The Path of the Aura II: Brothers in Arms

by GameManiac

Direct sequel to "The Path of the Aura: Intertwining Crossroads". With the Void of the Dark One now recognized as a looming threat, two groups in two different worlds must do their part in preventing this great evil from coming to light. Rated "T" for blood, language, and violence. (PS: "The Path of the Aura III: Bonds of Blood" is now up!).

25. Chapter XLII (42)

Hit Count for "The Path of the Aura: Intertwining Crossroads": 10,851.

Hit Count for "The Path of the Aura II: Brothers in Arms": 3,281.

Total Hit Count: 14,132.

Only the briefest of Author's Notes here. This chapter doesn't need it. It's already the longest chapter I've ever uploaded by the slimmest of margins, narrowly beating "Chapter XXXIX (39)" (the Dialga and Palkia battle), and both of them are 36,000+ words!

All that you need to know are three things.

This is now my favorite chapter uploaded, this chapter properly resolves the cliffhanger I left last time, and the referenced song count is 23.

Speaking of three, you'll also see three uses of uncensored profanity.

You can't miss them.

---

Chapter XLII (42): Arceus' Game (Part VIII (8)) – Sin and Punishment

Location: ?

Date: ?

Time: ?

"Where am I?

"What…am I?

"What…am…I…doing…here?"

Within the mind of the Almighty Alpha Pokémon, Arceus was witnessing events unfold before Its inner realm. Its speech was slurred and Its thoughts clouded, and Arceus hardly registered what was playing out before Itself.

Inside this faintly lit realm of darkness, Arceus provided its luminosity, Its hovering body being the dying light bulb. Arceus saw events playing out before Its "inner sanctity" through what appeared to be a screen, formed by two pairs of circles placed closely together, behaving almost like a pair of eyes, and Arceus was the brain behind them.

The only problem with these eyes is that by looking through them, it was almost like looking through a screen of blood. And through those crimson eyes, Arceus was seeing its own actions through a more reclusive first-person perspective.

The first thing that the sedated Alpha Pokémon witnessed unfolding was an approaching Spacial and Temporal Pokémon, running right towards It, speaking something with obvious concern in their countenances.

"Dialga… Palkia…"

But as they were approaching their Father, they were easily coiled by a pair of the Original One's mythic arms, before being tossed aside.

"Forsaken…"

Then, the man that Arceus was despising earlier came towards the Original One, brandishing what appeared to be a scythe equally his height, composed of what appears to be various bones of the human body. And through this bizarre weapon, Odraude made Arceus bow down before him by forcibly hooking his neck and craning it straight down, made clear by the fact that its reddened perspective was temporarily staring at the floor.

Then Odraude appeared to ascend Arceus. There was a distinct bob of Arceus' head when it appeared as though Odraude had just made the Alpha Pokémon his personal mount.

"Acknowledged…"

From there, events played out before Arceus like a rollercoaster on steroids, images of Dialga and Palkia, alongside a man in a monochrome jumpsuit, continuously flashed before its eyes, passing by for multiple times before disappearing from sight each time. Often times, when they went out of radar, it was because Arceus had swatted them away, like individual Combee to a hungry Ursaring.

"Orders…"

Though few images appeared to linger within Arceus' hazy mind more than others. One was of Palkia succumbing to Arceus' POISON JAB attack, another one was a surge of divine energy beginning to cumulate before Its forehead, and both of its Children collapsed on the floor over themselves, tentatively waiting for Arceus' final JUDGMENT to scatter their bodies across the cosmos.

"Arceus!"

The Other Promise/Kingdom Hearts Original Soundtrack Complete - CD9 - Kingdom Hearts Final Mix Bonus Disc/Yoko Shimomura

(Song Begins)

"…"

A voice echoed across this mental realm, this prison as Odraude made for Arceus' soul while he was manning the Alpha Pokémon's body and using Its power blissfully.

"Snap out of it, Arceus!"

"…Who?"

The little white light bulb within this ocean of darkness looked away from the pair of red screens, from the scene of its Children about to die by Its deliberately twisted sense of JUDGMENT. Arceus began to look around within Itself, for the source of this voice.

"Up here, Arceus!"

"…What?"

When Arceus looked up, It saw the man that It was fighting outside of Its body, descending down from above, towards his target. Arceus saw me, hands reaching down towards Arceus, flying towards him with wings composed of thirteen Elemental Aura attributes.

The Alpha Pokémon saw me, in my Aura Dragon Cloak come down towards It, with a look of definitive concern for my target, alongside hope for attempting to salvage It, away from Odraude's power and towards Its own, through my actions.

"Stop your attack!" I shouted at the top of my lungs. "If you don't, your Children will die!"

"…"

Arceus gaze focused more intently on me, on my face. But when It did so, Arceus saw not me, but Odraude. It wasn't that difficult of the Original One to mistake me for him, not with the level of corruption that Arceus already had administered into Its system like a slew of hallucinogenic drugs.

After all, the two of us basically share the same faces.

"Odraude…"

My eyes widened at the name he just referred to me by.

"Enemy…"

Locked on to me, Arceus released at least a dozen of Its ethereal arms, all reaching out towards me simultaneously, as I was still flying downward towards the Pokémon I simply must save.

"Oh fu―!"

The first arm rocketed towards my mouth, its hand covering my mouth and my nose, abruptly ceasing my ability to breathe. The second went for my neck, and wrapped around it like a noose. The remaining ten dexterously coiled around my arms and my legs, pinning them towards my center.

Even my aura-based wings and tail were restrained, giving me the impression that Arceus' arms and hands were my cocoon.

I tried to speak to Arceus, through normal means. I tried to break free of the Alpha Pokémon's grasp, through my Aura Dragon Cloak, all in vain as I was wriggling within Arceus' gasp, my screams stifled.

Desperately, I channeled all of my power into my right arm, struggling with all of my might to break free of Arceus grasp, because that's all I needed. I cared not what happened to me, not as long as I was still able to reach out to Arceus.

Arceus felt my power peak across my right arm, and even saw me succeed in managing to expose my right arm amongst this tangled mess that I was in. Arceus saw how instead of fighting against the Alpha Pokémon in any way, all I did was attempt to reach out towards It, trying to touch It.

Then I spoke to Arceus telepathically, knowing that I had no room to move my jaw, but still some room to snap some sense into God.

"I'm not Odraude!" Even my telepathic voice was smothered, albeit still audible. "I am Eduardo! And I'm saving You from Odraude, so that You can save your Children!"

"Eduardo…?"

"Yes Arceus! It's me!" I continued reaching out towards it, albeit unsure if I was actually getting closer or farther from the Alpha Pokémon. "You're being controlled by Odraude! You're being controlled by the enemy! You are forsaking Dialga and Palkia! You are about to kill them! Stop!"

Arceus' grasp around me grew tighter, and my outstretched right arm began to shake involuntarily as I could feel my very bones begin to warp.

"Intruder…"

Inside this chrysalis, I was screaming at the top of my lungs. I could feel my muscles compress, my bones begin to fracture, my breathing entirely nonexistent and my oxygen depleting fast. I could even feel my bruises begin to break over the surface of my skin, and trickles of blood began to run down Arceus' coils.

My Aura Dragon Cloak vanished as well, because my inner power was weakening alongside my consciousness…and my life.

"Arceus…! Don't…forsake…me! And don't…forsake…yourself! Not…to…him!"

"…"

Arceus' death grip on me didn't tighten, but it didn't lessen either. All that changed was that Arceus held me much closer towards Its face. And when Arceus did so, It unraveled the arm that was surrounding my face, and only my face. The Alpha Pokémon saw my bloodshot eyes, my trembling and reddened face, and my bleeding nose, ears, and mouth.

Even my eyes were bleeding, through my tears.

I was now seeing Arceus face to face. But Its face, while limited in its expressions, gave me no reassurance.

"…Infidel."

And then I felt Its coils tighten, and all of the life that I had within me squeezed out of my face, as well as the pressure bruises that I had surrounding my body. A mere fraction of Arceus' mythical arms was enough to break all of the bones in my body, from the neck down and from the right shoulder inward. Only twelve of the One-Thousand Arms of Legend made my face spray out blood from every conceivable place. The blood of my puréed body squirted out from between Arceus' network of arms surrounding my body. My ears became geysers, my mouth and nose became waterfalls. My eyes became jets, and my eyes sockets became fountains.

But I was still able to hold on to whatever cerebral connection I still had on my right arm, through sheer force of will and through levels of determination as godly as the Pokémon before me.

My hand made the metaphorical equivalent of a trip around the world to be able to put only one finger on God's face. And when it did, my only accomplishment was to dab my own blood on Its forehead, before my hand slid off of Its face and fell limp.

But that was all that I needed to do. Because through my finger and my blood, a shard of my aura managed to seep through Arceus where it counted most, and snapped It out of Odraude's nefarious spell.

And when Arceus came to and was about to wake up, It took one brief look at myself before my body disappeared.

"…Oh Fuck Me."

(Song Ends)

---

50.1: "You're the God Here. You Know My Answer."

Location: Hall of Origin

Time: ?

The red glow encompassing Arceus' eyes vanished as soon as Its consciousness took hold of Its own body in place of Odraude's dark influence. Arceus instantly snapped Its senses back into reality, analyzed the situation before Itself, and immediately called off Its JUDGMENT attack, mere moments before the lives of Its Children were wrongfully terminated.

Both Dialga and Palkia took note of this, and didn't realize that they were both holding their breath for so long. They exhaled and inhaled sharply, this tense moment having finally come to pass.

But for Arceus, it was just beginning.

And it began with the realization of Its physical constitution.

Firstly, Arceus felt a pair of cold, damp hands come off of the sides of Its face. And when that happened, Arceus about-faced Its neck, looking at the individual responsible for purging Odraude's influence from the Original One.

"Eduardo…?" Arceus said, only now realizing the gravity of my actions in returning Arceus to light.

Undying Faith/Volume #1 (CD 3)/Two Steps From Hell

(Song Begins)

Outside of the fact that I was holding back Arceus' ethereal arms with those formed from the aura-based wings of my Aura Dragon Cloak, Arceus' attention immediately glanced over at my face. My pale, sanguine face, similar to that when I was popped like a water balloon when I had entered the Mind of God. The only difference was that my eyes were still secured into their individual sockets.

Not like external appearances mattered much when my mind was already made into metaphorical mush, by the stress that I endured just to have Arceus look at me with more green in Its eyes in place of red.

"It's good…to see you…back to…normal…Arceus…"

I managed to gurgle out one weak, twelve-inch sentence before my eyes rolled back, my Aura Dragon Cloak disappeared, and I kicked the bucket. I fell off of God's Back and my face kissed the floor. The rest of my crumpled body painfully arched back to the point where I kicked the back of my head with the sole of my shoe. And after that, I was appearing to drown in my own puddle of growing blood.

With the arms that were no longer held back by me, Arceus could've used them to catch me as I fell. But the Alpha Pokémon didn't so much as move them as I fell, because It knew that I had died when I began to fall.

…Well, I "died" as per the applied rules of Arceus' Game.

Arceus somberly looks down at me and takes immediate note of Odraude's Death Lance piercing through its holy body. It grips it by the handle closest to the head of the weapon and pulls the wicked item entirely out of Itself, before tossing it away without a second thought.

And in doing so, Arceus hardly bothers caring that the weapon clanged and bounced its way across the ground before falling right beside Odraude's limp body.

"(I'll see to it that there's a special place in Hell for you, Odraude…)" Arceus' thoughts digressed, forcing Itself to quell Its own rage and focus on my health primarily.

The hole left behind across Its midsection quickly sealed over, seamlessly, without anything shed onto the floor that would even remotely resemble blood. And with that taken care of, Arceus' attention turned towards me.

Assimilating all but two arms back into Its body, Arceus used them to flip me onto my backside. Then, when my face was made visible once more, Arceus put both arms on me, but only one finger from each of Its ethereal hands. One was placed right on the center of my forehead, and the other where my heart lies.

Then, of all actions, Arceus began to sing, in a language so ancient that only those harboring the eons of age the Original One Itself possesses could understand this language.

Dialga and Palkia filled in those requirements alongside a few other select Pokémon, and they were overhearing Arceus, translating what their Father was saying, while they were still conscious long enough to overhear.

"(I am the Alpha and the Omega...)" Dialga translated, feeling its vision blur and its hearing grow distorted.

"(By My Name alone…I return the life I held for you…)" Palkia translated, unable to see now.

Through the Words of God, a surge of divine energy seeped into my body, similar to the one that was collecting itself before Arceus' forehead through Its nearly successful JUDGMENT attack, but was stopped short through my critical actions. And through Arceus' power, the "second life" that I was given in this world was promptly replaced with my first.

In doing so, my physical condition returned to its prime. My bleeding stopped, even going so far as to disappear entirely from my face, as though I was never harmed to begin with.

And with Its action done, Arceus stopped singing this antediluvian language and removed Its hands from me, retracting both of Its arms back into Its body, but still looking down at me, awaiting my return to consciousness.

"Rise, Eduardo."

As if on cue, my eyes opened wide and I found myself gasping for breath, coughing up whatever residue of blood still lingered and irritated my trachea. And when this breathing fit ceased, I slowly stood back up on my feet, taking immediate note of the Alpha Pokémon that stood before me instead of under my feet, as it was when Arceus was still our "enemy".

"How do you feel, Man of Bulwark?"

I was honest with Arceus, and told It how I was currently feeling.

"At the moment, I have one hell of a headache." I said, resisting the urge to rub my head. "But there are greater problems outside of my own to worry about."

Arceus nodded in understanding, but I noticed that It stopped doing this a little too quickly, and a solemn expression could be distinctly noticeable across Its visor.

"You brought Me out of my own hell." Arceus said sincerely. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." I said back, just as earnestly.

"I'm sorry I killed you," It added in that detail without hesitating, but with understandable sadness.

At first, I looked at Arceus quizzically, but I recalled the events that took place between me getting on top of the White Horse that I was trying to simultaneously save and prevent from scattering both Dialga and Palkia into the elements that they both embody. I remember quite clearly that I succeeded, despite the fact that I was crushed and ruptured when within Arceus' mind. And even if I didn't remember this, the proof that Arceus is no longer under Odraude's influence rests on the concrete fact that Arceus is speaking to me, instead of attacking me or Its Children.

"But you brought me back from the dead," I included, smiling and thankful that Arceus scratched my back after I scratched Its own.

Arceus simply shook Its head. "No I didn't."

My smile vanished, and was replaced with a curious demeanor. "What are you talking about?"

"When you and Xeno Lucario entered this world and began playing My Game," Arceus began to explain to me. "The two of you became just as much slave to it as your combatants. They wouldn't die initially if they were slain in battle, just as neither you nor the Pokémon of Prophecy would if either one or both of you fell fighting."

I digested this information and précised it. "So basically, the illusion of death kept Xeno and I fighting at our fullest, because you implied an 'extra life' to every single participating Pokémon?"

"Yes…save for My own." Arceus clarified that one key detail. "Because I presently lack the power to revitalize Myself if I were to ever die."

Anger was the last emotion to cross my mind about learning the inner mechanics and rules of Arceus' Game. Admiration was the first.

"…Ingenious." I said softly.

(Song Ends)

Thump…

The immediate sound of Palkia dropping to the floor automatically made the two of us stop conversing with one another, and rush over to the Spacial Pokémon's aid. In the blink of an eye, the stagnant and laterally recumbent Dialga glanced over at both its Father and the Man of Bulwark, as we both began to treat Palkia, through our own effective means.

Firstly, Arceus retrieved the S1-GS device that it had stored within Itself, and handed it to me by outstretching the arm that confiscated it with. After that, Arceus placed that same arm onto Palkia's heart, and began to channel the energy of Its REFRESH technique onto Its Child.

My approach was less aural and more along the lines of medical science. My words were slurred but just enough understandable for me to withdraw a concentrated medicinal capsule, composed primarily of the juice of a dozen Lum and Pecha Berries. And with it I angled Palkia's massive head so that it was mouth up, then manually opened its broad maw, and dropped the capsule in like a coin to a well. I even resorted to having to put my arm inside of Palkia's mouth, to push the capsule into the Spacial Pokémon's throat, then massage Palkia's neck to guide the capsule towards its stomach, stopping when Palkia displayed to me the telltale signs that it swallowed.

With our work done, Arceus withdrew Its arm and I burned off Palkia's saliva with my Red (Fire) Aura. We both knew that Palkia was no longer at risk of death, now that Arceus' involuntarily injected poison was purged. We both could sense that, and see it when Palkia's eye opened and its breathing sounded stable.

All that left was for us to do was decide what to do with the unconscious body that was Odraude.

…As if such a choice should be debated by the four of us.

The Last Stand/Archangel/Two Steps From Hell

(Song Begins)

Once Palkia was tended to, I stepped away from them so that their Father could comfort them and I began to make my way over towards Odraude. I simply walked a few steps forward before stopping, glancing over at Odraude as well as the Death Lance that was practically placed over his hand now.

Behind my back, I could hear Arceus speak to me.

"This stopped being a Game when Odraude entered My domain and committed such blasphemous acts to My Children and to Myself."

"…" My back was to Arceus, so my emotions were being sensed rather than seen by the Alpha Pokémon.

"I must tend to My Children, and to the wellbeing of all of the Legendary Pokémon that I have placed elsewhere within the Hall of Origin." Arceus continued explaining to me. "I must also retrieve Giratina and Xeno Lucario, whether they've finished their fight or not."

"…I understand." I said softly, my voice emanating the slightest signs of trembling, from the personal vendetta I was feeling swell within me from just looking at Odraude.

"Until their health is maximized and their safety assured, this fight is your own."

"…" This time, my body twanged instead of my voice, and it wasn't discreet.

"Are you comfortable confronting Odraude by yourself?"

Without warning, my Aura Dragon Cloak returned around me, bathing me in my inner power made outer through my force of will. My aura-based wings returned to me, folding themselves behind my back. My tail stood behind me, straight and positioned low to the ground. And my bull-like horns on the apex of my head reemerged, appearing somewhat sharper than they were before.

I turned my head left, just enough for Arceus to see the steely determination I had inscribed on my face.

"You're the God here. You know the answer." I stated.

That was all the confirmation Arceus needed before It and Its Children disappeared from my sight, likely having transported themselves elsewhere, to where the other recuperating Legendary Pokémon resided, alongside the Pokémon of Prophecy.

With the Original One no longer having my back, I had to make do with supporting myself for the time being.

"(I suppose this is where the fun begins.)" I thought, smiling to myself.

(Song Ends)

---

50.2: "We Both Know That We're Limiting Ourselves."

Location: Sendoff Spring (?)

Time: ?

When the light faded and the nagging gravitational flux stabilized, the first thing that Xeno noticed was the remarkably beautiful scenery before his eyes. And the second thing that he noticed was the fresh air that he was breathing here, the freshest that he's ever inhaled.

Before his eyes, he stood beside one of the clearest lakes he has ever laid eyes on, surrounded by a ring of fertile, mountainous land that appeared so perfect that it was difficult to believe it to be geologically natural.

"(I don't think I've been in an area this…pleasant before.)" Xeno thought, remembering himself to breathe so that he could take in as much of this air as he can.

Then, Xeno heard the sounds of widespread flapping wings from behind his position and turned around to confront Giratina once again. Only, as Xeno saw Giratina flap its wings and descend on the same terrain that he was comfortably standing over, Xeno noticed a remarkable aesthetic difference in Giratina.

What was once the limbless, six-tentacle Origin Forme Renegade Pokémon was now the winged, six-legged Altered Forme Renegade Pokémon. Giratina's posture was no longer elongated, but elevated, as it stood its ground before the Aura Pokémon of Prophecy.

Xeno said nothing as he coiled his paws and held his ground before his opponent, before one of Arceus' Three Children.

Giratina saw this, but instead of following Xeno's actions, it simply remained relaxed and looked down at its opponent. Because, within Xeno, it wasn't seeing the Aura Pokémon for what he was, but for what he might become.

"We both know that we're limiting ourselves." Giratina began.

Xeno's countenance didn't change, neither did his position.

"I haven't revealed all of my abilities yet, and neither have you. I know what you're capable of, and I trust that you know as well."

Like a statue speaking, Xeno's words came out, and showed no point of origin.

"Mega Evolution."

Giratina simply nodded, glad that Xeno is choosing not to deny this. Then, its countenance hardened before Xeno's eyes, as it spoke sternly. "Do it."

"Excuse me?"

"Mega Evolve." Giratina demanded again with silent authority. "Show me your true strength. Show me what you're capable of in battle."

The reaction that Giratina received from Xeno came in the form of him relaxing from his battle stance, as well as emotionally, perhaps even too much so. Because, when Giratina saw Xeno smile, and then laugh through his nose instead of through his telepathy as he never does so whenever he's been humored, the Renegade Pokémon sensed that something was amiss.

"Not to sound biased or anything, but there's only one problem that I see if I Mega Evolve." Xeno said, his diaphragm convulsing and his sense of humor stimulated.

"And what would that be?" Giratina inquired sternly.

"The purpose of this fight," Xeno stated. "If I Mega Evolve now, then you would lose. Easily."

"…Excuse me?"

"I would rather enjoy this fight than accelerate it to the point of it becoming an effortless, succinct victory." Xeno stopped chortling when he sensed Giratina's frowning disposition. "Because, as I've stated before, your pain doesn't compare as evenly as those of your Brothers."

Giratina's head appeared to lean back as its eyes were now physically unable to look away from this audacious Pokémon.

"You're insulting me now." Giratina's voice began to rumble. "You think yourself overconfident because of your abilities in battle."

"It's not overconfidence that I'm feeling, Giratina." Xeno clarified, before forming a fighting stance once again. "It's fact."

Am understandably long period of time passed where Giratina remained silent and Xeno stood firm. He knew that at any moment, he could resume this battle, and not have to hear Giratina's words on the matter. But he wished to, because he had denied the Renegade Pokémon.

Giratina spontaneously outstretched its wings, almost triggering Xeno to respond with violence. But instead, Xeno held firm, and took note of the three red spikes that amorphously hovered about the black mist that once was Giratina's six tentacle-like arms.

"As we continue in our little skirmish, I'll see what I want to see out of you, Pokémon of Prophecy." Giratina hissed forebodingly. "All I have to do is provoke you."

Battle Theme Medley (Golden Sun)/Nintendo DS, Wii, And Other Various Games/Super Smash Bros. Brawl OST

(Song Begins)

The battle began now, and Giratina wasted no time by instantaneously clapping both wings together, and cumulating its power into a sphere, formed through the precision points that the six red spikes on its wings helped gather and deposit.

Xeno saw as Giratina held onto a sphere of power that appeared dense from the way energy seemed to sink towards its center. But he didn't see it for long before Giratina hastily drove the sphere down into the earth between its first row of feet.

The energy of this sphere, as Xeno soon confirmed it to be GRAVITY, was immediately fed into the ground upon being planted. The sphere quickly let loose its gathered power and sent out a harmless shockwave across the surface of the earth, amplifying the gravitational pull of this environment by a factor of ten.

Xeno could feel as his body now weighed almost as much as Giratina's. But because his body was already involuntarily able to weigh twice this much whenever he would fall unconscious or trigger it through a forced state of slumber, he didn't so much as sag his stance before the unfazed Renegade Pokémon.

Though he almost did when Giratina made itself into five Pokémon, lined up in a single-file row across Xeno's perspective, through the use of its DOUBLE TEAM attack.

In one fluent motion, Giratina and its accomplices launched a coordinated barrage of AURA SPHERE attacks directly at Xeno. And Xeno, knowing that his evasive abilities have been momentarily hindered, immediately resorts to defending himself through PROTECT. And through his psychic shield, he could see all five of Giratina's AURA SPHERE attacks strike true to their mark, but do nothing more than ripple his bulwark and send a plume of smoke that block's Xeno's field of vision.

When that happened, Xeno's Aura Vision ability took over and guided his gaze through the smoke and towards Giratina's brilliant aura fields. And upon seeing the distinct signatures of these Ghost-Type/Dragon-Type Pokémon, Xeno quickly noticed them coming closer and closer to his position.

Through a rampaging five-headed IRON HEAD attack.

Xeno's PROTECT dissipates intentionally, and its psychic energy is put elsewhere, to its TELEKINESIS. Xeno can't physically jump while Giratina's GRAVITY field is still in effect, but overcoming matter with his mind will allow him to soar.

When Giratina began to rampage through with IRON HEAD, Xeno's TELEKINESIS carried him up and over their heads, their bodies, and their wings, but only just.

"(Now, I know I haven't been letting myself go.)" Xeno thought, joking about his artificial weight gain.

When Giratina realized that its battering ram attack missed, all five of them stopped in their tracks and sharply dug the nails of thirty flat feet into the ground, to turn around and see the Aura Pokémon slowly rising himself higher and higher into the air.

Disregarding and personal comments on Xeno's exceptionally strong mind, all five Renegade Pokémon opened fire on the Pokémon of Prophecy, each utilizing different attacks in Giratina's shared repertoire.

Xeno turned around just in time to see the inner power of an AURA SPHERE, the black chains of a DARK PULSE attack, the chaotic stream of a DRAGON PULSE, the collection of sunlight from an ENERGY BALL, and the gaian essence of STONE EDGE, all collide into his body. The simultaneous attacks were more than enough to discombobulate his concentration and harm him to the point of his body falling right back down onto the earth, face first.

Despite the minute head trauma, Xeno bounces back quickly and attempts to get up through TELEKINESIS once again. However, as bad luck would have it, Giratina helped him up to his feet, then carried him towards its face, through PSYCHIC. And through this means, Xeno found himself with his legs dangling off of the ground, glaring into the eyes and the aura signatures of five Altered Forme Renegade Pokémon.

"Why don't you Mega Evolve already?"

Xeno's response to this was immediate, and haughty. "Because the time isn't right yet."

Giratina takes offense to Xeno's defiance and all five of them toss the Aura Pokémon airborne through their present means of PSYCHIC. They see the Aura Pokémon tumble across the air and take flight, through means given to him instead of his own.

But Xeno reorients himself quickly during his mid-air tumble, just in time to see these five Pokémon come towards him with FLY―a sign that Giratina's GRAVITY has already worn off. Xeno retaliates against the incoming Renegade Pokémon attack force with a barrage of AURA SPHEREs, knowing well enough that as long as this fight persists, the equalizing effects of his earlier FORESIGHT technique will still hold.

Despite being multiple times larger than the Aura Pokémon, and despite not being as evasive as it was earlier in its Origin Forme, Giratina's evasion was debilitated but by no means nonexistent. Its massive body banked and barrel-rolled around these incoming AURA SPHERE projectiles, avoiding almost all of them.

As Xeno immediately noticed, he only struck down one of these five Giratina, causing it to dissipate into a puff of smoke. The remaining four struck him with FLY, right across the core of his body, causing the Aura Pokémon to fall back down to earth once again.

Luckily for him, his reflexives prevented him from landing on his face again, only because he shifted the land itself away from him when Xeno became earthbound. His arms moved at blindingly fast speeds, making quick work of the reasonably soft layer of dirt that he was using DIG to sink into and disappear from the sights of the remaining four Renegade Pokémon.

Wordlessly scolding themselves, Giratina and its DOUBLE TEAM replications separated from their close proximities to one another and began to scout the Sendoff Spring battlefield in search of the evasive Aura Pokémon. While using FLY, they were granted a Braviary's look of the earth from above, and knew that whatever signs Xeno would reveal upon inevitably resurfacing would be met vindictively.

Three Giratina remained airborne, but one decided to land and look around the area for the Pokémon of Prophecy, feeling as though the view from ground level would be better detailed than the view from hundreds of feet in the air.

That mistake would cost this duplicate its existence.

Not long after this Giratina touched earth did it feel a peculiarly warm and fuzzy object directly on its underbelly. Giratina tilted its head to look down between its row of six legs, and immediately noticed what it was that was below it.

Xeno's paw and only his paw was unearthed, with his palm firmly placed on Giratina's stomach, and already brimming with aura energy.

This Giratina could only watch now as Xeno's FORCE PALM made it cease to exist.

After feeling his technique connect, Xeno's paw retracts back into the earth as he was unquestionably navigating through it now, with greater haste than before. Because in taking out the second Giratina, the remaining three were drawn to the hole he made in the dirt when he attacked, and landed right around it.

"(You think taking refuge underground will be enough to escape from me, when you're surrounded by shadows?)" Giratina thought ominously.

In mere moments, Giratina and its two remaining clones sank into their own shadows via SHADOW SNEAK, before seeping into the small hole in the earth that Xeno made with his arm, and becoming one with the darkness that Xeno was navigating through.

Not long after all activity above the earth ceased did signs of activity below the earth become apparent. The ground spontaneously swells like bug bites on skin, in three closely packed locations, before rupturing and aerosolizing dirt and dust.

And in the middle of this brown cloud, three Renegade Pokémon hold the Pokémon of Prophecy by the neck and body through their amorphous pair of wings.

"If you don't Mega Evolve, I will kill you." Giratina growled at its target.

Xeno still had the audacity to laugh at Giratina's naiveté on the subject, despite his current shackles, because he knew the truth.

"And if I Mega Evolve, you won't live long enough to enjoy fighting me."

After his rebuttal, he used TELEPORT to escape from Giratina's ethereal clutches, and reappeared well over their heads, about a few hundred feet above them. He held his left paw down towards them, holding onto his left arm with his right for support as he began to channel frighteningly high levels of raw energy into the palm of his left paw.

"Besides, it's better for me to kill you than kill you effortlessly!"

Upon hearing Xeno's word overhead, they looked up just in time to see Xeno's left arm replicate the barrel of a laser cannon, raining down one wide HYPER BEAM attack onto his adversaries.

Only one Renegade Pokémon was struck down by this column of light. And the other two benefited from this doppelganger's sacrifice by fleeing the scene of disaster, hastily and mildly fearfully.

Xeno didn't hold anything back with his powerful HYPER BEAM attack, nor was he simply stopping it just because he only struck down one-third of the Renegade Pokémon in this battlefield. He put in just as much physical strength in angling this beam as he did aural strength in firing it. And in doing so, the HYPER BEAM attack followed the fleeing pair of Renegade Pokémon, cutting away at the earth like an oversized plasma torch.

Giratina proved fast in its flight speed, but was by no means the fastest Pokémon on two wings. Both Giratina could hear the HYPER BEAM attack vaporize the earth it was cutting through, hearing Xeno's attack come closer and closer towards them, twice as fast compared to their own velocities.

But just as it appeared as though Xeno's HYPER BEAM would vaporize one of the two Giratina's tails, the attack stopped outright.

"(…Damn.)" Was all that Xeno thought before the draining side effects prevented him from remaining airborne.

For the third time in this fight, Xeno found himself falling from the sky, unable to do anything otherwise due to the fact that he needs to recharge for a brief period of time after using such a demanding technique. Fortunately for him, he didn't land on earth as he had done once with his face and again on all fours.

He landed right in the jaws of Giratina, the Renegade Pokémon immediately intercepting Xeno's fall and catching an Aura Pokémon…with its teeth.

(Song Ends)

The Renegade Pokémon that presently held onto Xeno's abdomen like a vice, with a bite strength similar to that of a Sharpedo. And Xeno, being unable to retaliate for a brief period of time, could only grit his teeth and secretly hope that Giratina wouldn't do what Dialga did to him when he was in this same situation.

Those thoughts were brief however, as Xeno noticed Giratina―no doubt the original Giratina―approach the Aura Pokémon, looking a bit more irritated than before.

And still unable to let go of what its heart wants most from its opponent.

"Why won't you Mega Evolve?!" Giratina practically roared at Xeno's face.

Xeno could feel the duplicate Giratina clamp down its jaws on his abdomen, and could even feel its jaws tremble from the strain. But despite the fact that he wasn't wearing his battle armor, Giratina was hardly getting past the skin, which made Xeno believe in two things. One: Giratina isn't as strong as Dialga, and perhaps even Palkia. Or two: Xeno has truly grown all-around stronger than he ever thought possible.

"Do you want to know why I won't Mega Evolve?" Xeno said, beginning to feel his strength come surging back, but biding his time by talking.

"…Please enlighten me." Giratina said sourly.

"Because I've grown strong enough where using my Mega Evolution on a Legendary Pokémon is nothing short of redundant."

All Is Hell That Ends Well/SkyWorld/Two Steps From Hell

(Song Begins)

In one instantaneous motion, Xeno's left arm manifested a blade of aura. And with his SACRED SWORD attack, he drove the blade clean through one inner ear of the Renegade Pokémon and out the other. This Giratina disappeared in a puff of smoke and Xeno landed on the ground, rubbing the area of his abdomen where it felt as though he had been reclining on a bed of nails, even feeling trickles of blood dampen the fur on his paws. But otherwise, he felt just fine, and held his blade towards the OUTRAGEd Pokémon he was no doubt witnessing.

Giratina says nothing this time, and instead chooses to charge towards Xeno like a runaway locomotive, but not before its aura embodied the war colors of a rampaging dragon.

Seeing this cyclone of red and black aura spiral around the Renegade Pokémon, Xeno waited until his opponent was practically upon him before nimbly evading the attack by cart-wheeling to safety. He even resorted to using his SACRED SWORD to pole-vault himself back upright.

In turning around, he swore he could hear Giratina roar in frustration from within its OUTRAGE, just before Giratina put even the most aggressive Pokémon to shame by blindly rushing back towards him.

And like before, Xeno evaded the attack, by using his SACRED SWORD like a trampoline to spring himself up and over the Pokémon with the cumulated rage of a Primeape and the reckless rushing of a Rhyhorn.

But upon landing, and when Xeno turned around to face Giratina, just as it was beginning to turn around for a third run, he couldn't help but say something that he never thought he would hear himself say in the middle of a heated battle.

"(*Sigh*)" Xeno found himself beginning to grow bored against fighting Giratina.

Giratina stood ready to launch itself at Xeno for the third time. It dug in its heels and scratched away at the earth with all six of its legs, before exploding forth and rocketing towards the stagnant Aura Pokémon like a blind animal.

And this time, Xeno didn't choose to avoid this third coming.

Xeno knew of the Dragon-Type OUTRAGE technique. He knows how powerful it is. But at the same time, he also knows just how much of a double-edged sword this technique can become. Because if this attack is used after two or even three times, the resulting fatigue that comes from this monumental discharge of power can prove beneficial to his favor.

"Come at me, Giratina." Xeno whispered, holding his aura sword defensively.

At the last possible moment, where Giratina appeared to crash right into the Aura Pokémon, it actually crashed into his SACRED SWORD that he held broadside towards the Renegade Pokémon. Xeno held his posture through ENDURE, and kept the blade right at the apex of Giratina's vehement aura. However, Xeno still found himself being pushed back, his feet digging ruts into the earth as Giratina was slowed by showed no signs of stopping.

Xeno's legs vibrated against the earth he found himself sliding back on. His teeth clenched harder than Giratina's when the doppelganger was biting down on him. But his strength and experience kept him from crumbling under Giratina's pressure, alongside his stamina.

…Which, as it turns out, is greater than Giratina's.

Without Giratina realizing it until moments after it occurred, Giratina's OUTRAGE aura dissipated, and it felt as though its body weighed at least a hundred times more than usual, just from the incomprehensible levels of fatigue it now found itself sustaining.

No longer needing to ENDURE against Giratina, Xeno immediately returned back on the offensive, but didn't resort to his equipped SACRED SWORD just yet.

Firstly, Xeno pumped his body up with BULK UP, significantly expanding his musculature and improving overall blood flow through himself. Next, while Giratina was beginning to grow confused from its intense fatigue, Xeno gave Giratina one of the most powerful BODY SLAM attacks that he could perform without being given a running start. All he did was sharply thrust his upper body and strike Giratina's pectoral area with his shoulder and coiled right arm, hardly budging his feet as a result.

As for Giratina, it quickly forgot about the burning fatigue crawling all across its body as it felt itself grow surprised at the fact that it was just forcefully made bipedal before toppling over onto its backside.

Then Xeno was right above him, standing directly on Giratina's trunk-like neck, holding his SACRED SWORD high over his head, its tip pointing straight down.

...Right over Giratina's forehead.

"You'll get no mercy from me," was all Xeno said before he thrust down his blade with all of his might, and hopping off immediately after letting go of his SACRED SWORD.

In the middle of his acrobatic jump, Xeno could overhear one of the loudest and most feral sounding roars he's ever experienced. And when he landed, he could see why.

He had embedded his SACRED SWORD right into the earth, with Giratina's head surrounding the outside of the main length of the aura blade.

Ethereal blood was shed alongside pained roars and violent, spastic physical actions, all in Giratina's part to try to break free of how ludicrously pinned it was to the earth. It could feel the equivalent of its brain being split down the middle, as well as having its skull cut open, even though it was actually pierced through. Its body unnaturally jumped up and down with its head and neck tethered to the ground. Its ethereal wings flapped madly, forming gales that were ruffling Xeno's mostly pristine fur coat. Giratina's legs flailed about in the air, as though it were physically clawing away at the pain it was feeling burning across its body.

And then, as Xeno saw it, Giratina spontaneously stopped moving altogether, just before Xeno's SACRED SWORD dissipated into nothingness after a prolonged period of inactivity.

Xeno saw Giratina's dorsally recumbent body, its wings laid out on the ground and its legs reaching for the sky. Xeno saw the growing puddle of unnaturally green ectoplasm that was Giratina's blood. But alongside this, Xeno could also see that, despite sustaining a head injury that to most individuals would be fatal, Giratina's aura did not once for a moment show signs of diminishing.

To that, Xeno exhaled a bored "Huh…", mentally confirming just how much of a Ghost-Type Giratina actually appears to be.

He could sense that Giratina was coming through, and would come back to consciousness, no doubt enraged at him to the point of wishing for his death. But Xeno knew that Giratina was already seeking his death in Arceus' Game. And if that was the case, then Giratina would still try to provoke Xeno into initiating his Mega Evolution.

And honestly, to Xeno, his latest ability might keep him from growing any more jaded about this match, by making this match wrap up much more quickly than he would've originally liked.

"(If there is any mercy in what I'm about to do next, it's that your death will come gloriously quicker.)" Xeno contemplated before putting his left paw to his chest spike, the Lucarionite within his heart beginning to glow and feed him its power. "(Though I can't guarantee it being any less traumatic.)"

Giratina awakens just in time to sense and listen to Xeno Lucario undergoing Mega Evolution. And the Renegade Pokémon, despite feeling one of the most debilitating headaches in eons, forces itself upright, almost losing its balance when it could feel the hurricane force gales blow by its body and across its folded wings.

But when Giratina stands back upright and sees Xeno Lucario again, it can see, without questioning the matter, that the Pokémon of Prophecy has indeed Mega Evolved. Giratina could see Xeno's expression grow more somber, alongside the intensity of his aura. And Giratina knows now that Xeno will be fighting at a level of strength that makes his normal state of being seem almost infantile in comparison to this body's adolescence.

Inwardly, this made Giratina smile. But openly, this made Giratina appear insignificant to the Mega Lucario.

"You wish to see my full potential? You're about to." Xeno spoke gravely, before forming a stance so swiftly and so immediately that the air surrounding him snapped in back away from his presence. "And moments before your imminent death, you will come to the scarring conclusion that some wishes are not meant to be granted."

(Song Ends)

---

50.3: "If You Fight for Your Friends, Then You've Already Lost."

Location: Hall of Origin

Time: ?

At this moment, the only objects of interests within this particular section of the Hall of Origin were me, Odraude, and the Aura Dragon Cloak that I presently had bathing me.

Currently, my aura was flaring, embodying my appearance with the frustration and spite that I felt towards this man, this Nameless Emissary of the Dark One, this abomination that is no doubt playing a part to bring the Void of the Dark One to realization.

I step closer towards him, each steps practically resonating across of the ground due to how much power I had surging around me. And when I'm standing over Odraude, close enough to where I can begin to make out the individual strands of fabric of his moderately intact black cloak, the first object that draws my eyes and my attention is the Death Lance that is lying directly by his reach.

I inspect it, this weapon that appears to be made of bone, human bones to be more specific, from the tip of its blade to the end of the handle. But just because these appeared to be human bones didn't mean that they were indeed human bones. They were most likely formed into that shape, by whatever metal or material used to manufacture such a bizarrely intimidating weapon to begin with.

And as I come to this conclusion, there was a nagging feeling at the back of my mind that I couldn't shake off.

"(Why do I feel like I've seen it before?)" I thought, feeling ominous waves of déjà vu just from looking at this unorthodox weapon.

Shaking off this feeling away from my head, I ready myself against Odraude by withdrawing both my Gauntlet Shield Mark II and Penta-dent Mark II. And the reason for withdrawing these weapons was simple, through my distinct pair of eyes.

"Get up, you bastard." I ordered him, not liking the fact that I had to talk to him at all. "You're not unconscious. You're just playing possum on me."

Broken Reality/Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance Original Soundtrack DISC 2/Yoko Shimomura

(Song Begins)

A few moments went by where the man that I sensed was awake and feigning unconsciousness wasn't stirring. But then, when those moments passed, Odraude began to stir, laughing throughout the process of him getting up, retrieving his weapon, and standing back onto his feet.

I just readied myself against him by unfolding my shield in front of me, and holding my custom weapon in a Spartan's stance. And whether I was premature in bringing up my guard against him or not didn't necessarily matter.

Not in his eyes anyway.

Odraude held onto his Death Lance, but by no means did he hold it in any way that would make me believe it to be used against me. He just held it in the same way that a child would hold onto a twig.

And he was still laughing.

"You're a strong little beast, I'll give you that compliment." Odraude said once he stopped laughing, but didn't stop smiling. "But that's the only praise you'll hear from me, because the rest will just be my honest denigration."

"And what would that be?" As if I didn't already know.

His smile flipped before my eyes into a frown and his eyebrows sank alongside it. It happened so quickly that for a moment, I believed his countenance had turned upside down before my eyes, like magic.

"I don't take kindly to your actions in preventing me from killing Arceus' pair of horrid Children." Odraude scolded me, his tone of voice as intense as the most potent of toxicities. "Not. One. Bit."

"(Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you,)" I thought contemptuously.

"And then, to make matters worse, you bring Arceus back to rationality, just before that Fallen God could cast Its JUDGMENT onto Its failing inferiorities."

The way that he spoke so negatively about these three Pokémon, these majestic creatures that possess power that anybody with even a modicum of logic and/or knowledge of them should both admire and respect, actually began to anger me more than the actions he took to try to dispose of the three of them.

"What do you have against them?" I interrogated him. "What did they ever do to you, for you to hold such animosity to Dialga and Palkia, and such sacrilege to Arceus Itself?"

He gave me a quizzical look before the answer came as naturally to him as his own malicious intent.

"They've done absolutely nothing wrong to me."

"…So why hate them?" The question almost didn't come out of my mouth, by how thrown off I was by his casual response on the matter.

"It's not just them," He clarified to me. Or better yet, he added this to his testimony. "It's all life branching off of them, ever since Arceus gave birth to the universe and all of the obscene vermin It has gestated afterwards."

"So you just hate all life…in general?" I believed.

"Yeah, just about." He simply shrugged his shoulders, a topic this grave spoken as commonly as describing the weather through small talk.

Not surprisingly, I found this to be quite sickening.

"…Why?"

"I could tell you…"

At the flip of a switch, his posture changed immediately, to the point where he was now standing before me, brandishing his weapon before my face, ready for battle.

"But such a question would be better off left unanswered, so that it can torment your thoughts as you contemplate my intentions and my logic behind them."

(Song Ends)

I was already made ready to battle Odraude. Physically, anyway. But mentally, I was thrown for a loop, discombobulated, by means that he himself caused with his nonchalant contempt for life, no matter how supreme. And I despised that. But for now, I was forced to take his words and store them away within my mind, to contemplate them later. Because, as of now, the time for talk was over.

Or at least, it was nearing its end.

"In mere moments…" The blade of Odraude's Death Lance bent down and elongated, becoming his scythe now. "You'll be as cut open as Xeno. And this time, there will be no shred of luck or hope with which to survive off of."

My grip on my five-pronged spear and sword hybrid tightened, my lips curled back, and I began to snarl at him. But alongside this, I found myself smiling, at what I had the opportunity of doing to Odraude in mere seconds.

"I've been waiting for the day where I can exact my vengeance on you, for nearly killing Xeno."

To that, Odraude simply scoffed through his nose.

"If you fight for your friends, then you've already lost."

For what felt like an eternity, we were both petrified in place, statuesque in our set postures, hardly even moving an eye away from each other, as we each sized ourselves up and anticipated the first move of our respective opposition.

Then, before we each knew it, we unleashed hell upon one another.

Black Blade/Invincible/Two Steps From Hell

(Song Begins)

Our weapons became blurs when our arms swung our equipped weapons at speeds that almost made it seem as though our tools had minds of their own, and our arms were nothing more than leashes being dragged behind the collars of unleashed dogs.

Our bodies were just as immediate as our weapons, and neither of us could hit each other with them.

I would spiral my lance to parry his scythe, then thrust it forward or swing it away at him, but he would bend his body so nimbly around my attack, or leap over, duck under it, back away, flip, or strafe around it that I would only narrowly reach his black cloak, not even close to the enemy underneath it.

Odraude would do the same with a weapon that was just as long in its reach than my own. But instead of hitting me, most of his attacks connected on my shield, and would then be sent off course by either its smooth and circular surface, or when I made the features of my Gauntlet Shield activate. I would make the jagged spikes line the edges of my 48" diameter shield, then turn the motors on to make the shield spin like a buzz saw, sending his weapon away. But he would recover quickly and always appeared to aim for my neck with it.

Perfectly appropriate for a weapon of that blade design, pedigree, and reach.

Then, as we're swinging away more or less on instinct than complicated thought, I managed to gain ground over him. I stepped forward, blocking his attacks with my buzz saw Gauntlet Shield and Penta-dent, never hesitating to block my view of him with the former so that I would avoid losing my head by a blindingly quick blade sweep.

In one moment, I gain the upper hand on Odraude by holding onto my Penta-dent by the end closest to the five-pronged spearhead, an swinging away with the sword end outward, maximizing my reach and creating a circle around myself that he wouldn't dare close without cutting himself.

Or so I thought.

I didn't even get a chance to spin my weapon around myself more than three times before Odraude gave my weapon a rising sweep with his Death Scythe, timing it perfectly so that the base of his blade would act like a hook for the base of the blade of my spear sword. The resulting swing in Odraude's part forced my hand open and made me completely lose my grip on my weapon.

I could only see as my weapon was sent spinning skyward before I had to retaliate immediately to another scythe swing aimed towards my neck. But just because I didn't have my primary weapon at the moment didn't mean that I was made vulnerable.

After all, I still had my Gauntlet Shield, alongside my Aura Dragon Cloak.

"I have you now!" Odraude snarled as his weapon was coming within feet of decapitating me.

Without hesitating on the matter, I dropped right down onto the ground, left arm first, so that I was now lying right on top of my Gauntlet Shield Mark II. And then, as Odraude's swing missed my head and came whizzing past, narrowly reaching for my aura-based wings, I activated the motors of my defense once again.

The end result was not the shield itself spinning, but me. And when I began to spin in place, I spun around so fast that by simply outstretching my wings and tail, I was already counterattacking Odraude.

He saw this and managed to duck below one wing made as sharp as our blades and jump over the other. But he couldn't time himself perfectly enough to avoid my incoming tail, which acted more like a bludgeoning weapon than a slicer, and he immediately felt it strike his legs, causing Odraude to invert in mid-air.

Just as both of my wings were coming back in full swing towards him.

"Dodge this!" I snarled back.

Both of my wings were calibrated and reoriented to slice him at two areas simultaneously, against his neck and his midsection. But before they had chance to hit their mark, Odraude spontaneously vanished by resorting to his dark aura to warp away.

Quickly realizing that there was no target before me, I disengaged my shield and rolled back upright. My wings reformed their original shape, and I looked around me to see my fallen weapon lodged onto the ground. A simple snap of my fingers through my outstretched right hand was all I needed to do to telekinetically pull my Penta-dent Mark II back into my grasp.

And then, through my active Aura Vision, I sensed Odraude's ominous aura rematerialize behind me, moments before I took evasive actions and crouched down, moments before the Nameless Emissary attempted to decapitate me with his Death Scythe.

However, because he came at me from behind, and was therefore in closer proximity to the wings of my Aura Dragon Cloak, he managed to cut through them instead of through them alongside my neck. My aura-based wings separated from their base behind my back as Odraude's Death Scythe swings by, but they immediately reconnect back together post-swing, behaving like air equalizing itself in a low-pressure zone.

Still behind me and still on the offensive, Odraude redirects his Death Scythe and attempts to hammer it down on me, aiming for my spine and entirely intent on driving the skeletal blade through my abdomen from behind. But a quick jump and a low glide to the ground afterward allowed me to evade Odraude's blade smash entirely, and I turned around after gaining some ground between us, to see Odraude prying his Death Scythe off of the ground and back into an offensive stance.

With my pair of weapons, I readied myself against him. My shield unfolded itself in half a second, and my lance was trained onto Odraude in the other half-second. My wings and tail were tucked closer towards my body, ready to lash out at him at any potential opening. My ash black right eye and my auric left eye never faltered from Odraude, and I was looking at him from the inside out.

Odraude appeared ready to come at me once again, like the Grim Reaper to someone resting by death's door. But much to my better alacrity, Odraude didn't move towards me. And that became clear to me when I saw him smile to himself and heard him speak to me.

"This hellacious weapon of mine possesses many abilities," Odraude made that clear to me. "And you've only just seen a fraction of them."

As though he gave me a warning, his grip on his Death Scythe shifted just as his weapon itself began to change. In under a second, what was once a scythe had now become a longbow, which he held onto as any master archer would.

And that was drawn back and primed to fire.

Before my eyes, Odraude gave one mighty leap back and fired forth enough arrows to rival the potency of 100 archers. And each of these arrows, these arrows of shining streamlined dark energy, all huddled in relatively close proximity of each other, all made accurate by their sable marksman.

All made to lodge themselves into me.

Without hesitating, I drop down to one knee and fold in my amorphous wings and tail as close to my body as I could. My Gauntlet Shield stood in between me and Odraude's dark arrows, absorbing all of their blows and making my left arm tremble from their astonishing impact force.

When the barrage stopped, my shield remained relatively unscathed, and I remained defensive on one knee. I didn't bother exposing my head over my shield to see if Odraude had stopped firing or not, because I could see his malevolent aura through my nonexistent blind spot.

And what I saw was his aura rising, not in power but in height.

Odraude had made himself airborne through one high jump, and readied his Death Bow downward, towards me. He smiled slyly as he saw an opening in my frontal defense and not bothering holding back on firing another 100 arrows my way, because he simply let them go and watched them come towards me.

A soundless expletive leaves my lips, and I find myself sprinting and rolling out of the way of this dark arrow shower. His arrows are accurate, but by no means were they fast enough to account for my spontaneous evasion, and simply struck the ground before disappearing.

But that didn't stop Odraude from continuing to rain down at me from his perch above.

As I was dashing away from Odraude's closing firing range, I could hear his missed shots grow closer and closer towards me, until they were no longer behind me and dangerously overhead. When that happened, I stopped running, made one leap, and turned my body away from the ground, so that I could stop Odraude's cascading dark arrows with my Gauntlet Shield.

Like before, his archery proved fruitless against my massive defense, even when I landed on my back and skidded slightly against the smooth floor. My entire body was now underneath my metallic umbrella, and the only thing that Odraude could do against this was to come back down at me with a different tactic in his shrouded arsenal.

And as I could tell through my left eye, Odraude did precisely that. He began to come down towards me like a fallen angel, breaking his Death Bow across the handle and making it into two even halves. Each half transformed into a pair of short swords that were no longer than a foot in length, and he was wielding them backhandedly, as many assassins would.

Whether I could brace for his impact or not was certainly a possibility that I would wish to attempt, but made no such gamble. I rolled out of the way, just before he came crashing down with both of his Death Daggers, leaving behind a crater wide enough that my shield would fit comfortably into.

When I came out of my roll and back upright, sure enough Odraude was there, coming at me on the offensive. He swung away with his daggers held backhanded, sparks flying off of my Gauntlet Shield as I used them to block off the majority of his moves. And those moves that I didn't deflect with my rotund bulwark were deflected with my Penta-dent, as a result of Odraude's moving around me with incredible agility and divergently surprising acrobatic grace.

Metal and sparks were what I was seeing between me and Odraude, as I found myself dedicating virtually all of my concentration in keeping him from digging his Death Daggers into me. He consistently aimed for my heart and my neck with those weapons, and consistently attempted to provoke me into switching my guard elsewhere so that his handheld weapons would taste my dragon aura, and the human flesh and blood that was underneath it. But I never gave him the chance to.

However, he never gave me the chance to strike at him either.

His attacks on me were being deflected. And my attacks on him were being nimbly evaded. From my perspective, it didn't appear as though he were focusing all that intently at reading my moves and avoiding them. And as I continued locking my eyes on him and casting off his weapons with my own, I could begin to understand why.

His ferocity was great, but his reflexes and speed were incomprehensible. He almost appeared to be dancing around me and my persistent guard, moving at speeds no less than ten times what most mortals would consider normal. He almost seemed like a ghost to me. And if it wasn't for my partial Aura Vision ability, I'm certain that I would've been carved up by now, a crimson carcass that Xeno almost became…at his hands.

When that thought hit me, a surge of anger fueled me and made my focus spike in intensity. With it, I felt as though Odraude's movements slowed down significantly, moments before I accelerated them with a hard swipe of my shield.

My shield managed to make contact to him, but instead of striking the majority of his body, they only struck the soles of his feet. Because as the Right Hand of the Dark One saw my shield about to kiss him in the face, he jumped slightly and absorbed the hit with his feet, before dismounting off of my shield and soaring back with a couple of backwards somersaults.

(Song Ends)

When I saw him land and smile at my seemingly pitiful attempt of an attack on him, I knew that my present tactics of fighting him with physical attacks were getting me nowhere fast. I knew now that my best chances of defeating him reside within what is bathing my body at this very second.

Elemental Aura.

Black Assassin/Dynasty (CD 1)/Two Steps From Hell

(Song Begins)

"Eduardo!" Odraude yelled my name from his place away from me. "Stop trying to hit me and hit me already! You're beginning to embarrass me!"

Whether he was or wasn't provoking me out of his own enjoyment mattered not to me, even though it was irritatingly working wonders on my spite of him. I tucked away both my weapon behind my back and folded my shield away, contemplating the best method that I could think of to forcibly stuff his words back into his mouth.

Only one option entered my mind, but it involved my own mouth.

…No homo.

"(Pyro Flamethrower!)"

My head craned back at the same time my aura spiked Red (Fire) Aura for a second. I inhaled sharply before arching forward and breathing out an intense stream of fire his way, wide enough where attempting to evade it won't necessarily be the safest option.

Much to my amazement, Odraude chose to remain in place, even when this wall of emulated hellfire was fast approaching him.

Both daggers that Odraude held behind his hands were flipped forward with a simple flick of the wrist. And when they were held "normally", through his power, his pair of Death Daggers widened and evolved into a pair of Death Fans. With them, his own Elemental Aura abilities came into play, and he used Light Green (Wind) Aura all across his body before spinning rapidly in place.

What resulted from this was the channeling of his aura into the pair of Death Fans he was holding outward, and summoning a tornado to envelop himself, one wide enough and spinning as fast as an F2 to completely redirect my Pyro Flamethrower attack.

And then when my fire gave out because of my expelled lung capacity, I took note of what it was I was witnessing from Odraude.

"(Now I know for certain that I'm not the only user of Elemental Aura,)" I thought, almost ashamed of myself for sharing my power with this demon.

With the winds howling around Odraude and riffling his black cloak like the feathers on a chicken in a hurricane, the tornado that Odraude had summoned and was simultaneously controlling and maintaining was kept alive through graceful, gyrating motions of his arms and upper body.

Then, with no warning on the matter, Odraude cast out his earthbound air funnel and sent it my way.

My eyes widened as I saw this tornado begin to howl and rush over towards me. And with very little thought on the matter, the rainbow aura from my Aura Dragon Cloak briefly chimed Brown (Earth) Aura…

"(Terra Dome Wall!)"

…before I hunkered down low into the ground, and the earth I was standing over made like a clam and clamped shut around me, with me nestled inside.

Within my makeshift bunker, composed out of solid rock that I decided to not question its existence within the Hall of Origin, I could hear and foresee the tornado that Odraude made with his fans and with his Light Green (Wind) Aura. I could hear his cyclone immediately close our gap and stop sharply, so that it was now directly over me.

Now, under normal circumstances involving Mother Nature and her mastery of all of the tellurian elements, a tornado would pass by me and be on its way before disappearing into the air from whence it came. But because Odraude was supplementing his spiraling death winds with his own power and keeping it from fading for as long as he wished, my Terra Dome Wall was tested.

And failed…

Not ten seconds passed before my wall could no longer endure the intense winds and crumbled around me, before I found myself forcibly made airborne and spinning around his windstorm, alongside pieces of my former Terra Dome Wall. But luckily for me, the wings created from my Aura Dragon Cloak stabilized me and I simply glided about the tornado, not under any distinct danger.

…As of yet.

Odraude made it clear to me that he wasn't just a one-trick Nameless Emissary, when I was able to sense him join his held pair of Death Fans and had their center skeletal blade elongate until it formed one imposing long sword, while the remainder of it became the hilt and handle. And with this changed weapon, the aura surrounding Odraude's sword arm sharply changed into Red (Fire) Aura, moments before he thrust his sword towards his tornado and made the tip of his blade breath fire as intensely as any dragon.

The fire immediately replaced the wind that the tornado was revolving around dozens of times every minute, and began to glow red with hellfire. It became clear to me that if I didn't escape this fire and the winds it was flying through, then I would be severely compromised.

Luckily for me, through this boost in power, even my inexperience in using TELEPORT was nonexistent, and I vanished before the fires could taste my aura, and savor the flesh underneath it.

(Song Ends)

"(Short-range teleportation...)" Odraude noticed my sudden absence within his fire tornado, and promptly dissipated it, disregarding the sight of dying flames in favor of my reappearance. "(…Most impressive. It makes me think that his bitch isn't entirely useless.)"

Rather than look around himself for signs of my eventual reappearance, he simply looked on into his general direction, sensing for my aura signature through means similar to my own, but aesthetically nonexistent.

And when he did sense my aura, he realized that I had positioned myself above him, shining white light like an angel descending from the heavens.

Odraude could already sense a pair of Luster Ball techniques being fired down towards him. But his only reaction against this was a smile.

What I saw occur from Odraude next was nothing short of baffling. Odraude deflected both of my light projectiles with a shield of light that he conjured from his own White (Light) Aura. And when that shield dissipated after easily absorbing both of my attacks, he looked up at me, clearly seeing my astounded expression and deciding to rectify it, through his own…unconventional means.

"You look surprised? Is it because I used what you call White (Light) Aura?"

I didn't answer him. But unfortunately for me, my countenance answered him in ways that my mouth chose not to.

"Just because I favor lurking in the shadows doesn't mean that I'm afraid of stepping out into the light." He said, smiling at my disbelief. "In fact, when you think about it. This is how Arceus spends Its days, because of how compromised Its life is with just one elemental plate to Its name."

"…!" My countenance soured as Odraude continued to display such infidelity towards Arceus, especially before my ears.

"It almost makes me feel a bit despondent that I couldn't keep Arceus any longer within the abyss that I imprisoned Its mind in."

Unfortunately for me, a second pair of Luster Ball attacks didn't reach him in time to prevent him from finishing his sentence. He swats them aside as though they were obnoxious mosquitoes and patiently waits for my next attack to come over, so that he could make it fail.

And my third wave came in, a dark one.

Through Black (Darkness) Aura coursing across my wings, I fire forth a small chain of Chaos Bomb attacks his way. But like before, with my former set of attacks, he either deflects them with his bare hands or conjures a shield of light to absorb the hits. He even cuts a couple of them in half with his Death Sword, but only when he's certain that my attacks won't harm him.

And when the barrage stopped, Odraude simply looks up at me, still smiling at the entity flying overhead, emanating both Black (Darkness) Aura and White (Light) Aura, but managing nothing with them separately.

"Eduardo, you can do better than that!" Odraude continued to taunt me. "I know how much you hate me, so why don't you just show me already!"

"…" One second went by around me where I comprehended his words and decided to just blow him apart with all of my might.

Disappeared/Kingdom Hearts Original Soundtrack Complete - CD9 - Kingdom Hearts Final Mix Bonus Disc/Yoko Shimomura

(Song Begins)

With my arms glowing white, they channeled White (Light) Aura with enough intensity to shine like the stars in the sky. And with my aura-based wings no longer flapping, they channeled Black (Darkness) Aura with enough malice to black out even the background behind me.

Odraude had long since committed the fact that when someone is glowing, especially with this much intensity, a power surge will commonly result out of it. And when the Nameless Emissary saw me land back down onto the ground, and then unite my left and right arms and wings respectively with one another, he knew that he was about to see a spectacle that would dwarf all that I've unleashed before him.

"Now this is more like you!" Odraude exclaimed with a smile wide enough to reach his ears.

"(Twilight Cannon!)"

Not one, but two spiraling blasts of dark and light energy homed in onto Odraude. The force at which I fired both of these attacks was enough to push my body back somewhat. And if it wasn't for the aura-based tail that I currently had anchoring me down, then I would've most certainly lost my balance and perhaps even toppled over, my attack having entirely missed its target.

Of course, even though I fired two Twilight Cannon attacks and hoped that they would vaporize Odraude's mouth alongside with the remainder of his godforsaken body, that didn't exactly happened. My attack came in too masterfully amalgamated to be absorbed and too powerfully to be properly deflected against. So Odraude simply leapt into the air and used Red (Fire) Aura on his feet to propel himself skyward.

But my attack was still going strong, and I angled both beams up towards him, possessing more than enough strength to bend these energy pillars to follow him.

Odraude's immediate response to this as he found my fusion attack closing in on him wasn't to fly about in the air and have this become an energy-based game of cat and mouse. His immediate response to this was not to continue flying up, but to fly forward.

…With his Death Sword made into his Death Bow once again.

With the expertise of a sharpshooter, Odraude fired off a dozen dark energy arrows my way, and then stays put, just as both barrels of my Twilight Cannon attack were about to catch up to him and consume him.

He has no reason to evade my attack anymore, once my technique ceased altogether before his eyes.

From my perspective, what Odraude did was fire off twelve arrows to strike me down with. The arrows didn't fall down on my head―as any self-respecting sharpshooter would most likely target―but evenly divided themselves into four groups of three. And each of these groups stuck true onto my white shoulders and black wings.

But they only stuck onto my Aura Dragon Cloak, and not my flesh underneath.

"What in the―?"

BOOM!

Twelve explosions rang across my ears at once, deafening me and compromising both my technique and my concentration. The fact that Odraude fired down dark arrows upon me didn't bother me, neither was the fact that they exploded and made my ears ring. It did however bother me that Odraude managed to successfully stop my dual Twilight Cannon attack, but not as much as another reason that was hovering within my head.

My head.

My head!

"(Why didn't he aim for my head when he had the chance to?)"

As though my question was answered, I could sense Odraude still overhead and fire down more dark arrows my way. And now that I wasn't dedicating all of my attention and energy into my powerful, albeit failed attack, I resorted to defending myself.

"(Chaos Shield!)"

A dome of darkness encased me and absorbed the dark arrows that Odraude was raining down on me from below, absorbing their impacts and their resulting explosions, as I'm certain Odraude was intending with through this differentiating batch of ammunition compared to his former.

And then this deluge of arrows stopped alongside their explosive bombardment, and a period of silence existed within the safety of my inner darkness.

"(…Oh shit.)" was all the time that I had to think.

It felt as though the world was dropped on my shoulders when Odraude crashed his body into me with Orange (Melee) Aura, after propelling himself straight down at me with a boost of Red (Fire) Aura. His mass multiplied by his acceleration resulted in a force significant enough to not necessarily break my Chaos Shield, but push the body behind it halfway into the ground.

My retaliation to this was to immediately disengage a portion of my shield, creating two holes for which my aura wings could jet out and latch onto Odraude. But when I attempted this, Odraude warped away from my attempted grasp of him and from my reach.

I disengaged the remainder of my shield, and stepped out of the crater that I inadvertently formed. And once again, I found myself wondering where Odraude had disappeared off to.

…For about half a second.

I sensed Odraude's presence a fair distance directly behind me, and turned around to see him throw what appears to be a double-ended lance in his hand.

My Gauntlet Shield is brought back up without a moment's notice, and I hear my metal clash with his metallic similarity, before seeing his double-ended Death Lance fly away from me and appear to land away from me.

But then I sense Odraude's Purple (Psychic) Aura course through both himself and his thrown weapon, before I see his Death Lance take on a life of its own and come rushing back towards me.

I almost didn't block it in time, and the time after that, and the countless times after that. And that was because, through his telekinetic attributes, Odraude's weapon moved much faster than before, "behaving" in ways unlike any involving the use of bare hands.

And as I danced alongside this weapon, as it would break its way out of my grip with either my aura-based wings and tail, as well as ricochet off of my scratched but stalwart Gauntlet Shield Mark II, I could sense Odraude's presence relatively close by from me.

(Song Ends)

But he wasn't physically doing anything to me. He was simply standing idle, arms folded behind his back, eyes locked onto me, lips stretched wide across his face.

He was fighting me with nothing more than his mind doing his actions, and he was enjoying every second of it, as I was growing inwardly livid from it.

"All of this fighting is leaving me famished," he continued joking to me. "I don't suppose you're carrying any snacks within that toy of yours, are you?"

If I said a word to Odraude, I would find myself unable to stop, due to the grudge I was now holding because of him.

"Well, it doesn't matter to me." Odraude immediately answered his own question.

When his dual-bladed Death Lance lashed out at me one last time and bounced off my narrowly raised Gauntlet Shield, Odraude's weapon returned back to his hand instead of leaving another scratch across my bulwark. I look over towards Odraude and witness his weapon returning to his hand, just as his other hand began to emanate Brown (Earth) Aura. He flips me the bird, before he does so to the Hall of Origin's ground. He lifts his middle finger up, and opens his hand before catching a rock as wide in diameter as he was tall.

"Because in moments, I'll have you eating dirt."

His held rock spontaneously began to crack across hundreds of places and appeared as though it was glued together instead of simply being in one piece. And each of these pieces, through the Nameless Emissary's power, fired out towards me, at speeds equal to those of bullets, but considerably larger.

By instinct, I braced myself for impact by hoisting my shield before me to protect the core of my body. But when the first few dozen tellurian bullets struck my Gauntlet Shield Mark II, I found myself reeling back from their cumulative impacts.

In other words, my shield was forced away from between Odraude's earth-based attack and my own body. And I found myself feeling my Aura Dragon Cloak being pelted by the majority of what remained of his held rock.

If it wasn't for my external Elemental Aura, I would feel these little bullets dig themselves deep into my skin, perhaps even bypass it and each my muscles and internal organs. But the worst that I was feeling from this was the equivalent of dozens of punches striking across the vast majority of my body.

When they stopped, I felt sore and could already feel the initial signs of my body beginning to bruise internally. My immediate remedy to this was to highlight my Green (Healing) Aura within my currently enveloping thirteen and resort to my Bio Heal technique.

Odraude only gave me a second of tending to my minor physical trauma before he came at me, emanating Blue (Water) Aura and rushing towards me in a veil of water.

Kronos/Power of Darkness (Vol.2 - Action)/Two Steps From Hell

(Song Begins)

I figure that defeating him takes top priority over bearable injuries, and I hastily draw my Penta-dent Mark II from behind my back, bracing myself for his impending arrival.

When it appears as though he would crash into me, I stab forward with my spear, intending to break the focus of his water veil by embedding the center prong into his skull. But Odraude simply turns left to avoid this, and then turns right around me, and continued turning right.

In moments, what appeared to be a straightforward attack quickly became a wall of surrounding water, spiraling around me and preventing me from seeing the world outside of this own.

I see that I have no attempt to escape outside of this whirlpool except by going straight up, where the derived cosmos of this dimension were still clearly displayed before me. I jump up and take flight, but a powerful jet of water―no doubt courtesy of Odraude―sprays down on me and knocks me down onto my back and onto my tailed ass.

My view of the world above me was sealed off shortly after, and I spring back up onto my feet, entirely surrounded by water, as well as a Nameless Emissary that was riding his artificial currents around me.

"(No way out of here without injuring myself,)" I contemplated quickly. "(And I don't think Odraude would be generous enough to give me a moment to concentrate on using TELEPORT.)"

My options were limited to one as I realized my predicament within this claustrophobia-inducing closeness of water. My only option presented here was to fight my way out of here, through force as I must. My body briefly flashed Yellow (Lightning) Aura before I had my arms, wings, and even my tail conduct hundreds of thousands of volts of electricity in next to no time.

And then Odraude's attacks while still within this water dome began their onslaught upon me.

Odraude's weapon became that of a trident, and he channeled his Elemental Aura mastery through it in order to begin to fire jets of water through this aqueous prison. These jets―as they narrowly missed their intended target by mere millimeters― left behind a streak of water in their own respective wakes. Some of these jets managed to reach the other side of the whirlpool instead of simply splashing down on the ground that I was limited to standing on. And to those that managed to slip by me and connect both edges of the water like the diameter of a circle, Odraude flash froze them into a remarkably dense pole of ice, one that held its position even as this water veil was still spinning faster than any body of water could in nature.

These stalwart streams of water were coming in too quickly and from too many angles, challenging my extrasensory perception and distracting my attention away from Odraude. And when they froze solid and formed more pillars of ice around me. I began to see my physical movements become encumbered, as it soon became evident that if I so much as tried to take a step forward, I would end up tripping on this bar of ice.

And as I found myself surrounded by a seemingly irregular network of ice pillars, compromising my movements down to the point where even flexing my muscles was impossible, I began to harbor the thought that Odraude wasn't trying to strike me down with this combination of Blue (Water) Aura and Light Blue (Ice) Aura.

"(You deranged clown…)" I thought to myself. "(You're just toying with me now!)"

With my electricity still coursing through my five designated limbs and appendages, I began to cut away against these pillars of ice that Odraude had formed. I was using my Electro Claw technique to break these solidified rods of water, into multiple clean-cut fragments through my three-pronged plasma claws.

But as I was making fragments of ice fly before my scrunched countenance, Odraude continued to toy with me, by forming more and more of them for me to occupy my time and further amplify my frustration towards. I continued hacking away at these, almost blindly now.

But then I stopped, sensing a shift in power, before finding myself ducking by instincts alone. And when I did duck, I heard the telltale signs of a blade cutting through the air, where my neck was a fraction of a second earlier.

I evaded what appeared to be the Grim Reaper wielding a scythe, before finding Odraude return back into the water, his aura partially emanating Yellow (Lightning) Aura as intensely as my own, allowing him to move at such high speeds.

The remaining half of his body still emanated Blue (Water) Aura, just enough to continue to imprison me within this air pocket within the water dome, while his Yellow (Lightning) Aura now allowed him to maneuver much more freely across his water, like electricity conducting through water.

But I would sooner lose my own head before allowing Odraude to come towards me and do so himself.

When Odraude came back at me for another attempt at decapitation, my Aura Dragon Cloak flashed Purple (Psychic) Aura, and I caught him within my Psycho Control. When my telekinesis successfully froze him in place, Odraude was already in mid-swing, and his Death Scythe was positioned dangerously close to my neck.

The fact that I held him in place didn't even bother him, nor was the fact that my Psycho Control technique was currently shackling him. He continued to attempt to bring his weapon closer towards my neck.

And he was succeeding.

Bit by bit, his weapon was incrementally creeping closer and closer to my neck, to the point where the nerves lining the sides of my neck were tingling in anticipation of his blade. Odraude appeared the least bit concerned of the fact that I was holding him, and smiled as wide as physically possible, at the sight of seeing his blade hover within an inch of my carotid artery.

Not even when I attempted to drive him back through my technique or swat him away with my aura wings or tail did he show any signs of falling back from me. He simply remained in place, now more than ever when he himself emanated Purple (Psychic) Aura to cement himself in mid-air before me.

The lightning emanating from him ceased, the water before him remained a bit longer as it was slowing down from its high-speed gyrations. But it still very much remained in place, burning up the fuel that was once Odraude's Blue (Water) Aura. And through Odraude's mind over matter over my mind over his matter, the Nameless Emissary was incrementally drawing his blade closer and closer to my neck.

My face had reached its apexes in terms of displaying rage over this look-alike enemy of mine. Our auras were more or less even, but Odraude's still seemed to prove more powerful than my own, and I could feel my neck already begin to tear away at the feeling of the shadow of Odraude's Death Scythe looming over me.

Then his blade was on me, its tip having poked against my skin. And from there, what happened next was a blur of blind ferocity.

(Song Ends)

My entire body spontaneously emanated Silver (Sound) Aura and I released, from my mouth, what I would label as my Phono Boom technique. When the shockwaves from this all-consuming technique reached Odraude―and most importantly his Death Scythe―, he immediately cringed and could feel himself be blown back. The water surrounding us met a similar fate, and was abruptly brought down to the ground after the force of my shockwaves was reverberating across every single one of their molecules.

Odraude is thrown back, harshly, as though he were fired from a cannon, once my Phono Boom technique went so far as to disrupt his concentration over his Purple (Psychic) Aura. He skipped across the earth alongside his Death Scythe once his grip on it was lost. Both he and his Death Scythe flipped head over heels with every harsh impact on the ground, bouncing off of them like a smooth stone would on the water's surface. And when he eventually stopped tumbling back to the point where he was more than a hundred feet away from me, the look on his face as he took his time to stand back up was hardly that of astonishment or spite of my power.

If anything, it was more along the lines of a small smirk, one that forms when a tactical genius has his or her target in a position that was entirely intended.

Because, when Odraude commanded his Death Scythe to come back to his right hand, he saw that the aura-based wings and tail of my Aura Dragon Cloak now wrapped themselves around me, and took on quite the familiar cocoon of dragon metamorphosis.

The shockwaves from my Phono Boom technique stopped, but not the fierce gale that my Elemental aura was generating through its existence alone. Odraude's black robe was flapping in the wind as he calmly witnessed this sphere of Elemental Aura take my place, then spontaneously grow to three times its normal size in a matter of seconds.

At this point in time, nothing in Odraude's power could prevent my transmogrification progress. But in knowing that, not a frown or a thought of self-criticism ever crossed his mind. He simply held his ground, growing more and more satisfied at the sight he knew he would be bearing witness to in a matter of seconds.

…GRRRRRRRR…

Bloodlust/Volume #1 (CD 1)/Two Steps From Hell

(Song Begins)

A growl so low to the ground that it seemed to originate from there, yet so stalwart that it could set off an earthquake, coursed across the Hall of Origin. It did nothing in changing Odraude's thought process against facing me. It only fortified them.

Then he saw it. He saw my sphere of Elemental Aura disband like the shells of a magical egg, fragmenting and releasing pieces of themselves to the ground below, the heavens above, and the surrounding area between. These pieces never reached Odraude in time, but that was the least of his concerns.

What he was focusing on now was the crouching, curled up dragon that I had now become.

My eyes appear to flicker Elemental Aura, as my mouth begins to exude copious amounts of fire. I stand up, menacingly growling at the Right Hand of the Dark One, unanimously placing him within my mental list of "Most Hated Individuals Alive".

I roar once at him, a roar so loud and so strong that it caused a seemingly limitless place such as this to echo my deep voice. I could see Odraude's face cringe slightly at the audible torture. But other than that, he didn't appear the least bit frightened of me, or apprehensive of confronting me in battle. His stance held firm, and I made one of my own, knowing that all I want for Odraude is to see him be torn asunder, for his crimes against Arceus, as well as his narrowly successful murder on Xeno Lucario. It could be through my claws, my aura, or even through my teeth, when I bite his body in half.

Odraude's only words to me, a sentence entirely devoid of love, compassion, or repentance for his character and choices, was this:

"I like you better when you're a mindless, untamed beast."

(Song Ends)

---

50.4: "Death Has No Accomplishment If You Die by Yourself"

Location: Sendoff Spring (?)

Time: ?

After undergoing Mega Evolution, Xeno could sense Giratina's pleased disposition as well as he could sense day and night. But what he could not sense was any increase in Giratina's power in response to the exponential spike of his own.

"(No concealed trump card in direct response to my Mega Evolution. No initial or apparent sense of fear of my power.)" Xeno deduced from what his Aura Vision was scanning of the Renegade Pokémon. "(Only a pleased aura after witnessing my ascended body…? It's as though you wanted me to Mega Evolve, just for the sake of seeing me in this state of body, before I compress the entirety of your head and tail into your chest.)"

The Renegade Pokémon appeared to do next to nothing after having seen Xeno become a Mega Lucario. Giratina simply retained its position where it was already standing, and just…waited.

"(Well then…)" Xeno pondered before gracefully sweeping his arms around himself and cementing them into his physical stance. "(Let me see if you're even capable of making this fight any less boring now.)"

Danse Macabre in G Minor, Op. 40/The 99 Darkest Pieces of Classical Music/Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and James DePriest

(Song Begins)

Like a bullet, Xeno fired himself forward to Giratina, running at speeds so fast his feet were invisible, or effectively flying over the plume of dust behind his wake.

Giratina's immediate reaction to this was to curl up as close to physically possible into a ball, before encasing said ball in PROTECT. And once its perspective was covered over in a transparent sphere of defensive psychic energy, it was immediately put to the test.

Xeno closed the distance between himself and the Renegade Pokémon in a flash, before striking at Giratina's closely-shaved PROTECT with one of the most powerful FOCUS PUNCH attacks he has ever launched. And when his fist met Giratina's bulwark, its PROTECT held firm, but rippled in the same way that a pond would if a large stone was dropped over its surface.

Giratina felt itself get whiplash from bouncing off within the shield, and was confident that it would've taken extensive damage if Xeno's attack connected so squarely.

"(That shield won't PROTECT you from me!)" Xeno thought ferociously.

With both fists glowing pure white energy, Xeno began to bombard Giratina's PROTECT without holding anything back. And after no more than a few FOCUS PUNCH attacks, Giratina's shell began to crack. A few more and it began to fragment. Another dozen and Giratina was beginning to reel back unnaturally, spitting out ectoplasmic blood from the internal trauma of the brutality of Xeno's punches hammering away at its midsection.

Xeno hardly cared that Giratina was beginning to bathe his fur in its ethereal blood. All he cared about now was to finish this battle, and finalize Arceus' Game.

Like a tornado, Xeno began to spin, fists held out and aiming for the skies with each semi-revolution. Xeno's peculiar yet effective use of SKY UPPERCUT made Giratina's head reel back further and further, every time Xeno's fists met its chin, occasionally lacerating it with the spikes protruding from the back of its wrists.

Never skipping a beat, Xeno's paws clasped together after about six SKY UPPERCUT attacks, and he maximized their effectiveness by implementing HAMMER ARM into the mix.

And when his cupped fists met Giratina's chin for the final time, neither the words HAMMER ARM nor SKY UPPERCUT ever echoed outside of his mind. Because, as was the case with his former amalgamated attacks, a new name was in order.

…And that name is:

"SKYWARD SWING!"

Giratina's head flew to the sky as a direct result of Xeno's devastating uppercut, its elongated neck considerably compromised after tugging the remainder of its body with it. Giratina was briefly made into an oversized ragdoll, and Xeno promptly used FLY to come after the reeling Renegade Pokémon.

Giratina sees the incoming Mega Evolved Aura Pokémon, but is unable to do anything against his speed, his vigor, and his absolute ferocity in battle. Because, by the time Giratina stabilizes itself in the air, Xeno was already clasping onto the sides of its face.

Xeno didn't even bother looking into Giratina's eyes or inspecting its face to measure its constitution. And Giratina wasn't given enough time to do the same. Because, when Giratina felt Xeno's paws lock in place against the sides of its face, it felt its neck contort in ways that it naturally shouldn't be. It saw the world flip upside-down, then back upright, then invert and right itself and capsize and turn over and roll over and keel over, all in the time span of mere seconds.

Because what Xeno was doing was spinning Giratina for a powerful SEISMIC TOSS attack. And when the Ascended Pokémon of Prophecy let the Renegade Pokémon go, Giratina was falling too fast and too discombobulated to catch the wind with its wings and brace itself for impact.

But, if there is any consolation with where Giratina landed, it was in the center lake of the flawlessly replicated Sendoff Spring.

Xeno could see Giratina's entire bulk splash the water's surface before being swallowed up by the lake and sinking down to the bottom.

The Aura Pokémon used TELEPORT to return back down to earth, and stood close by the lake. He looked down at the water's surface, at the crystal clear lake before him. He could see Giratina's figure become progressively more enshrouded as it sank deeper and deeper into the water, the sunlight above unable to cut deep enough into the water and illuminate the floor below.

"(How long do you intend to keep me waiting up here for you to resurface?)" Xeno pondered with crossed arms and impatiently tapping feet, for a Pokémon he was now labeling as a boring challenge to both himself and his great power.

Xeno actually waited a minute for Giratina to resurface, as he sensed Giratina below the water's surface. And when the Renegade Pokémon breached the water, it used its wings to hover over the surface of the lake, and looked at its opponent with a countenance no different than its regular disposition.

As Xeno could point out, Giratina's body was soaking wet and raining down onto the lake below. Giratina's midsection was significantly bruised, to the point where its black striped and grey underbelly appeared unnaturally colored. Its mouth, while closed, was running with a dense, greenish blood that only Ghost-Type Pokémon appeared to possess and have coursing along their distinctly different bodies.

Xeno could sense that Giratina was minimally damaged, but he could change that in a moment's notice. He just needed to hear the words of confirmation, straight from the mouth of the Third Child of Arceus.

"Have you had enough yet?" Xeno said while retaining his crossed arms.

"…" Giratina remained abnormally silent.

Xeno briefly emulated the gesture of raised an eyebrow. "What's the matter? Did I make you bite down on your own tongue or something?"

"…" Giratina's face didn't change either. He appeared mellow, despite already displaying some injuries that Xeno would label as merciful in his present state of body.

"Do you wish for my permission to die?" Xeno inquired somberly.

After saying that, Giratina did open its mouth before the dark blue Mega Lucario, but no words escaped its lips. Instead, what Giratina had within its mouth was doing the talking for it.

Xeno could see a smooth, shiny object that was amber in color but hardly sharing in its consistency, comfortably resting on Giratina's bloodied tongue. This object appeared gem-like, and it almost resembled both Dialga's Adamant Orb and Palkia's Lustrous Orb.

If Xeno was any younger and/or less experienced, he would stumble back in fright at seeing the Griseous Orb that Giratina held within its mouth. But at his current age and level of experience, he simply saw it as a means for Giratina to scrape together some sort of "advantage" over him. He knew well enough that Giratina's Griseous Orb allowed Giratina to shift between its Altered Forme and Origin Forme at will, but what good would they do against him now that neither of them could scratch him.

Giratina closed its mouth shortly after revealing this item, and promptly swallowed it having the Griseous Orb move its way back down Giratina's elongated neck and return back to the only "sensible" spot that a Pokémon without pockets or slots could equip the item.

And before Xeno's eyes, dark clouds began to spontaneously appear around the Renegade Pokémon, before replacing Giratina's flying body and taking its place. Xeno could sense a subtle upward shift in Giratina's offensive power, before the dark clouds molded the shape of Giratina's Origin Forme. They dissipated as quickly as they came and revealed to Xeno that Giratina did indeed change its physical state of body.

…Not like it bothered him.

Without saying a word, Origin Forme Giratina flew serpentine towards the ascended Aura Pokémon. Giratina immediately made its body dissolve into black mist, so as to come towards Xeno in the same way that fog would to coastal land.

This peculiar sight, coming from a variation of the move SHADOW SNEAK, would make many ordinary Pokémon cower or flee in fear. But to Xeno, it didn't even make him bat an eye. All it made Xeno do was bring his paws to the sides of his face, their palms facing Giratina, and their tips placed just slightly beside Xeno's auric eyes.

"(You of all Pokémon should know that shadows can't exist without light.)" Xeno thought, before focusing his aura power to the center of his forehead.

This incoming black mist that Giratina's body had dissolved into, this shadow that existed in mid-air, proved to be in vain once Xeno used FLASH. Originating from Xeno's forehead, a twinkle of light glimmered from the source before spontaneously exploding in all directions, bathing the entirety of the Sendoff Spring in light so bright that no traces of darkness―in the form of shadows―could hope to exist.

Giratina's dissolved state of black mist reeled back unnaturally and the Renegade Pokémon screeched in pain, the light coming within moments of rendering it blind and bathing Giratina in what is almost comparable to hydrochloric acid. Xeno's eyes were closed before his FLASH paralyzed Giratina and forced it to revert back into its natural Origin Forme, and he was clearly visualizing Giratina's physical as well as aural agony.

When Xeno's blinding light ceases, Giratina was seeing stars and flashes of light in random areas of its eyes. It blinked its eyes frequently, heavily and tightly, shaking its head repeatedly to shed the irregularities it was forced to see.

But then Giratina could feel its head shake abnormally, straight down alongside its neck. And that came from Xeno's IRON TAIL attack, one which Giratina was hopelessly incapable of perceiving in time.

Xeno came out of his striking somersault just in time to witness Giratina forcibly drop like a rock and impact the ground, face first, leaving behind a crater that Giratina's countenance roughly imprinted. And the remainder of Giratina's body remained almost comically upright, before a lack of balance led to Giratina falling onto its back.

A sullied greenish-brown blotch was now present on Giratina's forehead, a deep bruise surrounding over the closed puncture wound where Xeno drove his SACRED SWORD through Giratina's forehead and out the back of its head. Giratina no longer saw stars from Xeno's earlier use of FLASH, but it was now seeing stars from another serious and endured head trauma.

The clouds, sky, and sun overhead appeared to spin before Giratina's eyes, vertigo having set into the Renegade Pokémon as it continued lying prone. And through its daze, it was able to make out the distant body of the Mega Lucario that loomed overhead, noticing him before he began to make his body glow a hellish red, to the point where the fires spontaneously combusting around his body burned brighter than the sun shining down on them.

Then Giratina saw the Pokémon of Prophecy come down right on top of it. Like a shooting star, Xeno was falling headfirst towards the vulnerable Renegade Pokémon, encased in fire and leaving behind a tail of combustion as he was slicing through the air just to crash down onto Giratina.

The impact was inevitable. Giratina made no attempts to evade it. It merely looked on at this impending meteorite that was the same size and weight as the Aura Pokémon, and only had this to think.

"(Did my Brothers succumb to this level of punishment from―?)"

CRASH!

Through the use of HEAT CRASH, and through the surplus of power coursing through Xeno's heightened body. The power of his impact onto Giratina was so great that not just an explosive fireball consumed them both and their surrounding impact site, but the resulting EARTHQUAKE did as well.

What could best compare to what Xeno just did through BOTH of these attacks was the eruption of a volcano, strong enough to blow off a portion of the summit, and inverted so that the ground was hit by the overall might of the upsurge of lava.

But to Xeno, only two words were enough to describe what he just did.

"(EMPYREAL BOMB…)" Xeno thought in the middle of this chaos. "(I like the sound of that.)"

(Song Ends)

When the tremor subsided in conjunction with the outward explosion of fire, Xeno could be seen standing over Giratina's Origin Forme body, which in turn was over a crater that made the one its face left behind look like an insignificant blemish.

Xeno stood tall over Giratina, standing right over Giratina's stomach, looking down on the pained expression of the Renegade Pokémon. Both combatants harbored scorch marks, burns, and blackened skin across the majority of their bodies. However, Xeno's injuries were mild in comparison to those of his enemy, because he was within his own twofold attack as it dispersed all of its energy outward.

…Into the earth, into the sky, and into the Legendary Pokémon that resided before Xeno as his platform and his beating bitch.

Xeno could hear Giratina coughing heavily, groaning from its extensive trauma and gagging on its own unnaturally green blood. Xeno could sense that Giratina's aura was still somewhat steady, but its body was marred, to the point where a comeback from this is slim to none.

"Are you ready to submit to defeat?" Xeno said to Giratina, honoring this Pokémon, but also knowing that there was no room in Arceus' Game for mercy.

Giratina's gargling tachypnea briefly paused when it felt the tip of Xeno's SACRED SWORD press against its neck.

"You already have my permission to die. Now all I need is your confirmation."

To this, Giratina's earlier fits of coughing and gagging were now intertwined with raspy fits of laughter, making the Renegade Pokémon sound like a scratched and skipping laugh track, drowning in blood.

To Xeno, death sounded like a joke from Giratina, of which he had no desire to hear the punch line of. Xeno promptly thrust his blade down through Giratina's neck, so that he would end this battle already.

But all his SACRED SWORD touched was the cracked earth that Giratina left behind when it vanished instantly.

Darkness of the Unknown/Kingdom Hearts Original Soundtrack Complete - CD6 - Kingdom Hearts II OST/Yoko Shimomura

(Song Begins)

"(*Sigh*)" Xeno exhaled through his nose before reabsorbing his blade. "(You're just wasting my time in delaying your inevitable death…)"

Xeno didn't even bother sensing for Giratina's aura because he knew that his opponent would reveal its aura when it would reemerge. All Xeno did was hop off of this crater and brush off the clinging soot on his fur.

A second after this, Giratina began to surround Xeno, through what appeared to be a ring of shadows directly before Xeno's feet. This ring spiraled around Xeno like a chakram thrown towards the enemy, remaining stationary but visibly revolving around him, like a pack of Houndoom surrounding their prey with their greater numbers.

Then this ring of shadows disbanded, and continued revolving around the Mega Evolved Aura Pokémon, in the form of ten individual circles of darkness.

Xeno simply rolled his eyes, not for what was coming, but for how futile Giratina's DOUBLE TEAM would prove to be.

Through these shadows, Xeno could see the six tentacle-like wings sprout forth from them, as though Cthulhu itself was tearing through all ten of these "dimensional rifts" to attack the Aura Pokémon.

But when Giratina's amorphous wings made into surfacing roots jabbed towards Xeno, all they struck was each other, because Xeno simply uses TELEPORT to escape from his surrounding adversaries.

Xeno reappears outside of Giratina's kill circle and simply looks on with a glazed look in his golden eyes.

"This is boring, Giratina." Xeno said, speaking loud enough where Giratina should be able to hear him through the shadows it had sunk into. "Our battle is boring me. You're boring me."

Shortly after he said those words, Xeno felt a tremor roll by his feet, the epicenter of which originated from these ten shadows that Giratina was presently submerged within. Then, without warning, all of these circular shadows sank in their totaling sixty wings before all ten Renegade Pokémon shot forth from them, firing themselves into the air like a set of armed missiles.

And like missiles, they redirected themselves after flying a set distance in the air, turning over towards the Mega Evolved Aura Pokémon of Prophecy, emblazoning themselves within the chaotic red and black amalgamated aura that only exists when they use OUTRAGE.

At the sight of this, Xeno doesn't even feel his heart race or his breathing heighten. All he feels is his left arm casually reaching for the sky, his palm held skyward, before he fed his own aura into it.

And instead of charging an AURA SPHERE, what Xeno generated was another attack similar to FLASH, in terms of outputting light alone. But this one came in the form of a luminous sphere he had to conjure and hold on to, one that gave off the warm colors of a setting sun and a flower meadow, rather than the cool or dark colors of most of his other spherical-based attacks.

The attack Xeno decided to use to counter Giratina's straightforward OUTRAGE was DAZZLING GLEAM. And when its shining light flashed and illuminated their setting better than the sun currently could, Xeno's eyes closed as he sensed all ten Giratina reel back from this, much like they did when he used FLASH earlier.

The only difference here was that after squirming back, they began to wither and shift unnaturally among themselves, before the nine DOUBLE TEAM clones bit the dust. The Origin Forme Giratina that remained appeared to convulse at the bright light, not because it was blinding, but because it was damaging. Giratina could feel its ghostly hide succumb to effects similar to those of a burn, only exponentially greater and without the telltale residual damage that followed from the fire.

"Now that I have you attention," Xeno joked flatly, unable to come to grips with his sense of humor over the sea of boredom that drowned it. "Please, allow me to set you in a daze."

After saying the subtle hint of his next attack, his entire body began to emanate fragments of black and red aura, with many of their color derivatives intensifying or diminishing within the mix. However, unlike his normal display of aura, this aura was inward, appearing to illuminate from within his body and outline it rather than exude itself outside of his body and surround it. And when Xeno's body was glowing this bizarre anomaly to a degree that he felt was sufficient, he held out his right paw and channeled the energy of this NIGHT DAZE attack into it.

But he did not unleash it. Not by itself anyway.

With his left paw still holding onto the orb of light that was named DAZZLING GLEAM, Xeno brought his right paw into the surface of this attack and united the second source of energy into the first. The result of this fusion was immediate, and darkness of his NIGHT DAZE attack intertwined with the DAZZLING GLEAM light.

Giratina strained to focus its strained eyes in the middle of this searing, but not blinding light. And what it saw when it had the chance to was a spiraling, outgrowing dome of energy with streaking bands of black, red, white, even pink and magenta, all coming right towards Giratina.

And Xeno was once again comfortably within the force of yet another one of his joint attacks, one which he feels should best be labeled as "(NIGHT AND DAY)". He looked on at this dome of polymerized energy flew towards Giratina like a screen, and then make contact with the Renegade Pokémon.

When the attack did make contact and unleash its energy all around Giratina's body, it felt as though Giratina had crossed into water from air, after falling into it with a belly flop from the Earth's highest atmosphere. The strength of both the Dark-Type and Fairy-Type properties of Xeno's simultaneous use of DAZZLING GLEAM and NIGHT DAZE left Giratina's body stunned and weakened, to the point where it was beginning to breathe heavily and gasp for air.

When this attack and the dome of growing light and darkness unleashed from it subsided, Xeno's arms dropped down to his side, before being tucked behind his back as he dashed right towards the immobilized Renegade Pokémon.

One acrobatic leap into the air was all Xeno needed before striking Giratina square in the forehead with one single HIGH JUMP KICK. Xeno's strength in the force he put into his knee was enough to send Giratina's head reeling back, narrowly splitting it in half in the process.

Then, with Giratina arching back as Xeno still flew forward, his left paw was within punching reach of the Renegade Pokémon's midsection, and he didn't waste any time in striking away at Giratina with BULLET PUNCH.

Now Giratina was feeling the equivalent of a jackhammer across its underbelly. And amazingly, all of these punches came towards Giratina with just one of Xeno's arms. But this one arm appeared to branch out into a hundred arms as each and every one of them slug the serpentine body of the Renegade Pokémon with enough force to punch holes in metal.

But against Giratina and the bizarre structure of its mildly amorphous and ethereal properties of its physical body, Xeno's continuous barrage was further compromising Giratina's health, incrementally but significantly.

Lastly, Xeno's jabbing frenzy stops and he grips Giratina's face again, but only with his right paw. And with his already monumental physical strength made even more monumental through his Mega Evolution, one CIRCLE THROW was all Xeno initiated to force Giratina to spin around himself before being thrown right back down onto the ground.

Giratina remained prone on its back once more, with Xeno landing right by its side, inspecting it and the extent of his attacks across the Renegade Pokémon body. Giratina's sustained damage is serious, as it could feel and Xeno could perceive, while Xeno's was more or less mild in comparison.

And at this point in time, if this battle were to continue as it already was, then Xeno would emerge victorious, with Giratina most likely not having much longer within Arceus' Game.

Xeno knew that with almost statistical certainty.

"You're nothing more than a punching bag for me now, Giratina." Xeno spoke to the Renegade Pokémon that he was staring down. "You became one for me when the Legendary Pokémon that I've clashed with before you strengthened me in ways that I've yet to properly measure. And as of now, what I'll be gaining from you is mild in comparison to what I gained from fighting the Legendary Golems, Regigigas, and your Brothers Dialga and Palkia."

To this, Giratina's response was to channel the power of the Griseous Orb it was housing within itself and shift into its Altered Forme. Its six, flat feet were towards the sky, but when Giratina rolled back onto them through the assistance of its newly formed pair of wings, it quickly realized the extent of its injuries, and nearly collapsed over itself before the Aura Pokémon.

Xeno simply crossed his arms against the opponent he was growing increasingly reluctant in fighting, for reasons that as of now, will do little in benefitting him.

"If I'm such a punching bag for you…" Giratina said, its words as truthful as the blood it was coughing out of itself. "Then by all means…keep going and continue assaulting me…while the both of us still can."

For a few moments, Xeno gave Giratina a cynical look, wondering why Giratina said what it did. But after thinking it briefly over, he simply disregarded it after seeing the state he left Giratina's forehead in, and simply classified it as a sign of Giratina's inflicted head trauma leading towards brain damage.

"…Very well then," Xeno ultimately responded. "Let's get this over with."

For his next sequence of attacks, Xeno begins by simply remaining in place, his currently spiked feet practically rooted to the ground. He hardly cared if Giratina was going to play offensively or defensively, because at this point in time, neither choice would benefit it.

Xeno's paws were gestured to the water within the lake at the center of Sendoff Spring. Through graceful and swaying arm gestures, alongside the use of TELEKINESIS, Xeno rapidly commanded the water to collect itself between himself and Giratina, and then spiral in place until it formed a WHIRLPOOL.

But this wasn't a WHIRLPOOL that Xeno had incarcerated Giratina within, otherwise he would attempt to use it around the Renegade Pokémon. Instead, through combining this attack with TELEKINESIS, Xeno drew it towards a weakened Giratina, certain that the Renegade Pokémon wouldn't be able to evade the attack that he had named for himself.

"OCEAN'S SOUL!"

With the spiraling water spout appearing to have a mind of its own, it continued charging towards Giratina.

"I'm not that weak yet, Xeno!" Giratina said what they both already knew was truth.

With a mighty flap of its wings, Giratina took to the skies, evading this water tornado that was large enough to consume a Wailord whole. But the effort to lift its weakened, fatigued, breaking body narrowly made Giratina become assimilated by this attack, when its feet skimmed over the apex of the funnel.

Xeno expected this from Giratina, but he only calmly raised his OCEAN'S SOUL upward towards his opponent with an upward flick of his paws, instead of hastily and with any fear or concern fueling his reflexes.

Giratina could see that this body of water was fast approaching its tail, and quickly fired a DRAGON PULSE attack towards Xeno's OCEAN'S SOUL attack.

But when DRAGON PULSE met water, the water parted ways around the attack, at Xeno's immediate command. Then, the spiraling water reconnected itself, having avoided Giratina's DRAGON PULSE by simply continuing through it.

To this, Giratina clicked its tongue, spiting itself at launching a wasted attack that simply passed by air before dissipating into it. But Giratina quickly took notice of Xeno's statuesque posture and aimed a DRAGON PULSE attack his way.

Much to Giratina's expectations of the Pokémon of Prophecy, Xeno didn't bother evading this attack or deflecting it through a shield, the latter of which would cost him the concentration of his attack. Instead, Xeno remained firm, and appeared to treat Giratina's DRAGON PULSE attack the same way a Fairy-Type Pokémon would.

Absolutely nothing.

Giratina continued flying steadily and saw its attack land directly on Xeno's body, enveloping him in a plume of residual spoke after detonating. But the smoke itself existed briefly, before the wind carried it away and leaving behind a Pokémon that was only marred emotionally.

"…Ow," was all Xeno said flatly before feeling just enough motivation to tug at his combination attack with a bit more…enthusiasm.

This time, despite Giratina's best efforts at evasion, it wasn't able to escape the attack or combat against it. Giratina was too weakened by Xeno's brutality and drained by Xeno's strength to continue evading forever, and eventually found itself breathing in water instead of air.

With Giratina now drowning in what has now become a bubble of water as per Xeno's telekinetic orders, the Pokémon of Prophecy knew that he had his opponent on its last legs…even if Giratina has a couple of extra legs to begin with.

To begin his final play, Xeno used SUBSTITUTE to replicate himself by taking a fragment of his aura and giving it form, passing on the use of OCEAN'S SOUL to his clone.

But before Xeno continued his tactics, he couldn't help but take note of the abnormal feeling he felt when he replicated himself.

"(My aura is different in this form. It's denser, more powerful, and taking a piece of it and putting it elsewhere is exponentially more difficult than normal.)" Xeno mentally noted. "(I'll have to remember to dedicate some training time to properly using DOUBLE TEAM and SUBSTITUTE as a Mega Lucario…once Giratina has been exterminated.)"

With Giratina an easy target now, Xeno locked his gaze over towards the failing Renegade Pokémon, and implemented yet another new technique in his arsenal, one that derives heavily from the first three opponents he fought within Arceus' Game.

"(I'll also have to remember to thank the Legendary Golems in helping me learn this attack.)"

Calmly, Xeno held out his paw before his target, and focused his aura energy to generate electricity for himself to use in his next pair of attacks. His first attack came from a sphere of electricity that was different from ELECTRO BALL, in the way the electricity was surging around within it in the form of a denser ball of light, as well as how much more potent and deafening its voltage was crackling.

Once his ZAP CANNON was primed, he also simultaneously manifested the requirements for an ICE BEAM through his free paw. And then he united them both by simply clasping his paws and bringing together two entirely different representations of energy into one compound of power greater than either of them separate.

The essence of cloudbursts and hoarfrosts, held between the palms of his paws and trained towards the enemy. To ordinary Pokémon, the attacks would be referred to as ICE BEAM and ZAP CANNON. But to Xeno, they were referred to something a bit more mutual.

"DIAMOND STORM!"

With one aimed push, his sphere of frozen squalls flew straight and true, colliding into the OCEAN'S SOUL technique that his clone maintained and was presently incapacitating the Renegade Pokémon. Xeno's DIAMOND STORM attack collided magnificently into the water, detonating in a brilliant flash of ice just as the electricity discharged within its blast radius.

What resulted next was something that Xeno didn't expect to see.

Giratina fell from the sky in a frozen sphere of water, landing to the ground a short distance away before the Mega Lucario, without shattering or even cracking. Only the ground below did that, giving way before the combined weight of thick ice and thicker Pokémon. And within this frozen solid state, the only company Giratina had within it was the streaks of electricity lining across both itself and the ice, appearing to be frozen in time, displaying lightning in a way that only seems to result from a professional photo.

"(I didn't know the cold could do that to electricity.)" Xeno thought, knowing that his DIAMOND STORM would freeze and paralyze Giratina, but didn't expect the aesthetic effects that made him secretly wish he was wearing his battle helmet to record or even photograph this.

But his attention turned away alongside his gaze when he faced his SUBSTITUTE clone. Xeno simply whistled to attract his attention, to which the doppelganger obediently responded to and approached him.

"I feel as though one last combination attack is in order," Xeno said selectively, before smiling malevolently. "How do you feel with going out in a bang?"

The only response that Xeno's replication gave him was a wholehearted nod, and a mirrored countenance.

"That's what I thought."

Immediately, Xeno stood directly behind the back of his duplicate. He planted both of his paws onto the shoulders of his copy, feeding this manifestation of himself enough of his power where he felt confident in his clone's ability to obliterate Giratina with one last attack.

"…" Giratina saw this, but could do next to nothing because of its debilitated state and within this frigidly paralyzing prison. All Giratina could do was look down at its own shadow.

And then Giratina looked at Xeno's shadow.

When Xeno was done donating a significant portion of his aura into his Mega Evolved SUBSTITUTE duplicate, he gave his mirror image a comforting pat on the shoulder, and a smile.

"Make Giratina experience the pain that comes from bathing in the fires of a thousand suns." He said simply and necessarily.

His clone merely nodded before glaring at Giratina, snarling at it, waiting for the moment where Xeno would let go of his leash.

With nothing more to say, Xeno ran away from this area with an almost abnormal haste. His clone spontaneously generated a typhoon of aura that revolved in the same manner as a jet engine, with the apex of its gyrations present directly front and center of the emulated Aura Pokémon.

Xeno continued running, not feeling bothered to turn around to look at his clone to know that he was using GIGA IMPACT. He could simply sense it.

His clone, now surrounded in a spiraling veil of aura, dashed forward towards the immobilized Renegade Pokémon. The run itself was brief, because the distance that separated Giratina from Xeno's SUBSTITUTE was no greater than a hundred feet. During that run, Giratina could see this mountain of aura dash closer and closer towards it. And just before the moment of impact, Giratina could see this Aura Pokémon spontaneously have his body glow a white as bright as that when a Pokémon undergoes evolution.

…Or when they intend to SELF-DESTRUCT.

Once the original Xeno had sprinted almost a thousand feet within a few seconds, and when he sensed his SUBSTITUTE's aura spiking before becoming raw explosive power, the Pokémon of Prophecy stopped running altogether.

BOOM!

(Song Ends)

He turned around shortly afterwards, just in time to see Giratina's aura becoming no more, alongside that of his self-destructing decoy. He saw an explosion so great in scale occur in the distance before his eyes. The towering mushroom cloud that he saw formed from the force of this detonation possessed an unnaturally green hue amongst the pallor of the dust and uprooted earth. The thousands of fragments of the Renegade Pokémon's corpse that were rent by the explosion were sent skyward, to fall by the ground, the lake nearby, or in the forest that surrounded the Sendoff Spring, clouding, staining, dyeing, and painting their targets respectively. The electricity and ice that surrounded these mutilated, grotesque pieces of Giratina disappeared outright, failing to hold Giratina together in one piece, or making this confirmed explosion any less fatal.

Xeno could see random pieces of Giratina's flesh land around him, even on him before bouncing off of his fur. Some of these pieces were recognizable, such as those colored gold, belonging either on Giratina's head, around its neck, at the base of its wings, or on its feet. Xeno could also begin to smell Giratina's blood begin to waft in the air, courtesy of these pieces of flying flesh.

He could even taste it.

To Xeno, Giratina's blood tasted no different than his own, or that of any other Pokémon that bleeds red. It tasted bitter, metallic, smelling of the iron that it was heavily composed of. But strangely, it tasted of something else, something that most likely was responsible for making the blood of Ghost-Type Pokémon appear green.

Xeno couldn't comprehend what it was he was savoring. He was too busy trying to forget it. And to take his mind off of the squalid flavor of Giratina's vaporized blood, he distracted himself with what his SUBSTITUTE did to fell the formerly banished Child of Arceus.

"(When you combine the spiraling energy from GIGA IMPACT with a core that is primed to SELF-DESTRUCT…)" Xeno summarized. "(And when you optionally albeit preferably use a SUBSTITUTE to initiate said amalgam without risking your own life through suicide, you get what I like to call DOUBLE TROUBLE.)"

After thinking of a fitting name for that pair of devastating attacks, Xeno rolled his eyes and scoffed to himself.

"(Great. Now I'm reminded of that motto those three clowns used when I was in Team Rocket.)" Xeno cursed himself for recalling something he's been smothering within his memories. "('Prepare for trouble… make it double…')"

Xeno stopped having words echo within his mind and focused more intently on the dissipating smoke cloud in front of him. He knew that his job was accomplished, and could no longer detect any trace of Giratina.

…No aural trace anyway.

Xeno began to breathe easy now. His Aura Vision ceased and his evolved dreadlock-like appendages dropped, low enough where they now tapped at his lower back instead of behind the back of his neck. He began to contemplate the process to revert back to normal, once the battle had ended.

But such a process never came. And instead, all Xeno felt was a sharp chill run across the length of his spine, and his blood grow cold.

Destiny/Dragon Ball Kai: Original Soundtrack/Kenji Yamamoto

(Song Begins)

With no warning his field of vision warped away from the Sendoff Spring and into a world of nothing but black, white, and gray in between. His sense of direction disappeared, alongside his sense of smell and sense of taste. He no longer tasted Giratina's blood or smelled its irregularly mutilated portions of flesh across the area.

What he saw before him was a black line across a vast white void. At the beginning of this black line was himself, his shadow connecting to it and forming Point A. And at the end of this void, far enough away where it appeared to be originating from the sight of his DOUBLE TROUBLE attack, was the Renegade Pokémon, forming Point B.

Giratina appeared alive and well.

"You're still alive, Giratina?"

…Or so it seemed.

"No." Giratina responded calmly, no animosity or vengeance present through its voice. "By the Laws of Arceus' Game, you have successfully killed me."

"…" Much to Xeno's better self, he was feeling a creeping sense of dread begin to form within his core. He didn't know why, but he knew that he would, if Giratina keeps on talking.

"Congratulations. I'm dead. You have overcome all of the hurdles of Arceus' Game. You have gone above and beyond in proving your merit before my Father. And as far as I'm aware of, one half of the weapons that the Original One has painstakingly crafted now bear your name."

Now came the part that Xeno's body was reacting negatively to.

"However!" Giratina roared, its voice nearly blowing out Xeno's eardrums, even causing him to flinch and shudder. "You haven't overcome my hurdle!"

The spirit of the Renegade Pokémon seeped into its own shadow and disappeared from view. And the black line that connected Xeno's shadow with that of the fallen Renegade Pokémon now appeared to approach the Mega Evolved Pokémon of Prophecy. This black line appeared to grow shorter and shorter as it made its way closer and closer to him.

Like a fuse, Giratina was the detonator, and Xeno Lucario was the explosives.

Try as he might, Xeno couldn't do anything about this, not with his massive and diverse move set, or with his physical body. He found himself unable to take a step forward, as though Giratina's shadow froze his own, and therefore froze himself.

"Death has no accomplishment if you die by yourself." Giratina voice resonated across this environment, appearing to sound closer and closer as Xeno's "lit fuse" shortened more and more. "You have claimed victory from me, but my DESTINY BOND will have you experience your own brutality and the pain of my defeat."

When Xeno's head arched down to see the fuse shorten until it was upon him, the world around him returned back to normal, and he stood on Sendoff Spring, placed no different than he was earlier.

He still couldn't move, but he did not bother fighting it. He could see fragments of Giratina's corpse around himself, but he didn't pay them any notice. He could smell and taste Giratina's blood, but what did that matter to him now.

Because when the fuse finally stopped "burning" and appeared to seep into his shadow, he looked up at the sky. His eyes closed, he sighed, his body relaxed, and he accepted his death.

And while he was certain he wasn't able to feel what it was that Giratina experienced once his body fails him, he wondered what it would be like for him to experience what he did to Giratina that ended the Renegade Pokémon's life.

He pictured his body exploding, his furred hide swelling grotesquely before popping like a balloon, his bones and internal organs vaporizing from the rending shockwave. He pictured his physical body being replaced by a loose derivative of himself, composed of dust painted sanguine by his own spraying blood. He imagined it feeling as though every single nerve of his body was crying in pain before dying from being overloaded.

And he was right.

BOOM!

…For the most part. Because, even though he accounted for most of what would occur when his body would explode, he didn't account for what his spirit would feel when the body was destroyed so utterly that it ceased to exist.

Silence and darkness.

Nothing else.

(Song Ends)

---

50.5: "When You Are Beside Me, You Will Never Die."

Location: Hall of Origin (Elsewhere)

Time: ?

Stardust Road/Super Mario Galaxy Platinum Version-(OST)/Mahito Yokota

(Song Begins)

Within a farther corner of the cosmic realm that Arceus calls Its home, Arceus spontaneously transported Itself away from the fight between the Man of Bulwark and the Nameless Emissary of the Dark One. And alongside Itself, Arceus warped both of Its fatigued and wounded Children here.

Within this particular section of the Hall of Origin, Arceus had already transported the Legendary Beasts of Johto, the Legendary Golems of Hoenn, and the Pokémon that they recall as their superiors, moments before the Alpha Pokémon found Itself shackled by Odraude.

But because of Eduardo's actions and drive/vendetta against him, Arceus has reclaimed both Its freedom of body and will of mind. And through those two factors, Arceus didn't hesitate to dismiss Itself from the fight against Odraude. The Alpha Pokémon did so because of the overpoweringly maternal priority of ensuring the health and safety of two of Its three Children, as they had fought with all of their (weakened) might alongside Eduardo just to liberate It.

"(Against Odraude, I'm certain that Eduardo can hold his own. However, he has no hope of defeating such an abomination.)" Arceus knew without hesitation. "(Not by himself anyway.)"

Before the Eyes of the Omnipotent Original One, the eight Legendary Pokémon that both Xeno and I successfully "killed" were recovering and being treated properly for their debilitated state after returning back to the Hall of Origin.

And these eight Pokémon―Entei, Ho-Oh, Raikou, Regice, Regigigas, Regirock, Registeel, and Suicune―owed their replenishing strength to the master medics that were Azelf, Mesprit, and Uxie, the Legendary Lake Golems of Sinnoh, aka the only three Legendary Pokémon that didn't fight the Man of Bulwark and/or the Pokémon of Prophecy.

And almost immediately after this trinity of miniscule Legendary Pokémon sensed the presence of their Father, as well as two of the three Pokémon that are essentially their Older Brothers, the Lake Guardians hastily used TELEPORT to appear before their family.

"Arceus, you've returned!" Mesprit spoke first, appearing before Arceus as the epitome of joy and emotion, continuously revolving around the Alpha Pokémon and sensing the overall condition of Its Father with its psychic power. "How are you feeling?"

"Physically, I feel no different than normal." Arceus explained to the Emotion Pokémon that could hug Its face with its whole body. "My pride however is in tatters. But I know the perfect remedy for that."

"Vanquishing the Nameless Emissary that we've come to label as Odraude?" Uxie spoke up, already bearing knowledge of that blasphemous man.

"Exactly." Arceus replied to its Second Daughter.

Arceus looked down towards Dialga to notice the Knowledge Pokémon hovering over the Temporal Pokémon. And with eyes that almost never open, they remained closed as Uxie held out its arms to psychically sense Dialga's internal condition, prodding its Older Brother's body with the tips of its two jewel-encrusted tails simultaneously.

In response to this, Dialga looked on as Uxie was hovering about, forcing itself to not smile as the tails of its Younger Sister threatened to tickle it.

"How are you feeling, Dialga?" Uxie began. "Any residual pain? Broken bones? Internal hemorrhaging? Bruised ego?"

"Why do you bother asking questions to answers that you should already know?" Dialga responded simply and without any negativity in the phrasing of its response.

Uxie stopped flying about Dialga and stopped before the Face of Time. "You should know the answer to that, Big Brother. I like to ask questions to preserve the knowledge that I already know. At least in doing so, it takes my mind off of the virtual limitless knowledge that I've already amassed."

Dialga simply nodded slowly at this, not bothering to spend any more energy unnecessarily and remaining down on the ground. "Thank you for treating me, Little Sister."

"It's what I do." Uxie said, before continuing to float around Dialga, healing areas of most concern first, with bursts of supplementing waves of its psychic energy.

Arceus saw that Dialga was now being properly tended to, and turned its attention towards Palkia, and the Willpower Pokémon that didn't exactly have the luxury of conversing with its Big Brother, because Palkia was unconscious and escaped certain death not too long ago.

"I trust that My Second Son is alright, My Third Daughter?" Arceus spoke to Azelf, the sixth Pokémon that It created.

At the moment, Azelf was examining Palkia's collapsed body, floating over the hulk of a Spacial Pokémon that it would've easily mistaken for a cadaver, based on how much paler Palkia looks. Azelf looked deep into Palkia's body through its ESP, prodding it for points of weakness, even pulling up on the eyelids of Palkia's closed eyes, imagining the words "OUT COLD" appearing in its bloodshot sclera.

"…What miracle did You enact to purge Your own venom from my Big Brother?" Azelf said, seeing the extent Arceus' inflicted poison did in rotting away Palkia's internal organs.

"Miracles," Arceus corrected Its beloved, determined Daughter.

"Father?" Azelf asked quizzically.

"Do you sense the capsule dissolving within Palkia's stomach?"

"…" Azelf promptly returned towards Palkia's abdomen and put both hands and tails there, visualizing Palkia's somewhat intact gastrointestinal tract, and identifying the pill fizzing away within the stomach acids. "Yeah. It's still there."

"That miracle drug came courtesy of Eduardo," Arceus explained. "Shortly after he liberated Me from Odraude's control."

"…!" All three Legendary Lake Guardians stopped cold in their progressive healing modus operandi, shocked at what they heard Arceus say. But before they could say anything in response to this and ask any questions on the matter, Arceus promptly gave them more information.

"Yes, it's as unerringly unthinkable as it sounds." Arceus continued. "And after Eduardo saved Me from Odraude's dark influence, and prevented Me from killing two of My Children, I left him alone to hold off against Odraude…for the time being."

Both Azelf and Uxie immediately returned to their work, while Mesprit simply hovered back towards the Face of the Alpha Pokémon, sensing next to no damage on its Father that required the Emotion Pokémon's attention.

"Do you think Eduardo will defeat Odraude?" Mesprit asked, the weight of the matter pressing heavily on her mind.

"No, I don't." Arceus said so with utmost certainty. "But I'll put My faith in his inhuman ability to persevere, so that we will come to his aid when we're all made ready."

When those words were said, the silence resonating across the Hall of Origin was palpable. Because, for God Itself to use those words that were almost exclusively reserved to be used by those "beneath" Arceus, then the events already being carried out elsewhere within the Hall of Origin resonated heavily within the Almighty Alpha Pokémon.

And then the silence of this area was broken when all eyes―even those of the stirring Spacial Pokémon―turned to the spontaneous materialization of Origin Forme Giratina and Mega Xeno Lucario. Both of them were on their backs, prone, with their eyes closed…

…And entirely lifeless.

(Song Ends)

Promptly, Arceus trots away from busy and wounded Children and proceeds over towards Its Third Son and the Pokémon of Prophecy, stopping once It was standing directly between them, eyeing each of their "departed" faces for a few moments, before focusing on Giratina.

"(You were defeated in battle,)" Arceus speculated concretely. "(And moments before your defeat was imminent, you successfully resorted to DESTINY BOND to drag Xeno down with you.)"

Then Arceus turned Its attention over to Xeno.

"(You 'killed' Giratina. You successfully overcame your fourth and final challenge within My Game.)"

Then Arceus turned Its attention over towards Giratina. Sharply.

"(And deep down within yourself, you hated the thought of losing. You always have. It's what has made you so weak and vulnerable in the Dawn of the Universe, and why I was ultimately forced to banish you into the Distortion World.)"

Arceus' eyes then looked away and darted across Its surroundings. Its face became rigid and didn't turn around alongside Its eyes, mostly because Arceus wasn't exactly using them to see, but to think.

"(…It's why you're still alive to this day and why you no longer hold any animosity towards your Brothers and I.)"

When those thoughts passed, only four arms emerged from Arceus' core. Two arms for Giratina and two arms for Xeno Lucario. Each arm slithered its way across the air over towards each Pokémon and placed an ethereal hand onto their foreheads and over their hearts.

With a connection now made to both valiant combatants that ultimately "died" fighting each other, Arceus began the process to "revive" them, to bring back the first life that they had, that Arceus borrowed and replaced with a "disposable" second.

In doing so, Arceus began to chant, speaking in a language that dates back eons farther before the Language of the Unown ever existed, back when Arceus first created the Universe, and created Dialga, Giratina, and Palkia to help shape all that can be seen.

".zuL al a ogiart sel ,dadirucso ,al edseD" Arceus recited. ".arreiT al a oíug et oy ,soleiC soL eD .adiV us a oserger ,etreum al edseD"

What sounded like nonsense to almost all forms of life was basically second language to the first six Pokémon that Arceus brought life to. But of those six, one was "dead" and two were being treated. That meant that only Azelf, Mesprit, and Uxie were overhearing this, and thinking to themselves what Arceus was saying, translating the First Language into a language more common.

"(From Darkness, I bring you to Light.)" Azelf recalled the first line.

"(From The Heavens, I guide you to Earth.)" Mesprit recalled the second line.

"(From Death, I return your Life.)" Uxie recalled the third and final line.

In moments, a wave of Arceus' holy aura seeped into the "cadavers" that was Giratina and Xeno Lucario. The holy aura carried the life force that Arceus temporarily borrowed from them, their original life force that Arceus gave them a replication of, for which was burned out throughout Its Game. And once it had been rightfully returned onto the Renegade Pokémon and the Pokémon of Prophecy, both Pokémon began to live. Both Giratina and Xeno, with their eyes still closed as if sleeping, began to breathe, feel their hearts beat, feel their bodies again.

And then they both suddenly began to scream, their nerves committing suicide from the explosion that they were put together from.

Their cries and their resulting convulsions of pain were a startling surprise to those listening in. But to Arceus, they were expected, and It quickly put Its hand that were once over their foreheads directly over their mouths, just so that there was much less noise echoing about the place.

And almost as quickly as their screams began, they both stopped and remained silent, when Arceus calmed their bodies through Its power. Arceus then retracted all four of these mythical arms and saw the eyelids of its Third Son and the Pokémon of Prophecy begin to flutter before opening.

Then both Giratina and Xeno Lucario, once they realized they were no longer in pain and no longer in the Sendoff Spring, slowly made themselves stand upright. They stood up slowly, in case they were still weak from their fight earlier. But much to their surprise, they were as right as rain, feeling as invigorated as the moment before their fight even began. And their incremental efforts at getting up were simply out of caution at this point.

Once upright, the first thing that Giratina and Xeno saw was not the Alpha Pokémon that calmly stood between them, but each other. Giratina eyed Xeno shortly after resorting to the Griseous Orb to transform back into its Alternate Forme, and Xeno eyed Giratina but remained as a Mega Lucario.

Both of them simply looked on at each other, the memories of their battle still fresh within their minds. But refreshingly, that was the only thing replaying within their minds, and not the heated emotions that came alongside it. They just simply stared on at each other in silence, wordlessly communicating with one another on how well they each fought, how much they've each grown in their match, and ultimately holding no spite for one another as a result.

All they held for each other was a deep respect that supported their freshly formed friendship, as brothers in arms.

Divine Intervention (Choir)/Legend (CD 2 - Choir)/Two Steps From Hell

(Song Begins)

"At any other moment in time, I would praise your displayed combat prowess," Arceus began to speak for the two of them. "But unfortunately, there are dire circumstances presently occurring within My holy sanctum."

Both Giratina and Xeno, alongside every single Legendary Pokémon around the three of them, turned their eyes over towards the Original One.

"Odraude is here, within the Hall of Origin." Arceus stated without sugarcoating or doing anything in softening the impact these words most certainly had, because the sheer shock of it would heighten the senses of those listening to Its words. "And I…had the displeasure of being his bitch, moments earlier."

Every single Legendary Pokémon within the nearby vicinity, once they were fully healed or replenished enough where they felt comfortable with themselves, immediately approached Arceus and circled around their Alpha Pokémon. Its words hit them gravely. Its solemnity making it easy for them to picture what Odraude did to have Arceus under his control.

Xeno in particular, envisaged this more than everybody else excluding Arceus, because thoughts of Odraude still weighed heavily within his mind. Vivid memories that made his body feel as if it was opening up the 100 slashes that Odraude had inflicted on him when they first met.

But then that feeling disappeared with genuine dread when Arceus added this.

"I owe My ability to walk before you, as the God you all acknowledge Me as, in part to the defensive and supportive actions of Dialga and Palkia. And alongside two of My Children, the three of us owe My diluted wellbeing to the critical, philanthropic choices of Eduardo."

When the name of the Man of Bulwark was mentioned, Xeno was the first to speak in noticing my absence.

"Where is he now?" His voice was anxious.

Arceus grimly looked over to the Mega Evolved Aura Pokémon and returned his sense of anxiety with some of Its own.

"As I speak, he is combating Odraude." Arceus said, before turning over to face the direction that my aura―and in turn, his aura―was flaring. "And while he's fighting with all of his strength, I fear he won't last much longer against the Nameless Emissary."

Arceus looks back at the glancing faces of the fourteen Legendary Pokémon and the one Aura Pokémon around It. Arceus could sense their anxiety as clearly as It could feel Its own. But alongside this, Arceus could also feel a sprouting sense of determination swelling up within their auras, feelings of spite and carnage towards Odraude, and senses of thankfulness and protection for the Man of Bulwark.

Arceus did nothing to deny them, but did have to remind them of the danger they're wishing to confront.

"If you all wish to accompany Me in supporting Eduardo and defeating Odraude, I must remind you that the only Pokémon that still harbor a "second life" within My Game are My Three Daughters: Azelf, Mesprit, and Uxie. No one else has My lingering blessing, a blessing that I'm unable to reenact in the limited time we all presently have. Not even Eduardo, who relinquished his second life in his successful attempt at liberating Me. So, this means that against Odraude, you all run the risk of dying, either abruptly or decadently."

Saying that did nothing to change their minds and their eventual choice of actions to follow God and confront Odraude while simultaneously supporting Eduardo, or even being his salvation if the worst was about to befall him.

"…But you all know that already, don't you." Arceus knew from reading their auras alongside their countenances and physical postures. "Because, you all know that when you are beside Me, you will never die."

(Song Ends)

---

50.6: "To Fight Alone Is to Die Alone."

Location: Hall of Origin

Time: ?

Guardando Nel Buio ("Watching in the Dark")/Kingdom Hearts Original Soundtrack Complete - CD2 - Kingdom Hearts OST/Yoko Shimomura

(Song Begins)

Enraged and empowered, snarling at Odraude to the point where I'm salivating like a feral beast, I recklessly rush over towards my enemy, my fury at its peak and my vendetta towards him at its prime.

Odraude sees me incoming like a runaway locomotive and holds his ground, ready for me with his Death Scythe in hand.

The time came too quickly for ordinary opponents to react to, but not for Odraude. He jumped slightly and aimed for my neck again with a wide swing of his blade. But all he hit when I reached him was air. I evaded by crouching down with wings folded behind my back, grinding and sparking the talons on my feet into the ground, before springing back up directly in front of Odraude's face and letting loose my right fist into a massive uppercut.

My attack connects with Odraude, and sends him flying high into the air. But it wasn't until he was already sent skyward did I realize I didn't strike him in the way that I had hoped. His body didn't wrap itself around my massive, clawed, and coiled hand. Only his feet contacted my knuckles, and he essentially treated my uppercut as a springboard.

I could see Odraude spiral back after hitting the apex of his flight, land as masterfully as an acrobat, then roll and cartwheel further away from me.

When he stopped, I could still see a smile stretch across that familiar face of his, and menacingly cracked my knuckles by merely flexing them.

"I've said this before, Eduardo, and I'll happily say it again!" He shouted at me from our grown distance apart. "Stop trying to hit me and hit me already!"

No words in my part were offered to Odraude's as a rebuttal. Only another hateful roar sounded off his way, before the source of the sound came towards him, gliding across the ground like a low altitude plane.

Odraude's response to this was unusual, while I still had enough rational thought within my head that wasn't being smothered by my dominating savagery. He quickly slammed his left hand down onto the ground, and channeled Dark Green (Nature) Aura into the earth. And what came up as a direct correlation to his power, to counterattack my own, was a trio of towering plants with tree-like thickness incorporated into them, with crimson flower petals as wide as my shield.

…And each armed with the biological equivalent of a machine gun.

With near perfect synchronicity and accuracy, each of these towering, rooted turrets for plants commence with unleashing a barrage of seeds to bombard me with. My first reaction against this was to fly higher to gain some ground to evade the first spray, then aileron rolling around the spray of stone-sized seeds that followed immediately after.

But I quickly came to the conclusion that I couldn't evade the speed of these projectiles forever, especially when the distance between their travel towards me was rapidly diminishing. Luckily for me, my Red (Fire) Aura would protect me against flammable bullets, in their own distinguishable way.

"(Pyro Globe!)"

Without breathing the fire, my body exuded it through my flaring aura and surrounded me in a remarkably thick and wide sphere of fire. The dragon within the flames was already fire resistant, but that hardly mattered when the heat inside was unchanged from my Pyro Globe technique. The heat outside of my defensive technique spiked dramatically, and burned up the incoming seeds before they had a chance to even touch the fire.

Odraude could plainly see what appeared to be a sphere of fire flying lower to the ground and imminently coming right towards him in a flyby tackle. He was even beginning to feel a subtle increase in the surrounding heat as I was now entering double-digits in distance in feet from him.

To this, Odraude put his left hand down again, but not necessarily on the floor. He simply thrust it down while being surrounded in Light Green (Wind) Aura, and generated a rush of wind strong enough to lift him up and off of the ground, narrowly missing me as I flew by, destroying and incinerating his trinity of plant turrets by ramming into them.

Odraude about-faced in midair to see me glide away from this scene. He readies his Death Scythe towards me, transforms it quickly into a trident, and channels Blue (Water) Aura into the overall length of the shaft. And with one thrust forward towards me, a deluge of water fired forth from the three prongs of his weapon, narrowed down to a concentrated stream with enough force to break through solid rock.

My Pyro Globe technique was comparable to paper when pierced clean through by Odraude's aqueous high-pressure technique. And while the stream of water passed clean through my spherical layer of hellfire, it didn't successfully go through me and perforate any of my internal organs.

It did however poke a hole through my left wing. And the immediate result of that was a disruption in my concentration with Red (Fire) Aura, the dissipation of my Pyro Globe, a spontaneous destabilization of my low altitude flight pattern, and an almost immediate fall and tumble across the floor of the Hall of Origin.

Before Odraude's eyes, I was a blur of rolling scales as my body and my wings rolled uncomfortably and unnaturally across the floor as I was slowing down to naught. And when I eventually stopped, I could feel the extent of my injuries as a direct result of my fall.

Overall, my body was bruised and sore, but that was the least of my concerns. Because, the continuous tumbling and inability to reorient myself due to my torn patagium―courtesy of Odraude's burst stream of heavily condensed water―meant that as I rolled, the weight of my body commonly came down on my wings.

The bones alongside them didn't necessarily break, but they were luxated and momentarily paralyzed. I learned this the hard way when I slowly stood back up and tried to fly again, only to flinch and feel my broad wings rub their bones in ways that shouldn't be felt. And then I felt the ground beneath me break open, as Odraude sprouted more plants from the earth to do his bidding.

With Odraude's Dark Green (Nature) Aura, he had numerous thorn vines and barbed roots shoot out from the ground, wrap around my arms, legs, body, and tail, and force me to scream in pain from feeling my thick scales being rent apart, fresh blood trickle out from my body. But surprisingly, the acidic properties of my blood had very little effect on these plants, and that might be perhaps they came from Odraude's aura than by natural means.

I attempt to escape this with fire, but one of these vines made quick work in muzzling me, before another two compressed my dislocated wings into my body. I couldn't scream any louder at this point, as my voice was muffled and had no escape, alongside my body. And even when I attempted to TELEPORT away from this, I was unable to do so, my concentration on such a mentally demanding technique next to impossible with this much physical stress.

And that was because Odraude had these thick roots and vines pull me straight down onto the ground, reluctantly putting me at his mercy.

He made it clear to me that I was at his mercy when he spontaneously warped before me and held his Death Scythe lazily on the ground, yet menacingly before my eyes. He held in it such close proximity to my left eye that I could see my own scaly reflection off of the surprisingly smooth surface of the Death Scythe's bony blade. Though my reflection wasn't intact, because of the fact that the overall length of the blade appeared to be composed of the absurdly elongated bones of the four human fingers.

"Where did all of that fire go?" Odraude lectured me, in his own distinct way. And he wasn't just referring to my expunged Red (Fire) Aura.

In moments, the blade he held before my face was no over his own alongside his arms, and as he appeared to bring it down on me, his weapon spontaneously transmogrified from a scythe to a hammer. An imposingly sized hammer, with a human skull for its striking head, warped unnaturally albeit still recognizable, looming over me as I appeared to be unable to free myself.

I could feel the scaly hide on my right and left arms begin to tear away even further as I strained to pull them free from these thorn vines and barbed roots with all of my might. My jaw was muzzled tightly shut, buy I clenched it tighter, roaring a muffled roar as I tried to break free of his Dark Green (Nature) Aura.

And I did, through the aid of my Orange (Melee) Aura.

Despite the fact that his vines felt like thickly branded metal wiring, my arms broke free after my sheer force of will. Odraude's Death Hammer was swung down to my head, and the palms of my hand intercepted it. My white arms, with hissing hemorrhaging blood running down them, intercepted the skull intended to come crashing down on my own and held firm.

Then, I retaliated by implementing a bit more aura and physical force to push his weapon back over his head.

He was mildly surprised by this, and I attempted to bring my own hammer down on him, through my right fist swinging down at him.

"(Martial Hammer!)"

But alas, he stepped back ever so slightly, and my fist nearly grazed him before crashing and indenting the floor below.

Missing again made me maliciously mad at my enemy, and my Orange (Melee) Aura spread along the remaining length of my body in an almost immediate response to my draconic frustration. My left hand came crashing down onto Odraude with another Martial Hammer, but missed as he stepped back slightly.

He said nothing at this and only smirked at my futile attempts to fist him.

…No homo.

Feeling a bit more feral, my freed arms and clawed hands now began to swipe away at him while simultaneously digging into the ground with every failed swing, pulling my body away from those binding vines and further tearing away at my bleeding hide as a result, even cutting into the patagium of my luxated wings and making them appear no different than shredded curtains.

Luckily for me, I was too preoccupied with Odraude and my rage towards him to distract myself with petty thoughts of blood and pain.

Odraude could see that I've mostly freed myself and decided to jump, flip and cartwheel backwards away from me, the hefty Death Hammer he was wielding only amplifying his midair somersaults.

(Song Ends)

I didn't come after him, because I was too busy slashing away at the roots and vines still tearing away at my underbelly, legs, and tail. When they were gone and left in pieces of foliage that were soaking my acidic blood, they began to dissolve and burn away into white smoke, most likely no longer fueled by Odraude's aura.

I stood back up, a bloodied mess of myself, with a tattered pair of wings and plenty of bloody red rage staining my lustrously white hide. All I had left of me that was from Odraude's Dark Green (Nature) Aura was the muzzle he made for me with those vines. But I made quick work of that by digging my claws into them and pulling it forcefully off. The fact that their thorns lacerated my mouth even further didn't bother me anymore, because my sense of pain was so heavily smothered by my seething spite for Odraude that I didn't even feel it.

When Odraude saw that I stood upright and glared on at him like a white devil growing red, and then remain almost statuesquely put without so much as bothering to tend to my own injuries―mostly because I couldn't feel a damn thing that wasn't negativity towards Odraude, even he knew that the absolute worst from me was to come.

All Odraude did to brace himself for whatever I had in store against him was to make his weapon disappear before our eyes, and form a defensive stance, making himself immediately ready for me.

My eyes were as black as ash, but all I could (metaphorically) see was red. My mind was fully functional, but all I could think about was Odraude. My body was a bloody mess, but all I could feel was wickedness on par if not greater than any antagonist.

Unable to hold it in anymore, I unleashed it all towards Odraude, with my jaws opening wide to the point of luxating alongside my wings, my lungs expanding to the point of bursting alongside my sense of pain, and with my body emanating Silver (Sound) Aura.

"(Phono Roar!)"

Soundless shockwaves came piercing and shredding across the air in my general direction, out of my mouth through my technique, towards the Nameless Emissary that I was targeting. The attack itself wasn't as all-consuming as my Phono Boom technique, but it didn't have to be because I was only facing Odraude as my solitary opponent. Besides, focused down to this single straight line rather than all around me meant that the general strength of this attack was exponentially greater than it normally is.

Odraude knew this when he saw the attack coming, and knew that the only sensible option against my Phono Roar is to hold his ground and defend. He does just that, by crossing his arms in front of his face, and surrounding himself in a dome of energy, summoned by the use of the same exact Silver (Sound) Aura that I was using myself. And while I couldn't entirely see what was going on around him, I can imagine his dome to be emulating the eye of a hurricane, where nothing was happening within a spiraling torrent of harsh winds and heavy rain.

I was too blinded by rage at this point to stop my attack. I only maintained it, amplifying it through my drive in obliterating him and forever removing an essential pawn to the Dark One and His impending Void. That was all I was thinking of. And at this point in time, I was more or less doing this by instinct rather than complex or even rational thought.

It didn't take me more than a minute of continuous use of Silver (Sound) Aura before I felt its repercussions hit me harder than anything Odraude has thrown at me combined. I paid the price for my blind fury when I felt my body spontaneously give out on me. My Elemental Aura attribute ceased, my powerful yet futile attack stopped, and I found myself collapsing onto my knees and clawed hands. My elongated neck craned down to the ground, I was hyperventilating in a self-induced state of shock, and was feeling my present collection of injuries flare up and harm me more than they normally would.

This is what happens when one expends their stockpile of aura. I could see my whole body―my clawed hands and underbelly in actuality―glow brighter than usual, not from bright light, but from the warning signs that if I kept at this, I would fade away into nothingness from "Aura Expulsion", as Xeno and I have dubbed this. The telltale energy surges that I was seeing course across my body, from my extremities to my core, was an aural warning that instantly cleared the miasma within my mind that my enmity caused, and made me realize that I was damn near killing myself, just to attack Odraude.

And what do I have to show for my hard work? Only five words and a self-inflicted sense of agony painted the proper picture.

"Why…can't…I…hit…you…?" My terrible voice, while normally epitomizing fear and hostility, now represented defeat, and even dregs of growing sadness.

Then, I heard the telltale sounds of the air in front of me snapping and splitting and giving way to an overpowering force. But what could I do against it?

KA-BOOM!

A spontaneous and explosive burst of reverberations knocked me on my bleeding white ass so fast that I didn't even register the time it took me to rise and fall on my back. I only felt my cries of pain come out of my mouth afterward, my ears ringing from the pointblank explosion, and my body mercifully stabilizing from the effects of Aura Expulsion.

"You idiot…" I heard these words echo within my mind.

KA-BOOM!

Another blast made me replicate my brief ascension and harsh descent, and this one I did manage to register. Another groaning roar escaped my scaly mouth, as I was certain that the initial shockwave ruptured if not split at least one of my internal organs.

"You've unearthed your self-labeled Elemental Aura abilities when you were sixteen years old. And only now do you choose to betray your own experience?"

I weakly lifted my head so that I could see the source of this telepathic voice, disliking the fact that he was using this useful psychic ability to make himself better heard through my ringing, perhaps even ruptured inner ears.

"The Elemental Aura attribute that you've labeled as Silver (Sound) Aura works best in short, simple bursts!"

I could see him thrust his arm forward, pointing a finger towards me.

KA-BOOM!

Then, I saw my body take flight, rolling in the air as I found myself flailing my arms, legs, tail, and even my disjointed wings, all in vain before my face met the ground and my feet touched the ground.

"You were idiotic and imprudent in maintaining such a demanding technique for so long! And now look at you! I have you flipping in the air after every time I toss your scaly white ass within an inch of its existence, all while you haven't hit me once throughout our little playtime!"

I looked up towards him and expected another burst of power from his obviously overpowering experience with Silver (Sound) Aura compared to my own, but much to my surprise, no fourth attack came my way. All Odraude did was cease his use of Elemental Aura altogether, and stay put, his distance over me mattering not while he was conversing telepathically.

"The self-proclaimed God that you and your bitch work for has forsaken you in favor of Its own. You allowed this to happen, and you've brought my power on yourself."

I try to heal myself with Green (Healing) Aura, but I can only channel sparks at this point instead of open bonfires. And even if by some miracle I succeeded in mustering enough aura to heal myself, I doubt I'll be given enough of a window before Odraude breaks it like glass. All I can do is grit my teeth and stand up, little by little, and hope that Odraude doesn't knock me off of my feet again.

I'm on my hands and knees, then arch my back upright, but not entirely. I see that Odraude simply stands there, allowing me the blessing of standing up to see him, probably because he couldn't care less, so long as he can still sense my life.

"To fight alone is to die alone." Odraude said, almost as though he quoted this phrase from a work of literature. "You are alone and have nothing now, except the opportunity to witness a sight not meant for mortal eyes."

Despite his earlier behavior of taking things as though they were nothing but good (or bad) jokes, his imposing strength made it impossible of me to be made into a nonbeliever, or to take his repugnant disposition as anything but serious and evil to the core. After all, this deranged individual is the Right Hand of the Dark One. And while I had no clue who the Dark One is, I have plenty of inklings in regards to His disposition, thanks to the Nameless Emissary.

Which is why, when I heard him say these next several words, I was almost certain I felt my heart stop beating.

"Where is your God now, Man of Bulwark?"

Obelisk/Yu-Gi-Oh! Unreleased Soundtrack/4Kids TV

(Song Begins)

What I saw before me was a mirror image of my draconic transformation in effect by Odraude. His mastery of Elemental Aura, just like my own, displayed itself around him as all thirteen colors, before they all encased him within a cocoon.

I didn't have to sense Odraude's metamorphosis into a dragon with my Aura Vision ability. I didn't have it on right now anyway. I could tell outright that Odraude was becoming what I am presently, especially when his thirteen-colored chrysalis began to enlarge itself. I could feel it, in my bulging eyes and buckling legs.

I could feel it…in my soul.

But what surprised me was that Odraude's cocoon didn't stop growing when it was clearly large enough to encompass a beast as large as myself. It continued escalating itself in length, width, circumference, until it stopped once it was large enough to hold something twice my size.

Then I could feel his makeshift egg shed away, and blow about across the Hall of Origin and around me, like a harsh wind that had no cold or warmth to it. Only antagonism, malice, odium, superiority. Only every conceivable idea or manifestation of negativity.

And what I saw take Odraude's place was a dragon twice my size, and sharing in many of my physical features, but not all of them.

While I stood fifteen feet tall at the most, he stood thirty. While I was as white as heavenly light, he was as black as the darkest abyss. His imposing wingspan appeared much like my own, save for the fact that the outermost edges of his patagium appeared torn and irregular, and how the thumbs on his wings appear more like the horns he has far more pronounced and devil-like as those pointing behind my head. His muscular build was much like my own, but obviously greater because of his towering height over me. His tail, while just as long as my own―in proportion to our bodies―, was tipped with an imposingly large arrowhead-like blade that could put spear tips and even swords to shame.

And when I looked at his face, I saw my own, painted black, and made much more nightmarish by a couple of unmistakable and unforgettable features. His eyes harbored two irises and two pupils instead of one. And where his snout should be, was now a second mouth, half as large as the imposing maw below it, but just as fully developed and armed to the teeth as it.

The final touch was this monstrosity raising his head to the cosmos above, roaring louder than I ever could, and breathing unnaturally pitch-black fire. And it was then and there that I knew fear now had a gender and a name.

His name was Draco Odraude.

(Song Ends)

Like a monster unleashed from the most dangerous circle of Hell, Odraude instantly fired himself like a bullet towards me, rampaging across the surrounding cosmos of this environment to come right towards me.

A Moment for Shuddering/Dragon Ball Kai: Original Soundtrack/Kenji Yamamoto

(Song Begins)

"You're intimidating me, but you're not overwhelming me!" My words came out moments before blood red fire did. And this fire didn't come from my Red (Fire) Aura. It came from me, from the flame sacs that I no doubt have within and lining the length of my throat somewhere.

But that was all that I could do to even hope to stop Odraude. And that wasn't enough. Not even close. I might as well have blown hot air at his hideous face, because he simply ran through my oncoming flames as though they were no different than air.

Then I felt Odraude's presence right in front me, after he was there in the distance and here at speeds so great he was almost a blur to me. I could feel his clawed, massive right hand wrap around my muzzle, clamping my mouth shut and stopping my fire altogether. I try to free myself through my own clawed hands clasping his wrist, but he quickly makes my arms go limp by slicing away at the tendons underneath my armpits.

With a muffled cry of pain, my feeble grip on his right hand disappears, and I continued screaming as I felt my acidic blood roll down my arms and body, and as I felt Odraude hoist my head by the grip he had on my muzzle.

I weigh half a ton in this body, but his arm doesn't even quiver at the nearly nonexistent strain in lifting me off of the ground, towards his nightmarish face.

I continue fighting with every fiber of my being, by kicking away at his body with my legs, scratching away at his belly. But another pair of calculated slashes with his tail, across the inside of my thighs, made my legs become a pair of disabled limbs on par with my arms, where the only purpose they now served was to help roll the blood exuding from my wounds down onto the ground, like water running down stalactites.

At this point, I realized my futile attempts and how defeated I now was. I dared not attack Odraude as I was now forcibly looking at him, straight in his special eyes. But even without using my wings and tail to so much as try to release his grip on me, another trio of muffled cries came from me when Odraude severed the tendons to my remaining three extremities.

Almost insultingly, Odraude wipes away the tears he sees me shed, not with his fingers, but with the tail that was coated with my acidic blood, which obviously had no effect on his scales, probably because his blood was now much like my own, and his body has adapted as such.

His tail doesn't leave my field of sight. He waves it around between himself and I, like a metronome to a musician.

(Song Ends)

And then he began to speak to me, disturbingly, through both of his mouths, using a tone of voice that made my own sound as though I was breathing helium.

"Physical pain is nothing compared to the emotional pain I've been enduring at the hands of my Superior." His simultaneous voice scratched away at my inner ears and into my mind.

I couldn't speak through my muzzled mouth, and I deliberately chose not to speak through my telepathy. I could the gravity of Odraude's words, and dared not do anything that would make it seem as though I were interrupting him.

"The first time that we met, I was only supposed to test your strength, and not kill you outright."

When he said that, my rigid countenance became quizzical, as I was certain that we've never fought before today. But when I took a closer look at the monster in front of me, holding me above of the ground with one hand on my mouth, I realized that I have fought against him before.

…Or at least fought something that looks like him.

"…You were the black-scaled dragon that I fought and beheaded years ago?"

Despite my better intentions, those words slipped out of me like an afterthought. But even though I knew I was right, and Odraude knew I was right, he simply continued speaking as though I was speaking nonsense or just plain uncaring of my words at the moment.

"And the first time that I met Xeno, I wanted to kill him, knowing he would be a threat to the Dark One, if allowed to continue living as the Pokémon of Prophecy. I wanted to peel his fur and flesh away like the skin of a fruit, and watch his peeled body squirm in agony before I chose to grind it into dust, or make it my own by devouring him."

I tried to open my mouth now, to curse him for nearly proving to be successful in killing Xeno Lucario. But he simply held onto my muzzle with a tighter grip, enough so where he nearly made it impossible for me to breathe.

"But because of his fighting spirit, he proved to resilient to kill outright, and willful enough to force me to retreat and tend to my wounds."

The eyes he was staring me down with were now beginning to show the telltale signs of vibrating within their shared socket. Odraude's eyes now appeared even more unnatural than they normally do, because the extra pupils that were not looking at me and appeared wall-eyed were the ones that were vibrating.

"I received hell from the Dark One that day, for my failure in killing Xeno outright and hearing word of how you saved him from an untimely death!" Odraude spoke so widely, through both of his mouths, that I could discern the inner workings of his sinus cavities within his upper mouth. "I can still imagine the fires of His disappointment gnashing away at my hide."

For some reason, after he said that, I could feel his grip loosening from my elongated snout, ever so slightly but nowhere near enough for me to wriggle free.

"But as time went on and I spied on the growth of you, your adopted brothers, your bitch, and your cause―something that I know you know I've been doing―, both the Dark One and I have come to realize something from my general espionage.

"You have developed a close bond with your bitch. And through that bond, you've intertwined yourself with the Pokémon of Prophecy almost symbiotically. You've both grown stronger from your support for one another in ways that are impossible for either of you to ever hope to accomplish on your own."

"…That's the product of friendship," I found myself saying to my enemy. "And that's something…that you'll never understand."

Almost immediately after I opened my mind's mouth, I saw Odraude hover the tip of his bladed tail right before my eyes, forcing me to look at my reflection off of the shiny surface, albeit a reddened reflection because of my blood still present on his tail.

"You are so naïve." He continued growling at me. "You see friendship as an invaluable eminence, but you fail to see the flipside of the coin, when it turns its tail on you."

"…What are you…talking about?" I found myself beginning to grow lightheaded from the loss of blood only amplifying my debilitated aural state.

"I'll tell you." He stopped growling and said calmly. "But I'll have to pop your ears and puncture your eyes first."

His tail disappears from my limited general view of him, and I can feel a chill run across the right side of my face as he slowly crept his razor sharp appendage towards my right inner ear, no doubt wanting to savor this in comparison to slicing my tendons earlier.

But it doesn't get any closer than that, and one word from Odraude's pair of mouths confirms this for me.

"…Damn."

Almost immediately, I feel a powerful telekinetic force release Draco Odraude from me and gently put me down on the ground, as though I were falling through water or in a low gravity environment. And when I was tenderly put facedown onto the ground, unable to move anything but my neck, I could see the Clawed Right Hand of the Dark One fly back, launched that way by whatever had just saved me.

And when Odraude stopped sliding back by catching the wind with his wings, and the ground with his hideously elongated talons, I could see what it was that was responsible for freeing me and sending my powerful, dominating opponent away from me.

The Legendary Lake Guardians of the Sinnoh Region.

…Well, two of them anyway.

"…Who dares interfere?!" Odraude snarled, seeing me on the floor in the distance that now separated us, but not seeing anything else, even after scanning the area. "Show yourself!"

"He didn't say please, Uxie."

"No he didn't, Azelf."

"Why should we listen to someone who has no manners?"

"Only the wise travel far after opening their doors with the keys of civility and sympathy."

"And only the idiotic bar their doors between me and my target!" Odraude roared twice and simultaneously, speaking to both entities with two mouths.

"…This brute called you idiotic, dear Sister."

"He must have a lot of balls to title the Being of Knowledge with such blatant lies."

"That's disgusting! You're sick! I don't see any gonads on him anyway…"

"You're right. Smoooooth…like an action figure."

"Do you think if I whistle endearingly, his genitals will come out of hiding?"

"You'll need a microscope for that."

Odraude took great offense to the fact that these two voices, wherever their sources might be, were having their share of laugh at his displeasure, by vilifying his manhood.

That's his job anyway.

"SHOW YOURSELF!" Odraude was seething now, both sets of jaws flapping against his skull now. "AND MAYBE I'LL CONSIDER DEVOURING YOU BOTH WHOLE INSTEAD OF IN BLOODY PIECES!"

"What's the magic word?"

"Here's a hint. It starts with the letter 'P'. And I'm not referring to your penis."

ROAR!

"…Yeah. Azelf, he's not going to say 'please'."

"So what should we do about it, Uxie?"

"Eh, let's just do what he says. He'll regret it anyway."

"…Are you going to do The Thing?"

"Yeah. Just look at his face. He's asking for it anyway."

"…What thing?" Odraude asked, his rage subsiding just enough for his curiosity to pique.

Spontaneously, both Azelf and Uxie appeared before his distinct eyes, warping right in front of him. And before Odraude could register what they were, or why Azelf had her eyes closed with her two tails, Uxie hovered directly before Odraude.

And Uxie opened its eyes.

What Draco Odraude saw was a pair of pure, auric eyes gleaming in direct contrast to his own. But the moment that Odraude looked into them, he felt himself get lost within them. He hallucinated himself being devoured by Uxie's warped and twisting gaze, soul and all. And once within Uxie's mind, he felt himself grow smaller and smaller within this crushingly oppressive dimension, until no fragment of himself to recollect on and climb back with remained. What was once himself was now lost within Uxie's memory.

…Well, that's what would've happened, were it not for something that Uxie overlooked.

"Huh…" The Knowledge Pokémon muttered before closing its eyes. "I didn't see that coming."

Automatically, Azelf looked at Uxie after sensing its attempts on Odraude failing, and obviously showing concern of that. "What just happened?! That always works!"

"It does always work." Uxie told Azelf, while never looking away at Draco Odraude's face.

"…" The Nameless Emissary simply stood there, watching both Lake Guardians like hawks, until the time came for this oversized bird to make a move.

"So why didn't it?" Azelf asked again. "He has two eyes, for Arceus' sake! And even if he had any more, had none at all, or even if he was blind, then The Thing shouldn't have failed."

"…He has two eyes…where only one should be." Uxie identified the problem after it was made clear to its understanding, and realized how severe the matter was now, how quickly the Knowledge Pokémon had failed, how it was feeling the hyperbolic weight of the world crush its miniscule body, and how it was now staring Death in the face. "That unnatural anomaly…is why my Thing…has no effect on Odraude."

CHOMP!

True to Odraude's word, he would devour them both. However, when Odraude opened both mouths wide and shut his double jaws like a vice, only Uxie disappeared within his lower and larger mouth, with its two tails emerging from the gaps formed through his teeth.

Azelf was quicker than Uxie and reacted faster to this by sharply hovering back. The Willpower Pokémon escaped the fate that the slower Knowledge Pokémon was now facing.

And that was to roll down Odraude's elongated throat and disappear within his digestive tract.

All Odraude did was bite off Uxie's tails and feel the Lake Guardian's blood roll down its lips, before tilting its head up and swallowing, feeling what was comparable to a stone slither down the mucous membranes lining the inner workings of its body.

Azelf saw Uxie's severed tails disappear before hitting the ground, and then sensed the remainder of Uxie's body fall into the cesspool that was Odraude's stomach. The immediate reaction of the Willpower Pokémon wasn't to show immediate concern for its Sister.

Quite the contrary actually.

Guardians/Quarantine/Two Steps From Hell

(Song Begins)

"Oh Odraude…" Azelf began to feign apprehension for the enemy rather than show definitive concern for Uxie. "Hasn't the Dark One ever taught you that the wise always know how to cover their ass?"

Odraude opened its mouth wide to try to devour Azelf and make it disappear within the same hellhole that Uxie vanished into. But before it could encage the surprisingly calm Willpower Pokémon behind the iron bars that were its carnivorous teeth, Odraude felt a wave of overpowering weakness course through its entire body, and immediately dropped down onto its hands and knees.

Azelf hovered down so that it was still at eye level with Odraude. It crossed its tiny arms and even crossed its two tails, smiling at seeing how he was essentially poisoned by devouring Uxie.

"What…what did…?!" Odraude found his words spontaneously become difficult to say, as though their very weight was crushing down on his mind alongside his body. "What did…that…cunt just―?!"

"What did Uxie do to you?"

Azelf could've told Odraude that Uxie departed its spirit from its sacrificed body, "killing" itself in order to invade Odraude's own and use MEMENTO to debilitate him, in every way that that it was possible to debilitate someone. But Azelf said something else, something much more fitting to the enemy.

"Now why would I disclose our secrets to trash such as yourself?" Azelf said with a smug smile complimenting its crossed arms and tails.

"You…you despicable…!"

"I'm sorry. I can't hear you over the sound of my own EXPLOSION."

"…!"

KA-BOOM!

Without warning, Azelf destroyed its own body and enveloped Odraude in an explosion great enough to consume ten of him in the conflagration alone, were it not for the fact that the tremendously overpowering fireball send him flying farther back and skipping across the surface of the Hall of Origin before skidding on his back, wings, and tailed ass, in a smoldering and blacker heap of himself.

Able to see what was being displayed before my eyes, I was watching on in a bizarre blend of awe at the power of those two Lake Guardians, and mentally distraught at how they had willingly sacrificed themselves. And when they chose to do so without hesitating on the matter, they did within a matter of seconds what I was unable to do to Odraude throughout the time period that I had to fight him while Arceus warped away from the battlefield with Dialga and Palkia. And that was to cripple Odraude to the point where he was made vulnerable, despite his enlarged and optically venomous appearance.

"They're not dead, Eduardo."

(Song Ends)

A gentle and approachable voice flooded my mind and made me look away from Odraude's crisis, to locate the source of this telepathic speaker.

I didn't have to look for long before I found Mesprit hovering towards me, descending from above.

"…What makes you say that?" My voice was so mild and smothered by my physical injuries that it sounded like a whisper rather than a frightening roar.

"Why, Arceus makes me say that!" Mesprit spontaneously cheered the Alpha Pokémon's name. "Besides, you already know that every participating Pokémon in Arceus' Game have been granted second winds."

"…Is…" I strained myself to speak when I looked at Odraude's stirring body. "…Is that why Azelf and Uxie sacrificed themselves…to hinder Odraude?"

"Absolutely!" Mesprit spoke of death with almost insane jubilance. "And that's why I'll happily give my second life to fully restore yours."

Requiem/Final Fantasy Tactics A2 - The Sealed Grimoire Original Soundtrack/Hitoshi Sakimoto

(Song Begins)

"…What?"

The Emotion Pokémon didn't wait for my response on the matter, nor was it inclined to argue with me. Mesprit simply continued speaking to me as it hovered right before my face, its golden eyes practically consuming the entirety of the perspective of my pair of widened ash black eyes.

"It's a good thing that your damage isn't entirely physical. I would've hated Odraude even more if he had sunk his claws into your handsome, scaly face."

Mesprit's compliment made me recall an earlier statement from a certain red Eon Pokémon, making the flesh beneath the white scales of my face begin to blemish.

"Latias…also thinks I'm handsome…in this body." I made it clear that Mesprit wasn't the first to say this to me.

The way she took this news made me blush and stammer even harder.

"Aw!" She cooed happily at me. "Are you two already making babies in bed?"

"…W-what would compel you to think―?!"

"CAN'T TALK! GIVING MY LIFE NOW!"

Before my eyes, Mesprit's body drops like a rock, with a comical grin on its face, and fell right on top of the length of my bruised snout. Its seemingly fragile body felt cold and lifeless to the touch, as though it were devoid of life. And when I looked back up to see where Mesprit's glimmering and hovering spirit was, I could confirm that assumption in metaphorical writing.

My eyes were the paper, and my welling tears were the ink.

Mesprit's spirit hovers around my being before I could feel it enter my heart. And when the Emotion Pokémon did so, all traces of it that I could feel simply disappeared. And in its place, I could feel my injuries mending themselves back together, my extremities regaining their full function, and my core regaining its stockpile of aura. Even my blood vanished from my body, as though Mesprit had turned back the clock on the physical trauma I had endured.

I stood back upright, feeling 100% within seconds, after Mesprit had given its second life directly to me with the use of its HEALING WISH. And the first thing that I did with my replenished strength was to gingerly pluck Mesprit's body off of my snout, and hold it in my right hand.

At this point, the tears that I could feel tickling my eyes were now rolling down my scaly cheeks. And that was because when I looked at the empty husk of Mesprit's body that I held so easily with my right hand, its eyes fluttered open.

Apparently, a fragment of Mesprit's spirit seeped back into its body, but only long enough for the Emotion Pokémon to give me its unforgettable mark.

"Remember…Eduardo…" Its voice was as weak as mine just seconds ago, but had far more eminence than my dragon voice will ever have in this constitution. "As long as…we are beside…Arceus…, we will…never…die."

When Mesprit's body disappeared and rose into the sky as twinkling lights before fading away into nothingness, my hand that held onto the Emotion Pokémon's body closed as tightly as my eyes did. And even though I knew that Mesprit was in such good humor about its situation, and that Arceus has them covered by the Laws of Its Game, plenty of tears were still shed in my part. And across both of my cheeks, I was silently sobbing enough waterworks to create a straight line race track for my tears.

Then I heard myself gasp when I felt something soft and furry prod at the sides of my abdomen. And upon looking down, I saw the smiling face of one of my closest friends.

"…Xeno?" I noticed the Mega Lucario below me, looking up with a pleasant countenance.

(Song Ends)

"You are truly an extraordinary individual, to be able to pull Arceus away from Odraude's control." He told me, having knowledge of that event that most likely came from Arceus Itself. "But please, for the sake of your own dignity, stop crying and wipe away those tears. It isn't befitting to your dragon form."

I said nothing to this. I merely nodded and wiped away the tears from my eyes and face with the fingers of my clawed hands.

"Besides," Xeno continued, before looking over towards Draco Odraude in the distance, shrouding his astonishment over his hideous appearance, and retaining a sense of professionalism with some…retribution in his expression. "You don't want to miss a second of what's about to happen to him."

Army of Justice/Archangel/Two Steps From Hell

(Song Begins)

When Odraude eventually stands back up in a weakened slump of himself, what his eyes immediately glance over towards is the incoming sextet charging right towards him, in the form of the three Legendary Beasts of Johto alongside the Legendary Golems of Hoenn.

Draco Odraude gave of one spiteful roar before charging forward in what appeared to be more along the lines of a graceless fumble than a reckless rampage.

Both Regice and Suicune tag teamed alongside each other, and split apart from their respective teams to join forces and run right beside each other. Suicune leaps high into the air while Regice remains earthbound. Suicune launches forth a tsunami of water in the form of SURF, conjuring the water from seemingly nowhere and having it roll across the floor that Odraude was running across. Then, Regice flash freezes it solid with a pair of ICE BEAM attacks from its frigid arms.

Odraude finds himself slipping instantly on the surface of the ice, and falling face first into the crystallized layer of water, premeditatedly encumbered by Uxie's MEMENTO so that he had next to no ability to react or retaliate accordingly to what he views as vermin with overzealous titles.

He digs his hideously elongated claws into the ice and stands back up onto his feet, only to be pinned down onto his knees by both Entei and Raikou, when they hopped masterfully across Regice's and Suicune's frozen lake, and each sank their fangs into the dense hide of Draco Odraude's arms.

On his knees, and with the Volcano Pokémon to his left and the Thunder Pokémon to his right, the Nameless Emissary was debilitated enough to the point where he possessed little strength in shaking them off, and then found himself experiencing the embodiments of hellfire and thunderstorms when Entei used LAVA PLUME and Raikou used DISCHARGE, in tandem of one another.

When their attack ceased and Odraude crying out in pain by having his body defiled by a pair of rabid Legendary Beasts and their harboring Type Attributes, Odraude was made a stationary target for Regirock's projectile STONE EDGE and Registeel's rapid fire FLASH CANNON attack.

With greater physical and special defenses, Odraude would've made those petty attacks comparable to an annoying albeit harmless swarm of insects. But with all of his bulwarks out of action, he was feeling his face and his scaly underbelly begin to bruise and even lacerate from the force of these two Pokémon's attacks. And just like me, his blood in this body was acidic, and began to run down his body and burn away at the ice below.

Odraude's pain gave him power in the same way a cornered animal would when its instincts force it to act erratically. He managed to channel enough physical strength to not only lift Entei and Raikou in the midst of Regirock's and Registeel's attacks, but throw both Legendary Beasts directly towards the attackers, at speeds too great for them to avoid.

The Iron and the Rock Peak Pokémon instantly stopped their attacks and braced themselves for collateral damage from the hulking bodies of Entei and Raikou. But luckily for them, Suicune's EXTRASENSORY and Regice's ICE BEAM psychically and literally froze these two Pokémon in their tracks.

And when these six Pokémon regrouped together, they looked at Odraude, and then turned around before retreating deliberately. Because, taking their place, was a dive-bombing Ho-Oh and rampaging Regigigas.

Ho-Oh comes in first, flying down towards Odraude like a holy arrow fired from the heavens, illuminating in the shining white light of a monumentally powerful SKY ATTACK rather than the seven-colored blazing aura that the Rainbow Pokémon exudes through its BRAVE BIRD technique. Draco Odraude sees this descending Phoenix and retaliates by breathing pitch-black fire from the twin barrel throats that are its two mouths.

But Ho-Oh is flying too fast and cuts through these unnatural fires like nothing, before flying by Draco Odraude and clipping him with the broadside of its right wing. Then, Ho-Oh keeps on going, but the hurricane force gales that Ho-Oh carried made Odraude fly far back, as though he were just flung from the winds of a tornado.

When Odraude stops skidding and stumbling backwards, and clutches the side of his chest which now bore a clean cut from Ho-Oh's attack, the Nameless Emissary sees Regigigas run the length of a marathon with speeds rivaling those of its Rainbow Pokémon ally. Odraude tried to put both hands before Regigigas's inevitable collision, but it was entirely pointless when Regigigas bathed its body in a swirling vortex of aura―courtesy of its GIGA IMPACT technique―before tackling the enemy greater than twice its size, in the same way a runaway train would to a human who was standing foolishly in its path.

Odraude's arms broke like twigs and unnaturally flailed about like flimsy ropes as he rolled farther back. And when he got back up, almost unable to in his attempts without arms, he could see that neither Regigigas nor Ho-Oh were coming back towards him for a second attack. Regigigas simply remained put, with arms crossed. Ho-Oh landed directly beside the Colossal Pokémon, folding its wings behind its back. And their "subsidiary" Legendary Beasts and Legendary Golems stood directly beside them, glaring daggers at Odraude but not doing anything else.

Even Xeno and I, as we watched on at the actions of these eight Legendary Pokémon, stayed put from our distance. Because all ten of us saw four more Legendary Pokémon stand directly behind Odraude.

And they looked pissed off. Arceus, Dialga, Giratina, and Palkia.

".dadicaroV ed orebil et ,aitseB al ed ertneiV le edseD" Arceus chanted quickly. ".adiV us eruatsnier y oczonocer ,odaseretniseD oicifircaS edseD .sazineC sus ed oyurtsnocer et ,onreifnI led sogeuF sol eD" [From the Belly of the Beast, I free you from Voracity. From Selfless Sacrifice, I acknowledge and reinstate your Life. From the Fires of Hell, I rebuild you from your Ashes.]

When Arceus finished saying those bizarre words, three lights began to form before the Alpha Pokémon's face, forming the points of a triangle. The light above Arceus' face was yellow, the light below Arceus' face and to Its right was magenta, and the light below Arceus' face and to Its left was cyan. The two cyan and magenta lights appeared to draw their growing shine from apparent nothing, while the third and yellow light didn't appear to be growing.

It wasn't until Draco Odraude sharply turned to face the Alpha Pokémon and Its Three Sons that he felt a twisting and turning sensation originate from his belly. He looked down just in time to see a yellow light glowing and growing in intensity, before it transcended through his sable, scaly underbelly and joined the other pair of lights in their growing intensity.

When these lights eventually faded, in their places, hovered Uxie above Arceus' head, Mesprit by Arceus' right side (or Odraude's left), and Azelf by Arceus' left side (or Odraude's right). Through Arceus' chants, their original life had been returned to their rebuilt and restored bodies.

Odraude tries to rush over towards Arceus and smite a God that only stands at a third of his height, but the Lake Guardians shackle him with their use of PSYCHIC, and hoist his black, draconic hulk over the ground. He doesn't struggle against this, knowing that it will be futile with his faded power and sustained set of damages.

(Song Ends)

"You are charged with intrusion of My sacred homeland, sacrilege of My body, and attempted assassination of My Children and My Friends." Arceus said with calmed anger and absolute authority. "How do you plead your guilt?"

Odraude's immediate answer to this could not have come any more honestly from his heart.

"Go fuck Yourself."

Kaminoikari [God's Anger]/Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters: Original Soundtrack Sound Duel II/Shinkichi Mitsumune

(Song Begins)

Even in the face of defeat, Odraude still retained his infamously blasphemous demeanor, and had the impudence to tell such an expletive to God Itself.

And after those words echoed across the Hall of Origin, everyone felt a subtle shift in the environment, as though the atmospheric pressure here had abruptly disappeared with a fatal vacuum.

"…Flee." Was all Arceus telepathically commanded every single one of us to do, after hearing Draco Odraude drop an F-bomb on It.

Unsurprisingly, none of us hesitated in acknowledging and initiating Arceus' order, and instantaneously about-faced and ran away. The Legendary Beasts of Johto and the Legendary Golems of Hoenn, alongside their respective "Trio Master" Pokémon Ho-Oh and Regigigas, took off in the same direction that both Xeno and I were flying away from. And the Legendary Deities and Legendary Lake Guardians of Sinnoh followed suit, running and hovering away from their respective Father.

When this happened, Odraude was no longer imprisoned by the collective telekinetic abilities of the Lake Guardians, and his broken body fell down to the ground. Odraude fell to his knees, before standing back upright, forcing himself to not resort to his broken arms because they would do him more harm than good.

"So…what comes next?" Draco Odraude still had the drive to defile the Alpha Pokémon, even if it was through his…colorful vocabulary at this point. "Are you going to…try to tell me of Your Kingdom…and get me to convert my beliefs…to desert the Dark One and serve You?"

If Arceus had lips and a mouth, It would be smiling devilishly.

"The only one that's going to convert…" Arceus spoke to Odraude for the final time. "…is Me."

Arceus wasted no time in initiating Its revenge against Draco Odraude and released only one ethereal arm from Its body. But under Its limited power against Odraude's incapacitated might, one arm fired from Its body was enough to clasp Odraude's face with one vindictive hand. And one simple "face palm" proved stalwart enough to topple Odraude back down onto his back, and into a crater in the earth.

With Odraude on the floor and writhing in agony at what he was certain was a flattened face he was just "blessed" with, Arceus spontaneously took to the skies with a mighty leap, using FLY until It was no less than a thousand feet above Draco Odraude. From here, Arceus immediately had Its one and only Pixie Plate appear as a ring revolving around Its body, a satellite to Arceus' planet. The power of Its elemental plate was equipped onto Its body, and like blood coursing through a body, all of Arceus' body that wasn't a holy white spontaneously became pink in color. Arceus face, sclera, underbelly, mane, golden hooves, auric streak on Its head, and cross-like wheel took on the color of the Pixie Plate, while the entirety of Its body now took on the full power of a Fairy-Type Pokémon.

Knowing without hesitation that Draco Odraude was best resembling the properties of Dark-Type and Dragon-Type Pokémon, Arceus angled Its body so that It was upside-down and facing the Nameless Emissary. And right before Its face, Arceus began to voluntarily channel Its shifted divine energy into Its decisive JUDGMENT attack.

No more words were expressed between the Alpha Pokémon and Its target. All that was expressed by the Alpha Pokémon, once the power of Its JUDGMENT attack was fully charged, was an unleashed quintessence of obliteration that came in the emulative form of a meteor shower, entirely composed of pink light and trained like heat seeking missiles to Draco Odraude.

Even in the distance that each and every single surrounding bystander had acquired by hastily fleeing from both Arceus and Draco Odraude, we could see what appeared to be a star storm that Arceus fired, and even feel the magnitude of Its attack when each and every pink streak of light impacted the floor of the Hall of Origin.

To Draco Odraude, it was as though all he was witnessing was the heavens above him unleash a deluge of explosive arrows down his way. And it wasn't long before he had disappeared from sight from the force of the detonations and the resulting plumes of blinding smoke that followed.

When that happened, and when Arceus' JUDGMENT attack ceased altogether, not a single voice was uttered in response to that. Because, as we were all witnessing what became of Draco Odraude as the smoke cleared, we heard Arceus' telepathic voice echo across all of our heads.

"He got away…"

(Song Ends)

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"Ignorance and deception can't save anybody. Knowing saves them." —Orson Scott Card ("Speaker for the Dead") (196)

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Before concluding for today, there are a few things I want to make clear.

1. As of 4/30/15, I'm officially TWO CHAPTERS AWAY from finishing The Path of the Aura II: Brothers in Arms! In terms of the general story, that's already one. The last two chapters will be an "Afterword II" (which answers questions involving my sequel story and where I'll go with The Path of the Aura III: Bonds of Blood) and a "Bonus Chapter" (which will be a secret until it's eventually uploaded).

2. In terms of my recent art hobby, I've already filled up half of a sketchbook, and will soon get myself a drawing tablet to complement the Photoshop CC 2014 program I already have. It will be a while for me to do digital drawing, because I want to complete my "practice" sketchbook first. As of now, I'm doing all thirteen of Organization XIII's weapons, from the Kingdom Hearts series (not the Roman Organization XIII of my FanFic series), and am finalizing the last of the thirteen weapons (which any KH fan should know without me telling you). After that, I'll probably practice by drawing sports cars, then settings, and then get into drawing living things, such as Pokémon.

3. Go watch Avengers: Age of Ultron tomorrow (or today or later). That movie WILL break records.