar bay and into the evening sky above.
"Gyarados! I understand! Let's do this together!" she yelled. Whatever the military forces were planning, it was clear that most of them were not ready for an engagement with a beast as powerful as that of the divines. General Surge had left a sizable chunk of his army topside, and missiles combined with elemental onslaughts tore through the sky at the mega-power pokemon. But Serena was ready. With a wave of her hand, the power of Gyarados Red erupted, and washed over the land like a tsunami. Any attacks against them disappeared and exploded immediately.
She knew, she understood now.
And she would unleash and fury that would rival the demons of old.
"Gyarados Red has activated! Serena is okay! She's alive!" the new was amazing, a ray of hope Aliana sorely needed. Behind her she kept dragging Calem. He hadn't said a worried in a bit.
The two had crawled through the anterior tunnels, finally backing their way to the lower central elevator. Just one ride up would get him to X's terrarium, and its launch bay.
Bullets flew. Shards of ice rained down from above. Damn, they had been caught. With reactions honed from far too many battles, in one motion she threw Calem aside and drew her pistol. A pair of insurgents were behind them, partnered with shrew-like pokemon adapted to fidget climates, and could use the very powers of ice to control or inflict harm.
"Of course that idiot Calem is nowhere to be found!" Serena declared of the radio. Aliana didn't respond, caught up within the firefight. She would get Calem to X if it was the last thing she did. She had one chance, and prepared for something like this. Lysandre was paranoid, at times. She remembered during the base's construction that he hid pockets of supplies all over the base. Had he always known this attack was going to happen? She had so many questions for the leader, especially after what she had learned. What really was his role in all this, his goals? Why did he know so much about Second Impact? Why did he know so much about Cyrus?
From her jacket she withdrew a grenade she grabbed from one of those storage units; small but enough for now. She fired blindingly around her corner as a distraction, then leaped out into the hall and tossed the grenade. It flew right to its target like a professional baseball player tossing the winning pitch. Explosion rockets the corridor, with the ceiling caving in. Good.
She dragged Calem out of his hiding and thrust him against the elevator, hitting the call button at the same time. From within the telltale clanks and rumbles of the coming lift returned. Calem was going to make it after all. But she wasn't. Major Aliana had be shot. One of the soldiers had apparently gotten lucky, or didn't fall for her feint when she tossed the bomb. Blood oozed from her stomach.
"Well, that should hold them off for a while." She coughed, Calem looked at her, stunned. "Don't worry, it's not as bad as it looks." Adrenaline rushed through her veins as she turned to the boy, drops of blood flinging off her hand onto Calem's shirt.
"Calem listen to me. From now on you're on your own. You'll have to make your own decisions; no one can do it for you."
"I... I can't. I'm no good. I can't command X if all I do is hurt and kill people. I thought I had no choice but to partner with X, but I was just lying to myself. I'm not worthy of being a mega's partner because I don't understand anything! I'm incapable of doing anything good for anybody else. I did something terrible to Serena. I killed Mew." A boy, a friend danced across his psyche. "I'm a horrible person. I'm dishonest and a coward. All I ever do is hurt other people, so I'd rather do nothing at all!" There it was, Aliana knew the boy had just bared his heart.
"I'm not going to feel sorry for you. If you don't like feeling pain, then you can just sit here and let them kill you!" Her words washed over like the futility of waves trying to erode a metal shore. Tears well up in his eyes, as the saline began to wash down his cheeks.
"Crying isn't going to solve anything, either!" She paused, collecting herself. "You hate yourself, don't you? That's why you hurt others. Deep down you know that you suffer more when you cause someone else pain, than if you just let yourself get hurt. But, Calem, that was your decision, so that makes it a valid choice. That was what you wanted, so that makes it worthwhile. Stop lying to yourself, and realize that you do have options. Then accept the choices you've made."
"But you're not me. You don't know what I have to go through. You don't understand!"
"So fucking what if I'm not you?! That doesn't mean it's okay for you to give up! If you do, I'll never forgive you as long as I live. God knows I'm not perfect either. I've made tons of stupid mistakes and later I regretted them." Visions of August flashed through her mind. "And I've done it over and over again, thousands of times. A cycle of hollow joy and vicious self-hatred. But even so, every time I learned something about myself. Please, Shinji. You've got to pilot Eva and settle this once and for all. For your own sake. Find out why you came here. Why you exist at all. Answer your own questions. And when you've found your answers, come back to me. I'll be waiting for you. Promise me."
For a moment, the two stood there. Time seemed the stand still in Calem's mind. And in that moment, he knew her. They stood together, facing each other not as a young boy to his teacher, but as a man looking at a woman who truly cared for him. A whisper escaped his lips, a softly muttered "yes."
"See you soon," She knew she shouldn't, but her body leaned in, and gave a kiss. Possibly the first real kiss of the young man's life. Her lips embraced his and lingered. "That was a grown-up kiss. We'll do the rest when you get back." The elevator opened up, and she shoved Calem in. In the time that she had known him, she tried everything to make a connection to the boy. But what more could motivate a young man, than the allure of a femininity?
As the elevator door closed, she felt the full weight of her body collapse against the wall and onto the floor below. Strength is funny in a way. Humans project it for others better than they can must it for themselves. When she needed it, she was strong, strong for Calem, yet now the pain of the wound returned in full force. Se coughed.
"If I'd known it'd end like this... "
"I would have... changed the carpet like Serena suggested..."
"Right, Prinplup?" Her last partner.
"August, my love... I did do the right thing... didn't I?"
The enemy was prepared. One standby circling above were trainers aboard a dropship, and they had all thrown their pokeballs at the same time. Before her, before Gyarados Red stood the Genesect series. She had heard about them, in passing. The Elites hadn't put their entire faith in the Megas project to fight the divines at first, and ordered another team, far off in Unova to research a solution to the divines. This was the fruit of their labors.
300 million years ago, life was different. It's been said that the beasts of today pale in comparison to the monsters of yesteryear, that earth was once a living death world, filled with monstrosities and chaos. The technology to resurrect the fossilized had been perfected for years. Woolly Mamoswine which once inhabited the frozen north, walked the earth again, as did the dinosaurs Aerodactyl and the jurassic Tyrantrum. Genesect was an insect giant, an apex predator from the before times. And science decided that the creature nature perfected wasn't yet good enough.
What stood before her were six hybrids of arthropod and machine, cyborg abominations given life. Each different, in slight ways, yet all similar in species and the fact that nature had been improved upon with cannons strapped to their back. All demons of science designed to fight gods.
"Six against two huh? Is that any way to treat someone fresh out of the hospital?" Serena taunted. She grinned. They had no idea who they were messing with.
Music played throughout the room. Soft, yet meaningful chords danced to every person they touched, setting the stage for things to come. Lysandre knew it was Xerosic's doing, a way to soften the tension running through the base. He smiled, his second in command always had good taste.
He had brought Shauna here, to the bowels of FLARE headquarters, down in the very terminal dogma which housed the most precious of cargo. There they stood, as the containment which separated Xerneas from the world lifted, letting the majesty of the beast experience the stale underground air. The rafters trembled with the fury of the battle above, yet Lysandre cared not. All that mattered to him now was right here. But they were not alone.
"When I saw you had abandoned the rest to the wolves, I knew you'd come here." Dr. Celosia announced. She pointed a pistol straight at the FLARE leader. Shauna stood behind him, that same blank look on her face.
"Tell the truth, the truth about you and Second Impact." She ordered.
"If you're asking, then you already know. But I will humor your request." Violins played off of cellos, their vibrato accompanying a soft harmony of deep strings.
"And I thought, that I would conjure a great devil, and tell all the fools in the heavens that I too was god. I was there, when Cyrus spoke those last words to his flock. I was never a believer. The gods sit in heaven, under Arceus, and follow His lead on the world, a strict policy of utter neglect. Existence is one of string of pain tempered by the sweet kiss of love, which never is enough to temper the struggle. My first love taught me that, not you Celosia, never you. Yui gave me everything, and left nothing but despair in her passing. Death begets naught but strife."
"You use that as justification to destroy the world? Not only once, but twice? You think you're the only person ever to lose somebody, but your depression blinds you to the truth. And you lured me into your crusade, knowing full well I lost everything to Second Impact."
"Destruction was never my goal. I'm not some villain who seeks death and wishes to drag the universe within him into the black. I seek life, eternal. A greater understanding between all living things. You know that. You know was Instrumentality is. I join Cyrus on his crusade into the far reaches of the world not as some religious zealot. Cyrus's vision was to use the powers of heavens to remake this world into something beautiful. A universe without pain, without struggle, without strife, where the barriers that separate us are dissolved and humanity can truly know one another. You believed in that once too."
"Jeanette Celosia, The truth is…" trumpets gave way to fanfare and crescendos. The doctor looked at him, and chuckled.
"I was a fool." She raised pistol and pulled the trigger, but Lysandre was ready, Celosia was a scientist, not a murder, and her aim was labored and crude. Lysandre dodged the bullet easily, and shot her with his own, hidden, pistol before she could manage a second attempt. The bullet struck true, right in the middle of her head. She was dead before she even hit the ground. Her glasses shattered.
Lysandre stood up and threw aside his own weapon. He had no more use for the crude inventions of this world.
Serena raged. Even down here, in the command center, Bryonny could feel the impact of her mega's blows against the Genesect series. Under the console, she hid, with a laptop plugged into the mainframe feeding her information about the battle above. The fighting in the command center had died down, the guards and their pokemon had managed to stave off the first wave on insurgents bearing down on their location. It didn't give her pause no reprieve. She knew it was only a matter of time before more soldiers came pouring in, from the same tunnel or others, with even bigger and stronger pokemon in their wake.
She also saw that Calem had finally made his way to X.
"What's happening up there? Kaguya shouted while he searched for something to reload with.
"Serena and Gyarados Red are amazing, but they're taking heavy damage." The two were tearing across the city with a vengeance. The genesect barely had a time to fire before Gyarados Red was upon them. The mega was all fangs and fury as one giant bite tore through the torso of the first abomination. Two more jumped her from the back, but Serena was ready. Pokemon were perfectly adapted to their environments, so much that they take on some of its physical characteristics. Imagine, then, what the creativity of man could add to that mix? Gyarados Red's Tail slap was more than just the physical slam of flesh and bone, but summoned the full force of the strongest of waterfalls with it. Between Second Impact, and the attack from the living island Volcanion, Lumiose had become a place of endless rivers and streets rushing through its cracked city streets. Gyarados Red could summon them, and hit with the force of a monsoon.
Bryonny watched as the mega took out two, then four, then the fifth one in rapid succession. The beast spending little more than dozens of second on each genesect before tearing them to pieces. Serena was on fire.
"Now the last one!" The girl shouted, her voice echoing through the comms. Gyarados Red launched itself skyward. The last genesect tried, shooting a volley of blasts, but to no avail. The mega came crashing down on the abomination.
"She did it! Serena destroyed the last one!"
The ring's light softened as both trainer and partner reveled in their victory. Gyarados Red fought well, but nothing is invincible. Blood gushed from wounds earned during the fight. The beast was tired.
It was the worst time for a missile to strike.
General surge still had some support topside, and just as the mega relaxed its guard came 25-tons of explosive fury. All Bryonny could hear was the screams of a young woman being roasted alive.
"SERENA!" She shouted within the command center. Albin and Kaguya turned their attention to the screen. Up top, Xerosic tented his fingers.
"Wait, what? Oh Arceus, the destroyed Genesect series, they're coming back to life!" Raw power was never the goal of the genesect project, but longevity. Immortal soldiers, what was dead, engineered to never die. Whatever power the arthropod had in its past life regenerated the creatures, enough to bring them back from the brink. They stood, 6 creatures, more machine than biological, but living enough for one primal urge to survive. The urge to feed.
Bryonny turned away from the screen, her stomach doing flips as she tried to hold in what she hoped wasn't her last meal. The six genesect descended upon what remained of Gyarados Red, and its rider. And had begun to feast.