Chapter 31: The Tower Part Seven (Finale)

(A/N: Hey y'all, sorry it has been a while since the last chapter, life has been really busy but I still of course intend to keep writing when I find time. To clarify with some reviews I saw earlier, this is only the finale to this particular part of the story, not the story finale. I don't expect the story finale to be for a long time so no worries there. Originally I wanted to send out a notification chapter to clarify that this wasn't the finale of the story but I also didn't think readers wanted to see a story update notification when it wasn't an actual new chapter so that's probably my bad at the end of the day. Hope you enjoy the chapter!)

General

While Red, Crys, Mei, and Sapphire had their hands full with Team Neo inside the Tower of Mastery, the outside of the tower was not any less chaotic.

Yellow, White, and Serena were in charge of scouting outside and reporting in to the squad inside if enemies were attacking.

The idea behind the slightly imbalanced combat power of the two squads was that Yellow would be able to communicate more directly with local pokemon and the other two would use their Croaky (Greninja) and Amanda (Serperior) to respond quickly the second they detected an opponent.

Yellow was the first to notice that something had gone amiss.

A local Alomomola had alerted her that a big Magikarp was spotted coming towards the tower.

At first, Yellow didn't think that meant too much as Magikarps were common pokemon everywhere, but to her surprise, the Alomomola was very insistent that this was a cause for concern.

Turns out, when the local pokemon spot a 4 meter tall Magikarp, they tend to panic.

Yellow quickly messaged White and Serena who were both currently about 100 meters away and around opposite corners of the tower.

Both of them had the initial reaction that this must be a joke, but based on the timing there was no time to take any abnormal news lightly.

White responded first by saying she would come meet up immediately (using the GPS function on her phone) and she also added that she ask the other squad for backup.

Meanwhile, Serena let Yellow know that she was sending Fletchy (her Fletchinder) to scout the area in case it wasn't just a water based attack.

A few moments later, the scouting squad had met up and Yellow let them know that the giant "Magikarp" would be here in about 3 minutes.

Strangely, there was no reply from the team inside yet but before White could comment on it, Fletchy returned from her scouting mission.

Yellow let the rest of the team know that Fletchy had not seen anyone else, which meant that for now, the only suspicious thing was the gigantic Magikarp heading their way.

As if on cue, the Magikarp surfaced while the scouting squad was trying to figure out what the deal with the surprisingly small attack force.

Out from the giant Magikarp burst a bunch of Team Neo Grunts who were wearing tops adorned with Rainbow R's on them.

White had to stifle a laugh for a moment because of how ridiculous these "villains" looked coming out of the comically big Magikarp.

This potential laughter, was definitely killed off when the Team Neo grunts sent out a swarm of Gyarados.

"Well okay, I get why they this squad came in on a Magikarp but why was this the only attack force?" White thought to herself.

Around then, White's phone went off and she quickly checked it (while keeping an eye on the enemy that was starting to set up).

It looked like Red's team was also under attack?!

White quickly let her teammates know about the situation and they were both shocked. The team had split up mostly as a contingency against an air attack through the windows or something along those lines, but nobody had expected the full scale invasion to already have infiltrated their ranks.

White replied to Red with a brief explanation about the attack from the outside and a quick apology about not being able to help them out and then turned to face the issue at hand.

Red

So it looks like they were sending a smaller force to distract us outside.

I'm pretty sure that White and co. could handle them but it meant that we would be left with just the four of us to fend off potentially countless Team Neo opponents.

I let Mei, Sapphire, and Crys know that the enemy was conducting a two-pronged attack and Sapphire quickly replied with a "That's alright, we can handle the grunts here easily with just us eight."

I wasn't sure what she meant by the eight here but then I noticed that she was gesturing towards Chic and co.

Of course, she would put the pokemon first, I shouldn't be surprised at this point.

Her comment put a smile on my face, but I didn't have time to linger on the sentiment.

Crys quickly pulled me out of my brief moment of distraction when she suggested "It looks like they're definitely using more than one pokemon, if they're not going to follow the rules, we can probably be pragmatic about how many pokemon we use as well."

While I wasn't much for unsanctioned usage of multiple pokemon, I had to admit that the horde style battle we were having right now was probably the time to be pragmatic about this.

Also, before I forgot, I let the others know that these were not your average Team Neo grunts, they definitely felt more difficult than the typical ones and it even looked like they had some strategy and synergies planned out with their combinations.

"If I had to guess, the group that invaded the tower was probably one of the more elite squads in Team Neo. Looks like they're serious about getting something here in the tower." I finished with this warning.

The first wave of opponents made contact with us as they attempted to exit the large stairwell that lead to the basement.

It looked like they (Neo) had refrained from using huge pokemon like steelix as it was impractical to be in a confined area like that with pokemon of that size.

An Aggron and Metagross were some of the key opponents that lead the first wave of opponent pokemon.

With the help of Chic's powerful fire and fighting moves, we easily repelled this first group thanks to an overwhelming difference in power and typing.

The initial group of grunts retreated and without missing a beat, another group replaced them.

This one had a large concentration of water types, I wasn't sure why they were so focused on monotype pokemon in these waves as it just meant that Saur had a great matchup in this case.

They seemed to change their strategy and focused a large amount of water attacks on Chic, to which Chic expertly avoided or cancelled out a majority of them only taking a minor amount of damage due to the large number of attacks that were being fired.

We adjusted our lineup a bit and we let Saur and Mega (not to be mistaken with mega venusaur of course) take the vanguard.

While it was certainly a bit more challenging than the typical fights with Team Neo, even this "elite" squad had trouble surviving the powerful onslaught from our pokemon.

For the faster pokemon, Togekiss would handle them with crippling thunder waves, while the less mobile ones were getting thoroughly trounced by the firepower from the remaining three pokemon on our team.

At this rate, it looked like we weren't even going to have to bust out more than one pokemon at a time.

At most, it felt like we would just swap out pokemon for matchups and the like.

It seemed like the opponents were expecting to be suppressed this thoroughly either as I could clearly hear a grunt exclaim "This was way harder than what we were briefed on!"

Seems like that guy was an open book… if there were less opponents, I would really have liked to have an opportunity to interro…ask this guy some questions about their operation and its goals…

After 15 minutes of continuous battling, it looked like we had thinned out the massive horde of pokemon from the grunts.

I was about to congratulate the others on a job well done when suddenly five people in eccentric red costumes stepped up.

"We're the newly reborn admins of Team Neo representing the glorious Team Flare. Aliana, Bryony, Celosia, Mable, and Xerosic, which is my name, will be your opponents."

Xerosic was on the larger side of builds and he gave an odd bow after saying this. He then confidently stated, "we have claimed the power of mega evolution, let's see how you handle us."

Without a break, he sent out a Mawile which suddenly mega evolved with the gauntlet he was wearing.

A mega Houndoom, mega Manectric, Bisharp, and Mightyena followed suit.

It looked like they had gotten their hands on some very powerful mega pokemon, but I couldn't help but remark aloud "wait, why didn't you all bring a mega pokemon?"

"I didn't realize Mightyena was lacking a mega evolution…" the one called Aliana remarked apologetically.

"Aliana, shut up don't let the opponent know that we were incompetent in this case!" the one called Bryony reprimanded her teammate.

… Good to know that they were still the typical Team Neo type enemies that we were used to.

The battle commenced and Sapphire immediately matched them with a mega evolution of her own.

Mega Blaziken took the field and I briefly felt the strong desire to have Saur also join her, if only I had my own mega stone…

The battle raged back and forth and the opponent pokemon, while normally not pushovers, were surprisingly dangerous in their mega forms.

Manectric moved faster than I thought possible for its species, and Houndoom and Mawile as megas had incredible firepower.

The battle raged on and they proceeded to send in backup pokemon until we finally managed to wipe out their teams.

At this point, between the 5 admins and the countless grunts, we had probably defeated hundreds of pokemon altogether.

This was when an even more imposing man stepped forward with a mane of hair that looked like a lion's.

Next to him, a more familiar face in Team Magma's Maxie joined him.

The lion maned man spoke first, "Hello trainers, my name is Lysandre and I'm here to claim the power of mega evolution for the sake of Team Neo."

After introducing himself, he let out a Gyarados that was promptly mega evolved.

Maxie, who recognized some of us already, sent out his Camerupt and mega evolved it.

Two criminal team bosses here at the same time? This was a bigger deal than I thought.

While me and my teammates had swapped in team members a while ago, I wasn't sure if the four of us could hold up against boss level mega pokemon.

The battle began and while we were able to eventually dispatch the mega opponents (partially because it was 4 vs 2…) they proceeded to send out there other regular pokemon.

We triumphed in the end and the two bosses looked impressed.

"The idea was to have the grunts and admins wear you down so this battle would be simple but I must acknowledge that your group is certainly capable. How about this, in respect of your demonstration of power, if you surrender here, there is certainly an admin or higher role available in Team Neo for you. This is your chance to lead the new world order." Lysandre said this in a praising tone.

"It sounds like you don't feel too concerned about the fact that we just wiped out 10 of your collective pokemon despite all that so called fatigue. Regardless of the situation, we would never give in to your demands." I replied affirmatively.

My partners also nodded in agreement and stared back defiantly.

In reality, our teams were mostly exhausted at this point… I was really hoping they weren't going to clown car in even more Team Neo bosses from downstairs.

Maxie had a smug look as he remarked sarcastically "It's a shame that you are still resisting, I guess we will have to wipe you out."

He certainly did not look upset to be stating this, I wasn't sure what to expect with his comment, and in a few moments I realized that there was nothing that could have prepared me for what happened.

Maxie and Lysandre sent out Groudon and a large stag-like pokemon.

I quickly pulled out my pokedex for the first time in what felt like forever, and it read out the name "Xerneas" as well as some details about how it had the power to share eternal life.

Ah… okay so it's a legendary pokemon on the level of Groudon, perfect…

At this point, I was tempted to repeat the plan I had tried in the underground arena.

Under normal circumstances, if our pokemon were healthy, I think we could reasonably handle these legendary pokemon, but currently everyone was exhausted.

Unfortunately, retreating was probably not the best idea either as it was unlikely anyone in the tower could handle the legendary pokemon. I was also concerned they may inadvertently wreak havoc on the upper floors of the tower which would endanger our friends and the rest of the people in the tower.

To add insult to injury, Maxie held up a red orb b and suddenly Groudon changed into a form that I was not familiar with.

"Behold, Primal Groudon! The Red Orb allows us to finally harness the old sealed power that Groudon used to create land in ancient times."

… You've got to be kidding me, I swear to god if that Xerneas pokemon also starts changing form then we're seriously screwed.

I looked at my teammates and realized that we had all subconsciously taken many steps back, partially to not get stepped on by the large Primal Groudon in front of us, and also partially because it looked like we weren't sure how we were going to handle this.

I took charge and put on a brave face, "Alright, beating these legendary pokemon is probably not possible in our current state… but we need to stall time for our teammates to come back us up. Otherwise, I fear that Shalour City and Kalos as a whole are in danger."

The others agreed almost immediately and we started quickly planning a stalling strategy.

Lysandre seemed to have thought that they had already won and was fine with sitting back and observing how we'd try to resist.

Maxie on the other hand, had been defeated multiple times by dexholders in the past and was not going to give us that luxury.

Primal Groudon started with a fire blast attack that Mega Blaziken tried to repel with a flamethrower move.

Chic was overwhelmed and dodged the attack as our pokemon all spread out away from the fire blast.

"Tsk, fast enough to dodge that huh, mega evolution is no joke." Maxie said in an annoyed fashion.

"No matter, precipice blade isn't something you'll be dodging anytime soon." He said in an arrogant manner.

Precipice blade? That wasn't even a move I had ever heard of and I thought I was at the point where I had learned every move in existence…

Primal Groudon started glowing and gathering power, I felt a rumble from below my feet and instinctually recognized that this was not a good sign…

I told the rest that the plan was to try to cancel out and avoid as much as possible from whatever this move was.

Lysandre still hadn't even ordered Xerneas to do anything, it seemed like he didn't think we could handle this move.

Judging by the increasing strength of rumbling happening, he was probably right.

After a few more moments it looked like Primal Groudon was ready to launch his move.

We braced for it and then…

A tremendous torrent of water enveloped him.

Was that how the move was supposed to go…? Didn't really look like blades to me…

Of course, a few moments later I realized that this was the iconic hydro cannon move of Blue's Blasty.

Blue came down from the upper floors on the back of Blasty… no that was mega Blasty.

Meanwhile ,mega Lopunny also joined in with a mega kick to the face of Primal Groudon.

Shortly after, Platina joined us and, as expected, didn't need an explanation.

She assessed the situation and quickly started coming up with a plan.

She handed me two of her pokeballs and had Blue lend two of hers to Sapphire.

As the most capable trainers there, we were going to take down the severely weakened Primal Groudon and then handle the Xerneas threat afterward.

As this was happening, Maxie suddenly let out a roar "I KNEW WE SHOULD HAVE DONE THIS FIGHT OUTSIDE!"

"Desolate land doesn't work inside a building and Primal Groudon is 4x vulnerable to water." Maxie looked genuinely panicked.

We must have inflicted a lot more damage than I initially expected.

Wait, 4x? Does that mean that Primal Groudon was also part fire?

I had always thought it would make sense for the legendary pokemon that hibernated in lava to be part fire type, guess it was sealed away all this time.

Since Maxie had the generosity to reveal these helpful facts to us, I wasn't going to hold back in abusing it.

"Everyone, while Primal Groudon is recovering from having its precipice blade disrupted and the damage from Mega Blasty's Hydro Cannon, let's use our water moves and finish him off."

Without holding back, we let out a torrent of water moves and Primal Groudon was inundated with water attacks from every direction.

Primal Groudon proceeded to lurch forward and then hit the floor with a loud thud.

Maxie returned Primal Groudon to its ball, and I proceeded to get myself ready for the battle with Xerneas.

Suddenly, the sound of footsteps heading towards the entrance of the tower could be heard.

I really hope its not more opponents coming here… I thought to myself.

Luckily for us, Yellow, White, and Serena appeared and noticed our ragged looking group of pokemon surrounding Xerneas.

Serena gasped first as she must have recognized Xerneas as the Kalos native here.

Before I could explain what was going on, I heard a clapping sound as Lysandre returned Xerneas to its ball. "Magnificent, I didn't expect you to be able to handle Primal Groudon, and now that you have more reinforcements, it is time for Team Neo to make its tactical retreat. I look forward to our next bout Red and co."

Before I could retort, a smoke cloud bloomed from Lysandre's area and I could hear the sound of countless footsteps descending.

With that, the extraordinarily unusual trial at the Tower of Mastery had finally finished.

(Hey everyone, I know it has been a while since the last chapter, sorry about that, work has been really busy and I didn't want to rush this chapter out. Hopefully y'all enjoyed the longer chapter and I'll see you in the next one!)