Distortion
Chapter Twelve - Distortion
Zero's small aircraft hovered over the water, but they could hear the creaks and gears as it twisted and changed. Leaf narrowed her eyes, pushing her hat up slightly and asked, "Is it just me or that kind look like Giratina?"
Ash mimicked her expression, even going as far as to push his own hat up so that more light could reach his eyes in the darkness. He tilted his head with confusion and asked, "What is he—." Ash threw his hands up over his eyes as a brilliant sphere of pulsing, pale blue light appeared. Through his finger tips, he could see the sphere hovering before it flew at them violently. Giratina whipped around, with a vicious cry, an identical orb generating in his mouth before it went flying through the air.
The two orbs crashed into one another, the light swirling for a moment before it exploded. The shockwave sent them all flying to the ground, landing in a confusing pile of tangled limbs.
"Pikapi!" Haven been protected from the shockwave by Giratina, Pikachu did not appreciate the fact that his trainer was hurt again. He jumped down electricity surrounding him as he unleashed a powerful Thunderbolt. It slammed into the ship, but didn't do much.
Instead, the ship took off towards the sky, doing a loop in the air before a portal appeared in front of it. The ship flew through, and everything went still and silent again.
"What just happened?" Dawn squeaked out as she pushed herself up, dark blue eyes wide as she tilted her head with confusion.
"He's gone to the Reverse World," Newton growled as he stood up, face twisted in anger. "That machine, it was designed to copy Giratina's ability to get there, but it probably copied all of his other abilities too. There's no telling what damage he could cause there!"
Almost like an answer to that statement, the water in front of them exploded and they all would have ended up on the ground, completely soaked if Giratina hadn't blocked the attack. The pokemon cried out angrily, and Ash looked up just as it lowered its head down. His red eyes look towards Ash, and the boy instantly knew what Giratina wanted, because it was what he wanted too.
Ash took a step forward, but was stopped by someone grabbing his arm. He looked around towards Misty, her eyes filled with worry. "You don't have to." She didn't clarify what it was that he didn't have to do, but Ash knew what she was talking about.
He stared at her for a moment, contemplative before he shook his head, taking his arm away from her grasp and then squeezing her hand reassuringly. "I know, but I want to." His smile faded, a once-rare seriousness that was becoming all-too familiar creeping up on him. "Whatever happens there happens here, so get ready to fight."
Misty appeared thoughtful, before she nodded her head and squeezed his hand back. "We got this. Don't die, or I'll kill you."
He snorted with amusement and let go of her hand. "I promise nothing." He turned to Giratina, who was still waiting patiently, which was slightly surprising since the Reverse World was his home and responsibility. Ash nodded at Pikachu, who jumped up onto his shoulder. He climbed up onto Giratina's head.
"Where are you going?" Dawn called up to him, though Ash didn't answer. Instead, he held on tightly as Giratina took off into the air flying up towards the glacier and creating a new portal.
"I'm coming too!" Shaymin landed not far from him, holding on just as tightly as Giratina flew through the portal. Ash didn't have it in him to argue, and as much as he disliked Shaymin, he couldn't deny that having the help of another legendary pokemon might actually be a good thing.
The Reverse World was cloaked in the poisonous clouds when they flew in, though as Giratina approached, it all dispersed, as if unable to touch the legendary pokemon without being destroyed. Maybe that was exactly what happened, but Ash didn't have time to focus on that. His eyes locked onto Zero's ship flying around, watching it zigzag around the tall columns of land and ice. He gasped as the wings of the small ship started slicing through some of the massive shards of ice. He wasn't sure what that would do to their world, but it couldn't be good in any way. He watched another completely shatter, a massive chunk falling down.
Giratina cried out in anger and flew towards it. Ash winced, throwing his hand up over his face as they flew through a storm of sharp shards, grimacing a bit from the cuts that it caused. He yelped and jerked back just as a large piece of ice fell in front of him, nearly taking off his head, thought Giratina didn't seem to notice or care. He sighed with relief, his hand resting on the ice. It was strange to touch, because it was so cold and ice was one of the things that he couldn't normally sense, it wasn't actually alive, but the ice here was. He looked around as Zero continued to smash and shatter the ice columns.
"Whatever's going to happen at home, they're going to need more help," Ash said to Pikachu, because if a small bubble popping could cause an explosion, he didn't want to see what this was going to do. He wasn't aware of the blood he left behind on the ice shard, and he wasn't aware of it glowing for a moment before it slid off of Giratina's back and fell.
Ash also had absolutely no way of knowing that something else heard him, awaking for the first time in many, many years.
...
Misty loved fireworks. She loved watching the shapes and the colours, she loved the excitement that most people had when they were watching them, she loved seeing them with friends, and she also loved the fact that something so beautiful and amazing was created by simple explosions.
Fireworks were the first thing she thought of when she heard the cracking. It was much too loud to be gunfire, though maybe some of the veterans who fought in the Kanto Wars would disagree with her. Whatever the case, in this scenario, she did not associate it with anything good.
They all looked around, straining in the darkness to see exactly what was going on before the ground started to shake violently beneath their feet.
"An earthquake?" Brock cried out, grabbing Dawn's shoulders to keep her upright. The girl smiled in thanks, sticking close to him, though she would never admit that it was out of fear.
Misty looked down as the water suddenly touched her sneakers. She frowned in confusion, able to clearly see the water level rising, and took a few steps back. Beside her, Leaf let out a gasp that was so horrifying, that the redhead actually looked up to make sure she was okay.
Though Misty could barely see her in the dim moonlight, she could still see that Leaf was suddenly terrified. "The glacier! It's moving!"
Misty looked towards the mountains that surrounded the walls of ice, an the rising water suddenly made sense. Her heart dropped and she took a few more steps back. It started ripping at the sides of the mountains, sending rocks and trees down into the lake and shore below.
"This is Zero's doing," Newton growled angrily.
"You don't say?" Leaf snapped, and Misty was glad because what did it matter if Zero was doing this? There was a massive wall of ice creeping towards them. She told Ash that they could take care of this world, but fighting against a wall of ice?
"What do we do?" Brock asked Newton without looking in his direction.
"I don't know."
"We fight!" Misty looked around at Dawn, who stormed up to the water's edge, her eyes fixed on the glacier and more determined than anything she had seen in a while. She tossed two pokeballs up into the air, releasing her tiny Buneary and Swinub.
"Buneary, Swinub, use Ice Beam and Ice Shard on the lake!" She pointed at the water, and her pokemon were quick to follow her command, freezing the lake where their attacks touched.
"Oh! Of course!" Misty threw her own pokeballs into the air, releasing Gyarados and Spheal. "Use Ice Aurora Beam and Ice Beam!" They followed the lead of the other two pokemon, freezing the lake.
More and more wild pokemon began to show up, and any that could use an ice-based attack did. Snover, Abomasnow, Froslass, Bidroof, Bibarel, and even an Aagron were helping.
"Come on guys," Misty muttered, more to herself than anything else. "We just need to slow it down to give them a chance to stop this." She wasn't the type to pray to legendary pokemon, but she was hoping against all hope that Ash and Pikachu would be able to stop this.
...
Zero's ship finally stopped moving, hovering in front of a rippling portal that showed what was going on in the real world. Ash could clearly see the glacier starting to move, and knew that they had to do something to stop it. Their friends were back there, and as strong as they were, he really didn't expect them to beat a glacier.
Instead of shadowing Zero and trying to minimize the damage without being see, Giratina went on the attack, launching a powerful Dragon Rage attack that slammed into the small ship. Ash cheered the pokemon on, especially as Shaymin adding her own attack in. Surely there was no way he could withstand two powerful pokemon.
Ash gaped in shock when the ship streaked towards them without a bit of damage on it. Giratina cried out angrily and shot forward, slamming into the ship to try and force it into one of the rock columns.
Pikachu cried out in surprise as he pitched off Ash's shoulder. The boy reacted without thinking, letting go of Giratina to grab his partner, flipping forward and slamming into the metal of the ship. He reacted quickly, grabbing onto the grooves to keep himself on it. From this angle, he could only watch as Zero managed to somehow overpower Giratina, flying forward and slamming the legendary pokemon into a column of ice.
"Giratina!" he yelled, watching as Zero created his own Dragon Rage attack, attempting to hit the legendary pokemon at a point-blank range. Relief rushed through him when Giratina vanished, appearing above them and attacking. Sure, hew as on the ship too, but Ash honestly didn't care at that point of time.
"Hey, hold on!" Shaymin yelled at him, firing her Energy Balls at the window of the ship. "And you, freak on the inside! Why don't you come out here and fight!"
"Come out and—." Ash yelped as the ship suddenly lurched up. Just as his hand slipped from the grove he was holding onto, he willed yet another barrier to appear around him, shocks of discomfort spiralling up his ankles as he slammed into it. He twisted around, holding onto the ship with a bit more comfort in the knowledge that he probably wouldn't fly off again. Instead, he slowly started making his way towards the windshield.
Giratina appeared in front of them again, and two Dragon Rage attacks slammed into one another violently, the explosion nearly twice as big as the one they experienced in the real world. Pikachu cried out and Ash grunted as Zero's ship flipped over midair before correcting itself, and more of the ice columns shattered.
Ash held up his hand, and the ice shards melted before they could reach him. He looked at his own hand with confusion before he realized something. Flipping around and trying desperately to hold on to Zero's ship, the obvious that he had been ignoring this whole time finally came to him. The aura was so strong and powerful in this world that it was almost overwhelming, so he was shunning a lot of it, much like he tried to do when he was at the Tree of Beginning. Aura was powerful, he knew that so much more than most because they couldn't experience how overwhelming it could be.
It didn't have to be that way though. He could control it to a point, but only when he truly stopped fighting against it.
Face screwed up with determination, Ash stopped shunning the energy around him and was almost blinded by the sheer light that assaulted his eyes, a light he couldn't even escaped if he closed them. He didn't need to see though, all he needed to do was feel.
Ash reached out, and to anyone else, it might have looked like he was grasping onto thin air, but in his point of view, he knew that his fingers were physically wrapping around some of the energy flowing around them.
"Pikapi!" Pikachu yelled at him, holding on to his back tightly.
"It'll be okay, just hold on!" He felt Pikachu's tiny claws dig into him more, and then he pulled. The energy followed his movement, and he slammed it down onto the windshield below him, not quick enough to block the glass that shattered and flew in every direction. He grimaced at the stinging pain from the thin cut on his cheek, but persisted. With a grunt and a heave, Ash pulled himself and Pikachu up, leaning over where the windshield used to be and meeting a pair of shocked and incredibly angry golden eyes.
"Hi."
...
Leaf would never admit it, but she had always hated horror movies. Even as a kid, she didn't like the scary shows that were aimed at her age group. Despite her refusal to admit how much they frightened her, Gary and Ash managed to figure out her fear and that, in combination with her stubbornness, led her to watching many things that gave her nightmares for weeks after.
She was starting to realize though that the true horrors weren't murderers or vengeful spirits, but rather the things that could happen in life without warning. The glacier that was slowly moving towards them, though slow moving and not alive at all, was easily one of the most horrifying things that she had ever seen. Sure, Leaf had been afraid for Misty, but this was different. If they (or Ash) couldn't stop the glacier, it would not only kill them, but a lot of other people. Who knows what would happen after that, with Zero in the Reverse World.
Though Leaf had only been around Ash and his friends for a little over a day, she already figured out where his stress and his tension came from. If this was the type of thing he was expected to do, and on a regular basis by how wary he seemed, she couldn't blame him. Her mind was running a mile a minute, trying to figure out what they could do to slow it down.
The ice on the lake cracked with what sounded like canon-fire as the glacier surged forward. She heard Misty curse beside her, but all she could do was stare. She was a smart girl (though always second to Gary Oak, as he thrived in pointing out), but the mystery of how to stop a glacier was beyond her.
"It's no use, it's not stopping!" Brock cried out, frustration riddling his voice as his fist shook. Leaf decided that he needed as much of a break as Ash did. He was clearly taking too much onto his shoulders as the eldest of the group.
"It's going to crush the Flower Garden if we don't stop it!" Dawn added, stomping her foot on the ground. Her words and her actions were so innocent, so child-like in a way that it almost made Leaf smile. In another situation, it probably would have.
"That's the least of our problems," Newton explained to her in a no-nonsense tone. "There are towns down this valley. The glacier will crush them and as it keeps melting, flood everything else downhill from here. They're all doomed to be destroyed."
Dawn looked like someone had punched a Poochyena in front of her, and Misty put a comforting hand on her shoulder. The redhead glared fiercely at Newton. "Well that's not helping us at all." Her eyes flitted to the glacier again, narrowing slightly. "Maybe we could...melt it?"
"And flood everything?" Newton sounded appalled. "Why would you—."
"It wouldn't' flood if we made our own wall of ice to block it," Leaf interrupted, but then she shook her head. "Even with all these pokemon, we couldn't do it fast enough."
"So we just stand here and let it crush us?" Misty's cheeks turned red with frustration, and Lead decided then and there that all of them needed an actual break.
The ground started to shake beneath their feet, and she actually groaned in annoyance. "What now?"
"Maybe the ground will just open up and swallow us hole," Brock grumbled bitterly, and the three girls stared at him for a moment, completely ignoring the shaking ground beneath them. He realized that they were staring at him, sighed and said, "Sorry, that was morbid."
"What the..." Newton trailed off, focusing on something up on the outline of the mountain. They all followed his gaze, watching as a massive figure appeared above them, lights flickering down the center of it.
Misty shifted suddenly, her expression becoming uncomfortable as she asked, "Is that Regi...um...well one of them?"
"Regigigas," Brock answered, his eyes going wide. The shaking came to a stop when it stopped moving, before it yelled loudly and held out its arms. The shaking started again as an entire herd of Mamoswine stormed down the cliffside, dwarfed by the sheer size of Regigigas. The shaking became worse as the legendary pokemon started to walk as well.
"There's more over there!" Dawn called out, pointing at the other side of the valley where more Mamoswine stormed down the hill.
"What's...going on?" Leaf asked unsurely, dusty eyes flickering from one incline to the next and back to the glacier.
"I don't know," Brock answered her honestly. She wasn't really expecting an answer, so all she could do was hold her breath and wait in anticipation as the pokemon charged towards the glacier. Regigigas led the way, pushing against the glacier along with the Mamoswine, actually slowing down its movement.
"Gyarados!" Misty called out to her pokemon after a minute of stunned silence. "Get over there and help push. If the ice under their feet starts to break, freeze it again!"
"You guys watch their feet too!" Dawn urged her own pokemon.
...
Zero was angry. Ash didn't even have to look at him to know that. He ignored Zero's stuttering yells, rolling so that he landed right in front of the young man, kneeling where the windshield used to be, and grabbing the steering. He jerked the ship out of the way before Zero could truly clue in to what he was doing, giving Giratina the chance to attack.
"You stupid child!" He raged, his pupils narrowing. "You don't know what you've done!" He grabbed the controls back, fighting Ash for them. The ship jerked wildly back and fourth, spinning around so quickly that Ash was sure he was going to puke.
"Pikapi!" Pikachu's cry of warning was a little too late. Though he was jerking Zero's ship around, he couldn't stop the man from firing his weapons. Heat seared his back and he was pushed forward, slamming his head onto the top of the ship as something exploded behind him.
Ash cried out in pain, black dots flittering across his eyes. He slumped slightly, but still managed to hold himself up.
"Pika!" Pikachu's cheeks sparked and he unleashed a torrent of electricity into the cabin of the ship. Ash didn't know what was going on, but he knew that his partner was absolutely done sitting around.
A loud bang and a high-pitched cry of pain caused Ash to whip around, his bright brown eyes locking onto Giratina's form as the legendary pokemon slammed into one of the ice columns with such a harsh force that it actually made him cringe. He could only watch in horror as Giratina fell, the ice column breaking up and slamming down on top of him.
"Giratina!" He yelled in vain, because there was nothing he could do to help the legendary pokemon.
"You should be worrying about yourself."
Ash didn't have the chance to truly understand Zero's ominous words before the ship jerked roughly. Only holding on with one hand, and far too distracted to actually have a barrier up to protect himself, Ash yelled in shock when he was thrown off.
He threw out his arms and the energy around him reached out, like it was grabbing a hold of him and stopping him from slamming into the ice column along Giratina had moments before, less than an inch away. The abrupt stop made him feel like he left his stomach somewhere else, and Pikachu was shaking on his shoulder. His concentration wavered, and he started to fall, physically scrambling to grab onto what was left on the ice column, his hands almost instantly becoming cold and numb as he slid down it. Still, grabbing onto different grooves and willing the aura in that world to slow him, he managed to stop himself from what would have been a deadly crash onto the ground. It was still rough though.
Pain exploded in his right ankle as that foot hit the bottom first, and he fell to the ground, crying out and clutching it. His eyes watering and his breath catching in his throat.
"Pikapi!" Pikachu scrambled off of his shoulder, going down to his ankle and sniffing it. He just lightly touched it and Ash cried out again, jerking it away. Pikachu's ears fell.
"It's okay, it's okay," Ash breathed out, though he wasn't sure if he was talking to Pikachu, or himself. He took a few more deep breaths and then looked up, watching as Zero forced his partially broken ship through the Reverse World. "Oh Mew, oh Mew, what do we do?" His eyes darted to a moving object in the sky, watching as Shaymin attacked the canons that mimicked Giratina's powerful attacks. The thought made him sicker than the pain already did, but in that moment, Ash realized that Shaymin was the only thing that could stop Zero now.
...
Though their pokemon kept the ice from shattering under the weight of so many heavy creatures, all Brock, Misty, Dawn, Leaf and Newton could do was watch the struggle.
"What's it doing?" Leaf asked suddenly, watching as Regigigas started to glow, and that glow started to spread across the surface of the ice and illuminating the area in a warm yellow light. No one needed to try and answer her though, loud crackling and scraping echoing through the air.
"Is it pushing the glacier back?" Dawn asked, completely flabbergasted at what she was seeing. "How's that possible?"
"Regigigas is a legendary pokemon," Brock told them simply enough, deciding not to bother with how strange it truly was. He knew that legendary pokemon were very hard to explain to someone who had never met them before, mostly because they could do things that just didn't make sense and almost took a blind leap of faith to trust.
Leaf shifted beside him, and he glanced down at her curiously. She focused on Regigigas, biting her lip before she apparently made up her mind. "Well, lets just hope that whatever he's doing helps whatever Ash is doing."
That made Brock smile. That was a leap of faith.
...
Ash saw it within all the destruction, something that was wonderful and even though he couldn't explain how it was happening, he could clearly see it happening and that's all that mattered to him. He couldn't explain why one of the shattered ice columns suddenly had a subtly yellow glow to the jagged tips, or how more and more ice was slowly appearing out of nowhere, but it was slowly repairing itself.
He was very proud of the very obvious fact that Zero's ship wasn't working right. He couldn't get the speed to ram apart any of the other ice columns, and he seemed to be having trouble steering it in general. Things like motor skills tended to become a bit sluggish after being electrocuted, Ash knew that first hand.
The sound of shifting rocks and ice suddenly caught his attention. He looked around with alarm, but then froze when he saw Team Rocket and their pokmon trying to move the ice that was holding the unconscious Giratina down.
"Team Rocket?"
"Don't go thinking we're nice guys," Meowth warned him, flashing his claws, though Ash was very confident it was just for show this time. "We gots to help."
"See, the odds of him," Jessie pointed at Zero's puttering ship, "helping us are slim to none. We'll take our chances with you, twerp."
"Yeah, besides we haven't had a very big role in these stories so the author wanted to give us a tiny moment," Meowth added with a shrug. Everyone just stared at him, but he went back to chipping at the ice with some sort of tool, rather than using his own claws.
Ash looked at James as the man knelt down next to him. He flinched when James' hand made contact with his ankle, and he quickly yanked it back before frowning. Then he reached forward again and pushed Ash's pant leg up just a little bit. "Oh."
It was a bit strange that Ash was letting someone from Team Rocket actually touch him, but if he had to pick one of the three to actually physically help him, it would have been James. Sometimes he honestly didn't understand how this man became a Team Rocket grunt, but then he would turn around and try to steal Pikachu, so there was that. Right now though, Ash knew that he needed some sort of help. He looked down and felt his stomach drop at the swell and bruising appearing around his ankle. He knew for a fact that it was bad.
"It looks like you fractured it a bit," James told him. Ash was going to reply but another explosion rippled above them in the air as Shaymin attacked Zero's ship again. Funnily enough, James shifted a bit so that he was blocking Ash from the heatwave as best as he could. "There's nothing we can do about it here, but I can help you walk."
Ash stared at James, and all he could feel was complete sincerity. There was no double-cross here, not even from Jessie and Meowth, who were still working away at getting Giratina out. Ash's eyes shifted upwards as he watched Zero's ship finally settle over them, a sphere of energy starting to appear, pointing at Giratina.
"Pikachu!"
"Pika!" He pokemon jumped from rock to ice shard to rock again, getting close enough to blast the sphere back into the ship, sending it flying backwards. Zero managed to steady it easily enough this time.
"Get out of my way!" The madman yelled, his voice echoing over an intercom system of sorts. "People like you are what's wrong with our world. You never understand. I bet you think I'm destroying everything, but if anything is destroying this place it's the real world!"
"Talk about your melodramatics," Meowth mumbled and Ash almost laughed out loud.
"There, look at that toxic cloud!" Ash and James both looked up, seeing the mass of purple smog explanding and engulfing everything it came across. "Don't you see? This wondrous world is constantly being polluted! Don't you understand, I'm protecting it!" His voice ended with a yell that made his speaker system squeal a bit.
Ash shook his head, focusing on the cloud that was coming much too close to them for comfort. "He doesn't know anything about protecting something." Ash closed his eyes. "Ria, come out here." His pokemon appeared from her pokeball almost immediately, staring at James suspiciously. She too had been the target of Team Rocket time and time again. "He's okay, look at me. We don't have any time. Heal it."
She looked at his ankle, wincing a bit and looking at him with wide eyes. "Rio?"
"We don't have time. Heal it. Just so I can walk a bit."
"Ri."
"Ria!"
She closed her eyes and put her paws over his ankle, and Ash tried not to cringe away from the pain because that would only discourage her. She focused, a blue glow covering her paws and his ankle. Neither of them ever really tried fixing something like this before, and Ash wasn't expecting the pain. He had to bite down on his gloved hand to keep from crying out. He had to give James a bit of credit though. If he thought this was strange, he didn't say a word about it.
"Pikapi!" Pikachu ran back, and Ash opened his eyes just in time to see the poisonous cloud surround them. His ankle was far from fine or any sort of healed, but he grabbed onto Ria anyway, breaking her concentration and holding her to his chest so that she wasn't exposed to as much of the poison. Pikachu knew enough to hold his breath.
"Stop it!" Shaymin's voice suddenly echoed around them, oddly powerful. He flew into the midst of the poisonous cloud and started to absorb it. "No more of this!" She pulled in so much of the toxic fumes that her flowers turned pitch black, the leaf-like fur around it turning grey.
"Seed Flare," Ash mumbled one the air in front of him was clear. He struggled to stand up, accepting James' help to stay up. He took a deep breath and yelled, "Shaymin! Shaymin use Seed Flare to knock Zero back into the real world!"
Zero's ship suddenly jerked back away from Shaymin, most likely haven heard Ash. He tried to fly away, but as he did, Jessie and Meowth both let out a cry of triumph. They didn't completely free Giratina, but they got enough off to give the once-again-conscious pokemon some mobility. Giratina jerked around, his golden arms clamping onto the ship as he roared. Zero tried to take off, but Giratina was too strong.
"Shaymin! Hurry!" Ash stumbled forward a bit, grabbing onto a boulder beside him. He nodded his head at James, seeing the way the man's eyes kept darting to his own friends with worry. "I'm okay, get to them before something else goes wrong." Which was bound to happen.
James hesitated, but nodded his head and turned to run to Jessie and Meowth. Ash watched him go, making sure he got there before turning back to Shaymin. The pokemon was glowing a bright green that was almost painful to look at. Everything calmed down for a brief moment before it all exploded with a force like nothing they had seen before now.
Ash grabbed Pikachu and Ria, completely forgetting about the fact that he still couldn't walk on his ankle (Ria hadn't done much to help it in a couple minutes she had). He was thrown backwards, wincing as something hot and bright blue shot by him, slamming into Zero's ship and sending it spiralling just as the energy sucked back into a vaccum-like portal. Shaymin herself was pulled through, followed by the ship and then Team Rocket. Rocks and ice flew in all directions, freeing Giratina completely.
Ash felt the massive pokemon wrap himself around them and land on the ground, holding them all in place.
...
Misty hated waiting, she hated being helpless, and those were easily the two ways she would describe herself and what she had done during this entire adventure. Now they were waiting once again for something to happen. She was so tense with fear and worry (though she would never admit it), that she was willing to accept any sort of change, good or bad, as long as something happened to break up this waiting.
Almost like something heard her, a shimmer appeared in the sky over the glacier. She narrowed her eyes, staring at it with confusion before it was suddenly like the sky was being ripped open right in front of them.
"That's what I saw before," Leaf spoke up suddenly, straightening her posture. "The first time I saw Shaymin."
"She must have used Seed Flare again," Newton explained as he shifted a bit.
They all watched with baited breath to see what would happen. Zero's massive ship flew through, slamming into the ice and flipping over again and again, the piercing sound of ripping metal echoing around them. Misty watched it for a moment before looking towards the portal. "Come on, Ash. Come on. You got him out already."
It wasn't Ash, but another familiar figure that came through next. Shaymin slammed into the glacier, and though she could withstand losing her Sky Form in the Flower Garden at night, combined with her exhaustion and the cold ice of the glacier, she didn't stand a chance. A yellow glow surrounded her body as she changed back into her normal form and fell towards the ice below.
Dawn ran forward, sliding across the ice and catching Shaymin just in the nick of time. She yelped as she slipped, falling onto the ground and rubbing her back. "Ow."
"Sorry," Shaymin muttered, much to the young girl's surprise.
"Where are Ash and Pikachu?" Misty demanded as she slid over to Dawn's side, glaring fiercely at the grass-type, who actually flinched away from her.
"They must still be there," she looked up towards the disappearing portal almost hesitantly. "I'm sure he's okay though."
"He had better be," the redhead grumbled, more annoying with the fact that they were going to be waiting again. She didn't even care that, technically, their problem with the glacier was still a problem.
"Misty," Leaf said suddenly, looking off towards where Zero's ship landed. "Come with me for a minute."
"Why?"
"Well, so you don't attack a legendary for one thing," she replied dryly. "And another...well...come on. Bring Gyarados." She took off in the direction of the downed ship.
That caught her interest, and she was quick to recall her massive pokemon before running after the brunette.
"Do I really wanna know?" Dawn asked Brock as he helped her stand up and regain her balance on the ice.
"No, I really don't think so."
..
Zero desperately tried to get any system back working, anything at all to recover some sort of data, but he was lost in the darkness and destruction of his ship, with nothing but his own pains and thoughts of failure to go over in his head over and over again.
He closed his eyes, and in an oddly serene voice, muttered, "All of my glorious plans...ruined." He breathed in and out slowly and calmly.
Then a pair of massive teeth clenched through what was left of the roof of his ship, dripping the metal off. The angry eyes of a Gyarados glared down at him, and Zero wondered if this is how he was going to meet his end: killed by a common pokemon.
Vines suddenly shot down from the hole where the roof once was, and he was ripped out of his safety straps and up into the air, unable to move his arms. He struggled, staring down to see the two teenage girls standing between the Gyarados and the Venusaur, glaring at him fiercely.
No, this was how he was going to meet his metaphorical end, defeated and trapped by a bunch of children. He didn't know if that was better, or worse.
...
Note
Was that Team Rocket breaking the fourth wall again? Yes, yes it was. That always amused me in the movies, so there you go. It won't be happening again though.
Before anyone asks, yes, the next chapter is the last one. Sort of. Then there's an epilogue! Haven't had one of those in a while, have I?
There's one thing I feel like I really need to clarify, and I'll do so in more detail on my blog. Ash's aura isn't the answer to anything. Sure, he has been using it to grasp the feelings and intentions of things, and here it definitely saved him, but it's not unbeatable and not perfect. In part, that's why he ended up injuring himself so badly. He slowed himself enough to survive, but not enough to completely to the effects of a long, quick fall. He landed on his right foot, the left one still up on the column, if you're curious why only one ankle was hurt.
The last chapter was apparently horrible for spelling and grammar and I really apologize for it. I also apologize for anything that I missed in my very, very quick read over in this. For that matter...
I was wondering if someone would mind helping me out? Reading through Between Time and Space as well as this story to edit my grammar and spelling mistakes (which I know there are many of...I don't even realize I'm making them at the time, to be honest)? Like a beta reader, but with what I've already posted. Kimiko Heroux was kind enough to edit The Mystery of Aura and The Master of Mirage for me, but the other ones are a little lacking!
I'm glad that everyone likes Giratina 'growling' Shaymin!
Thank you to everyone who read, followed and favourited this fic! An a massive thanks to everyone who reviewed! You guys keep me going somedays! So thank you to: NoSignalBlueScreen, JediMasterDraco, Olivers Shadow, thor94, ultimateCCC, awolflover2, amandaalb4, Wraith Five, RCPMione, and Great!
You guys are awesome, and seriously, if you have any questions, concerns or anything like that, never hesitate to ask me via PM or over on tumblr!
Also, you guys know how it works by now (I assume). I won't be writing an author's note at the end of the next chapter. I just feel like endings should be just that: endings.
Til next time,
Sky
