A new instalment of For Eternity Awaits Us. Because it popped into my head. Also because it's really amusing to image Xerneas' reactions.

When you have a universe where the goal amongst all young children is to be a trainer, or Coordinator... well, it's only natural to have Pokémon dolls. Specifically, Legendary Pokémon dolls. To be the very best, after all.

It's just a shame they don't get the colours correct.

Xerneas (Accidentally) Starts A Cult

It wasn't that Sinnoh was bad, or anything. It was just that… sometimes the people took it too far. They got carried away. And the result was this.

He stared at the doll. The doll stared back.

It wasn't even a good likeliness. In his stag form, he wasn't that colour. Even when Arceus had one day allowed all the Legendaries to see what their Shiny forms could have been like, he still wasn't that colour.

The doll was hot pink. He was dark blue.

...Why had they made him pink? Mew would have suited the colour so much better. Actually, Mew was pink, so scratch that.

But – dear holy Arceus did he hope Yveltal would never have the presence of mind to visit a Grand Festival. The one thing on his side was that his brother would not be caught dead visiting a Grand Festival. Then again, he wasn't really sure what had possessed him to the stalls either.

Maybe it was just that horrible doll. That had to be it.

Xerneas took a deep breath. Another. Then he closed his eyes and slowly moved away from the offending toy.

He got maybe ten steps away before bumping into someone. The perils of walking with eyes closed, naturally. How Uxie did it was still baffling everyone except the Lake Trio. Did area-wide Psychics actually reveal where people were?

He offered a hasty apology before continuing on his way, casting a net of Psychic to tell him more-or-less where people were so if he was moving backwards he could more-or-less avoid them. Hopefully.

Then, of course, the next Coordinator battle started. The Psychic went haywire as people stampeded towards the entrances of the arena. Just to avoid getting crushed, he allowed himself to be swept along with the wave of humans into the arena.

And it was only the first day. Preliminary battles, really. More contests, more ribbons, more trainers who preferred beauty to power.

Despite what everybody thought, Xerneas actually didn't enjoy Coordinator battles. He preferred outright battling. It was simpler, no holding back – unlike the Scyther dancing around the Jellicent floating on the arena. There was more finesse in a Coordinator battle, nobody would deny that, but there was just something about the raw power in proper battle that attracted him.

Also, the fact that it was possible to predict just about every move in a Coordinator fight made it distinctively boring. He found himself muttering their moves under his breath, analysing and critiquing the whole thing without a second thought. Consequently, he gained a lot of strange looks.

The X-Scissor on the Bubble Beam is pretty enough for a Coordinator battle, but simple. Also, its weakness is that it brings the Scyther closer to the Jellicent. A Vacuum Wave would have worked better. Double Team-Agility is good, but the Jellicent is Ghost. It won't and can't be phased by a Double Team. Life energy is too specific and Jellicent in particular can easily detect that life energy. The only worse opponent would be Chandelure. There we go – that Water Pulse, spot on. Night Shade or Ominous Wind would have been better than that Sludge Wave, though. The Razor Wind is good, blows apart the sludge. Wait, what –

Why in the name of Entei would you use a Sunny Day? He barely managed to stop those words coming out of his mouth. Something told him the crowd would not have received it very well. Another quick Psychic-net, a little Dazzling Gleam from the opposite side of the arena and a Light Screen was enough to make him effectively vanish, and he quickly moved out of the arena before he did accidentally say those words aloud and trigger some kind of mass audience hate.

Light Screen in place, he wandered around the stalls again, keeping well away from The Doll. In the process he found doll versions of the other legendaries. The most frustrating thing? They were all correctly coloured.

Could he go track down the toys' creator and demand a better colour palette for himself? Why did other legendaries get perfect colour palettes and he got – hot pink?

He asked a shopkeeper selling Dialga dolls that question. Maybe he should get a Dialga doll for Dialga. Or not. Palkia would laugh at Dialga for the next century, probably bring it up in every argument, and Dialga would eventually get frustrated enough to bend time and stop him from getting that doll. Possibly by blowing apart the entire stall and its surroundings with a Roar of Time. Yeah. Not good.

Also, the Flash Cannon would hurt.

On the other hand, a Mew doll might be a good idea. Enough to possibly stop her from nagging everyone and their Furfrou all the time.

"It's because we actually don't know Xerneas' colour," the shopkeeper was saying. "There are only old carvings and their colour has worn off over time, and there are no descriptions or anything. We only know his shape. And since there was an open market in girls' toys at the time, and the people making the dolls probably figured that Xerneas would appeal more to females – the whole death thing, you know, with his counterpart, it puts people off. Research was showing that pink and lavender toys were selling better with the age range being catered to, so they designed him hot pink and so far no professor has been saying any different so, yeah, they're hot pink."

Even though he really didn't feel like it, he thanked the shopkeeper and left.

~OoOoOoO~

He stepped out of the portal – formed with Geomancy and a little bit of Secret Power – into a deserted part of Mt Coronet. Straight onto a thin ledge, in fact. With roughly carved stairs going up.

Up was the summit of the mountain, and, if you knew where to find it and how to sing it into being, Spear Pillar and the Hall of Origin. Contrary to the legends, it wasn't necessary to possess an Azure Flute, not that such a flute even existed in the first place – Arceus sucked at making loose ends. The Song – known instinctively by every legendary and heard only by a select few humans – was all that was needed to summon the stairs. It was just that human voices weren't really able to sing the Song – it was, as those who had heard it described it (all long dead) too high, or too beautiful, or too wild, or some other too that basically translated to "we can't sing this." Creativity at its finest.

There was no down. Only rough scratches in the rock indicating that a lot of someones had used Rock Climb. A simple Psychic turned the rock face into a perfect slide, which he promptly used to reach the lower floor of Mt Coronet.

A Magikarp broke the surface of a pool, gurgling softly at him. The plea was clear, the reason less so. Still, Xerneas obliged, Misty Terrain sweeping over the cavern. The Magikarp glowed with the telltale brightness of evolution.

Xerneas continued onwards, not really sure where he was going. At some point he decided the clumps of rock one had to climb over was frustrating enough to merit the change back to his normal form. Maybe if some Hiker saw him they could correct the hot pink doll issue.

He just knew he needed to walk it off. And maybe battle something. Not get caught, of course, but it would be fun (at least for him) to have a bit of a workout.

Aromatherapy, Misty Terrain and Heal Pulse combined revitalised every Pokémon on the lower floors. A good dozen Geodude evolved. A quick flash of Psyshock was enough to deter the Zubat, even if plenty still took the opportunity to evolve quicker, or maybe stronger.

A Feebas appeared in the water, staring at him with those wide eyes. A second later, it glowed with the energy of evolution, becoming sleek and serpentine. A Milotic broke the surface a while later, beauty and gratitude emanating from the sleek Pokémon.

When he was finished with the lower floor, he picked the stairs easiest to reach and kept on walking. Walking was good. Walking was calm.

A Psychic swept through the entire cave floor revealed the presence of maybe a dozen or so humans, and a quick mental sweep found them to be – holding delusions of a new world? That was interesting. The vague memory of Cyrus and Team Galactic resurfaced.

Psychic led him to stand facing directly across from them. Behind a rock face, that was. But Psychic did locate them to be standing on the other side of the rock face.

There was just the minor problem of having a rock face in the way.

He pulled back the Misty Terrain and the Aromatherapy, taking two steps back. Two Moonblasts made craters in the rock. Another Moonblast, and Psychic detected just how thin that wall was.

So did his ears, actually, because they picked up the sound of someone who was presumably the leader droning on and on about the problems with the world. Joy.

He charged down the entire thing with a Close Combat.

(Not like Mew or Arceus or anybody else with half a brain couldn't fix it anyway)

The wall broke, splintering around him; his charge slowed, the Fighting aura fading until he was standing in front of a Very Big Hole in the wall. The humans all turned and stared.

At least their leader had stopped talking. Now they were just engaged in a staring match.

Deciding to take the initiative, he promptly unleashed the strongest Psychic he could manage while simultaneously using Flash and Confide. The humans stumbled backwards from the sheer light he forced out, at which point he wiped their minds clean of anything to do with restarting the world but kept his image seared into them. And a name, of course; wouldn't do to have himself classed as a new species of Pokémon.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, the last vestiges of his frustration burned out during the attack. While they were still processing their new memory loss, he formed another portal and returned to the Hall. Job done for the day.

Xerneas also made a resolution to keep everyone away from the Grand Festival for as long as he could without being suspected. Of course, the fact that the damn thing ran for a month would make it difficult, but he was definitely going to try.

(Two weeks later he returned to find that the colour palettes were correct again. He also found a new cult dedicated to him. It was made up of those people he'd wiped in Mt Coronet.)

(Thankfully, Cresselia was nice enough not to laugh when he told her this.)

Hope you enjoyed that! I've got the next chapter of OTWD written out, it just needs a few edits (not particularly happy yet with the ending). Review, comment, favourite, suggest prompts, whatever. School, by the way, is stressful. I procrastinated on my homework doing this.

Til next time

~dreamingthroughstarlight