Ayyyyyyy, I posted earlier than a month after the last chapter.
Anyways, I got nothing for you all right now, so I'll just see you all later!
Chapter Seventeen: Zygarde, Magnificent Deity of Order.
Yveltal's hibernation and Clovis' death had created a disturbance in Kalos. With the God of Death out of commission, serious damage would be wreaked upon the ecosystem. While death would still occur, as it always had before Yveltal's creation, it would no longer have a sense of order to it. No longer would death happen with the purpose of allowing the creation of new life. With no deity to regulate it, death had no purpose, no direction. This disturbance went unnoticed by most, but deep in the bowels of Terminus Cave, the Snake of Order, Zygarde, was fuming at the interruption of its plan for nature.
"DISTURBANCE DETECTED." One of the hundred cells on Zygarde's body announced. One by one, the other cells repeated the same message, until the main body began to repeat the phrase again and again.
This was much to the annoyance of their human, who was sitting on the floor of the cave, using a computer for some unknown purpose. This human's name was Esmae, and they wore fairly casual clothing, save for their shirt, which had a green silhouette of Zygarde emblazoned on it. Clearly, they were more open about their status than most Legendary humans. They had short but unkempt blond hair, freckles all over their face, and shining green eyes. In addition, their appearance made it hard to discern whether they were male or female. After all, Esmae considered gender unimportant, and refused to use the concept all together, so they had no use for gender norms.
The annoyed human closed their laptop. "Zygarde, settle down!" They said. Their voice too made it hard to discern their biological sex. Zygarde did as their human asked and stopped repeating the overbearing phrase.
"ESMAE. FAILURE TO DETECT YVELTAL LIFE SIGNATURE. SCANNING YVELTAL DEN… COCOON FOUND! DISTURBANCE DETECTED! DISTURBANCE DETECTED! DISTURBANCE DETECTED." Zygarde began to repeat the phrase again. Esmae sighed.
"Good Arceus…" Esame said, standing up. They walked over to Zygarde, and tried to comfort them with a soft stroke on their head. This calmed Zygarde enough to stop speaking. A moment passed before they spoke up again.
"ACTIVATING PROTOCOL Z-10. SENDING SCOUT FORM TO ANOMALY." Zygarde announced. Suddenly, the numerous cells composing their main body began to separate. A small portion, about ten percent of them, moved away from where Zygarde usually stood and began to take a new shape. This new form was of a canid nature, but with Zygarde's color scheme, and a small scarf-like object tied around its neck.
In this form, Zygarde lost their speech capabilities (much to Esmae's relief), but retained their intelligence, though with some animalistic mannerisms. They barked at Esmae, and they knew instinctively what their now canine partner wanted. They ran to the dog-like cellular structure and mounted it.
"Guess we're going out for a little jaunt?" They asked. Zygarde gave a quick nod of the head and sped through the cave, rapidly following the path that led to the surface. They used their newly heightened smell to sniff out the location of the disturbance from hundreds of kilometers away. Zygarde noted something odd however, as he sped through the cold early morning air.
The anomaly was moving, and it was heading for Xerneas.
…
The night had passed and I hadn't gotten much sleep. Part of that was the fact I hadn't gone to bed until the dark hours of the morning, but the issues I had been contemplating were still present, as much as Sarah had helped with them. I did feel better than last night though, so supposed it was a good sign. But now I had to deal with more pressing matters.
Xerneas had awoken us in a panic, rambling in old english about how she was unable to feel Yveltal's aura. I already knew it had to be TDA. I mean, it couldn't really be anyone else could it. That meant we had picked wrong in choosing to protect Xerneas. I felt so stupid now that our plan had failed. Why would he have any reason to attack Xerneas first? He could have easily gone for Yveltal first, and the result would be the same. He hadn't even outsmarted us this time, we just fucked up and gave him an easy win.
But Reshiram had gone along with it. Wasn't she supposed to be vastly more intelligent than me? Shouldn't she have seen the flaws in this plan? Was it a test to see if I would be able to pick the plan apart? Or was she not as intelligent as she claimed? Gah! I can't think about this right now! Yveltlal has fallen to TDA, Xerneas is next, and I have no idea what to do!
We knew TDA would be coming for us any moment. The least I could do was get in some extra training to try and be a little stronger for when he arrived. Sarah and I had agreed to train outside Xerneas' den, and Absalon decided to watch us.
Sammy was by far my weakest Pokemon, besides Frenc, so I prioritized him. Besides, I was sure Grace could handle herself decently in a battle now. So I decided to pin Sammy against Snek, seeing as he was Sarah's only mortal Pokemon. Sammy seemed to be faring better than he was yesterday, but he was still obviously worried. The impending approach of TDA wasn't helping matters.
Sammy, while being at a type disadvantage, still managed to put up a good fight against Snek, and even almost managed to knock him out on one occasion, causing Sarah to swear in surprise. Absalon was absorbed by our training. It was as if he'd never seen a Pokemon battle before. Sarah seemed to notice this, as she became mildly annoyed at each excited gasp from Absalon everytime one of our Pokemon landed a hit.
"Is this your first Pokemon battle or something? What are you getting so excited for?" Sarah asked him in slight annoyance. Absalon shrugged.
"Xerneas and I don't get out very often. She doesn't like civilization that much…" He said, a tone of sorrow at the last line.
"What's her problem?" Sarah asked.
"She thinks it's too noisy, or that the cities are too polluted, or that it's too boring. Honestly, her excuse changes every month." He replied, chuckling bitterly.
"Do you want to go out more often?" I asked. Absalon nodded.
"Yeah. But I don't want to bother Xerneas about it." He replied.
"You should talk with her about it. I'm sure she'd be happy to let her human get into the big city every now and then." Sarah chimed in. Absalon sadly nodded his head.
"I'm not so sure." He said. I was about to inquire why, when Xerneas emerged from her den. Her eyes narrowed when she spied Absalon.
"Absalon! What art thou doing just sitting there? Have you no ears? An attack is imminent! Thou must prepare thyself!" Xerneas yelled. Absalon opened his mouth to respond but Xerneas barked back a retort. "I do not wish to hear your excuses! I only require that thou rise and prepare for battle!" She yelled. The now slightly terrified boy nodded quickly. Xerneas glared at us a little longer before retreating back to her den. Absalon looked back at us.
"She doesn't really like it when I say something that goes against what she thinks." He said bitterly. Sarah and I exchanged concerned looks.
"What do you mean by that?" I asked. Absalon shrugged.
"I dunno. She treats me like I'm a kid. Well, a younger kid than I am now." He kicked some dirt. "I'm fourteen! I should be able to have some say in what we do, shouldn't I?" Neither of us responded, seeing as we didn't know the first thing about parenting. Both of us were barely adults, and I had been orphaned for eight years. I decided to change the subject slightly.
"How did you meet Xerneas?" I asked him. Absalon sighed.
"I can't remember life without her. I dunno if I was just abandoned as a child or what, but I can't remember a day she wasn't there. She raised me, and she's always been kind of authoritative. Honestly, I'm not sure if she's had a human in a long time, or if she ever even had one at all before me." He said, pausing a moment before continuing. "I'm smarter than I look, you know. I know she doesn't see me as an equal, and I know all the other Legendary pairings are supposed to be equal partnerships. But ours just isn't." Absalon looked like he was going to continue, but stopped himself. He stood up and started walking back towards the den.
"Where are you going?" Sarah asked. Absalon didn't look back.
"I shouldn't be talking about her behind her back like this. She did raise me after all, so I should be more grateful. Anyways, it was nice talking to you two and seeing you guys battle, but I have to get ready." He said as he walked into the den. Sarah and I looked at each other once more.
"Yeesh, I guess not all Legendary relationships are perfect. But I guess I should know that what with me being Zekrom's partner and all." Sarah said, trying to lighten up the mood.
"Sarah, I think it might be more serious than that. I mean, you saw how Xerneas scolded him." I replied.
"What? It's not much different from how Zekrom scolds me." She said.
"Well… I apologize for saying this, but you deserve it most of the time." I said. Sarah shrugged.
"That's fair." She said. I searched for the words to describe what I felt was off with Absalon and Xerneas.
"He was just watching us train our Pokemon. And I don't see why he'd need to get ready so quickly. I don't mean any offense to him, but I don't think he'll be very useful in a fight." I said.
"Maybe Xerneas is just flustered now that TDA got Yveltal. We don't know what their relationship was. And I mean, remember Damian and Lin? You saw how Lin reacted when she was told that Damian died and shit. I wouldn't be surprised if they were lovers, so how do we know it's not the same for Xerneas and Yveltal? She could just be stressed." Sarah pointed out.
"But didn't Absalon seem… used to this sort of thing? Why would that be the case if this was just a one time thing?" I asked. Sarah paused for a moment, seemingly thinking on this.
"...Ok, you got me. But I don't think it would be a good time to bring it up right before a battle. We can address it if it really concerns you that much, but let's wait till after we get our asses kicked by TDA again." Sarah said with a half serious tone. My spirits weren't exactly uplifted by the insinuation that we would lose to TDA again.
"Hey, you don't know that he'll beat us…" I said with an admittedly small amount of confidence.
"Eh, we'll just have to see if our training has paid off. That, and hope our Legendaries are able to do more this time." She said jokingly. I could only nod to assure myself.
"Well, guess now we just have to wait for him to show up. Unless you're up for more training?" I asked. Sarah nodded. We stood up and moved to head to our battling positions, when I found myself tackled to the ground by something. "Shit!" I yelled. Whatever had tackled me began to frantically claw my back, causing me to scream from the unbearable pain.
Sarah quickly ran over and kicked the attacker off of me, eliciting a yip from whatever was on me. From the corner of my eye, I saw a grey blob fly several meters before crashing into some nearby bushes. I heard a grunt of pain followed by copious swearing coming from the bushes, before a small gey figure emerged out of them. My eyes widened in horror as I realized who it was.
It was the dead Weavile, Tranchant.