The cold that settled over the base of the mountain and their camp was all-engulfing. Gary sat in one place, rubbing his hands by a crackling fire, while Flannery and Misty sat beside him, warming their own freezing palms. Gary thanked his lucky stars for the interval- continuing this battle at night might have been disaster for his army. He would be at a complete disadvantage, unable to see any of the goings-on around the battlefield. Things would unfold around him without him knowing, and who knows, at the end of it, he might have been the only one standing.
He had assumed that Wally and the others would have wanted to talk. But unfortunately, the conclusion of the first phase of the battle had shaken them all enough to realize that no amount of strategizing would save them from a grizzly death at this moment. It was just a matter of the sun rising and them facing their final hour. Gary was snarling to himself by now. He was starting to feel infuriated at Ash's absence. He'd rather just know right now if Ketchum was alive or dead. If Ash were indeed dead, Gary would go all out at this very moment. He would bring all his strength to the forefront and destroy Mount Pyre entirely, if he could.
He got to his feet, looking around him. He wanted to walk, just to get the stiffness out of his legs. He looked back at the fire before he walked into the expanse of tents. Flannery had retreated into an almost docile state of mind. In her helplessness to change the situation, the fire in her seemed to have slowly burned out. Misty, on the other hand, looked focused and driven, but utterly devoid of the capacity to direct either feeling in a particular direction. Her orange hair hung down in front of her, and even the glow of the flames could not make her look bright. In the corner of his eye, Gary could see Wally and May sitting very close to each other, talking in low voices. Gary did not want anyone near him. He did not need that.
Brock had disappeared into his tent with Claire soon after the last remnants of food had been cleared out. As Gary walked past this tent, he heard their voices, and found himself stopping to listen. The pair were talking like nothing had happened- their voices were strong and would fit into any regular conversation. They weren't conversing in lowered and strangled whispers like May and Wally had been. Gary was about to walk on after this realization, but when he heard the contents of their conversation, he could not stop himself from quickly taking a seat on the grass, leaning on a felled tree trunk. . He leant on it, listening to them, as they talked of home, and their favorite foods, and their favorite places.
"Ash's mum would make us this brilliant Oyster Sauce dip, and the three of us would literally sit outside dipping our fingers in. Pallet Town was the best thing about meeting Ash, I think," came Brock's carrying voice.
Claire laughed, a joyous, happy, and excited sound, so strange in this gloomy setting.
"Using friends for food, good plan. Why do you think Robin and I get along? Rangers are supposed to know how to cook. I'm not very good, but that guy…he can whip up something delicious from a bunch of berries I've never even seen before. I mean, half of them still look poisonous to me…"
The pair laughed, and Gary found himself grinning. Yes, he didn't need people…but sometimes, people were nice.
"We should have a cookout after all this is over," Brock said, his words hanging in the air. Claire did not respond, probably because she was thinking the same thing Gary was- would they still be here after 'all this' was over?
Claire and Brock abruptly stopped talking, and now it seemed like the only thing Gary could hear was his own breath. He turned to Pyre, to the remains of where they had fought, and when he caught his breath and listened to the air around him, his heart began beating much faster. The silence covering the area was suffocating. Pyre was entirely still. Unnaturally so…
Gary got to his feet almost at the exact second after the sky exploded in light and pillars of flame erupted all over the camp. Before screams erupted, Gary used the power of Umbreon to speak out to his forces, all of them, wherever they were. He spoke as quickly as possible, and he was sure his low voice would be heard.
"Surprise attack. No regiments, no time. Get organized quickly. Stay alive until I think of something."
Trainers and Rangers emerged from tents, shaking off their grogginess instantly. They ran to where the flames roared. Gary, still looking up at the sky, subconsciously made a noise very much like a gasp. He hoped the rest of the army did not hear his rapid heartbeat.
Dragons…
Gary stood in shock as shadows of wings and tails emerged in silhouettes against the inferno of Flamethrowers and Dragonbreaths in the sky. A beast of a Salamence hung in the air, but Gary could not see how such a heavy beast could even float. Multiple dragons traversed the sky, destroying whatever and whoever they could. Gary recoiled as he watched an artificially enlarged Altaria and Flygon rout Tate and Liza, who could do nothing as the power of the dragon in magnified form washed over them. Gary could not move in time to help them. In fact, he could not move at all. He was rooted to the spot, unable to lift a finger. He had not expected this. He had thought of the possibility of a surprise attack at night; Sven would not lose any opportunity to wipe them off the face of the earth. But he had not expected it in such force.
Gyarados appeared in light, shooting back jets of ice-cold water at the flying beasts, all of whom chose to, at that moment, assault the water-dragon with an endless number of Dragon Claw attacks. Gyarados's resistance lasted for all of two minutes before he was overwhelmed. Streams of blood began swiveling through the air. Brock's Steelix had been rendered unconscious seconds earlier by a combination of Hyper Beams that must have originated from the mouths of all four large Dragonites levitating at the back of the company.
By the end of the first dragon onslaught, Gary had watched a quarter of the trainers and Rangers collapse, dead or unconscious. He watched blood dripping from wounds on trainers he had spoken to not half an hour ago. Strangely, the power of Umbreon seemed to glow much stronger while he watched the carnage unfold- as if Umbreon desperately wanted to enter into a battle she could not hope to win. He held her power inside him. He had no intention of losing focus on what was important. He needed to save as many as he could, to at least get as many of his friends out as he could. As if Wally and Gardevoir shared some sort of telepathy with him, the pair appeared by his side. Wally nodded at Gary, jumping down the cliff into the slope in order to pull Misty out of the destruction that had ensued around her Gyarados. Gary felt Gardevoir's clutch around his wrist, but before she teleported him to Brock, there was an explosive screeching sound around Mount Pyre, causing a pressure bubble to burst inside Gary's head.
What now?!
The darkness lit up in purple light for a second before light flashed amid the group of enemy dragons. When the smoke cleared, four Dragonites were crashing to the earth, lifeless. The entire world seemed to have stopped. The Rangers and Trainers, motionless, watched the savage dragon army that had just lost four. Wally held onto a shrub sprouting out of the soil as he watched the sky. The enemy dragons had put a pause to their rampage, and now their heads jerked right and left, up and down, rapidly. Gary looked up at the dark night.
There was another screech, this time much louder, followed by a series of screeches accompanied by small explosions of light. The gleam of light gave Gary a sudden silhouette that disappeared much too fast for him to make anything out other than an ambiguous shape- a creature he could not recognize. He watched as a group of Flygon and Altaria suddenly dropped to the muddy ground, lines of blood flying vertically into the wind as they made their descent. All of a sudden, the gigantic Salamence, the beast that was sure to give Gary nightmares for weeks, emerged into the night, threatening to blot out the entire sky with its size. There was a very familiar figure on the monster's back- Maxie's hair made him cut a very noticeable figure. As fury rose in his stomach, Gary realized he was powerless to stop a man on a Salamence that dangerous. Maxie's taunting, enraged voice filled the mountain side.
"Show yourself! Stop hiding in the shadows!"
Another high pitched screech made Gary cringe, this time making Maxie and Salamance veer out of the way as an entire cliff-face collapsed above them.
"Face me, Maxie, Lieutenant of the Dark Apostles, and submit to justice!" Maxie screamed in challenge.
There was complete silence. The night seemed even more all-enveloping to Gary, before Gardevoir swept him away, depositing him on different soil. In several rapid seconds, she teleported back and forth, bringing back all his friends. Misty collapsed roughly to the soil, attempting to quickly get to her feet before the next attack. Flannery hoisted the other girl up and allowed her to lean. May and Wally ran up to join Gary, May's hand tight around Gary's wrist. He watched as the skies remained quiet and ordinary, as if nothing had happened, as if the attacker had decided to simply infuriate Maxie and then flee. Soon, Gary, Brock, Misty, Flannery, May, Robin, and Claire formed a semi-circle, watching Maxie as he circled the air on his Salamence, urging his mystical attacker to show himself.
All of a sudden, he appeared. Gary let loose a low whistle as Ash Ketchum appeared out of thin air. He was perched on a dragon with scales black as night, and two long and deadly blade-like protrusions that gleamed with bright red blood. Gary had never seen a Garchomp up close. He had never wanted to…
Ash got off Garchomp, and instead of finding a hand hold to climb down the twelve foot tall dragon, he simply jumped, landing nimbly on his two feet. He did not look back for a second, but Gary felt something different, something off about Ash as the black haired boy walked forward casually, looking up at Maxie floating in the sky.
"The coward who runs finally joins the fray! Done hiding, Ketchum?" Maxie called out, glowering.
"Justice? Is that what you call yourselves now? Where's your Leader? Ask him to come down, face me like a man, or I'll teach his Lieutenant a lesson he'll never forget. And if he doesn't learn, I'll kill him and every other Dark Apostle on this battlefield," Ash said. After hearing his voice after months, Gary loved the anger he felt. Ketchum was back. And no one was more relieved than Gary. Beside him, Flannery had stopped reacting altogether, her eyes focused on Ash and only Ash. Maxie stretched out his hand, palm facing Ash, and hurled flames. Ash disappeared along with Garchomp. The flames hit the soil and smoked the ground.
"Don't play with fire unless you want to get burnt, Maxie," came Ash's calm and taunting voice from above. Ash was hovering in mid-air, twenty five feet above the ground. "I'll show you fire."
He took in an immensely deep breath, and blew out a pillar of red hot flame. The flames hit Maxie like a truck, causing him to topple off his Salamence's back, and crash messily to the ground. Salamence reared, ready to charge, but Ash had disappeared again. He reappeared on Salamence's massive head. The dragon screamed in rage, but Ash stretched out his hands and clasped the sides of the beast's head. There was a collection of dark energy Gary knew to be Absol's between Ash's hands, and all of a sudden, Salamence had tumbled to the ground, eyes unfocused.
Ash leapt off the unconscious Pokemon, landing not three feet away from Maxie, who was attempting to stand. Without a word, Ash landed a ferocious punch on the ex-Magma Leader's face, and Gary heard facial bones splinter into pieces. Before Maxie hit the ground again, Ash simply raised his hand. A column of smoky ice rose up and pinned Maxie in place, allowing only his head to protrude out of the icy imprisonment.
Guess we have our own super-soldier now…
Gary watched as Ash Ketchum looked up at Mount Pyre, with all his friends, trainers and Rangers standing behind him. Ash had not noticed anyone else's existence but the enemy, though.
"You have till morning to surrender, Sven. Choose wisely. Either I kill all your soldiers or I kill only you. Either way, I'm coming for you."
Once again, the mountain was penetrated by silence. But Gary was happy that the silence was caused by his arrival. Ash turned on his heel and walked straight past them towards the camp, which was now a large group of tents along with campers simply looking at this new arrival. Gary could tell that his rival was different, and he had no doubts after Ketchum's rather bored and blank, even non-existent greeting. Ash suddenly stopped when he had walked past the entire group. He looked back.
"Do you have any food? I'm starving."
Gary grinned. He could not stop himself, even though he wondered how Flannery felt at this moment- Ash coming back to save them all, but not bothering to acknowledge her. But then again, he hadn't acknowledged anyone- only food.
The thirty feet around the table seemed to be covered in a blanket of silence, apart from Ash Ketchum munching viciously on food. He swallowed soft slices of bread in one bite, and downed mugs of hot soup in seconds. The Rangers serving up food watched in awe as Ash ate enough food for six people and still stretched out his hand for more. Misty didn't say a word as he ate; she just watched him, like everyone else was. She observed his every move, noting how he had grown by what seemed like five years in muscle and facial hair. His beard covered his jawline and made him truly look like he had been hiking for a year before he suddenly realized he wanted to leech off people for food.
His eyes were what Misty noticed the most, though. Ash Ketchum had managed, through his late teenage years, the difficult art of managing to hide his emotions with disguised faces. But he had never managed to stop the feelings from reaching his eyes. There was an odd focus in Ash's eyes, like he concentrated on something he wasn't looking at. She felt waves of…determination coming out of him. It was almost like he felt that this was not a reunion with friends, but a reunion with the Apostles. She had been initially impressed by the way Ash brutally destroyed the enemy not half an hour ago, but the feeling soon changed to doubt. She had never seen Ash cast the spell of destruction with such a lack of hesitation before- it seemed overly violent and merciless, qualities Misty had never associated with him.
There were a loud series of crunches as Ash began eating a particular piece of toast with melted butter. He moaned a fairly loud 'Mhmmm' and finally sat back, sighing. Eight plates sat in front of him, each and every one scraped clean. He looked around, at the bewildered group of people simply watching him. Watson, now looking very much like a disheveled old man rather than the usual electric and energetic Gym Leader, looked absolutely awe-struck as to how a young man of Ash's size had consumed that much food in one sitting. Or perhaps he was still recollecting Ash's bold arrival. Flannery was a mask of calm, watching for Ash's next move. Ash opened his eyes abruptly.
"How many have we lost and how many do we have left?"
Gary, not perturbed in the least by how random this question was, answered.
"After the massacre we faced today, we have, say, three hundred eliminated out of the six hundred and forty." Misty could not believe what she heard. Almost half their trainers and Rangers had not survived the day? One half of the battle had wiped out half their forces, and Sven hadn't even been getting started. Ash nodded.
"There aren't going to be any battle plans that will change the future for us. We attack at sunrise, on my cue. We'll smoke them out. Or rather…freeze them out," he said.
Without a doubt as to how Ash would accomplish this, Wally nodded.
"We get the mountain to open its mouth for us, and we shoot straight in."
"Exactly. And…literally."
"Sorry, what?" Brock cut in.
"We break open the mountain. We explode their very headquarters. Get every single soldier out onto the battlefield. I doubt he's let out his main force?" Ash demanded. Gary nodded.
"Let out only a few out at a time. Played with us like we were kids."
"We are kids in the face of this."
"In the face of what, Ash?" Flannery asked. Ash exhaled slowly.
"Do you remember the plan? The plan we chalked out in Wally's house in Lilycove? What I planned to do, where I planned to go? And then after I went through the first Gate underwater?"
"I saw you go through a circle of dead stuff, but that's where it ended." Gary said, next to Misty. She watched as something strange passed over his face, but she had no idea what that was about.
"It's a long story, one that I'll tell you guys once this is all over. But we were right about everything from the beginning. Birch and Oak were right all along. Souls- that's exactly what it's all about. When I went to Aryon, the icy place, with Professor Oak ages ago, we might have started the entire cycle. I don't remember exactly what I saw over there, but I know now that I saw the souls of a huge number of Pokemon, souls that had come to rest in this place because it's so…removed. I absorbed Lugia's soul then."
Misty coughed, and Brock's eyes widened instantly.
"You mean, the one that…from then?"
Ash made eye contact with Brock, and nodded.
"I passed through gates that blocked passage into a world under Aryon- filled with souls. And I met the friend I was searching for in Fortree." He said, nodding at Gary and Flannery, who nodded back silently.
"And I found out about everything. The origin of it all, and through all of that…I was able to think of exactly what Sven is doing. He's creating the ultimate soul. He's combining everything he has, all the rare Pokemon souls he has, into one. Inside himself."
No one said anything for a short while.
"How do you know?" Gary asked.
"Because I know how to do it. Because I am doing it. It's the only way we can beat him, make him pay for what he's done." Ash stretched out his palm, letting it face the sky. A tiny ball of fire appeared, spinning slowly like a top. All of a sudden, it burst in a cloud of smoke and was replaced by a reflective ball of ice that seemed to be colder than the depths of this Aryon itself. With another flash, the ball turned into a smooth sphere of black energy, crackling purple every now and then until it transformed into a sparking jagged blade of purple electricity. The electric current fizzled out into the air with a stream of smoke and Ash looked at them, as if it explained everything.
"Okay. Okay," said Gary.
"At least explain why you just ate more than a Snorlax would eat in an entire day." Misty stated, trying to lighten the mood. She thought she was successful when she heard the others laugh softly, until Ash replied grimly.
"I'm not eating for just me anymore, I think. That and I haven't eaten in a while," he said, not batting an eyelid, saying his words like he had memorized them for a test. He began walking away, towards the first empty tent he saw, illuminated by a small lantern. He turned before he disappeared inside it.
"Just make sure you're all ready for tomorrow's first attack. All the explosive offensive power you've got, in one shot. We'll tear his mountain apart."
Gary merely nodded, unable to say anything else to this Ash he did not know. The light within the tent faded out into the dark. The others stood quietly for a few seconds, until they walked away, either on their own or in pairs. Gary made his way to his own tent first. He was followed by Brock and Claire. May and Wally, now holding hands, Misty noticed, separated themselves from the group and left for their own version of peace. The Gym Leaders from Hoenn left then, one by one. Misty had begun pulling Robin away with her, but then she noticed Flannery, standing quite awkwardly on her own. When Flannery noticed Misty's gaze, she looked up. Her eyes told her confusion. Misty looked at Flannery for a few seconds, and then looked towards Ash's tent. As she watched, Flannery walked in the opposite direction, and entered an empty tent on the other side of the clearing.
The trials of connecting with someone were already difficult, Misty knew. And Flannery seemed to be the type of girl who understood relationships well. Misty knew she was incorrect to make that assumption right off the bat, but there was a steady sort of experience in the red haired beauty that rode at the forefront of her character- a stability that made her so headstrong. Misty had watched her walk into her tent, and had really wanted to go after her and reassure her that things would be alright. But Robin tightened his grip on her forearm and shook his head.
"There's a war tomorrow. Let her be. She's a Gym Leader. She knows she needs to focus on what's happening. We can all find out what's wrong with Ash after this."
Misty had forgotten that Robin had only heard things about Ash, but never met him. He would have heard tales of heroism and fun, of Ash's cheesy humor and untimely sarcasm. The Ash of now had been wiped of these qualities completely. The cleansing had begun soon after the Dark Apostles had arrived in Hoenn, but the job had clearly been finished in Aryon. Misty felt like Ash was slowly losing connection to this world, even more than he already had. There was a sense of insensitivity about him, in the way he had shattered Maxie into what seemed like a hundred pieces. And there was something very frightening about him, arriving right in the center of things at supersonic speed on a Garchomp, freezing things and burning things at the same time, and most of all, his dangerous threat to the entire mountain. Misty wondered only if Ash could possibly kill all the Apostles with his newfound power, she didn't wonder if he would. The threat had been all too real and blunt for it to not be meant. She was led away by Robin, her fingers interlaced in his. The cold of the night was settling once again, even though there weren't many hours for dawn to appear. And what a horrific dawn it would be- the day was opening its stalls for more death and destruction.
