The older Professor Sycamore came back around three weeks later, the Saturday before Ariel's birthday which was the fifteenth of November. His eyes were sunken with bags under them, and he looked a bit thin, but he maintained a positive façade.
"Tough time with the royal family?" Blanche asked, trying his best not to smirk.
"Huh?" the Professor said, stumbling mid-stride. "Oh, no, it's unrelated. I've sorted that out for now but there's more important stuff to…" he stopped mid-sentence, nearly collapsing into a chair and coughing. "Never mind. Nothing you kids should waste time worrying about. Time's precious, after all."
"Any Anomalies?" Shauna asked, stretching her arms with a click in her elbows.
Augustine waved his arm haggardly, staring through the back window that led to darkness. "No… in fact, you all can leave. Go spend time with your friends or whatever you kids do for fun."
"Feeling a mid-life crisis?" Blanche offered.
"Ha, I wish," Augustine said, sounding positively miserable. "I think I'm going to call up my father and see how he's doing. You all do the same for your relatives. They'll appreciate it, I'm sure."
Rosa gave a rigid salute, standing to attention.
Blanche felt sobered all of a sudden, like a cold wave had just crashed over him. It wasn't out of concern for his parents, because he couldn't remember them in the first place, but for his friends.
Serena had her mother and so did Rosa, most likely, and the Professor had mentioned Michael's, but everyone else? Shauna, Trevor, Tierno, they had all been living with Serena's mom for a year at least. Clemont had mentioned his sister and only his sister, not saying a thing about his parents.
And the worst part was that they didn't even recognize that as the tragedy that it was.
"Aveline, we need to talk to Lysandre for a debrief," Augustine said, his voice sounding regretful. "It's classified information, but still nothing any of you need to worry about. Blanche, I'm looking at you."
Our bandage babe in chief held up his arms in surrender. "I acknowledge that I can be nosy, my bad."
"Maybe keep a hold on that for the next week or so. Might make you feel better…"
There it was again, the Professor just trailing off.
He never did that, except when he'd been severely off-balanced by whatever stupid shit Blanche had just said. Was he just tired? He'd just gotten told off for being nosy, so thinking about it only compounded his minor amount of guilt.
He shrugged. "If you say so, boss man."
Not that it helped anything.
Blanche's head was placed against the dining room table, his forehead feeling cool on the wooden surface as he continued annoying Ariel.
"You can't tell me that there's nothing you want to do for your birthday."
She hummed as she worked at her homework beside him, some physics work about equal and opposite reactions. Blanche wasn't the smartest guy when it came to emotional intelligence, but he excelled in most science that helped him kick ass. Rosa was similar in that way, but tenfold and much more specialized. And he knew very well that punching something that pushed back harder would only break his wrists, so he helped her with the diagrams when she asked, not even looking at the paper.
"I've never celebrated it, it's no more special than a Tuesday. And truly, it's not very accurate since the church found me in a basket as a mere babe."
"So you're probably older than me even if I was born in December," he groaned. Seriously, why did he have to be so young? It only prolonged the presence of those thrice-damned hormones. "But you could, I don't know, go for a walk with Audino in one of the plaza parks while we set up a surprise party."
She hummed again, a slight giggle sounding through. "I think that the surprise wouldn't work as well if I knew when to expect it. But it is the thought that counts, I suppose."
"It's still important." His voice was muffled a bit because of the wooden table he was speaking into. "We've celebrated everyone else's birthday, we can't just skip over yours. Come on, what do you want? A new jacket?"
"A good sister chooses to live in squalor, but I do enjoy the one I have. Any more than that, well, I just couldn't accept it." Her attention returned to her homework. "What is it called… a vector quantity?"
"Velocity, acceleration and force are vectors since they got magnitude and direction. Speed and time are scalar since they're directionless," he recited from his own notes without looking at them. Ariel, evidently, was not looking at his notes either, which was respectable.
"I see. It's saying to create an example of an object accelerating to a slower velocity… isn't accelerating only increasing?"
"It means increasing or decreasing velocity."
Rosa passed by somewhere, with Blanche recognizing the sound of footsteps before she opened the squeaky cupboard, the one that was filled with snacks for as many hours as Rosa hadn't remembered it was there.
"I used a FLARE Ranger punching the sky after moon jumping, and that they would slow down over time because of gravity and resistance from the sky," Rosa said, before her voice dropped to a whisper. "I don't think the sky likes being punched. I drew a smiley face though, so I think it'll be fine."
"Valuable input," Blanche said, still not lifting his head. "Have you already finished it?"
"Yeah, I didn't want to have anything to worry about at home so I did it in class."
"...But the Physics teacher only gives homework right before the bell."
"Really? I thought it was classwork."
Ariel's pencil scribbled.
"Don't copy Rosa," he said automatically. "You know how the teacher is about plagiarism."
"I do remember when they thought you had stolen Trevor's homework."
"I'm not a delinquent. Wish Shauna never started that rumor," he grumbled. It went without saying that his teachers had noticed when he turned out to know a lot of stuff even with amnesia, which was still the story he was going with, as well as noticing Shauna yelling at him for extorting homework or whatever set her off that day.
A hand slapped against his scalp, meaning that Shauna had just walked back into the room.
"I said sorry, idiot," she said. "I'm not going to do anything like that again."
"Afternoon to you too, Ponytails," he said, lazily rolling up. Shauna had already passed by to get to the fridge, but he saw her shrug.
"Pft. Well, you know what they say about dumb blonds. No offense, Ariel."
Her head bowed to the side in confusion. "Do you spell it with an 'E'?"
"Eh?"
"Is Serena feeling alright?" he asked, leaning into his fist and lazily looking over to Shauna.
"...No, she's still nauseous," Shauna complained, evidently deciding that insulting him wasn't as important. "She was fine when she went to bed, too. It's an upset stomach, I think."
"Maybe she spent a little too much time looking at me," he said without thinking.
He'd meant it as a comment about her habit of insisting he wear the red hat, but given his own habits, it was obvious why Shauna squawked in indignation and ran over to slap him upside the head.
"Don't say things like that!" she yelled as Ariel recoiled to the side. Rosa was peaking around the bar, still shoveling caramel popcorn into her mouth.
Blanche made the ever so intelligent decision to play it off as a joke, saying, "What, do you think she enjoys looking at me? Jealous?"
She was clearly torn between calling him a pervert and just shouting a denial. He could tell just by looking at the shade of her face. Was flushing when you got angry really that common?
"Just… don't say things like that," she said, much quieter than he expected.
He sighed. Tierno had said a lot of the same things, but with obviously different intent from Shauna. "Yeah, yeah, alright."
Ariel scooted back over and returned to her homework, Shauna chiming in with an answer about how magnetism would be a pulling force or a pulling force depending on the location of the magnet and the direction of the acceleration.
Rosa, naturally, continued to eat snacks and say absolutely asinine things that completely fit the guidelines given for original examples.
A certain sort of peace had settled in the apartment. Not in the sense that there wasn't any tension, Shauna made sure there was plenty when he was around, but that it was comfortable.
From a room on a higher floor, a series of beeping cut through the floorboards and ceiling plaster, and soon after, a crash.
Blanche looked up to the ceiling, confused. Tierno had decided to hit the gym (Blanche had not, still drilling Ariel with questions about what she wanted for her birthday) and Serena wasn't feeling well that day.
Trevor stumbled down the stairs not ten seconds later, running over to them before nearly collapsing.
"There's a…"
Three chimes rang out from three pockets simultaneously, the FLARE alert making them perk up.
"There's… turn on the news," Trevor puffed out, hands on his knees.
Blanche confusedly stood up, moving to grab the remote while fishing his Holo Caster out of his pocket.
He clicked the television on and saw a black bar above the cartoons currently playing. There were too many teenagers in the house to keep the channel set to anything important.
EMERGENCY ALERT
URGENT MESSAGE FROM LOCAL AUTHORITIES
PLEASE CHANGE YOUR CHANNEL TO A NEWS STATION AND LISTEN TO AND FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY
He pressed down on the channel button with a spike of panic driving through his spine.
A newscaster sat in front of an unedited green screen, shuffling papers with a somber look.
"This is," the middle-aged man began, his voice cracking slightly, "An emergency alert from the United Regions and FLARE to our Kalosian listeners. If we are lucky, there is nothing to worry about. As of 5 o'clock today, an official memo was released to the public detailing the trajectory of a large meteoroid approaching the Earth. The approximate size is twenty by ten by five kilometers."
The man shuffled his papers again, looking off the set with a hopeful look.
"That can't really be it, can it? That's twice the size of Lumiose-3."
"Read the script," commanded another voice.
The man choked, before coughing and beginning again. "The meteoroid is predicted to strike the Earth somewhere on the Eurasian continent at 11:08 this evening. At the current velocity, it is believed that the crust of the Earth will be shattered. If we are struck…" The man paused, the veneer of professionalism cracking once again as a single sob escaped his lips. "Life on Earth as we know it will come to a close. People, Pokémon, all of nature. Please, anyone-"
"Stay on script!"
"I don't care what gods you follow! Helix, Arceus, those damn Storm Birds that always screw with the forecast, Xerneas, Yveltal, Zy-"
Two other men hustled onto the set, dragging the man away as he cried.
"Pick a god and pray. PLEASE!"
The news broadcast shut off, leaving a black screen with an error message along with the constant buzzing.
The remote slipped from Blanche's fingers as Serena ran down the stairs, a stern look set into her face though directed at nothing.
"FLARE. Immediately," she said, tugging on her bag.
"Couldn't agree more. Ms. Grace will be heading there now." He stopped for a moment, thinking of the one thing people did when there was an emergency. "Along with everyone else in the city, I'm guessing."
Chespin ran across the kitchen tiles and jumped onto his shoulders.
Blanche opened his bag, shuffling arm-deep in hammer space before pulling out his folded bolter and testing his grip. His hands shook, though he tried to hide it.
Shauna looked up from her arms which tightly held Froakie and gaped. "Wait, why are you-"
"It's the end of the world as we know it," he said. "And I don't feel fine when it's going to be chaos in the streets in just a few minutes. Serena, get Fennekin and Rhyhorn."
"Right."
"Trevor, Ariel, behind us. I'm going to morph. The rest of you, act as civilians."
"Why?" Shauna asked, rushing to catch up with the rest of them as he kicked the door down. Hinges and all. The result of his adrenaline created a sharp crack as people ran through the street outside. Children looking for adults, adults looking for children, people looking for their Pokémon, and Pokémon looking for their people.
Blanche placed his morpher to his chest, itching to twist it into place. "I don't know much about people on a small scale, but when the world's about to end, people tend to throw shit they don't care about out the window."
Lysandre's hands were steepled in front of his face. Augustine's were held in front of his eyes as he curled into himself.
A singular switch sat between them on Lysandre's desk, perpetually a shade of green signaling its use.
"You know it's necessary."
"They'll be breaking down the doors soon. All those people…"
"You don't have very much faith, Augustine. You care too much."
"I'm a human, dammit," he said, dragging his hands across his face and revealing the deep bags under his eyes. "Did we have to tell them all?"
"UR-DRAGON knew. The council would have released the details without my input had I not negotiated." Lysandre's visage was hidden. "Too late for any long-term damage to be done. Too early for them to burn out their emotions. The information was released as I asked. We live in a world of pathos, Augustine."
"You don't seem to have any yourself."
"That is the necessary sacrifice. Should FLARE prevent this end, our funding will be secured. Should another, such as the… commonly favored Aura Guardian, step in, then we will not be criticized for being unable to control the situation. We aren't the United Regions, after all. We simply send them the bill."
"You remind me of Amaranth, sometimes. The kid's smart, and thinks a lot like you do."
"It is likely the other way around. I know a great many things, Augustine. If he is who you believe him to be, then perhaps it was a trigger of trauma that changed him."
"Like you?"
"..."
"...I apologize, my friend."
"It is not your fault that you cannot remember. It is also not the time to dwell on such things. The last resort is always possible, even if years of work will be undone. Zygarde will reenter hibernation, and will not awake for many more."
"It'll still come, eventually."
"Just as Xerneas brings life and Yveltal brings death."
The switch between them sat untouched.
"Rayquaza will likely interfere as well. The Champion of Hoenn does not keep a tight leash on his Pokémon."
"That's for the better, though."
"It is. And it is not as if we do not have alternatives."
"We're talking about millions of people and Pokémon, Lysandre. Don't just call them alternatives."
"A heart is a heart. An ace is an ace. A spade is a spade. A wild card is a wild card. The rest are minor compared to the major."
"You just like to play with a full deck."
"Something like that."
The switch remained unused
"Hey."
"Yes?"
"Do you think that if we make it to tomorrow, you can set me up with Diantha?" Augustine let out a tiny laugh, trying to cut through the mood. "She's been too busy to talk with a mere scientist recently. That's what her receptionist says."
Lysandre's expression was hidden as he appeared intimidating and cold.
"Even I cannot work miracles, Augustine. You can hope that tomorrow comes, as will I."
The sky was clear of smoke and fog, but a single cloud hung overhead as the sun approached the horizon. The cloud was not a cloud at all, however. It was the shape of a coffin, evenly approaching the Earth and growing slightly, minute by minute.
Jaune Plaza was filled with people shouting and Pokémon screeching, barking, or whatever sounds they could make. It was chaos. Pandemonium. Shards of glass littered the streets, with cries of pain coming every other second from those around them.
Blanche held his bolter across his heart, not daring to move it and appear to be aiming. He wasn't a fool. If anyone thought he was even possibly instigating a fight, there would be a riot, no doubts about it.
Police officers and FLARE grunts were standing on top of makeshift barricades, whether they be police transports or the roofs of the nearby MagLev stations.
And naturally, a fight did break out eventually. It was slow at first, a sudden outburst from someone more central to the plaza, before a wave spread outwards of people moving back.
"You all get to FLARE," he said to Serena, hoping that his tone carried through properly even with the mechanical change in pitch. "Talk with Aveline then brief me over the uplink. Let's set to meet at Prism Tower if things get too bad."
Serena simply nodded, the only one in their group to hear him. It was certain that any vocal responses wouldn't carry very well to anyone else.
Balance pushed himself through the crowd, the people in front of him growing more and more unstable, quickly clambering out of the way.
A man rained down blows on another held beneath him, swinging wildly and not responding even as the other pleaded that he stop.
And no one around did anything. They stood there as surely as Blanche would have if he was them. It wasn't their business. The world was ending, why should they? They all just watched glumly, giving in to their own uselessness.
Blanche had been there before, though. He'd been one of those people, a long time ago. But now, he was himself. He'd seen what could happen if he did nothing, the two options. He'd seen Trevor nearly be taken by a Nihilego almost a full year before, and he knew that there had been very few outcomes. The easy outcome where he did nothing because he believed himself to be too weak to do anything, and the difficult outcome. The outcome where he pushed back what he believed he was and acted as what he truly was.
Blanche didn't know what he wanted. Sometimes, he took the easy options, like passively denying that he was Calem to Serena but keeping a hold on his frustration. Other times, he stopped caring about what limits he thought he had and knocked out an Ultra Beast with a metal lamp post.
Suffering. The suffering of the people around him, the apathy of the very same. The pain that he knew everyone felt because he felt it too, and the unwillingness to do anything about it.
The world was ending. Most saw it as a reason to stop trying. Blanche saw it as a reason to do his best.
He clicked his bolter onto his waste, locking it into place before rushing behind the attacking man and pulling him off. They attempted to headbutt him, lashing back into his grip, but only succeeded in slamming the back of their head into his breastbone.
"You FLARE bastard! Why aren't you doing anything? Why are you just letting this happen?" the man shouted, pulling against Blanche's grip and his sunglasses sliding off his face with a soundless click against concrete. "All you do is control us, but when we need you, you're nowhere to be found!"
It was tragic, really.
Why?
Because Blanche recognized both of the men, as well as the girl that the man on the ground was protecting.
Clemont had shielded Bonnie with his body as Gin had mercilessly attacked him. His blue jumpsuit was torn in some places, his glasses crushed on the ground and blood dripping down his face. A tiny patch of flame, emblazoned on his left breast, was hanging by a thread, burns of decay surrounding it.
The Esper's fists were still crackling with a murkish black energy. His shouts broke through the muted chaos of the plaza, ringing out quickly. He shouted, "Damn you all!" continuing to struggle.
Blanche moved his arms from around Gin's upper arms to around his neck, using one to click a button on the side of his helmet.
A tiny slot slid back into the helmet, removing the voice modification.
"Gin, stop fighting. This isn't justice."
"Who the hell…" the greaser said, trying to turn to get a better look.
Blanche could tell what it looked like. FLARE abusing its power against civilians during a conflict rather than talking the aggressors down. It was unlikely that they'd get far enough for that to be a problem with the media. It was more likely to turn the impromptu protests and confusion into a full-blown riot with a domino effect.
That wasn't justice either. That was senseless violence, anger directed in the same ways as usual.
I'm not a psychologist, he thought, I don't know what to say.
But I can still try.
"Gin, you know me. It's Blanche. I'll explain everything to you when we all get out of his alive, but please stop. That guy over there, he's my friend. His name's Clemont, and that's his sister. He's a person, just like you. It's not his fault. There are much, much bigger bastards out there than a guy who wants to protect his sister. Can you see yourself? Can you see what you're doing? Or has a haze settled over your mind, that damn red mist?"
"You're not…" Gin wheezed, clawing at his arms and his joints laced with black lightning, "Blanche isn't an Esper, you bastard."
"I'm not. I'm not even close. What I am is someone with an outside perspective. You are attacking someone who's trying his best to be a good brother from what I can tell. Is that you? Is that Gin? What would LaRusso say? What would Lenore? What the hell are you doing with your power, Gin?"
"More than… you…"
His voice was rising, taking on a scratchy edge. "A hero doesn't do that to anyone. A hero protects as many people as he can. A hero stops when their enemy is downed. That's why there aren't any heroes, because a true hero will never do what needs to be done without becoming a hypocrite. The greatest hero this world has ever known is likely the one that broke it. That's just a matter of likelihood. It's a convention of the world we're living in. That's the way our world works. You're dealing with the same emotions that everyone is feeling by making them worse. You're extending suffering, creating more pain, not reducing it. The long-term at the moment is midnight, and probably not even then. So, why are you giving up so easily?"
Blanche loosened his grip, before turning on his heel and copying one of LaRusso's moves. The practice paid off, even if it looked a little too much like a ballet step when he pulled Gin over his head and threw him down into the pavement with a resounding crack.
Static burned at the edges of his vision, but Blanche couldn't see it. His periphery and his tunnel vision blended into one, and it became as if he couldn't see at all. He simply existed. He felt his existence and the existence of the world around him.
He pointed down at Gin, his finger shaking no matter how hard he tried to control it. "You're not the hero of this story, and neither am I. I'm going to do whatever I can to protect as many people as I can for as long as I can. You can do whatever you want with your life. You can give in, lash out, or start trying to find a damn solution yourself. I don't need to tell you what I'm doing."
There were tears flowing from Gin's eyes, the boy's body impossibly tense as he cried on the ground, his anger leaving him and being replaced with only sorrow and pain.
They were emotions that Blanche knew would become all too common if he didn't do anything, even as the sky above him grew closer.
He pulled Clemont to his feet, and his sister along with him.
Clemont tried to smile. His eye was beginning to swell shut but the flow from his mouth was stemmed.
"Get to FLARE. I'm going to head to Prism Tower."
"Why?"
Blanche looked to the ceiling of the world, encroaching and trying to make him feel smaller and smaller.
"I don't know. I'm going to do whatever I can once I get there. I'll need you for support. Thanks for everything." A thought occurred to him, so stupid in its simplicity and irrelevant that it made him crack a smile even in the bleakest of situations. "And if you see the others, well, just tell them that I'll owe them all the flowers I can buy if we make it through this. It's funny. I've been complaining all this time about what I've forgotten while forgetting something more important."
Blanche walked past them, through a crowd that split like a sea, his helmet clicking back into place and hiding his grin.
"This is my world now, and for all this time… I've forgotten how much I owe to it."
A camera feed from the RKS-2 was a small comfort in the FLARE Pokémon Lab. They all knew what was coming. Technicians had left to be with their families. Clemont had rushed off to make sure his sister was safe at home. Michael had left to call his mother who was still back home in Orre. Her dad was still meeting with Lysandre.
Aveline sat alone, listening silently to an empty communications channel. She was not as stressed as she supposed she ought to have been. Why didn't she fear the coming future herself?
Was it because she knew that the moment impact was made, there would be very little pain for her, and simply a flash of light?
Was it because it was inevitable? That was how most people coped with tragic certainties that were yet to come.
Or maybe it was because someone like her had nothing to fear.
The feed existed on a loop, replaying into segments separated across the monitor, to the first appearance of the meteoroid in the camera's periphery to the very moment that it was cut off.
The satellite would need to be repaired and relaunched. The RKS system couldn't run at full efficiency with only seventeen satellites, after all.
That was assuming that they would need to run at all in the near future.
Aveline saw it on the feed. She wasn't a religious person by any means, but she still clasped her hands. A silent cry, a show of solidarity. Either or both.
A pair of thin tentacles, red and blue, emerged from a crater in the meteor. They spun themselves together and violently grabbed the satellite from hundreds of miles away, even as it thinned from the width of highways to lengths of rope.
The satellite was crushed, the camera along with it, and the feed snapped to darkness before replaying once again.
"Blanche, whatever you know, whatever you remember…" she began, not sure what to say next. "I can't believe in myself to do anything up there… but you're just like me. I'm going to believe in you instead."
The outer airlock hissed, and she clasped her hands tighter.
"Is that alright?"
Prism Tower had stairs. That was as fortunate as it could be, since the elevator was out as the interior ground floor was used as an emergency center. It was the biggest landmark in the city, after all, and Lumiose-3 was a big place. People gravitated there or had their children go there in cases of emergency.
Blanche placed his foot on the first step of a staircase that led skyward. According to a map, there were four, one for each cardinal direction. Only the south was generally accessible to the public, the rest reserved for maintenance. Blanche started climbing up the eastern staircase.
A small part of him asked what the point was. Why fly so high just to die anyway? What could he do against a meteor?
He didn't know. He was too cowardly to defy destiny, wasn't he? Ever since he'd been reborn, he'd taken the easy options. Go to Kalos because it was easy. Join FLARE to avoid pain. Ignore any uncomfortable subjects for the sake of stability.
He clung to that idea. Even in a world so filled with dreams and nightmares, he refused to let himself fall asleep at all. He didn't have a plan after 2012. What was he going to do after they all graduated? Would they just scatter to the wind and go on their own journeys? Was Shauna right to be afraid of that? He certainly was.
A platform was reached, the metal grating leveling out, but he continued onwards.
He didn't have to look up to see the sky darkening. Just on the edges of his periphery did a static burn, and within that he saw the sun finally finish setting.
The moon was rising higher, offering only slivers of moonlight despite its fullness.
"It really was that obvious, wasn't it?" He asked himself. Weird dreams, the more memorable operations, hallucinations; they all happened around the full moon. Even if he dismissed them as anything more than nightmares, he should have put two and two together.
He was never a stargazer. He'd only looked when he was stressed or scared. That late night in December, there had been a full moon, he was sure of it. When he met MissingNo just a month before, the moon was full and the stars burned bright.
What the hell was it? A glitch in reality? Something from the depths of blue hell?
That didn't matter. It wouldn't if he wasn't right.
Because he felt it around him. It was in his body, sending shivers down his spine, a spider of lead crawling through his chest, a pain that lanced through each and every muscle. It was a bastard, and he was its avatar.
Fitting, he thought.
It was just like the bastard he was to continue fighting against hopeless odds instead of giving in.
The air screamed in his ears as he reached the true top of Prism Tower. Not the viewing deck, but the grated platform that would barely fit four people that neared the peak.
The sky pressed down on him. It was strange watching something that would be considered small if it were part of the landscape approach, and recognizing that once it landed, everyone would die. It was roughshod, gray and plasticky, like it was constructed of souvenir moon dust. It filled his vision when he looked directly up, the static in his periphery obscuring what remained of the natural night sky.
There was an emerald light coming across the horizon, like a tiny green arrow that streaked across the sky. It was small, and ignited in flames before striking the meteor as it crossed the edge of space. Space rocks and rubble exploded outwards to the far west, like an asteroid belt had just been created.
But the arrow of light fell to the Earth, descending back through the ozone layer. It crashed somewhere over the horizon. He couldn't see it directly, but he saw the huge plume of dust and heard the ear-splitting crack that followed a screech that could only belong to the Legendary known as Rayquaza.
Above him, a monster approached the earth. Blue and red tentacles, stretching for miles end to end. A single tentacle was likely wider than Prism Tower itself.
Deoxys.
Its face pressed down on him, its eyes showing no emotion as it fell towards Lumiose-3 with no opposition. Within its chest, a small sun seemed to glow. A cubic blue box, twisting and turning like a generator. The very same kind that had canceled out Serena's aura.
The hole that had been blasted in its shoulder swelled shut, not regenerating, but instead redirecting its mass. Rocks were still trailing from loose bits of its body, the size of train cars in and of themselves.
It stood out against the blackness of space, not making a single gesture to accelerate.
He knew it was a lie. It was still coming closer. A single impact couldn't prevent such a massive thing from making contact. Not when it failed.
And neither could he.
He grasped the handrails tightly, sending a rumble down them as he tried to relax.
Why was he there? To watch? To be the first to die?
No, that wasn't it. He didn't feel any selfish satisfaction. He didn't feel like a martyr. He didn't want to be one either.
And yet, he knew that it was what he needed to do, even if it would send him drifting across the cosmos or crashing back down to earth.
"Are you there?" he asked with only the crackling and bleeding-with-static air to answer him.
The communications line in his ears crackled to life, a somber but resolved Aveline answering along with everyone else. Clemont, Michael, Serena, Shauna, Rosa, Trevor, Ariel; even Tierno had found his way there.
"We're with you!"
He was shocked for a moment, but the shock was quickly replaced with a grim determination.
"Unlock my inhibitors," he said with gritted teeth, the static overwhelming him and spreading to the outside of his helmet. "Because I'm not giving up. I refuse to! Even if I die, I'll go even further. I will fight beyond death, because this is my world, and I'm not letting anything take it away from me!"
A picture appeared in his mind. A prototype, perhaps, but it would be what he needed.
He let go of the railing, clenching his fists by his side. He thrusted one skyward, as if his knuckles could pierce the heavens.
"Clemontic Gear Access: NSPACE!"
AIAM FIELD PATTERN: ERROR. MISSING NUMBER.
Designation: ERROR. MISSING NUMBER.
FLARE Designation: ERRO. MISSING NUMBER.
Clemont reared back as the prototype on the table disappeared. The mechanical wings and the fueling mechanisms hadn't been completed. It wouldn't work at all.
"But I haven't added the link. And it's not even called that." He looked at the unpressed button on his desk. "How is this possible?" He wiped his face, once again trying to clear his vision.
"He's going past the impossible, can't you tell?" Rosa said, finding her own resolve after a moment. "I… We have to go help!"
"Agreed," Serena added.
"Yeah, let's go!" She paused, her mouth moving but no words coming out. "Well, I'm not doing it for him or anything," Shauna said after a few seconds of internal struggle.
Trevor looked up and gave Shauna a dry look.
"Okay, fine, it's the end of the world, maybe I am."
"You all, go! Support him in any way you can!" Aveline commanded, speaking clearly and concisely. "Go!"
Hilbert Johannson stood on an island, not far from the coast of Kalos. A tiny piece of land adrift on the seas, a resting place for the Sea Spirit that made the cave its home.
They'd met, naturally. Occupational hazard, if one could call it that.
His rocky helmet was sealed over his face, giving him the appearance of a Golurk himself, as he watched the massive Pokémon enter the atmosphere. From so far away, it seemed small, almost, but it was above Prism Tower. The true size was evident when it made the region-wide landmark look like a house of cards.
A spark lit up the night on top of Prism Tower. It gleamed like a diamond in the sun, despite the land being shadowed beneath the moon. The spark, whatever it was, began rising through the air.
Hilbert shuddered as he felt a wave of pressure roll over him moments later. It was nothing major. Barely even a shift from what the air pressure was before, but it was there.
He still had a good feeling. His helmet melted away, his brown hair falling loosely as he smiled.
"Lucas is always telling me to believe in the next generation of heroes." He raised his arms and clasped his hands behind his head, looking to the stars that the Pokémon had left behind in thought. "Huh. Maybe I can retire before I turn twenty after all."
A gust of wind threw Blanche upwards, the backdraft sweeping his legs out from under him.
He didn't control the blinding wings of energy that had just appeared on his back. They were what he needed. That was the Gear, and that was all that mattered. It was what FLARE could give him in support, representative of everything that they ever had given to him.
He wasn't going to put it to waste by worrying about technicalities.
"I will go further," he said, and he accelerated. There was no muscle control, no computer. A need and a response. Was this his aura?
Static grew stronger around the edges of his vision. His vision was tinged with red, but not because of rage. If he had seen himself, he would see that the inside of his visor was simply reflecting the neon red light pouring out of his eyes.
The wings of energy tinged themselves with gold, the mechanical source on his back overwhelmingly hot. His chest was burning, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He couldn't afford to care about that right now.
Deoxys was still falling. A single tentacle, slightly faster in its advance, reached down through the atmosphere. It initially burned away to nothing, but as it grew wider it grew more resistant.
It passed by him by miles at least. It had sprouted from its arms, and it seemed like an inverse water spout as it poured downwards.
He didn't flex any muscles. He felt a need to cut it off before it could do anything, hurt anything, hurt anyone.
And the wings on his back responded.
He didn't understand the power. He didn't need to. His mind was clocking into overdrive, possibilities running themselves into the ground where he fell, was crushed, was burned alive. He discarded all of them, only looking for the one he needed. Not the future where he lived, but the future where everyone else did.
They could have treated him like dirt. They could have left him out in the cold. They could have believed him to be the same person that he believed himself to be.
But they didn't.
He was going to repay them in full, or as fully as he could, for as long as he could.
Cutting through the air, he pulled a pocket knife from his suits neck compartment, feeling the air jet against his skin. Would it cut through yards and yards of Deoxys's arm?
No. Not on its own.
As he raced toward it, he flicked the blade open, and an energy he didn't know he had, called, "Access: Progressive Knife!"
Mechanical parts strewn about the FLARE Pokémon lab disappeared. From shelves, from unused machinery, from things that Blanche had barely even seen, pieces were taken. The lights flickered slightly as the BURST was reduced to only a handle.
Clemont whirled around, hearing the buzz they were all too accustomed to. "What's happening up there?"
Aveline bit her thumbnail in thought. "He's doing it. I thought he didn't have aura… maybe we really are opposites. To have nothing but to borrow strength regardless… is that what it means to be human?"
A beam shot from Blanche's wrist, his knife growing in size and melting into exactly what he needed. The tubes from his shielding melted into the instrument as it expanded from a metallic hilt. The hum of electricity was overpowering in his ears. Two blades extended from the hilt, containing the beam within. A circular guard prevented his hands from slipping upwards.
He twisted the beam sword in his hands, a containment field springing to life and weakly containing it. It shrank to four feet, then grew to twenty, then settled at eight. It still wavered as he shot forward, but uncertainty was what he needed.
It was a risk to trust in chance, but nothing changes without taking risks.
His wings blasted him towards the corded red and blue, and he plunged into it where it was as wide as a skyscraper.
"I'm sorry, everyone."
He descended along with the double helix of tentacles before his body stopped. The blade traveled upwards, burning through cells and dry matter like air. He stopped being pushed down and shot skyward, continuing to cut further through Deoxys's arm. The sword grew heavier, but his resolve grew stronger. He pushed his shoulder into the hilt and trusted in his wings to guide him further.
There was a sudden resistance as he approached the approximate shoulder, where the sword behind his head grew long enough to cut off the tentacle entirely.
He glanced back and watched it dissolve, turning from red and blue to gray and black as it withered away and burst into flame.
Blanche stared into the face of the Deoxys still above him. As it recoiled away from the outer atmosphere, had there been any air it would have pulled him too as a vacuum formed.
But there was no air. There was the Deoxys with only the stars and the moon behind it, and there was Blanche, a glowing sword in his hands and the Earth at his back.
He was merely an insect to it. His sword was the threat, not him.
And somehow, he didn't care. Whether it was by his hand or another's, this Anomaly would be destroyed. It wouldn't threaten his world, his people, his family, and carrying on like it could get away with that.
He held the beam sword with one arm and freed the other, before pointing a thumb at his chest. It was a pointless gesture, an insignificant one, as he floated on his own in the vacuum in low Earth orbit. If he went too far, there was no coming back down.
And he was fine with that.
"My name is Blanche. I am seventeen years old as of this moment. My house is in the upper-east side of Little Kanto, where all the row houses are. Remember that. Make it a warning to the rest of you, wherever you come from. Because if I have to, I will destroy you. I'm not a human or a Pokémon. I have no aura. But it's thanks to them that I can live as a person anyway. It's their power, not mine, so let it be known. It will be the least powerful being on this Earth that destroys you."
His hand slipped back down to his sword as the wings on his back did not flap, but exploded into clawed sections of light and threw him forward.
"And this Earth… is MINE. I'm not letting anyone or anything take it away from me!"
He raised his arms, his back to the ground and his face defying the sky. "BURST!"
The beam sword exploded into fragments and debris, a metal cylinder replacing them and fueling itself with Blanche's overclocked Infinity Battery. The very second that it glowed with its charge was the very second that a spear of electricity lanced towards Deoxys.
The stars dimmed as it was struck, the light appearing and making its features clearer. That empty face, the beady eyes concealed by a false mask. Whatever aura it had once had no longer existed. Its organic core had been replaced with one of artificial machinery that canceled it out in exchange for greater power. It was a machine that could destroy what little protection they had left.
Humanity was not alone in the universe.
But it also had Pokémon by its side.
They wouldn't be destroyed so easily.
Because people kept on growing. That was what set them apart from Pokémon. It didn't make them better or worse, simply different. A Pokémon could only change in so many ways. It could never become more intelligent, it simply learned different things.
And yes, they advanced with each and every turn. As someone had once said, that's just how a drill works.
The beam tore through its upper chest, missing the heart by a mile. A clean hole opened, and the head only hung by a few threads of dry matter.
Psionics, mechanics, whatever it was, it would not continue. Blanche had made his last stand, and no one would pass in front of him for as long as he stood.
Even alone, even as it could repair the damage done, even as his battery was beginning to fail as he could tell by each and every click, he would stand strong.
But he was not alone, and he didn't stop anyone from passing behind him.
A crackle came to life in his ears. "Hey, Leader. You were out of range for a while so I couldn't get your input on the plan, but I think…"
A roaring streak of green shot past him, patterned with red and segmented with yellow. It curled around him, hesitating to approach the
Someone rode on its back, wearing some kind of oversized space suit.
No, that wasn't a space suit. It was too transparent.
Also, it was shaped like Zygarde's standard form, with Rosa standing in full morph inside, immersed in some kind of green goo.
"This should do the trick."
Blanche floated back, the static burning brighter and seeming to cackle in his ears as if it were a voice.
He smiled, before his face was reset with grim determination.
"This Rubix-cube-looking RGB light on an string can cancel out normal AIAM fields. It has the same kind of cube that canceled out Serena's aura a while ago. Don't get too close or it'll send you off into space until you get out of whatever its range is. I'll ask how you got Rayquaza back up after we win."
He'd been carried along with that cube for hours. There was no forgetting what it looked like.
"It's not just us, Leader," she teased.
From all around him, scattered meteoroid debris shot back into its source, pelting it and tearing small chunks free of its body.
As it regenerated, it shrunk yet again, but still towered over all of them.
Wearing some kind of actual space suit, Serena rode past on a pillar of Earth, a meteor in its own right, before jumping back and floating next to him, but not close enough to be cut by his clawed wings.
"Shauna's in here too!" Rosa called. "No extra space suits."
"I'm still confused about why any of this is working," Shauna complained.
"You two are similar. Sort of. Kind of. Eh… it's not an exact science." Blanche shook his head, still smiling. To be able to joke like that, to talk with his friends, to live with such great people; that was what he was fighting for, and he'd never forget it.
"Blasting. Aim for the core. I'm going to-"
"Don't say it!" Shauna shouted.
"-cut this bastard down to size!" He yelled, leading with the blade of his sword and blasting forward. Each of his clawed wings seemed to pull him towards Deoxys, cutting through the static in his vision.
It was still enormous, no matter how much damage he'd done on his own. It stood fifteen kilometers tall, roughly ten miles by his estimates. It was smaller, but that wasn't enough. Its tentacles were still wider than Prism Tower, but not by much.
His blade grew longer and more massive, and he swung it at the remaining decameters of thread that kept its head attached.
A storm of meteors battered its chest, and though it could block some of them with its appendages and the occasional psychic blast, it couldn't block his sword as it melted through the plasticine organics like clay. In a single soundless swish, the head began dissolving, disconnected from its power source and the brain.
Whatever had created it in its own image, whatever it had mutated from, it had a head. It was just that Deoxys only needed it for vision.
"It's blinded!" He yelled, his feet nearly skimming its new head as it regenerated. It shrunk again, dropping to thirteen kilometers as it rushed to replace the missing mass.
Had it been a normal Deoxys, he wouldn't have had a chance, but he could think faster than it could move no matter how large it was. Had it been a normal Deoxys, he wouldn't have been necessary. He had to keep moving, keep fighting, even as his body felt as hot as the sun. He couldn't even think about letting himself stop.
It stopped dodging as it reformed, for a precious few moments. Serena jumped from one meteor to another to avoid a blast of energy from the core, more like pulling them to where she needed them and rebounding.
Rosa was yelling in his ear as purple shimmered in the space around it and hundreds of scales shot out towards it, shredding its body and scratching at the core.
A light flashed and they were forced back as its body spasmed.
One of its tendrils caught Blanche, slamming into him with the force of a train. He grunted, his body numb, but realized that the claws of his wings had caught the tendril, not countering the impact, but lessening it.
He pushed out of its way, tumbling along the side as it whooshed past and knocked more debris out of orbit.
The Earth was still spinning beneath him, one horizon leaving his vision and another growing closer. He could see the shadow that Deoxys was creating over Lumiose-3, over all those people.
He was struck by a thought. There was a gap in Deoxys's body around its core, empty space. Was that because it needed to be exposed? It thrashed in what he assumed was pain when it was struck.
Blanche didn't want to cause it pain.
He wanted it to die.
He wanted it to be gone, not to suffer. Whatever it was, organic or artificial, it had senses. If it was attacking Earth, then it was likely no coincidence that a similar core had arrived earlier, though much smaller in size. That implied some sort of link, whether by communication or sort of hive mind.
There wasn't anything more discouraging to an invader than pain received in turn.
He jetted around it, his chest burning hotter and the static growing stronger in his vision.
Its back was to him as it fought off the others, even as a distance. Its body was full again, even as the limbs that had been cut off were dissolving into nothing but dust and carbon.
The moonlight was at his back. He looked down at Deoxys with his feet towards it. He saw the core, the gaps in its body, and glimpses of the Earth beyond it.
"You're here, then?" he asked the empty space around him. Static intensified in his vision, and his wings curled around his face into seven claws.
For as long as it is necessary, my avatar. You are doing my will better than expected.
He nodded to himself despite the lack of visual confirmation and reoriented himself. He was burning out, burning up. He knew that.
They call it a blaze of glory for a reason.
"Access: BLAZING SWORD."
He'd be that reason from now until the end of time, or at least until the sun finally went dark.
Blanche scoffed to himself. A year ago, he'd been someone else. No idea who, but even without his proper memories he could assume that he was a prick who hated himself. And now? Well, issues like that don't totally go away so easily. He was still having issues, but he was improving.
And he was going to keep improving for as long as he breathed.
"The enemy gate," he began, a sword of white-hot flaming plasma towards the core, "Is down."
Like an arrow of light, flames billowed around him, licking at his helmet and his face. It was breaking down, he knew that. But at high enough speeds, even a single particle could create a great impact.
He accelerated. He kept accelerating. He kept moving forward, even as his body trailing behind his mind and he pushed further beyond.
There was a sudden halt, like he'd hit a wall. His body creaked and his mind shook. A terrible vibration shook him, glowing white diamond filling his vision and screeching.
His sword was halfway through the core. It tried to click and solve itself, but it was jammed.
An unstoppable force meets an immovable and massive object.
He pushed forward anyway. His vision was filled with entirely red light as red and blue organics engulfed him and tried to crush him. His body folded in on itself. Or it ought to have. Any attempts to stop him only pushed him further.
A single crack.
Then another.
Then the cubic plane beneath him shattered entirely, and he burst through it in a cascade of light.
The remaining RKS satellites had long since lost connection with planet side receivers, but what little information they could gather was burned into their hard drives and later on would be backed up to hard drives across the world.
A monolithic being, holding its chest as it broke down entirely, not a shred of emotion apparent on its false face as it dissolved into nothing but dead and opaque carbon debris. In front of it, a boy reaching towards the Earth with an outstretched hand, the armor he wore drifting away from his body as he re-crossed the edge of space.
It wasn't quite a Shattered Heavens incident.
But some thought, hey, it's damn well close enough.
Blanche was falling.
That's not good, he noticed.
The train of thought was obviously missing some of its wheels, as he clearly demonstrated. Simultaneously, he realized that he was too tired to try to fly. Not that he could have, since he was pretty sure his Battery had exploded a minute ago. Why did he have wings? How did they work when he didn't have muscles controlling them or aura to connect them to?
His chest was hot. Was that normal?
His whole body was hot, now that he could feel it. It was like he was being dragged across asphalt at terminal velocity.
Ah, wait, that made sense.
His displeasure would have been obvious if his uplink was still working. A simple swear could only contain so much malice, after all, and when lost on the wind it also lost most of its impact.
Where was he again?
Oh, right. Falling because he hit a Deoxys with a really big sword-
Wait, seriously? He'd done that?
Why did his eyes hurt so much? It was like he'd been watching a dead television channel for hours. The afterimage seemed to have burned into his eyelids.
Maybe I can sleep now, he thought.
No, no, it's not my time yet, said another part of himself. Don't be selfish.
There was a pop in his ears, then another, and then another. He could still breath though, which meant that the pop was loud enough to get through the sealed armor.
He looked to his left and saw a big green dragon and a girl riding a meteor trying to catch up with him.
Trying and succeeding, of course. Said big green dragon was a Legendary Pokémon that lived in the ozone layer.
Y'know, Blanche thought, if I had a nickel for every time Rosa teamed up with a Legendary green Dragon-type that balances out two forces of nature, I'd have two nickels. Not a lot, especially in this economy, but it's sort of weird that it's happened twice.
Oh, wait, Pokémon world.
My world, he reminded himself.
His world. Yeah. That sounded about right.
He still had the distinct feeling of an oncoming sunburn beneath all the spandex, but Zygarde grabbed him with its serpentine tail and pulled him onto Rayquaza, along with the space-suit-clad Serena.
He looked behind him and back to the sky and saw only the moon and the stars.
I suppose I should say thank you, next time I see that bastard, Blanche thought.
He let himself relax in the semi-permeable projection of Zygarde like it was a fully-immersive saddle. His vision was tinged green, Rosa and Shauna in front of him and Serena behind. The former two could clearly breathe, so he was guessing that they weren't just chilling out in a tub of aloe vera, as nice as that sounded to him at the moment.
The edges of Lumiose-3 came into view. First the forests, then the outskirts, then the walls of the city proper, and then he watched as Rayquaza curled around the base of Prism Tower at Rosa's command.
There was a hiss in the air as the protective Zygarde shell disappeared, and Tencent's blobby form became more clear around Rosa's neck. She gave Rayquaza a soothing caress before hopping off its neck with a whoop, sliding down to the road with an impactful slam.
As if they hadn't been silent enough, the rest of Lumiose-3 took a breath and held it.
Shauna went after, stammering something under her breath about not wanting to look awkward.
Blanche swung a leg over and out onto the segmented brick path beneath him.
His boots cracked. Then the exoskeleton began breaking down, busting open with a shower of sparks and falling from the spandex, though thankfully his modesty was unharmed.
His helmet essentially shattered on impact with the air, cleaving itself off into pieces with his visor going first.
It clattered to the ground, and he felt a cool breeze brush across his face.
"...I'm guessing an expletive wouldn't be very family friendly," he said awkwardly, shrinking under the collective gazes of, well, all of Lumiose-3 could have been there just from the sheer amount of crowding. People stood on rooftops, on vehicles, on each other's shoulders. Some had even climbed partway up the outer shell of Prism Tower.
Serena slid off behind him almost silently, putting a hand on his back and clicking a button on the space-suit.
It folded off of her body and she handed it to Rayquaza, who gingerly took it with its relatively tiny arms though it didn't move more than that.
Serena bowed to palm her helmet, slipping it off and letting it disappear in a flash of light.
Shauna looked over, tapped at her own face, then realized she was the odd one out and quickly took her helmet off too.
Rosa did the same thing at the same time, though with much more nonchalance.
Shauna elbowed him, whispering from the corner of her mouth, "Say something, Leader."
Fittingly, Blanche's mind blanked. Another cool wind brushed across his face as the world stood still. This… was not a situation he'd expected to be in under any circumstances. Which was strange, considering he turned out to be right about keeping a pocket knife in his morph suit and being prepared for FLARE-related things in general. Well, as long as they didn't involve emails.
A show of solidarity from his friends. They wouldn't leave him out in the cold, even if he was exposed himself. Was that... was that what loyalty felt like? That was what the people of Lumiose-3 expected. FLARE wasn't just a big, nebulous organization. It was built of people and Pokémon in tandem, with everything that entailed.
"Uh…" he started, holding up his arm with a vague grasping motion.
Wait, I'm not socially awkward, I'm just bad with social cues. What am I saying?
He switched over to running his hand through his hair to look a lot more confident than he felt.
"You should see the other guy."
An ear-splitting cheer. People jumped into the air, Embers shot off in celebration, smaller Pokémon being tossed into the air with joy and clearly feeling that joy as well.
He couldn't hear very well, like just about everyone else, but the four of them had a fair amount of space to talk as Rayquaza flew back off into the sky to return to its Trainer.
"You can't go a day without saying something stupid, can you?" Shauna asked, shaking her head with her hands on her hips.
"It's a habit," he said with a shrug.
His chin was then yanked away from that direction, and he found himself looking straight at Serena only a few inches away.
She leaned next to his ear, almost imperceptibly. "You're not Calem. I can see that now. No matter how similar you are. But I think I can care about you anyway." She leaned back, not reacting to shock. Her voice took on a different tone, almost… teasing? No, that was impossible. "Are you familiar with the Standard Hero Reward, Blanche?"
Something equivalent to a system of gears jamming occurred in his head.
"Uh… is my princess in another castle?" he asked, a stupid joke being the only thing he could think of.
Serena stuck her tongue in his mouth.
Oh.
Warm, a small part of his brain said.
A much larger part of his brain told the rest of it to shut up.
A few seconds later, she let go of him and looked past him, saying, "I'm going to speak with the Professors."
Then she just… walked off. Headed back to FLARE.
Blanche pressed his fingers to his lips, pulled them away, and stared at his hands for a good few seconds.
"What the fu-"
Shauna coughed.
He turned, certain that his face looked incredibly stupid, but Shauna was clearly too angry to comment on it and Rosa was just too Rosa to point it out.
Blanche's arms shot up in self-defense. "I didn't ask her to!"
Shauna opened her mouth, as if to speak, but she closed it again like a Goldeen. Snaps, crackles, and pops of electricity were flying out of her ears. Truly a miracle of human biology.
"Well, since she's gone… I'm a hero too, y'know! Where's my Standard Hero Reward?"
"Maybe ask the next time you see her," Blanche asked. What a responsible friend he was, providing solutions.
"I guess…" Shauna struggled for her words. She suddenly whipped out with her finger, pointing up at him. "You'll have to do it. N-not because I like you or anything, but because that's how these things go. You save the day, and then you get the g-b-whoever! Right?"
Blanche blinked.
He then pinched his nose and sighed. It really was just not his day. But since that was the logic Serena had used, it would be sort of unfair to deny it.
Why was he factoring fairness into it? Oh, right, those damn hormones.
"I'm not… going to object. Just get it over wit-"
Shauna then tackled him sideways with much more force than someone her size should have been able to generate.
By the time he registered the weight, the heat, and that he could finally breathe again, she had already run off.
Blanche sat up, massaging his face until a sharp pain in his arm shocked him into stopping. He was already suppressing his hormones in preparation for the next year, even though it was almost a month and a half away.
"Rosa, I'm beginning to think that I don't understand girls."
Rosa shrugged. "Me neither. Punching things is much easier."
"You're not going to… do that, are you?"
"What? No! Ew." Rosa made a face. "You're like, a really cool guy and all but that would be like kissing Nate or Hugh. I mean… ick."
"Oh, thank God. Can we just be good friends, then?"
"Good friends kiss sometimes."
"...I forgot you're crazy too. Still no."
"Still not gonna."
"Then don't say stuff like that to make up a loophole!"
"Do you want there to be a loophole?"
"No! God, you're all impossible."
"Go beyond the impossible and kick reason to the curb! That's how Rosa rolls!"
"Sure it is. Say... do you think the grocery store will be open after we go give our report?"
"Why?"
"I could really go for some ice cream. With… caramel syrup. Chocolate-vanilla swirl. Hell, I'll take Neapolitan if that's all they have."
"You had me at ice cream, Leader."
Few were paying attention to him and Rosa anymore. People and Pokémon cheered together, crying with relief and laughing away the catharsis. The lights in the sky burned brighter than they ever had before. As the full moon rose higher into the sky, it was as if a new day had dawned in Lumiose-3.
AN:
End of Arc 2.
And wow, it's certainly been one.
The end of Arc 1 was the fight against Celesteela, by the way.
I've come to a revelation about the use of author's notes. You're not going to see them every chapter, but if they're necessary, I will include them instead of just posting them separately. Author's notes shouldn't be used to tell the story directly, I don't think. If I mess up with a character's intentions and making that clear to my readers, I should edit the writing instead of saying exactly what they meant. A lot of the fun in reading comes from discovering the meaning of the pages yourself.
God, I'm doing the stuff I did in MSND again. Ha. Ignore me. I'm just some guy on a soapbox talking about human nature when I should really be talking about cool monsters. I think my next story will have maybe two Trainer characters as the focus instead of high school drama.
Chapter... 13/27? Yeah, I've spaced that right.
Thank you to everyone that's been reading so far. I know I'm a bit insufferable at times, that's still something I'm working on, so I hope you can forgive me. I should probably learn how to tag things properly on Ao3, but I write stuff so niche that it probably won't increase readership.
I know, I know, "Write for yourself," and I absolutely am, but developing themes and characters is kind of useless if no one else reads about them. Like the old adage about trees falling in a forest, if a guy gets on a soapbox but no one is around to listen, did he really make any good points?
Reviews are always appreciated. Even flames if they make the story better. I make fun of Blanche a lot for acting like a stupid teenager, but, well, I'm not the smartest guy either. I sort of stumbled through the first few chapters before I found my footing. I'll go back and rewrite them one day and maybe make the prologue, to speak colloquially, not as shitty.
I may take a week off of posting to build up my buffer, as I've been busy recently, but no one is going to tell this story but me. Well, unless someone makes recursive fanfic. Man, that would be pretty cool. Plenty of shipping fodder is just laying around in these text documents and Blanche is the only one that can't see any.
Have a good one, my friends. You're all appreciated from the depths of my bleeding heart.