The Guardian

by Stjernefald

Ash Ketchum learned from an early age that the world was a place devoid of hope. Armed with an unquenchable thirst for vengeance and with an unholy power at his fingertips, Ash must fight a mad force of nature intent upon destruction, whilst trying to cling onto any shred of sanity within himself. But Dark forces lurk unseen in the shadows of the world, and the Crimson King rises.

14. Tears of Life

Disclaimer: Don't own this franchise. Obviously.

A/N: Well, it's been awhile. So, I won't make any pointless justifications for why it would take the better part of a year to upload one of these, because I have no excuse worth listening to. It is what it is, I suppose. And, well, here it is. I hope you haven't lost interest, and will enjoy it just as much as I did writing it.

Thank you.

---

Tears of Life

"There is a light inside you, Ash. Something the world cannot touch. Because it is stronger."

---

Stronger?

---

I was born to run. To run when I could, walk if I had to, crawl if I must against the broader reaches of cruelty; just never give up that distant fucker. I can't. I mustn't. The world will break me (and the world will break upon me one day, trust the wisdom of nihilism) but I will remain strong on the edges of brokenness, until that day arrives. And then I'll welcome it gladly. For…

I will mend. Mend everything.

You see, Drew, the miracle is not that I made it this far. The miracle is that I had the courage to start. None before me had even that.

I knew, right from the start – I knew.

I knew this road was gonna bloody hurt.

---

"HURRY, ASH! HURRY!"

Oak sounded beyond panicky. Beyond all those good intentions of hope that we, as a species of mutual delusions and destructions, must cling onto in a vain attempt at salvation.

Fuck this. Fuck panic.

I was excited.

So very fuckin' excited. No. I was beyond excited. Beyond lunacy. Beyond reason and rationality. Beyond redemption. Fuck it all, I was…

Running. Running and running and running forevermore…

And fuck redemption, too. Nothing good ever came out of that.

---

It ain't pretty, motherfucker. It's all about the blisters on your feet, the sweat in your eyes, tears on your cheek, and the nauseous feeling of despair in your gut telling you it's all pointless bolstering from a soul not yet ready to give in. Just ignore it and let it go. Let go.

Let go.

Do it. Do it.

Do it…

Listen to the sound of the emptiness inside. Listen… to sound of silence. It's so easy once you just let go. Can't you see it in their faces, man? Their dead faces allude to a serenity not found in the alive.

You see, my friend of devoted attention, the dead – they are alive with serenity… because they know – or realized as their anchor to life slipped away – that memories are only there to define us in a kind of set point. To scare us of what we used to be, what we could be, and what we must be. To obliterate us with the mortar of flesh and dreams. And look! Look upon the ghost. The ghost upon the roads of the world, fragments imbedded beneath your skull, crushing your will, which is born out of the womb of a fragile existence.

A burning world consumes you, man of astute understanding. White-hot fire consumes you. Yet you mustn't burn.

For God sake, you mustn't burn.

---

"Ash, you must hurry!"

"What the fuck do you think I'm doing?" I asked, a land of psychosis surrounding me, and a frazzled sort of laugh almost escaped my lips. You know, the kind of laugh caught somewhere between excitement and ecstasy. Between pleasure and pain. Between losing it and shouldering on.

Laughter? I almost laughed. Why didn't I just laugh? Let it all go. Laugh against the world. No. For the World. For the last word in this last world of mine, man. Laugh! Because it was either laughing or crying when it came rightly down to it. And some place deep inside, where darkness grows like cancer inside even the purest of hearts, I guess my soul yearned for tears.

Tears of life.

---

Tears like drops in the rain. Almost unseen yet possessing tremendous power. Like the touch of a distant lover. Often times, and this most men and women won't dare agreeing with vocally, love is more important, more deeply touching, to us men than to women. It sticks… it burns way deeper in us than in women. We yearn for catharsis, for a kind of appreciation for our laboring. A divine right to exist, as we are. Appreciated – not for what we could be, given the opportunity – but for what we are in this moment.

Or maybe it's just me. Pussified by an abusive mother and a father constantly abroad in another realm of existence. No. My parents have nothing to do with this. They didn't shape me. I molded me. Me! I! And Serena. And May, I guess.

And Oak.

And all those hurts and pains.

Ah. Shit.

I ache for her touch. I ache. Bleed. Yet I must fight. Must breathe. Must survive. And most often I must so without her touch.

(I miss her)

(I miss her)

(I miss her smile and her delicate hands touching my neck oh so soft and teasing)

I miss the way her tongue would stick out through her smiles when she was teasing… Fuck…

Yeah… fuck it.

Where was I? Oh. Right.

I was running.

I was running.

I was running wild!

---

Taking a running jump, I carried myself far above the masses of men and women, who scuttled on top of each other to evade the crazy dude in the grey suit. I unleashed Charizard from his Poké Ball – which had coalesced out of thin air in my palm – and screamed with rage and laughter in equal measures. The game was afoot. And I was most definitely caught behind.

No more half measures would do. Punishment was due.

Charizard materialized in a flash of bright, almost blinding lights, caught the crescendo of my ascension instinctually, nimbly catching me with his back, and arose the sky like a king mounts his throne.

We took flight. Flight of flames. In fire that burns like an old love. The good kinda love, fella. Love that makes you run and burn and rave in a soaring euphoria. You know what kind of love I'm talking about, Drew.

Screams accumulated in the air like a frenzied fire burning sordidly through flesh, through dreams, and my vision of her, of them, of all 'em bitches that could make me breach the gates of hell to reach them, vanquished from the eye of my mind.

For a second my mind was empty. Wiped clean by old thoughts not my own.

I shook my head, a river of existential nothingness flooding me, and caught faces gawking upwards in my peripheral vision, amazed and palsy-white with unbridled terror in the face of this vast creature of fire. Dragons were not common. I knew that. Not even in Kanto. And Charizard wasn't a common dragon, despite being a starter Pokémon. Not many had the sheer courage to bring out this in a Charmeleon.

Few even aspired to try. Better safe than sorry, right?

---

Breathe. Fight. Survive.

---

I leaned over the dragons back, placed my feet in the nook of its wings, and the greyish sky blurred as Charizard accelerated into a shadowy dot in the sky. At least, that's what I imagine it must have looked like from the ground.

Heavy drops of water began beating against my helmet, and my visor became clouded and murky by the running, never-ceasing rainfall.

And then the world just fell away. Like it slipped sideways out of existence. What appeared to be tears blurred over my vision. Of course, they had little to do with tears.

"Where the fuck is my windshield wipers?" I asked, then laughed abrasively. Everything was beyond hilarious at this point. I cannot even comprehend why sitting here now, though. Reflecting. There was nothing funny about the situation. Was there?

No…

Lightning screamed across the half-eaten world, tearing my half-blurred vision apart, and my laugh died on the edges of my saneness. Slowly, as we ascended further, reaching the top of the mountains somewhere between Cerulean City and Vermillion, the rain turned to snow, and Charizard snorted with something very close to scorn. Hating the cold as fiercely as he ought to.

"Good boy," I said, clapping its neck, hoping it couldn't feel my psychosis coming forth. Speaking of which…

"The Land of Psychosis awaits…"

Charizard, in midflight, craned its neck to look at me with its one eye, caught aflame eternally, with a touch of inquisitiveness. Uncertain. Almost afraid.

"Something's coming," I amended as if it was the most natural thing, wondering what was wrong with me. "Can't you feel it, old timer? It breaths down our necks… it's the sum of everything that's ever been wrong. It's the thing that has hidden in our shadow all this time. Something's coming, fella… Something… James, mayhap? No…"

James. Fuck. It had been awhile since he last touched upon my mind.

Fuck him.

FUCK ALL OF THEM!

Blurred tendrils of heat streaked across my visor, clearing my sight.

"CHARIZARD!" I screamed. Thunder blossomed within the vortex of the sky, and swirled all around us like we had become the epicenter of the maelstrom.

We came out of the mountains spinning and throbbing, raving and raging, like the sky itself had tossed us out of a heated void. Vermilion City. It was there. In the horizon somewhere. Burning. I envisioned its terror with glorious apprehension and anticipation. Like a schizophrenic caught within his own madness.

Sometimes madness, however, lends its own kind of clarity.

No. Drew, don't ever let anybody tell you that. Those that try to sell you that shit are only trying to justify their own shortcomings.

Something appeared out of the murky evening.

Clement's route through the mountains – a silent canvas in the side of my visor – hadn't let us astray, and skyscrapers bloomed in a hazy mist of fiery, almost swirling blackness in the distant, encompassed by the swirling storm of a rising abyss. Within that storm, that abyss, the screams of a million damned souls preached their doom to me, their silent wish for my salvation spurring me onwards. Forever. Defiant. Eternal. I will set you free. I must.

"I will set you free," I whispered, and it felt right, man, it felt true. It felt like I was born to do this, born to…

Run.

I was born to run.

No matter what you do, no matter who you are, when you wake up, you better be running. Right?

"See you on the other side, buddy," I said suddenly, the idea occurring to me as I was in the motions of it, and suddenly I stepped off Charizard like I had planned it all along. Charizard, not discouraged by its master's apparent insanity, roared its approval and descended the sky beside me.

I fell. Floating upon the whimsical air of good intentions. Flattening myself in the air, I plunged faster and faster, and a streak of almost transparent azure light started to trail my feet, accelerating my descent. Pushing me. Urging me to take flight and embrace destiny.

A white light coalesced from my abdomen, tinged with a touch of crimson, and suddenly Pikachu was on my shoulder, flattened and clinging onto me for dear life.

"Be careful," May said, and her voice was inside of me, almost like she was with me. I could feel her lips from yesteryear. Feel her passion, though not her love…

Never her love. She'd always been far too free willed for that.

"Ash…" Serena's voice died in uncertainty. And it was perhaps the most heartbreaking thing I'd ever heard in my entire life. The tragedy of humanity, I once heard, is not that a heart can break, but the certainty that, given time, it will mend again.

"I know, Serena," I said, and perhaps my voice had never been this fragile before. At the worst and best time possible.

The city approached fast now, dwarfing me with its enormity, and everything was afire. Consumed by flames. Screaming fear of burning souls, man! I could taste 'em. Like sulfur revealed in the night.

And then a creature ascended from betwixt the buildings, coming to meet me, its sheer size overwhelming me easily. Others followed it, intangible in the distance – yet they would reveal themselves soon enough. All too soon, I feared.

I hoped.

Lightning flashed. The heavens screamed. And Charizard roared its way in front of me, intercepting the beast, protecting me, and I descended further, unchallenged and unharmed, unaffected – for now. Not even seeing the unknown Pokémon as anything other than a vague shape of darkness against the backdrop of a distorted city.

I heard their screams as they began their struggle for supremacy. A column of flames turned ablaze the chilly, misty air above me, and I knew Charizard was in mortal danger once more. I didn't dare turn and look, for Pokémon of all shapes, sizes, and powers accumulated around Pikachu and I.

An inferno of noise mounted, reaching a crescendo, like it had accumulated all night and year. The air was heavy with regret. With danger. And I was in their midst anew. An expected part of the plot, it seemed.

But I, as you know, Drew, wasn't without powers, and with the power of my intent alone, Poké Balls spewed out of my Suit like they were being born in the moment from my non-existent uterus.

White lights flourished slowly around me as we became surrounded, becoming beasts of different shapes.

Come nightfall, we are all beasts.

Skyscrapers filled the corners of my vision as my descent carried me into the city. The ground was getting closer. I could sense the texture and brokenness of the tarmac waiting to greet me with unforgiving brutality. Pikachu was tensing. Cries of defiance and lunacy split the air around me. Not sure which cry was my own at this point, but it was there – challenging in spirit.

My breathing was even at this point. Untroubled. For the first time tonight I was at ease with the nature of the fiend inside.

My Pidgeot emerged out of the brightness and Pikachu, spurred on by the moment quite like me, jumped from my shoulder, a sphere of crisscrossing yellow lightning encompassing it, and landed on Pidgeot's back.

And then the world became a sphere of white lights and deafening explosions!

My skin became alight with the sheer power in the air. Streaks as thick as columns from a big-ass mausoleum zapped all around me, though they never touched me. As if alive, they streaked and zipped and lassoed round me, always finding their intended targets, guided forever by the awesomeness that was my Pikachu.

And that, Drew, is indeed proudness you hear.

You see, I've seen it all, Drew. I've quelled fire, mastered infernos, lay to sleep tempestuous waters, and brought down horrendous hurricanes with nothing but the shield of my intent.

I've conquered innocence. Slain my own in the name of terrible but righteous vengeance.

"ASH, THE GROUND! THE GROUND!"

Clement. Worried about something as inconsequential as the ground. How human!

I am beyond men. Beyond courage. Beyond strength. Beyond simple morality in this ever-changing, incomprehensibly vast cosmos of flesh and sins.

A swam of Goldbat's, led by a vast, enraged Aerodactyl, smiling with unhinged desire, attacked me with everything they possessed. One second they were a distant dot below, and then they were on me. Biting me, scratching me. Trying to kill me with everything but their dying breath – and even that, I felt, wasn't completely out of the question. No matter.

I was right there with 'em, staring into the face of death itself. Grinning like a lunatic.

My skin was torn to shreds by their claws and teethes, only to be knitted together again instantly. The Suit worked inhumanly, impossibly, outrageously fast. And for every failed attempt at wounding me, for every time I proved untouchable, their tenacity became more pronounced, more desperate.

I laughed. Screamed. Fought.

Twin spheres grew in my palms like balls of pure light, guided by a half-forgotten dream – a half-palsy, almost sickly memory of being here before, of doing it before.

They raved and fought harder – seeing their doom in the hazy blue reflection – my skin blotching, my heart quickening impossibly against all the inhumanity in it. Excitement was mounting. Reaching a crescendo of unreasonable magnitude.

Clapping my hands together, not paying even slightly attention to the beasts' efforts against me, which by now stung like all fuckin' hell, not paying the slightest attention to the ground waiting to smack me the fuck up, the spheres intertwined into one, twitching in my hands, scorching, craving to be unleashed like it possessed a mind of its own. Slowly – very slowly – I drew my hands down my side, holding it tight to my hip… and then…

And then I hesitated. And they fought all the harder. And I still felt nothing. Like the pain was caught in the void between worlds. Noticeable, yes, yet shrouded somehow.

I was ready, but I wasn't even sure for what myself. What nonsense would I unleash upon my godforsaken adversaries? But at last their efforts against me began hurting, and I was, after all, far beyond carrying.

Beholding my greatest foe presently, the Aerodactyl, I released a concussive wave of obliterating monstrosity, screaming all the while. Screaming and screaming and screaming…

"FUCK OFF!" I screamed in sheer rage, tinged with a small measure of disbelief at the power I wrought with my hands. My voice, however, became incomprehensible even to my own ears in the noise. So loud it was almost silent.

The wave tore the monster out of the sky, torn to shreds and pieces, stopped my downfall towards the ground, and sent the Goldbat's scattering everywhere by the force of the subsequent shockwave.

Liquefied. You ought to experience it at least once, man. Witness it. The power! Setting one of those buggers afire, I mean. Goldbat of all kinds were licked with lances of blue fire. The shockwave was so damn powerful they literally caught fire. Flames so hot, burning so hard, they seemed artificial in nature. Otherworldly.

I suppose, in a way, they were.

I was always partial to a little wrongness. I think it's part of human consciousness – amplified, I suppose, by the otherworldliness of what I am dressed in, cloaked in immense power as I am. A manifestation of desires made illicit by the strictness of morals and laws of a socially acceptable society.

You know, the things – the only things – that keep us humans decent.

Fuck that fuckin' shit! Tell me a fucking prayer! I wasn't here to be political correct.

The ground approached anew, but the angle of my descent had changed. Changed by the blast of my power. Carrying me towards a building. I waved my arms pitifully, trying, quite desperately, to mimic what I'd just done. Trying to grasp the lighthearted feeling of flight I only experienced in my dreams of olden times. No dice. It wouldn't manifest from my hands. Or my memories.

Instead it hurt. Like hell.

I smashed into a building of glass, spidery cracks splintering out over the window, then slid down and hit the ground a second later, face-first, dizzy and only half-conscious of my surroundings, feeling like I'd just awoken after sleep-running a marathon. Shook my head, then I rose to my feet an instant later, taking a look around with a detached, over-confident attitude. Like I'd landed like a fuckin' ballerina.

The first time I was in a situation like this, I was on top of things. Or as much as you can be in this type of situation, I guess. I was right in the middle of it all and could contain the situation, at least. Not this time. The time for containment was past. Generations past, it almost seemed.

From afar it had looked like the flames were conquering the city.

From where I stood, right in the fucking middle of it all, it was clear that the flames had long since won. This city was beyond saving.

But things were still salvageable – there were still people. Screaming. Alive.

Immediately, even as I was engaged in mortal combat in the middle of one of the corner stones of human civilization, my brain started a meltdown, doing shit without my permission, looking for ways to save that which could not be saved.

Looking to make sense of the impossible.

Fortunately (if you can call it that) I was used to it by now, and while the other side of my brain started working over the details of a plan, the memory of flesh started taking over my body, for the streets were littered with enemies, and I hadn't exactly made the most subtle arrival.

It became a slaughter of grinning faces. Those fucking nightmare-ish faces. In an instant I was back in the muddy swarm, and the alligators were swimming around me, not mindful that I was stronger, faster, and better in every way. They didn't care. Even as I ripped their heads off with my bare hands, unleashed devastating beams of energy, created obliterating nonsense and earthshattering forces, they just kept coming, grinning. Dying.

Controlled beasts. That's all they were.

It takes the novelty out of it. I've said that before, haven't I? Yes, I have.

No matter. I would fight. Kill. Slay my innocence as need be.

But the more I killed, the more I faced. They kept right on coming, Drew. Committing suicide by stepping up to me. Yet it didn't frighten them.

There is a limit, Drew – to what I can do. And that limit, that line where muscles cramp and blood spills, that space was approaching now.

All my life had led to these moments, you see, and every time they came, every time I stood here, killing, dying slowly, I could feel the life I craved slip away just that little extra inch from my fingers.

It didn't really matter. I'd gone too far to stop now, haven't I? There's no turning back at this point. All I am, all I have left, was there in that moment, and this moment, Drew, and the moments – which will be just as horrendous – that comes next.

That's life. A circle of your choices that keeps spinning and spinning and spinning.

I turned and ran down the street, realizing I could continue to kill the fuckers without really making a dent. The plan being fed slowly into my brain through my nerves was unraveling like a curtain in my mind, and I could feel myself slipping away. To the machine of me.

Rational beyond anything else.

I cast a look over my shoulder, noticed that a horde of creatures, Pokémon of fire mostly, were following me, almost drawn to me, it seemed. I snarled and threw a jet of blue fire at them blindly, knowing that they would burn blue regardless of their nature.

Horrific screams forked the chilly evening air, and a burning car was thrown through a sheer wall right beside me. The wall crumbled and I halted my run, acting on an instinct far too fast to be merely my own. I moaned in something dreadfully close to fear, even as I banished the car with a kick of my left leg.

Behind the car, however, hiding sneakily, was a monkey-like creature, like a Primeape, only leaner and meaner, and it jumped me, dwarfed me with its sheer size. It had caught me by surprise and grabbed ahold of my arms, held tight till something popped sickeningly, pushed me back, and planted a massive fist right in my chest, knocking all semblance of air and hope outta me.

Blood spewed out of my mouth, splattering against the inside of the helmet, and I grunted painfully as I tucked and rolled along the dirty, broken road, feeling the sweltering heat of burning souls and exhausted tarmac at my back.

I stood fast, but my eyes were deceiving me. A curtain of crimson scope flickered over my eyes, a nauseous feeling manifested itself in the pit of my soul, and life itself seemed to be of no consequences. Like a mind-fuck, of which nature was untraceable, had encased me and my trusty Suit.

And then the voice whispered. Whispered in my ear:

(The Land of Psychosis)

(The Land of Psychosis)

(The Land of Psychosis)

The crimson turned purple and a vague shape of some creature approached me from afar, from a door ajar to another plane of existence. We were drawn to each other – and I seemed to drown.

NO!

"Fuck off," I whispered, then raised my voice in pure defiance, "Fuck off! FUCK OFF!"

The monkey was upon me again, before I could roll out of the way, dragging me kicking and screaming by my left angle. But as it raised me so that I came eye-to-eye with it upside down, to beat the shit out of me no doubt, it realized too late that I had recovered enough of my senses to fight back. I threw a splash of pure blue, undefined light straight in its face, smashing it to gore and splattered brain matter.

It died laughing.

Fuck, man, it laughed.

Its whole body jerked in the throes of death; it let go of me, which wasn't all that surprising, and fell backwards to the ground.

I fell to the ground, too, got stomped by a creature before I could look up, smashed by unseen hands that felt like the size of cars, and kicked by feet that must have belonged to mutated whales.

I threw up my hands around me, flicking all manner of desperate attack this way and that, striking some down, missing most in my desperation to survive. They seemed to be instantly replaced by another horde of unafraid Pokémon. The edge of my vision blackened, pain became too vast to be manipulated by the Suit. And I was dying. Of that there was no doubt.

Air became a scarcity fast in my lungs. Worry bobbled beneath the surface of my defiance, treading a fine line of misery. I couldn't find an ounce of will to go on, couldn't find courage that could manifest into a concrete defensive action.

Then a yellow blur filled the edges of my vision, expelling the blackness, and I was filled with a sense of pain-numbing, heart-exhilarating hope.

"PIKACHU!"

I felt thunder, saw a pure white light of salvation, and was born into the fray anew. The hands ceased their onslaught, the forces of the legs died softly in my abdomen. And I was alive! I was kicking!

I rose. Breathing ragged and artificial, more Suit of old technology than human, but it was glorious!

"Thanks, buddy." I wheezed and nodded to Pikachu, who – enraged eyes blazing – kept on running through my legs and onwards. Scarcely acknowledging my appreciation.

It was in the zone. He was in the fucking zone.

I turned to follow him, then threw myself backwards as the entire structure of the building beside me collapsed and a monster emerged, separating me and Pikachu. I weaved sideways as it struck again, and threw up a blue dome round my body on the fly.

"Fucking hell, man!"

The Gyarados, unimpressed by my form and my language, raised its tail and smashed it into my shield. Spidery web-like patterns broke out everywhere, the whole thing shuttered on the verge of breaking, and yet it stood. Mild surprise filled me. Even the Gyarados, in its grinning madness, looked a touch surprised.

Breathe.

I held that breath and ran through my shield. The Gyarados was far too quick and nimble out of water for my taste, yet I was faster. My shield dissolved instantly as I left it behind, and – using the Gyarados' stupor of surprise to my advantage – caught its tail and threw myself up along its rough hide. Using the momentum I now possessed, I aimed myself straight for its head.

Fight!

Raising both hands, suspended in mid-air, shaking spheres of Aura in them both, I brandished my hands forward, into its eyes. Instinct and knowledge I never knew I possessed driving me forth.

SURVIVE!

The momentum of my flight took me past its head and I landed a couple of meters away, on my hands and knees, breathing labored and feeling human all of a sudden. Then the ground moaned as the Gyarados fell to the ground behind me. I turned and looked upon the two sizzling holes where its eyes used to be, burned almost all the way through its thick, fucking skull.

Wha… Shit.

That look back proved costly. That single instant of a pause. A moment to be human, to breathe, to be anywhere else but here… That single moment proved costly indeed. This was a war zone and not a moment left to be wasted as filler. A fork of pure lightning pierced the air and struck my exposed back with a power beyond belief, beyond all religions. It rendered me snapping for breath like a fish out of the water.

I turned my head jerkily, whole body seizing up, suit sprouting out nonsense and repair functions on the side of my visor, trying to save me even as I was dying. Yet I knew, somehow, that I would not die. Not yet. Had the creature before me intended my death it would have slain me instantly.

I almost fell unconscious by the simple effort of turning my head.

Suddenly, however, I was ablaze with energy, and I knew, quite instinctively, that the Suit had administrated a shot of pure adrenaline into my system in an effort to get me going.

It worked and I was on my feet an instant later, squatting down against the motherfucker who had sucker punched me with lightning.

A second later, a blast of pure energy gone by, and I was back on my back, wheezing and out of all semblance of energy. My eyes…

My eyes bulged in fear, even as my Suit worked to dull all sensory feelings. Pain, fear, smells, sounds – essence of living – it all dulled and fell away in the blackness. It had become useless distractions in this war zone, and thus the Suit sought to eradicate it. Life ceased to taste, becoming an artificial form of sensory experience. Like witnessing something through a screen a million miles away and hundreds of years later. Like a kid living his life through a screen instead of exploring the world for himself.

The difference between seeing it and feeling it.

Yet despite all this, the creature before seemed more real than anything ever before.

The Zapdos was still right fucking there. Before me. Chipping a merry tune of senses lost and unseen.

My breathing labored deeper, and despite the fiery city, my breathing was now freakishly discernible in the hellish night air.

Another roar split the air, a vast wind went past me, and my beloved Noivern landed in front of me, betwixt us, protecting me.

"No…" I moaned, cringing in agony as the act of breathing cut like knifes through my flesh. I could feel my Suit knitting together flesh, administrating adrenaline, altering hormones to suit my immediate needs, cutting pathways to the brain to dull pain, taking over every process it could to protect its master's frazzled health. "No… Noivern. Stand down. Too… too strong. Can't possibly beat it. Fuck, man!"

My voice was nothing but a glorified whisper at this point. All I could manage, and it went by unheard. Or, more likely, ignored.

I knew I could beat Noivern with both hands tied behind my back, perhaps even in my current state, and I had felt Zapdos' might.

There was no contest.

Noivern knew this, and yet still it stood against all odds to defend me. I guess I should be touched.

"Noivern!" I said with a small measure of force – all I could accomplish, man – and tried to act as stern as a tight fuck. No dice. I fell limply to the ground, cheek of my helmet in the dirt, my breathing foggy and misty clear, and the overload of adrenaline ebbed away at last, lest it would kill me with an overdose.

Why was it suddenly so damn cold?

A cry of ice answered my unpronounced question. A birdlike shape of total graze, azure and beautiful in its pureness, descended the sky, landed beside Zapdos, and cried anew.

And unleashed a fucking blizzard.

Even with blurred vision, my astounded eyes beheld the impossibility before me. The impossibilities, I should say. Plural, man! Fucking plural.

Articuno had unleashed its power, and Noivern was blasted away, caught by the heart of the storm, and beaten in one otherworldly bout.

I was sent bouncing along the ground, too. Bouncing literally like a fucking rag-doll, and then flattened with a certain measure of force into another building, which trembled like the weight of the entire world was upon it.

I held no illusion that it was my collision and not the force of Articuno that made it tremble. My self-assurance had been torn asunder by a single strike, and I was left more naked and knackered than the day I was born.

But I wasn't dead. Yet. And there was a virtue in that.

---

Imagine the miracle of life, Drew. Try to expand your vision and contemplate the sheer miracle that you came into being. Against the millions of odds that were stacked against you. Out of all the cells that could have been chosen inside of your mother, you were the one who was selected. That cannot be an accident. It has to represent something.

And even after you are selected, you still have to make the trip to your birthday, claim the right to be born. And there is some instinctive force inside of you that fights, till the day you're born, to break free, to see the light, to step into existence… to reach for a life.

And after all that, all those odds that you conquered, all those hard times that you toiled through, barely aware of doing it, you owe it to yourself to search, to aspire to something greater, to spent all of your natural life working for a life worth living. Worth getting out of the bed for every morning. To seize… that which is your right to seize – no matter what anybody might say to the contrary. It is your right.

Your right.

I wasn't chosen, despite all the evidence to the contrary, to be a Guardian of some mythical force of nature, a force of olden days. No. No, I chose. I chose. I chose that for myself, for I knew life wouldn't be worth a goddamn thing, unless I did.

I will fight to my dying breath for that life, and – if I'm correct – I'll fight beyond even that.

That's what I was born to do, Drew, for that was what I chose. You see, life is an endless circle of our choices. It's as wonderful as it is terrible. And in that… there is the most desperate and most real thing of all: love. Hate. Broken hearts and bittersweet memories. Gentle touches and stolen, soft looks. As I've said before, it's all the same thing.

And it all starts with a choice.

---

Opening my eyes was unbearable in its enormous agony by this point. Yet I must do it, and I did – and I bore witness to the commencement of the Land of Psychosis, the Infernal planes of existence right on the edges of human consciousness and ambition.

Demonic talons, of ice or thunder I did not know and hardly cared at this point, grabbed ahold of me, raised me up, and carried me away from the slaughter; what happened to my Pokémon at this point seemed inconsequential. I could muster nothing but indifference; they were going to die just as their master. No force upon this world would be mighty enough to save us now.

Below me, as I floated amongst the burning buildings, screams arose to my ears. Like I cast a shadow so vast and frightening people quivered in its wake. Despair, death, slain innocence – corpses of little children and women and men laid bare and naked in the fire. In death they all looked the same. Just as lost, just as fuckin' meaningless.

Serene.

The talons let go off me and I fell to the ground, broke the concrete, bounced off of it, and settled my flaccidly roll at the foot of a bench. Arms and legs sprawled and intertwined in an intangible mess of broken bones and shattered will. My neck felt stiff, broken, yet I was as alive as ever. For now.

I awoke with a certain feeling of déjà vu. Like I had done this one too many times before. Like I'd been in this kind of danger too many times before. Like I'd seen this before. Dreamed it. Before.

"You are – without a shadow of a doubt – the most extraordinary man I've ever met, Ash."

I struggled to turn my head, got it halfway up, and then sort of let it fall to the ground on the other shoulder. Yup, definitely broke my neck, then. Fuck that shit.

I beheld a silhouette that, quite like a distant dream, walked amongst the flames unaffected. Like he belonged within their burning embrace.

A nerve settled in my brain, a door which had been kept shut from me without my knowledge slammed open, and the knowledge within was suddenly unleashed upon my unsuspecting brain.

"And you are," I said, nerves ticking on the edges of my lips, making speech almost an impossibility, "without a shadow of doubt… the greatest asshole I've ever met."

Riley ignored me and sat down on the bench. "You like what I've done with the place, hmm?" he asked gamely, an easy half-smile creasing his lower-lip. An instant later it was gone, replaced by something dark and unforgiving. "Massive improvement, I must say. Though it wasn't easy; you fought me some of the way. Trained too well, I'd say. Like a well-trained dog biting its master outta spite. Huh? Huh!"

His voice rose steadily with a sense of bubbling rage, building towards a terrible crescendo, which I dreaded beyond anything else I'd ever known. Like being scolded by your own father.

I was still coming to terms with things. Not exclusively with Riley per se, but with everything – and with my broken body and my own knowledge hidden away inside my head. I'd known all along. I felt it the moment just before I laid eyes on him. A small remnant of my mind, which had been closed off by the Suit, had held the key to… everything…

What else did it have hidden up there, I wondered.

And why had it held it back? Had it felt me unworthy of my own knowledge? Surely, something good would have come out of me knowing. Something better than this, right?

"You're the puppeteer. You were there. That night," I said at last. "The night I first came across these… these monstrosities. You were testing me."

"Correct."

"Why?" I asked the emptiness inside me, and after stating the question it felt like I'd had that question inside me all along. Knowing without knowing. "Why, why, fuckin' why?"

"Sometimes," Riley began, obviously thinking my question was directed at him – as would any sane man. Mayhap it was directed at him – in some way. And speaking of which, Riley wasn't strictly speaking sane, was he? "Sometimes I wonder that myself. Why would I go to such lengths to train you, only to discard you later? Standing here, looking back upon my choices, it seems like such a waste. Waste of time and resources, but mostly, Ash… a waste of your vast potential. Know that it was necessary. All of it. A necessary evil, if you will."

He stood still as a rock before me, contemplating past, present, and future in his flickering world of fire.

"You, Ash Ketchum," he began, "should have been the one – the one who reshaped this age. Like your ancestral species before you. But you were too weak all along, unable – not to comprehend – but to take action… I saw that in you from the very first moment I laid eyes on you. When the time came, as it has now, you wouldn't be able to muster the courage to do what is necessary."

"Why?" I asked. This time the question was directed at him.

Riley sighed. "That's what you wanna know?"

"Amongst other things, yes." I nodded.

"The world needed to change. We couldn't, as a mutual species of destructions and delusions, continue as such, as we were yesteryear. I wanted the pain to go away – to find a grander meaning with all the suffering. There is a measure of grace in our pain, is there not?"

"You became the cause of the suffering, Riley. Fucking brilliant idea. You have cursed–"

"No, Ash – what I do to these people, what I've wrought in fire, is a blessing. Not a curse. I set them free. I free them of the sin of human consciousness. Look at them. Unable or – more disturbingly – perhaps unwilling to attain a higher level of consciousness. Squandering around in meaninglessness, laboring under fallacies and illusions of meaning. Do not pity the dying, pity the living – pity us for our misguided quarrels. Pity us for our delusions of grandeur. Pity us for our lack of vision. Deep down we agree upon this, don't we? As we always have. The only difference is our ability to accept the truth of our reasoning. Take a leap of faith with me, Ash – show some real courage for the first time in your life. You should be at my side, saving this wretched world from itself."

"There is no… Ah shit!" I shivered in unimaginable pain, lances of fire-like agony sizzling beneath my skin as all manners of internal organs began healing at an accelerated pace. "No justice. No justice in this. You have burned millions… Little children. Innocent men and women. Gone."

"No adult is innocent. And no child remains innocent for long. I've witnessed children's cruelty firsthand. Trust me, none of these people would grow to become better than our generation. Or generations past. Or hence. They were sparred the pain of knowing. They were spared our pain," Riley said. "They were sparred the fate of realizing, as you and I have, that man has long since lead itself astray. Consider it a game, Ash. A game we have saved for far too long in the hopes that something great would come out of it. Nothing but the decay of morals and misguided kindness have tethered to our society, and I am simply here to push the reset button at last."

"Fuck you!" I groaned. "Look who's afraid now! I, too, have realized that, Riley. I, too, have felt the enormity of infinity… but it didn't scare me into denying that there is a grace in our missteps. That there is… hope. Not just in our pain, but in our dreams, as well."

"You are a drunken fool… A fucking coward!" Riley spat, shaking his head.

"Why didn't you just… kill me?" I asked. "Back then, I mean? I suppose you had ample opportunities to do so. I was gone, stone-cold. Ripe for the killing."

"I admit that was the plan." Riley nodded. "You would never be my ally, of that I was sure. You were a possible liability to my ambition, a thorn in my side to come in a not-so-distant future. I had searched for ages since I first felt you power within my soul – and when I finally found you I couldn't have been happier. A young man angry at the entire world, easily discarded once he had served his usefulness."

I moaned, Suit fixing my body far too fast to be healthy. "I sense a 'but' comin',"

Riley nodded, exhaled slowly, and sat down on the bench. Then he grabbed my body and effortlessly lifted and placed me beside him so that I lay with my battered head in his lap.

Then my helmet slipped away and revealed a thoroughly battered Ash fucking Ketchum to the world. Crimson blood ran down from my temple, a blow that should have killed any mortal man had dealt the wound. I wondered for a brief moment if he would apply pressure to the wound – finish the job, so to speak.

But instead he brushed my sweaty hair back. Like a…

Father.

"But then you started to remind me of my little boy," he said. "How I always imagined he would be had he been given the chance to grow up."

"If you ever imagined your son to be like me," I said, coughing blood in my eager to deliver the punch line, "you're one sick fucker."

"You possessed the courage any father would be proud of, Ash," Riley said, ignoring me. "There's a virtue in you, my boy. I – God… I came to love you, Ash. I couldn't kill you; I cannot kill you even now. Your existence made me feel alive again. After everything the world took away from me that was the last thing I excepted to feel again."

Something, in the back of my mind, was pushing me for answers to questions I hadn't yet thought to ask.

"I didn't know you had a son," I said eloquently. And there was an agony in those words. A world of everlasting pain.

"Oh yes," Riley said, and there were no tears either in his voice or in his eyes; only a stone cold face with which he could freeze hell itself. "A beautiful, beautiful boy and a wife – my wife… my son was caught in…"

Riley breathed. A building moaned in the distance, and a giant scream split the air as it crumbled to the ground. To my mind it didn't matter; I wasn't part of it anymore. I would hear this tale, and then – despite Riley words to the contrary – he would kill me. And that would be the end of that. And I would welcome it with a euphoria-like release. See you on the other side, motherfuckers.

"You see, Ash, I used to work for Silph Company. Heading the development and manufacturing of Poké Balls," Riley began, paused, breathed evenly (in and out, in and out) closed his eyes, and continued: "One day, a couple of years ago, I came upon a groundbreaking formula, which potency was beyond anything ever created. Immeasurable in its ability to ensnare the DNA of every living Pokémon in known existence. No matter the kind or the level of power. No matter the intricacy. It's efficacy was beyond astounding. The greatest creation of man, they called it. They might as well have called it the greatest weapon of man."

"The fabled Master Ball," I said, and there was a touch of real surprise tinged deep in my voice. "It's real, then."

"It might be. I do not know. I seek to end all doubts, however. See," -Riley brushed my hair to the side, caringly like I had so often wished my own father would when I was a child- "I stopped the production of the Ball, destroyed the blueprints, erased all files of it, and was, of course, fired shortly afterwards. Before I left, however, I begged the presidency not to create it, to give it up and never pursue it again."

"Why?"

"Why? Why! Think, Ash! A Poké Ball incapable of failure. Think of such a Ball mass-produced – in the hands of everyone who can afford. Think of the sheer damage it would do. I wanted no part in that anarchy. In that unreasonable pursue of wealth. No. I left. I settled down, took a small job as a teacher at the local school, married, had a child, and never thought of it again. Happy in my ignorance. Happy that no matter what would befall the world; it was out of my hands. If they did something, then it wasn't my fault, was it? I had done all I could do. Or so I convinced myself."

He looked down at me; smiled with a loathing of himself so strong it almost took my breath away.

"And then a couple of years later, after I had picked up my son from the daycare, we got mugged on our way home by a couple of teenagers – just kids, really – playing with their daddies Pokémon. I'd never been that great in a battle, never really fancied it much, and they just wanted my Pokémon – so I handed them over willingly, to protect my son from harm, you understand. But one of these… these teenagers, these assholes… wanted to show his prowess; he unleashed his Charmeleon…"

I tried to say something. No words came forth. Riley sensed my distress, smiled at me with that little smile that promised the world's end, and looked away, looked to the city. Looked to the fire.

"He couldn't control it, got himself killed by it… and then…"

"Then it turned on you," I coughed; it seemed important, no matter how much it hurt, to actually say it.

Riley nodded. "It turned on us so fast… so damn, damn fast… and before I knew what was happening my own son was screaming and burning, and the other boy fled and Charmeleon ran, and I was on my son in an instant, trying everything I could to stop the flames, and my son… He perished in my arms. All because of some spoiled boys incapable of keeping it in their pants." Riley looked to the blackened sky, obviously contemplating the past. "Marriage didn't last long after that, of course. Nothing lasts…" he trailed off, voice whisper-thin and aching with the undeletable agony of yesteryear, of regret burning eternally. "For the longest time, I blamed those boys, but I came to realize that it was a broader problem at play here. A problem of society. Those boys were but a product of the world we, as a species of mutual illusions and destructions, have forged together for ourselves, and they were not to blame. They would not get to me. They couldn't get me down! Man's need for supremacy was once a necessity for survival – not anymore. Today we are just the meanest of the world's monsters – and I came to realize that something needed to change. In order for man to progress."

Riley paused, looked into my face as I lay in his lap, and must have found something disagreeable in there, for he shook his head, sighing.

"Don't be sorry." Riley shook his head, smiling sadly, reading the convoluted, slightly distorted emotions on my face. "It was a blessing. It sparred me the sin of being a father, it sparred my son the sin of living in this world, of knowing – it granted me the vision, the sheer scope needed to see and comprehend with all my being… what the world required to change. You see, as my son drew his last breath, I noticed that the Charmeleon was back again, and it had its claws held aloft, ready to strike me down. But just before it did so, something happened; something snapped loose inside of me…"

A pause. A breath. Breathe. Fight. Survive. That's all there is to it, Drew. That's all it is.

"And it killed itself instead," Riley finished. "For months afterwards I wondered. Why? Why did it do that? And finally, as I sank deeper and deeper into the cesspit of my own shallow existence, I acknowledge at last that it was I that had somehow made it do it. My fury and fear and powerlessness had somehow let me attain, for a short burst, a power beyond the hands of mere men. My sheer need for vengeance had allowed me to grasp a power deeply imbedded in me."

"But you needed time." I could feel the warmth in my fingers again now. The Suit would take days to fully repair all that had been done to me tonight, but I was close to operational again. And for now, that would do. I just needed to delay Riley a little while longer. "You needed time to master your newfound power."

"Yes. That and more, yes. I left civilization to embark on a journey of discovery, and after a numbers of imperceptible years spent enduring the hardships of the world I found myself at the foot of the Tree of Beginning, drawn there somehow… as if all answers lay inside. If only I could enter."

"It wouldn't let you in," I said, and if there was a touch of vindictive pleasure in my voice, it was, I thought, well deserved. "You weren't worthy. You needed me. You needed me to pave the way."

"Yes. And I had felt you for a while, lurking in your own cesspit, rage and hate consuming your thoughts; somehow I could sense you. Like our souls and destines were intertwined by a higher being. Kindred spirits on the path of destiny. Those skills have long since lost me – or maybe our paths have just diverged – but it proved fruitful when I needed it the most. I found you, and I tested you with my, admittedly, limited skills at the time. As it turned out, your skills were just as unrefined as mine, but yours could be harnessed in a way that mine could not. You possessed the key within. And you mastered your fire. We did." A pause. The distant flicker of emotion in the back of his eyes was the only sign of the reminiscence he went through. "I helped you, and somewhere along the way I grew to depend upon you. For you reminded me what it was like to love beyond rational thought. And now I don't know if I should hate or love you for that. After all, love is blind, and only the loveless are truly free."

He rose to his feet, gently placed my head on the bench and angled my head so that I could watch him walk away. He paused a couple of meters away and turned to me, a city on fire acting as an immense backdrop. He had ascended the invisible throne of the world. He had, at last, revealed himself to the eyes of the world.

"I will retreat for now. I have showed the world a fraction of what I will do to it if my demands are not met."

Zapdos swooped down and landed by his side like a faithful, flying dog.

"Demands?" I pronounced carefully, my neck was in the final stages of righting itself up and it hurt like all fucking hell just talking and breathing.

I'd endure.

"I want Silph Co. closed down and I want every Pokémon Trainer to unleash their Pokémon in Kanto, then the world. I want it made illegal by law to own a Pokémon. And I want it done by the end of the month. Man has long since proven himself incapable of handling the immensity of owning a tool of such vast destructions. There shall be no more blood spilled by the arrogance of Journeymen and common Pokémon Trainers." He paused as he mounted Zapdos, which bent down to help him up. "These are my terms, Ash Ketchum. Fight me on this and I will be forced to deal with you – however much it would pain my heart to do so."

"You're mad," I whispered, panting hard as my neck snapped back in an odd angle.

"I'm just," he shot back, having somehow heard me. "You know my cause is just. Giovanni, and the actions his minions and Pokémon have designed over the years, should stand as a testament to my words alone. You know the danger of Pokémon in the wrong hands better than most. You should be on my side, spearheading the revolution instead of lying on the bench with your head in your hands."

Head in my hands, I thought, snarling as I snapped my head back in place and rose to my feet anew.

A great moan of iron and steel split the air with a heavy sound that was heard with your bones rather than your ears. A distant light grew like an approaching sun a couple of blocks away, and within that light, a fierce, tortuous scream arose, building to a monstrous crescendo.

Fuck.

Fuck.

"Fuck," I whispered, staring with unmistakable horror in my eyes.

I felt a link to my soul pulse. And I felt it expand rapidly.

One of my Pokémon had decided to evolve at the absolute worst possible moment it could. It had probably been pushed beyond its threshold, and therefore forced to take itself to the next level prematurely, but at that moment rationality was the last thing on my mind. Only horror prevailed.

"The strength to protect, huh?" Riley said, smiling almost sadly as a vast creature stepped out of the fading light – and then tore the nearest building to shred with its massive tail as its first act of admission, it seemed.

This just wasn't happening.

"The strength…" I whispered with a rough countenance beneath my helmet, which had just slid back in place. Equal measure of defiance and raw rage coiled within me, and my eyes found Riley's again. "The strength to defy. For I'm the only one that can. You taught me that."

"The strength to protect," he repeated, and this time he seemed sure of himself, cool – distant in his icy conviction. "But what are you really protecting? A tomorrow that will only end up being worse than today. We are, as a nation… as a species, racing towards a red light. With no breaks to stop us. We are the last forces left in this godforsaken plane of existence that can put a stopper on mad ambition… and we possess the will to act upon our convictions and ideals. Ash! Please, realize the truth your mind knows so well. Before it's too late."

The city screamed a couple of blocks away and the earth shattered as another building crumbled beneath the power of my enraged Pokémon.

"Sometimes," I said, carefully stepping away from Riley and towards the direction of my Pokémon, "you have to let go of what your mind knows so well… and listen to the knowledge of your heart – however fickle it might seem."

A pause. Breathe. Fight.

Survive.

I was born to run.

"Ah. The great problem with children," he said mockingly, and I hardly recognized him anymore. He seemed so old and bitter to my eyes. "You never know how they turn out to be." Riley had turned his eyes away from me, towards the uncertain darkness in the corners of the world. "The clock ticks, ticks, ticks… Give a monster a sense of purpose… and he shall become a man." He turned his eyes back on me. "Through action, a man becomes a hero. Through death, a hero becomes a legend. Through time, a legend becomes a myth. And by learning from the myths, a man takes action." He descended towards me on the back of his own legend, bound to the immense will of his mind. "But you, Ash Ketchum, Last Guardian of Aura, will be forgotten. Like unwritten pages in the book of time and space. Too afraid to evolve. To realize – like most men before him – that he had the power to do more than he'd ever dare to do."

"Fuck you." I had stopped listening some time ago, contemplating how to get to my little bugger before it did too much damage to the rest of the standing city.

"Goodbye Ash Ketchum," Riley said as Zapdos arose the air. "Hopefully this will be the last we see of each other, lest I'll have to get rid of you once and for all. Realize this: you live only on the borrowed time I've granted you. Never forget that."

And then he was gone. Zapdos speeded away with the ferocity and grace of sheer thunder.

I turned back to the newly evolved Tyrantrum in the distance. With a thought its Poké Ball coalesced in the palm of my hand.

"You have to get closer, Ash," Oak whispered, his voice soft and sorrowful. Compassionate. He must have heard. Heard everything. "You have to return it quickly."

"Yeah. Or kill it. I feel like killing something."

---

Life. So small sometimes, and yet often so inexplicably large. And if the world around you, with all its ugliness, comes upon you and drags you through the soil of the human condition, you feel your life, your meaning, quiver on the edges of saneness itself – and you are small, then, for you are within in its incredible power, aptly distortable and easily shakable.

You are without control. And you cannot save them. Not everybody. Not ever. Some people are meant, I think, to suffer.

And that is the tragic fate of life. You are either meant to suffer, or meant to, sometimes, turn a blind eye to it all, for no man can take in that much pain.

However, there are small moments. Small moments of true power. You know, those moments where you dare to aim higher, to dream bigger, to reach and touch upon something or someone who can grant you even a moment of release – for that release will aid you eternally. Those are the moments that empower you, feed life into your existence and give it a certain meaning we cannot achieve on our own.

When I have sometimes lied on the cold, hard ground, broken and poor, and looked upon the world as it moved by my eyes, I've found myself envious, trekking upon the remembrance of a life not my own. Not anymore, at least. In all honesty, it feels like a life I dreamed up once upon a time to escape the reality of my existence.

But when I lay there, Drew, and I watch these people go by – everyday people in an everyday world – I am sometimes smote by this innate desire to be chosen, to be called upon by another human being that wants to find me – out of an innate desire of her own. And we can connect, simple and pure in its intentions, attain a deeper attraction and fascination, and she would take my hand, and she would lead me away from the prying, judgmental eyes of the world. We would sit there, then – exactly where do not matter as long as we are together – as days grew dark and shadows grew long and substantial. Our skin would age and become wrinkled, and we'd just talk to one another.

Just talking.

Man…

But what does that say about life, Drew? What does it say about my reality? That for life to have any kind of meaning, that in order for our souls to grow comfortable and whole, a lonesome has to become a twosome?

Isn't it tragic that our brains can hold such power over our consciousness? For, and this I promise you with the certainty of a man who has seen the world break on the banks of good deeds gone awry, it was never meant to last. Twosomes, that is. Relationships. Marriages. All of it concepts crafted by a deep-seated desire to reproduce – nature's way, I suppose, of telling us to keep going, for we were created to do so.

And yet there must be more, right? There must be a reason why a mother would throw herself in front of a car to save her child. There must be a reason why a man goes to war to spare his loved ones of the knowing.

Is it really possible that love is this intangible force that binds us together. So that the faces of loved ones may remain with us long after they pass away…

Is it the force that makes us rise to our feet, even as every bone in your body is broken and the laws of physic dictates that you should not be able to stand?

Or is it only I, and the fools like me, who labors under these illusions? For the concept of love is, in fact, thin and restricted, as all such things are – enacted by the human conception as they are.

I met a girl along the way that I came to love deeply, though I often had problems articulate it with words. And I met a girl along the way that I desired, and there were no problems in articulating that with action. And in the end, there is a terrible difference in that.

And somewhere in between… there is a choice to be made. Our life is but a circle of our choices, a wise but bitter man once told me. And I will do the same thing over and over and over. I don't want this, I don't want that fucking fate, but I know this well – and this is how it's gonna go down. Always.

But fuck it all, because now, my friend, Vermillion City burns, and I was running with broken legs.

---

My bones were broken, and I should be dead, man. Stone fucking dead! But I was not. I was running faster than ever down the street, flying upon the scorched, soulless streets of a city I'd never cared for.

Why was I even here? Shit… this was all wrong.

Few people still had enough life left in them to scream for it, but those who did managed to impress upon me an image undeletable in its anarchic ugliness.

Corpses of fire ran down the street like they had forgotten to fall apart, driven in their last moments on this earth by sheer adrenaline. Like strings of some otherworldly being held them hostage in their misery.

I ran past them without sparring them a glance of consideration. I wasn't being a hero, you see, I didn't have time for such nonsense. In the distant horizon, amongst the few still-standing skyscrapers, a creature of massive girth was casting a pulsing shadow in the afterglow of evolution.

Behold! The power of true evolution. A power man cannot and should not ever attain. Molecules and DNA strings accelerated in a kind of explosive concussive force of energy. Bones break and mend within seconds once the power within burst forth, stretching them to their limits. Entire organs fill out – blood cells and matter multiplies and expands. How the fuck does the body even sustain such force? Such destructive force! Blunt force trauma, man!

Oh, the stress it must endure in those life-changing seconds. And make no mistake – that kind of stress, the sheer pressure… it will affect the mind in a profoundly negative manner. Even a human consciousness and self-awareness could not perceive it in a manner where they could make sense of themselves. Consider it for a moment, Drew: ten seconds and you are an entire different person, capable of feats you'd never even dared to dream of before. It's like you literally inhabit an entire different world.

They grow mad in those brief instances after. They literally cannot contain themselves within their bulging bodies and changeable minds.

To get 'em back under control takes a special touch. Nature, of course, possesses this touch. Few people, however, possess such a delicate touch. Most men die trying to tame a newly evolved Pokémon. And the bigger the difference post evolution, the harder they are to tame.

Tyrunt went from barely reaching my knees to reaching the fucking stars!

It went berserk. Obviously.

I was always partial to that type of madness, wasn't I?

And I was running towards it, not sure if my Poké Ball could even contain the fucker anymore. Not sure I wanted to stop it anymore. This was the terrible fate of all living things playing out right in front of the eyes of the world. A part of me felt that they needed to see this. See it from their television screens. And most of them would, I reckoned, casting a quick glance at the helicopter far above.

This was the terrible fate of man's ambition.

We weren't meant to conquer the world. We were, as a species, meant to run. To run and to defy with a steely resolve forged from a number of millenniums spent hiding in the beasts oppressive, all-reaching shadows.

Defy. Though never conquer.

We were bearing witness to an end of an era. And I was the small pauper at the heart of it; witnessing something I had been foolish enough to challenge. It was a law of nature I had mistaken – in my arrogance – as a fallacy.

A building lay askew on the road ahead of me, broken some places yet still mostly whole, and I climbed it quickly, running uphill, running for the world. No burning man greeted me; no insane smile of the deprived attacked me. I felt alone, and perhaps I was.

I reached the end of the building fast, blue tendrils of soft light trailing me. Standing on the edge of the roof that had stood tall towards the sky not long ago, I dropped a hundred feet down to the ground.

The world cracked in a stream of tremendous power as I hit the ground. Not because of me, though. The city shook in glass-shattering tremors. And the screams, oh motherfucker, the screams, man. I could feel them… in my bones. I had felt this before. In a half-forgotten dream. Lying upon the grass of a distant world upon our world – inside a tree.

A Tree of Beginning.

"Clement," I said, staring at Tyrantrum as it tore through another mountain of steel and glass. It left behind nothing but ruination. "Clement, my Suit is sending you a feed in a moment-"

"Ash, we have recalled all your Pokémon," Oak said hurriedly. "Well, those left, at least."

"Who didn't make it?"

There is no time for that now. The city is beyond saving – maybe it was from the start. You need to leave. Now!"

Worry bobbled beneath my indifferent countenance. If Oak didn't have time to tell me who had perished, that could only mean there was more than one. Shit. Fuck. Ah. I closed my eyes. Breathed. I sighed, feeling my already tested patience warring on the verge of slipping away. "Clement, my suit is sending you a feed… right now. Are you receiving it?"

"Ash, listen to me, son! There is an army between you and Tyrantrum. You cannot get to it. Not in your current condition. Not now. Not ever!"

"You're wrong." He was, of course, right. Between my colossal Pokémon and me was a vast mass of different Pokémon scattered across the street, moving betwixt each other like drunken asshole on a Sunday morning. To cross that would mean certain death in my current condition.

Fucking shit.

But there were other ways than these.

"Ash, what is this?" Clement said, obviously enthralled by what I'd sent him.

"That, my friend," I said, rocking the tight-lipped countenance and brisk tone of voice, "is the League's very own, very private – and obviously somewhat illegal – satellite." I paused, a half-assed chuckle tasting like bullshit and blood on the tip of my tongue. "The eyes of the angels above us. Spying on all of us with ever-watchful eyes. To keep us save, of course."

"Ash, you hacked it?" Oak sounded impressed. Or was that mortified? It was a little hard to differentiate in my current state of mind.

"Well, the Suit did, if I must be honest." I put my hand to the ground, focusing every ounce of my Aura through my Suit and into the ground. And as I lifted my hand, a grey, lifeless object manifested out of thin air. "But we are one, so I'd like to think it was me."

"Ash…" Serena whispered. "Is that…" she paused; most likely searching for words to describe what she bore witness to through my eyes. In the end, she came upon the only… half-logical conclusion. "Is that magic?"

"Of a kind," I said. "More tangible than mere magic, I'd say. More complex. But I'm not really in the proper state of mind to elaborate with the scientific explanation presently."

"What do you need from us?" Oak said briskly, sensing I wouldn't let go of this. He knew me far too well to argue anymore than necessary.

"Thank you. Clement…" I looked to the building beside me, a plan so stupid and reckless it could only be my own forming in the back of my mind. "Track Tyrantrum down using the satellite. Shouldn't be too hard, I imagine." I started running as I spoke, for I was born to run, bitch. "I'm looping another feed as we speak. A green control-key should be popping up on your screen any minute now. When I tell you to, you smack that fucker as hard as you can. Got it?"

"Ah yes. Why?"

"Because someone wants to get pregnant tonight," I huffed, kicking the door in and stepping over the threshold, game-face on and all.

---

Drew, I'm feeling reckless tonight.

And often times, there is no greater feeling.

---

"Oak," I said, standing before the elevator. The useless, dead elevator, to be exact. "Please, tell me the staircase is clear."

A video-link appeared on the side of my visor, showcasing a staircase crawling with humanoid Pokémon going through zombie-like motions like it was the apocalypse.

"Do you ever wake up just wanting to – ah fuck!" I snapped, straightening in sheer in agony.

"ASH!" four voices shouted in a profoundly distraught manner.

"I'm all right, I'm all right," I said, wheezing and breathing. "Don't get your panties in a bunch. My Suit just felt it prudent to relocate my vertebrae." I paused, considering the insanity of my situation. "Apparently, you need that shit to function properly during warfare."

"Ash, I'd advice against going up that staircase-"

"Then you'd advice against my plan," I said, "which is a no-go. Because there's only one way to the top, old man."

"-in your current condition, and bearing in mind the closeness of the staircase…"

"Yeah," I said, nodded, and ran anew. "I'm going."

"Ash, it's suicide!"

"It's taking a fuckin' stance, Samuel Oak."

"It's impossible."

"It's necessary!" I all but screamed and jumped through the ceiling in an angle, my momentum taking me through the wall on the next floor, and then I ended up smack dab in the middle of the staircase.

"It's not necessary, dammit!"

"It is to me."

Dust and debris went everywhere, the zombie-like Pokémon were left shell-shocked and still in the wake of my sudden appearance. And like time itself slowed almost to a standstill, a sharp fragment of shrapnel went by my face, and I backhanded it into the face of the nearest Pokémon, an unknown beast of vague human resemblance.

The shrapnel tore into its eye, tearing the silence asunder with the enormously wet sound of a broken eye and a pierced brain.

"Clement," I said amicably, moving onwards from the horrendous sight as my friends on the other end gaged in revulsion, "If you'd be so kind."

"What?" he said, and I could virtually imagine him blinking stupidly against his fucking screen.

I nearly closed my eyes and wished for eternal suffering upon all humanity. "The signal. Clement. The. Fucking. Signal."

"Oh. Right."

Clement hit the button. A slight moment between moments of nothing went passed. And then. Then…

A vast sound split the chilly, slightly smoky night air with an ungodly depth. I fell to my knees along with every Pokémon in my immediate vicinity, feeling like the sound was gorging through my brain with an unwavering urgency.

And then it stopped. I felt blood running from the edges of my lips and nose, a nauseas feeling of despair had manifested somewhere deep inside a void I couldn't shake off.

I shook my head, opened my eyes, and looked upon a world in pain. A pain I had brought unto it with my magic.

"What's wrong? What's happening?" May asked.

"High-pitched sounds," Oak said, and a quality seldom heard nowadays came over his voice, like he was back to his teaching ways, if only for a moment. Back where he truly belonged. Where he excelled. Not here – on the front line of some sickly fight for the world. "Easily missed by the human ear, but not by a Pokémon's honed senses. Clever, Ash. Very clever. Tell me, did you hear it, too?"

"Yeah. Thought I might too." I was all but flying up 'em staircases, kicking all the Pokémon in my way aside. They were in obvious, agonizing pain, clutching their heads for dear life, but I didn't feel particularly merciful at the moment. "But I was hoping for the suit the quench the sound."

"You magic… eh – thing did this?" Serena asked.

"Yeah – consider it my supersonic," I said. "It will render the lesser Pokémon all but paralyzed, and will draw the attention of the bigger ones. Tell me, Clement, is Tyrantrum in motion?"

"Yeah, it's heading your way. What are you going to do?"

"I don't know. A distant memory keeps coming and going. Hopefully it will stick when the time's right."

And it was close. A light kept resurfacing in the palm of my hand. Like a faint idea of a forgetful mind. Beautiful if only fully grasped.

"Whatever you're gonna do, you better do it now," Clement said, as the Pokémon around me stopped withering in agony. "Tyrantrum has just stepped on your little creation."

"No shit!" I yelled as I was attacked anew, taking a punch straight to my battered gut. The helmet split around my mouth as I reflexively spat a puddle of blood into the face of the beast.

The helmet was closed before I'd even hit it back. Taking a wild swing, barely aware of anything, I felt my fist connect with a substance of pure stone. If not for the grunt of pain accompanying my blow, I'd thought I hit a stonewall.

I jumped over five sets of stairs, kicking out with nothing but a sense of someone being there, and felt the instep of my foot connecting with something solid.

But a clammy hand grabbed ahold of my other foot, ripped me off my feet and threw me back down.

I tucked and rolled down the steps, smashing into the wall at the end of the floor – cold and alone and feeling drunk on despair, wanting it all to end.

A fantastic boom rocked the whole building, and I was sent spiraling down another set of stairs – limps intertwined and broken anew.

"ASH! GET OUTTA THERE!" Serena screamed.

"TYRANTRUM! OH MY GOD! THE BUILDING'S COMING DOWN!" Clement screamed in the throes of a never-ending seizure of panic.

"SON OF A BITCH!" I screamed, kicking myself back on my broken feet somehow. "Okay, that's enough!"

A Blue light – and that's with a capital B, Drew – coalesced from my abdomen, before quick as a whip expanding to encompass my whole body. I raised my hands, all but brandished 'em against the gods, and yelled utter nonsense of the old ways.

"LIGHTNING BOLT!"

A ball of pure lightning, deep azure like the ocean on a lovely summer afternoon, carved through the entire staircase above me, tearing it asunder with an uncontrolled ferocity. It broke through the roof without slowing and continued like a beacon of the world towards the airless space of blackened infinity.

I followed in its wake immediately, jumping upwards upon broken bits and pieces that, miraculously, held just long enough for me to drive myself further to the top.

I caught the edge of the railing with one hand, thirty feet or so from the top, and propelled myself the last way up with a mighty pull-up, landing crouched upon the rooftop.

The night air was fresher up here, and its coolness chilled me to my core – cold and clammy like a broken heart.

Pure fire burned in my hands. The veins beneath my skin were just as hot.

"TYRANTRUM!" I yelled across an ocean of pure madness. "I'M RIGHT HERE! HAHA! GET IT?"

It turned and stared at me like I was a peculiar stranger. A smack of its tail was the only answer I got, then, and I felt the foundation slowly crumble beneath me. I had mere moments before this plan literally fell apart.

Guess he didn't, I thought, forcing every ounce of life and will and half-forgotten memories of a former self into this last bid for a night still worth saving.

"The city has been evacuated, right?" I asked, voice whisper-thin and with a lover's touch – liquid heat burned through my lungs. Everything burned tonight. "None left alive. None left saving. I feel this could get nasty."

"No, everybody's gone… dead… Ash…" Serena hesitated. "None came to the rescue. It's like… it's like they just stood back and let it happen. Too afraid to take action. Where was Lance in all of this?"

"I know, Serena. But we did all we could, right? That counts for something. Right?"

Right?

"Ash," Clement said, "move your ass."

"That's…" I frowned. "That's the worst pun… I've ever heard. You really need to-"

DOOM!

A wave of pure force went right through my bones, blasting me off my feet and sending me tucking and rolling along the roof floor. A pure white light, enormous like a second sun rising come dawn, blazed from the top of the skyscraper right beside that which I stood on.

And then it crumbled beneath the force of the bomb. For surely it must have been a bomb.

"Ash, get out of there!" Serena all but growled at me. A kind of protective instinct born out of love had come over her in her distress. "Right now! You have done all you could."

"Not yet," I said, and at the heart of that statement, the heart of everything I'd ever been, was not courage, but a deep-seated need to prove myself superior. Everything I'd ever done up until that moment – and those acrid moments hence and before – was born out of hubris.

Sheer hubris. Nothing quite so glorious.

By a stroke of good fortune or another hidden skill, I'd manage to keep ahold of the vast power burning through my hands. I rose anew, sensing enemies coming from all sides to flank me, sensing the platform on which I stood about the bent over and die in a clattering scream of metal.

A raw blast of purple lightning scorched my exposed back. I fell to one knee but kept my composure in check. I'd come too far to be brought down now. Pencil-thin tendrils of purple thunder erupted across my chest, sticking and digging into my skin until it felt like poisonous snakes biting me all over. I screamed and frayed against the dying of the innocent, yet I stood mighty, for that was what I'd been given to do.

This was what I needed to be. For all of you, Drew.

I didn't look back to see who did this. I refused. Now it was all about Tyrantrum. Stopping that fucker. Ending this night once and for all.

I brandished my hands into the night's air, holding them high like a prayer to the divine. Not sure what I was ready to unleash, but I was sure in its devastation. And now that was all I could ask for.

"Ash…" Clement said, trailing off, sounding beyond terrified, beyond horrified, beyond even human in his fright. "The building's gonna blow."

It was said so matter-of-factly that I actually paused. Like he didn't have the strength of will to pronounce it with any force. Such was his fright.

"No," I said. "There were no bombs up here – I'd have noticed when I arrived."

"That other building…" Still, he used the same apprehensive tone of voice. "It wasn't a bomb, Ash – it was a-"

"ELECTRODE!"

I turned in fright and stared with barely concealed fascination at the source of the sound.

A fat monster shaped like a Poké Ball had snuck up behind me, shinning a bright light from within that just grew and grew, soon consuming its entire form.

Needless to say, a sense of immense dread overcame me.

"What the fuck is that thing?" I asked.

"I dunno," Clement said, frightened tone of voice. "It looks, well, man-made."

"Riley?" I said, dumbfounded, then almost laughed at the irony of that. Of course, Riley would have found it funny if Poké Balls started blowing up humans.

Muscle tensed all of sudden, my eyes widened in shook at my body's response, and a burst of fight filled my veins. Pure adrenaline, I surmised. Blood accumulated beneath my skin in a kind of fetid anticipation. The Suit had temporarily rendered me superhuman again. With a perception so quick it dwarfed time itself.

It would prove insufficient.

I spun about on the broken rooftop floor, my hands breaking apart and coming down on both sides of me, brandished towards both this unknown Pokémon ready to blow me sky-high and the treacherous Tyrantrum ready to eat me.

Seconds of empty thoughts filled the void between us. Twinjets of azure heat, sizzling with an ugly eager for blood, shot out of my palms.

Tyrantrum, strong as all fuckin' hell but also clumsy in its new form, shambled headlong into the path of my attack with a ginormous misstep. I'd aimed for its shoulder region – you know, maim not kill – but ended up carving through one of its eyes at an odd angle, most likely killing it instantly.

I didn't have time to contemplate that in any meaningful manner that could seek to make sense of it all, for my other attack had been caught in the shockwave of Electrode's self-destruction, looping it back on me with impossible potency.

Breathe. Fight. Survive.

Death.

Everything turns to death.

The world turned white. I was bathed. Consumed in a cosmos of white-hot fire, thick columns of blue flames licking away at me. I felt the world slip away beneath my feet, felt the scope of my awareness slip away from this realm of life, as I was sent flying over the edge by the suicide-bomb.

And through another scope of vision, which nature seemed almost extraterrestrial in this confined space of fire… a phenomenon that defied all explanation revealed itself, and thus it became the only thing of concrete meaning in those last instances, where I traversed on the path betwixt this moment and the next. Betwixt this life and the next.

Death had a face, I realized. A face of fate and faith. A crimson face. And I knew at once we were destined to clash. To slay one another. And in that knowledge was my serenity. For I would…

I felt my body smash and bounce off of Tyrantrum's falling form – it was with the feeling of a spectator, aware of it, but not quite sensing it. Visions glided by without much meaning, and I slid down Tyrantrum's thick, rough hide – lost world beyond the fray. How I missed you…

"ASH!" a voice. Yelling. Screaming. It pierced the visions with some intangible force that could only be perceived by the sound of my still beating heart.

"Serena, he's gone. No one can survive – not even…"

"Fuck you! He's not dead – ASH!"

The voice was wonderful. Angelic, almost, in nature and in its ability to instill upon me a will to live I'd seldom known – or perhaps never recognized for what it truly was. But beyond the sound of her voice, another sound, a closer sound came to me with a glorious reverberation.

A heartbeat. A heartbeat so vast it could only be Tyrantrum. And though I wasn't whole by any stretch of the imagination, I could open my eyes, and I could see just enough to know where I was, just enough to keep me going, to keep me in the game, and to keep getting back on that bitch.

I had landed right on top of my unruly Pokémon. Right on top of its faintly still beating heart.

"Screw it! I'm going out there!"

"I'm coming with you!"

And though their words of courage and compassion and love made no sense to me presently, Drew, I realized something valuable. Perhaps that I could be more than I ever thought… or… perhaps…

I closed my eyes – not sure how I'd opened them in the first place – and knew that this wouldn't get me down, I would stand again. I would challenge Riley and the Crimson King with the dead face lurking in some unknown future. I would challenge them all. It would…

It was gonna be okay. There was serenity somewhere for me. Some day, some when.

But first I must fight. Fight with all I have. With all I am.

For I realized the world was an ugly place. I'd known that all along. But… for now, I could live with that. Hell, I could even love that.

I felt a Poké Ball materialize in the palm of my hand, born out of my will alone. Tyrantrum's Poké Ball. And touching the tip of the ball to its chest, right over its heart, the vast Pokémon went home without a complain.

I fell to the ground as my platform beneath me suddenly vanished, yet I didn't feel the fall. Lying there, broken and burned and by all godly rights and laws of physics dead to the world, and utter alone… All I could feel was…

Hope.

Hope and love.

There was a tear in my eye and a light inside of me, and I knew it was good.

---

The world is an ugly place… but it's worth dying for, Drew.