Armada Divison, G-Men Headquarters

Victory Road, Kanto

January 28th

Ashton and Aurian Borealis appeared from thin air into the Armada base within the G-Men Headquarters, fuming slightly.

"Still can't believe our sabbatical was cut short," Aurian muttered, dropping her duffel bag on the well-worn black leather couch in the corner. "Granted, it's for a good reason, but really?! We'd just started to crack the Chronicle..."

Ash nodded. "I brought Dad's journals with us so we can keep up our research on the go."

"Brilliant!" Aurian grinned. "As long as no one gets too curious about what we're reading..."

"Patonai?" Riley asked, poking his head in the door. "Welcome back!"

"Riley!" Aurian grinned. "You'll never believe what we've discovered!"

Ash put an arm around his sister. "Riley, we found Father's notes on the Chronicle!"

"Holy hell, is it active?" Riley asked, eyes wide.

Aurian shook her head. "No, the notes spoke of its use, not where it was or how the Chronicle was used. We're back to square one there."

"Keep researching," Riley said. "This is an incredible window of opportunity. Think of all the knowledge we could regain and the people we could reach! For now, we need to focus on why we called you back."

Ash sighed. "Cabot's awake."

"Yes. The medical staff managed to pull him out of his coma last night. His cognitive function seems to be normal but he's sustained serious physical injuries. Cabot lost the use of his right eye due to shrapnel. He needed a skin graft on his side where Aurian nailed him with an aura sphere,"

Aurian shrunk back a bit as Riley listed off the Andan commander's injuries.

"...he's limping pretty heavily, and he lost a few toes."

"Did we cause all that?" Ash asked, jaw slack.

"At this point, we still don't know. Lance and Steven have been poring over the footage that Cynthia managed to record of the back half of your fight. By that point, all of you were in terrible condition," Riley shrugged. "All we have is your testimony, which might not be too clear due to rapid aura loss."

Aurian nodded. "I might've been a bit delirious when I triggered that aura mine below Cabot, so your point's solid."

"They've put Cabot in the big interrogation room downstairs," Riley said. "Change into your formals and meet Lance for further instructions."

"Before we leave," Ash asked, eyes worried, "what happened to Tobias and Faith?"

"Faith accepted a plea bargain and is currently working out her fifteen hundred hours of community service in addition to ten years in prison with possibility for probation. Tobias..." Riley trailed off.

Aurian raised an eyebrow. "Tobias?"

"Solitary confinement. He snapped after we captured Darkrai and hasn't regained his sanity. He's on track to be sent to Lavender Asylum," Riley said, face devoid of emotion. "Michael's leading a Purification Team in an attempt to save his Pokemon, especially Darkrai. We don't know if we'll ever succeed in turning the Shadows back to light but we think aura might help accelerate the process. We'll keep you posted on developments.

Ash shook his head. "I hope his Pokemon recover, it'd be a shame to lose them to the darkness. Lavender is the toughest asylum in the League, right? Maybe they'll straighten him out."

"I'm amazed the courts didn't bypass the insanity claim and convict him of attempted manslaughter against the three of us," Aurian replied. "The legal team had all the necessary materials to press a charge, why didn't they?"

Riley nodded. "I'm not entirely sure. They might've known that the jury might would overturn the trial if they pressed for a prison and not an asylum. In the end, Tobias remains somewhere where he is safe and where we are safe from him, which is what matters. Go change and meet with Lance, I get the feeling he's getting impatient."

The patonai saluted and hurried to the locker rooms.

"Thought we'd get to go a little longer before we had to pull these out again," Ash sighed.

Aurian nodded, ducking behind the partition so she could change shirts. "This might be the closure we need... if we can make it through without crying, screaming, or snapping."

"Do you still want to go through with this?" Ash asked, nearly tripping over his dress pants as he pulled them on.

"I don't know, I don't know," she responded, reappearing and attempting to tame her hair. "We're about to find out, right?"

Ash chuckled and buttoned his cape to his shoulder. "Guess so. I'm glad we're doing this together, I can't imagine taking this on without you."

Aurian held the door for her brother and shooed him out. "I feel the same, Ash. Time to go to work."

The patonai sprinted down nine flights of stairs to the basement, silence growing between them as they descended and reached a single steel door embedded in the wall.

"Ri, what would Father make of this?" Ash hesitated, hand suspended in mid-air before knocking.

Aurian frowned. "He'd be proud of us for facing our demons together and for seeing this case through beginning to end. We'll have to wait until we rebuild the Chronicle to find out for sure."

Ash knocked his initials in Morse code and Lance opened the door, visibly relieved.

"Thank you for coming back so quickly and I'm sorry your sabbatical was cut short," Lance said, motioning for the patonai to join him inside. "Welcome to the Cement Castle. We have two lists of questions we'd like you to ask Cabot. Any answers obtained from the first will go on record and will be used in his trial, so be careful what information you disclose. The second are some starter questions that you can ask as the last Borealis descendants. If this gets too hard for you, Steven and I can take over and finish if you need to leave."

Aurian nodded. "Understood, sir. We'll be fine."

"We'll signal if anything gets weird," Ash said, taking the papers and an additional envelope from his commander. "Any advice?"

Lance frowned. "I honestly have no idea what's about to happen. Stay reserved and don't let him scare you."

"We kicked his ass, he doesn't scare me anymore," Aurian chuckled. "Ash and I can handle this, Lance. Do we have clearance to go in?"

The commander nodded and opened the reinforced door. "Best of luck, patonai."

The smell of cold metal and sheen of florescent lighting greeted the siblings as they sat down at the lone table inside the blank white room. Cabot eyed them suspiciously, handcuffed and restrained to his chair.

"Giovanni," Aurian said, extending a hand.

The Andan Alliance leader raised an eyebrow. "After all I've done to you, you still wish to shake hands?"

"It's common courtesy," she replied, taking the hand anyways and gently shaking it. "We may be mortal enemies but we can still be polite to each other."

Ash shook his head at his sister's incredible spirit. He'd rather slap Cabot than shake hands with him. "We have two stages of interrogation for you, sir. The first stage comprises of questions concerning your actions just before and during the Global Invitational Grand Tournament. You have the right to remain silent and the right to retain legal council if you wish. Do you have a lawyer?"

"Such a trifling question, patonai," Cabot laughed at the dumbfounded looks on Ash and Aurian's faces. "If a lawyer chose to represent me, their career would crash and burn. No, I have no lawyer and do not anticipate gaining one."

"We can call a liaison from a non-League territory," Ash said. "Would that solve your conundrum?"

"Potentially," Cabot purred. "Explain."

Aurian gulped. "You could theoretically argue your own case. Knowing the situation as well as we do, you'd be doomed from the start if you chose that option. A case lawyer might soften the sentencing, since you're up for multiple life terms on attempted manslaughter, bribery, corruption... the list continues."

"Onto questioning," Ash said, signaling Lance to call an Oblivian lawyer through Johtoan Sign Language.

Aurian placed two photographs on the interrogation room table: one of MissingNO, one of a fragmented Red Chain.

"When Dragonite Reserve raided your headquarters, they found ninety-seven fragments of Red Chain in addition to the three we have under protective watch. Why would you manufacture a Red Chain and MissingNO at the same time?" Ash asked.

"The Red Chain was a backup," Cabot shrugged. "It wouldn't have been nearly as deadly as MissingNO, but, when amplified correctly, could come close. Both would also incapacitate any Guardians within a fifteen-mile radius, so that was a plus."

Aurian scratched off a line of text. "Theoretically speaking: if you had succeeded in killing my patonai and I, what would you have done next?"

"Moved past Lily of the Valley and teleported straight to Indigo League Headquarters," Cabot said. "Staged a coup d'etat, potentially taken over the League if we moved fast enough. If not, we'd retreat back to Mt. Silver and regroup."

"I'm surprised that you'd stick to such a standard world domination plan," Ash noted.

Cabot shook his head. "You don't think the use of an artificial Pokemon distinguishes this plan as different?"

"It's been done before," Ash said, crossing his arms. "Look at Lawrence III, he tried combining the legendary birds of Kanto into something artificial. Cyrus tried to create brainless Palkia and Dialga to start the world anew in his image. You're not very unique here, sir."

The patonai continued on until the first page Lance gave them was entirely crossed out, leaving only questions about the Great War and the patonai's specific situation.

"One last round and then we're done," Aurian said, sliding a single photograph across the table. Cabot turned it over and hissed when a likeness of Aaron revealed itself.

"Dammit, I should've seen this coming," Cabot said. His handcuffs rattled as he drummed his fingertips on the table in a menacing rhythm. "You've most likely learned about the Great War, what else do you need to know?"

Aurian bit her lip. "We're not coming to you as the heads of the Armada, we're coming to you as Aaron's children. For the sake of our father, would you at least tell us why you killed him?"

"Indirectly, mind you," Cabot huffed, eyepatch stark in the harsh florescent light. "The Guardians wronged my family, I decided to return the favor. Simple as that."

"Must've been some wrong to justify killing an entire race," Ash snorted, fingertips beginning to spark with aura. "That's not exactly the level of detail we'd like to hear."

Cabot groaned. "What are you looking for, my life story?"

Aurian raised an eyebrow.

"Fine. This isn't going on film, is it?" Cabot asked, motioning towards the camera in the corner of the room.

"No," Lance's voice crackled over the intercom. "We'd violate our patonai's privacy if we ever released this so you're fine until you mention anything that's happened in this millennium. Are we clear?"

Cabot nodded. "Understood. It'd be best if I finished this before my lawyer got here, correct? Don't want your little secret leaking into any of the interrogation tapes, now do we?"

Ash took a deep breath. "How did the Guild wrong your family?"

"My brothers and I applied for Guardianship multiple times, as my father and his brothers did before us and his father and brothers did before them. The Guild never let a single Cabot through their doors. We were squeaky clean. No criminal records, no indivudual history against the Guardians, nothing."

Aurian slipped into aura vision to confirm the boss' statement. "You're lying to us, Cabot. I can see your aura, you look like the human version of a Shadow Pokemon! Hatred can corrupt a person but I've never seen anything like this!"

"I'm not buying it," Ash said, putting a hand on his sister's arm to calm her down. "You're not obligated to tell us the truth but we'd really appreciate it."

Cabot groaned. "You've heard the legends of what happened to the first fallen Guardian, Morgan. We share blood through my father's side. The Cabots have been doomed for generations; I was the one who was supposed to change that."

"Hatred incarnate," Aurian murmured, crossing her arms. "That explains a lot."

"Part of it was jealousy, I'll admit. Aaron had everything I ever wanted and more- perfect job, perfect family, perfect... oh, what's that word you two throw around- patonai. Everything he touched turned golden. Everything I touched fell apart. Someone needed to pay for the curse that was inflicted on my family. The Guardians seemed like a logical place to start, since they refused to take Morgan back."

"For good reason!" Ash cried. "He followed the call of the shadows and paid the price for attempting to murder the first Executive Board!"

Giovanni shrugged, eyes maddening. "Minor details, patonai. In the end, Aaron was the eldest descendant of Gabriel, the man that removed Morgan from the Guild. Everything we did as an Alliance was built to destroy the Guild, leaving your father alive until the very end so he could watch his world crumble."

"Brutally effective, but you failed to realize that the Borealis family never gives up hope. Aaron kept faith in his Guild and his Guardian family until the bitter end," Aurian answered, lip beginning to quiver.

Giovanni sighed. "We're running in circles. Do you have more questions or are we wasting time?"

The patonai made eye contact and nodded.

"Did you know that Father was planning on sacrificing himself?" Aurian asked, voice shaking.

The Alliance leader chuckled. "That was a surprise. I wasn't expecting him to survive the blockade, but two unknown Guardians appeared from nowhere and cleared his path to the Tree. We don't know what happened to them afterwards, but that's beside the point."

Ash and Aurian did their best to hide their surprise.

"His actions did tie up our loose ends so I won't complain," Giovanni finished, handcuffs clinking on the table.

Ash motioned towards the door. His sister nodded.

"I believe we're finished here. Any final words?" Aurian asked, packing up her things and giving her father's murderer one last look.

Cabot smiled. "Rot in hell, izveldhana."

Ash let out a strangled cry and moved towards the cackling Andan leader. Aurian dragged an enraged Ash out of the interrogation room and pinned him against the back wall, tears streaming down her face.

"It's over, Ash, calm down!" she cried, doing her best to keep him from raging back into the room and beating Cabot into a bloody pulp.

"We should've killed him, Ri," Ash growled, stopping his struggle at the sight of his patonai's distraught tears. "We should've taken him out when we had the chance. Now he'll get to sit in prison for the rest of his life, kept alive by the mercy of the court and the lack of a death penalty charge in Sinnoh!"

Aurian shook her head. "We'd be no better than he is, brother."

"We've sniped people before, I don't see a damn difference," Ash snorted.

She raised an eyebrow. "We've never sniped. We acted as bodyguards for Mack, Sam, and Saul, but we never killed anyone or anything before MissingNO. You're letting your emotions get the better of you. Breathe!"

Ash's rage diminished to heaving breaths and tears in the corners of his eyes. "We lost our father and what our lives could've been to that monster?"

"As much as we wish we could've stayed with Father in our original time, you can't deny that we were supposed to be here," Aurian said, loosening her grip on her brother. "We're the only ones who could've prevented MissingNO from terrorizing the world! We were supposed to shut Cabot down, we were supposed to make Andan crumble at our feet."

"She's right, Shadow," Lance said, coming around a corner. "We couldn't've pulled this off without you."

Ash sank to the ground and put his head in his hands. "Why us, Lance? Didn't our family already suffer enough at Cabot's hands?"

Aurian joined her brother on the floor. "You said it yourself. The Guardians started with Borealises and Cabots, the Great War ended with a Cabot and a Borealis, the Sinnoh Standoff ended with two Borealises and a Cabot. We've been born into a vicious cycle, brother, and all we can do is bring it to an end, once and for all."

"That's what Father must've thought," Ash sighed, "and I can't imagine what he'd say if he saw us broken like this now."

"You have every right to feel broken," Lance said, "but I promise that he'll spend the rest of his life in solitary confinement and that we'll do all we can to hunt down the rest of the Andan Alliance."

Aurian smiled. "Thank you, Lance, that means the world. Did you get what you needed from the interview?"

"And then some. Cabot got into a lot of Guild history that I'm completely unfamiliar with," Lance admitted, leading the patonai to his office and handing them mugs of coffee. "Could you give me a rundown?"

Ash gulped. "Lance, you're asking us to detail a millennia and a half of history, it's impossible in the time we have here."

"We'll try our best, sir. Where'd Cabot lose you?" Aurian asked.

Lance frowned. "Who was Morgan?"

"Legend has it that Gabriel Borealis, the seventh son of a seventh son, was the first Guardian," Ash began, taking a sip from his mug. "His older cousin, Morgan Cabot, grew jealous and his heart was corrupted, leading to the rise of the Cabots as the primary antagonists to the Guardians. More Guardians kept popping up as seventh sons of seventh sons until aura blood became a dominant trait and was passed on from father to son."

"Father to son, huh?" Lance muttered. "How'd you factor into this, Aurian?"

She sighed. "We'll get there when we get there! Eventually, the Guild split into regional factions, with headquarters located in Rota. What they didn't know is that the Cabots split up and followed them, slowly putting a plan into motion that would take many, many generations to see the light. Eventually, the time came for the cursed sons of Morgan to start the Great War... and guess who the next heir to the line was?"

Lance raised an eyebrow. "Giovanni?"

"Precisely," Ash said. "He dispatched the family assassins to whittle down the other Guilds before they could get into contact with headquarters, and the rest is history as we know it."

"Meanwhile, no one figured out why only two females inherited aura blood before the Great War," Aurian shrugged. "Riley thinks it's a genetic mutation, I think that most of the power went to firstborns unless the carrier parent was extraordinarily strong, like Azaiah and Aaron were. Unfortunately, all of the firstborns in aura families were male."

Lance nodded. "I believe I understand now. Thanks for the crash course, you two."

Ash smiled. "No problem, Lance. Anything else we need to do before we head out?"

"Phone in your goodbyes and tell your mother where you're going. You've had a rather traumatic day and you need to rest. Report to my office at 0900 hours tomorrow morning, are we clear?"

The patonai saluted and walked out the door, the sound of their footsteps fading away as they climbed the staircase back to floor one of headquarters.

"I hope they'll be all right," Lance muttered.

Riley nodded as he came around the corner. "They always have been. Why start worrying now?"

"They've seen a lot of trauma over the past few years. I'm amazed they still want to keep up their missions," Lance sighed. "Especially after the hell we put them through. They're eighteen. Eighteen, Riley! We were twenty when we enlisted!"

"Keep in mind that they're made of stronger stuff," Riley said, sitting across from Lance. "I know for a fact I couldn't've handled facing my father's murderer when I was a teenager; I don't know if I'd be capable of maintaining my composure now. What I'm trying to say is that they've developed a knack for proving all of our worries wrong. Lets hope they keep the trend going..."

Ash and Aurian returned to their bunker. Pikachu jumped onto his trainer's shoulder and squeaked his hello.

"I'd say that went better than expected," Aurian said, slipping into the bathroom to change again.

Ash sighed and waited for his sister to emerge. "You really think so?"

Aurian came back out wearing G-Men sweatpants and a faded blue t-shirt. "We didn't kill him. I'd call that a success."

"Ri, I hate that our closure's bittersweet. We stopped the bad guy, we saved the world, we saved Mom, but we lost what we could've had in the process. Knowing that Aaron is our dad is an incredible privilege, don't get me wrong, but I wish we could've saved him too," Ash blurted.

Aurian put an arm around her patonai. "I agree, Ash, but you have to keep in mind that Father sacrificed himself to save us. If we'd interfered, we'd've created a paradox, which wouldn't exactly have the best consequences. Going through this with you further confirmed my belief that everything happens for a reason. We survived to stop Cabot, we survived to revive the Chronicle, we survived to seek out others like us. If we succeed, we can speak with everyone we should've known. That's motivation enough for me to keep on with the missions and assignments."

"So long as we don't come close to dying on this one," Ash chuckled. "What's the count at now?"

"I lost track," Aurian sighed, "and I think that's for the best. I've learned to appreciate being alive, brother, and I think tallying our encounters with the other side is pushing it a bit too far."

Ash nodded. "Seconded."

They trailed off, a companionable silence coming between the patonai as Ash picked up his gym sweats and retreated to the bathroom to change.

"Time to call Mom?" Aurian asked, sitting on her bed.

Ash nodded as he left the bathroom. "Yeah, I think she'd like to know what we're about to do. Never dreamed that we'd get to go to Kalos."

"How's your Kalosian?" Aurian nudged her patonai's shoulder.

"Just as rusty as yours, sister," Ash groaned. "I really hope we'll have a translator. Life'll be pretty hard if we don't."

Aurian snorted. "When have our lives ever been easy?"

"Good point," Ash said, pulling his Pokegear out of his pocket and pressing the first button on speed dial.

The line rang four times and Delia picked up, face slightly smudged with flour and hair in a messy bun.

"Good morning, you two! How have you been?" she asked, a smile on her face.

Ash took a deep breath. "Mom, we have news for you..."

(A/N): Surprise update attack! Welcome to the Epilogue of Primary!

Okay, it's not so much of a surprise as a primer for Secondary. I still have a lot of work ahead of me but I figured it would be best to create an epilogue that tied a bit more into what the first chapter will be. I still have a lot of writing and plot outlining to do so I'm not sure when C1 of Secondary will come out- check back for updates!

Thank you all for your kind words in your reviews! You continually make my day and I hope that Secondary lives up to your high standards. I'm excited to start a new project!

This is PL, signing off! See you guys soon!