The Champions

Part 1

A Shade of Myself

We were already broken. Each of us messed up in our own special way. I had my PTSD. Alder was a drunk. Benga, a bloodthirsry savage. Liza was lost and alone. But that fucking war? It tore our broken souls into a thousand pieces and dared us to stitch ourselves back together so we could be broken a hundred more times. To say it was hell would be a disservice to hell.

- Jason Rykker, 'The Shade'

I leaned forward in the seat, straightening my spine. The lights flared behind my guest and I breathed in sharply, acutely aware of myself. Even during my League days, I'd never been particularly happy in the spotlight. I was content to live a humble life in the middle of nowhere with the last few members of my team. Of course, recent events made that an impossibility now.

"Relax, Mr. Rykker. Forget about the camera. It's just the two of us having a drink in your study."

I shot her a look that probably made her regret ever coming out for the interview. Or not, I could never tell with reporters. "I just don't like the lights is all," I replied, managing to keep a civil tone. "I spent too much time in them during my younger days."

She didn't answer immediately, still fiddling with her voice recorder. She was young, probably only a year or two older than I'd been when I made Champion. Just another example of the League's stunning efforts to influence public perception.

They'd never wanted the interviews to go ahead in the first place, preferring to steer the narrative with coordinated leaks to friendly media members. They said that it would be safer for any survivors that way, to minimize the spotlight on our horrific actions during those nine months of hell. So they'd worked their magic and had the youngest and most inexperienced reporter in UNN's docket assigned to my interview.

She looked up at me, voice recorder finally ready. "So, shall we begin?" She asked. She lifted her notepad and glanced down at the clipboard containing the League provided talking points.

I nodded, ready to steer the script away from those approved talking points as aggressively as I could. We went through hell for this country. I wasn't about to hide the real war from it. "Ready as I'll ever be."

"Then let's start at the beginning. Tell me about how the Champions came together. Tell me what happened that fateful night two years ago."

I nodded. "You're expecting some grand show of comraderie. Some great heroic speech that rallied the rest of the Champions behind me." I smirked, knowing that I'd grab her attention with the story of that fateful night. "But the truth is that we weren't even 'The Champions' until the war was over. We were just a bunch of scared trainers who refused to give up our friends to Ghetsis." I tipped back the drink I had poured for myself and steeled myself for the memories. "I was just making dinner when it happened."

The news had been blaring all day. A breaking news chevron ticked across the screen as a half-dozen talking heads offered useless opinion and banter in a confusing mess. Opelucid was still buried in ice, and chaos ruled the streets. I was in the kitchen, scrambling together a quick meal before I missed something important. As hectic as the night had been, we were hungry. We still had to eat, and like hell I was trusting Sherys in the kitchen.

"Jason?" Sherys called from the couch. Her voice sounded scared, worse than it had been when I run into the kitchen. "You better come see this."

I dashed back down the hallway and into the living room, eyes gravitating immediately towards the TV. The breaking news chevron was back and the scene cut to the anchorman with a solemn look on his face. "Ladies and gentlemen, I regret that I bring some terrible news. The Opelucid City Gym Leader, Drayden Shaga has been confirmed to have been killed in the attack. No word yet on the official casualty numbers, but Unova has suffered a terrible tragedy today."

I didn't say anything, still staring at the screen mutely as the anchor continued droning on. Drayden gone... It just didn't seem possible. He was so indomitable, so indestructible. He was the media's darling, the heir apparent to Alder's throne until he revealed that he'd been grooming young Iris for the role. Rumour had it that the only reason he hadn't taken the Champion's mantle was his respect for Alder.

Sherys broke the silence with a nervous cough. She picked up the remote and turned off the TV. She was trembling, looking at me for any clue as to my thoughts. I'd seen her cry a thousand times in her movies, but now that there were streams of very real tears running down her beautifully sculpted face I was lost.

"Tell me about her," the reporter asked. She looked up at me when I didn't reply. "What was your marriage to Sherys like?"

I paused, knowing that there was no going back from the things I was about to say. I'd be dragging the name of a dead woman through the mud for my own political purpose. I'd say that the decision took me time, but my mind had been decided months ago.

"It was a private hell of our own making," I replied after a half a beat. "Sherys was a nice enough woman, but it was never a marriage of love. I was a status symbol to her, just a way for her to climb the social ranks just a little bit higher. She used the prestige that our marriage gave her to land starring roles in damn nearly every training drama worth mentioning..." I trailed off, my empty gaze dropping to the floor. "Did you know that she was the League Chairman's granddaughter? I didn't. Not until a few weeks ago actually." My heartbeat quickened and I shook the ice around my drink. "Explains a lot about how things were to be honest."

"And you met her through your contacts with Elesa Kamitsure?"

I nodded. "Yeah, Elesa introduced me to one of her modelling friends, set us up on the first date. I actually thought it went well..." I downed the rest of my drink and finally looked back at my guest. "Everything seemed so right at first. Maybe it was real at first. Maybe it was all fake, or maybe just some of it was…" I picked up the bottle I had brought to the study and poured myself another glass. "What the hell do I know? I'm just a stubborn old man who preferred the company of his pokemon to a young woman after my heart."

The reporter continued scrawling at her notes for another moment before looking up at me. "And what made you realize that it wasn't, as you called it, a marriage of love?"

I shrugged.

She smiled at me, a smile that took me off guard. She did look a little like Sherys did at her age, and I think she knew that. She was smarter than I had taken her for, this reporter. She'd done her research. "Now now, Mr Rykker, you did promise to answer my questions. All of them."

I sighed and looked down at the floor. "There was just this endless tension between us. Probably because she was the Chairman's grandchild. She was a pawn as much as I was. It hung over both of us, even though I didn't understand why at the time. I was kept under close watch by the League and allowed to resume casual training, and the Chairman put his prized grandchild into a marriage that flung her into the upper echelons of society."

She raised an eyebrow at me. "You were allowed to continue training?" She asked. "Was there a reason you had to stop? If I remember correctly, you retired without losing your mantle as Champion. What could possibly stop someone like that from continuing casual training at the least?"

I smiled. She had taken the bait. I knew she would. She reminded me of myself a bit, with her attitude. She resented this assignment too, even if I was likely to advance her career significantly. Nobody wanted to interview the broken old man with anger issues so they'd sent the youngest and most inexperienced member of their reporting team. They would probably regret that soon enough. Someone a little more experienced might have been able to stop me, steer me toward what the network wanted.

I sat forward in my chair, a devious grin on my face. "The League really doesn't like its dirty laundry aired out in public. I've signed a half-dozen contracts that mean I can't say anything regarding this issue in particular, but there are those who are not similarly bound by that thorny issue. Others who may be able to answer a tough question like that."

She leaned in closer to me, brushing her curly blonde locks out of her face. "I've never been the type to shy away from tough questions."

I smiled. "Good," I said softly. "That'll make this a whole lot easier." I leaned back and sipped on my drink again. "Ask me another question. We should really get on with our interview."

She flipped through her notes and then looked up at me with a satisfied grin. "What made you call Alder that night? Records show that you called him twelve times after UNN went live with the attack on Opelucid."

I leaned back with a smug knowing grin that the camera would just eat up. "That was a good question, Ms Hall."

I picked up the phone again. He hadn't answered the last six times, but I had to try anyways. Nobody knew what was going on, and my League handler wouldn't answer his phone either. Sherys had begged me not to bother calling, crying that getting myself killed being a hero wouldn't help anyone. As if I had playing hero on my mind at all. Most of my friends either worked or lived at the League campus north of Opelucid. I was just trying to figure out what was going on. Whether we were really under attack or the situation was under control.

Alder answered on the third ring. "Rykker?" He asked, panting loudly over the phone. "You got a lot of nerve calling now."

An explosion rang across the line and I pulled the phone away from my ear. "The hell you doing?" I asked.

More scuffling and shouts echoed across the line. "I'm a bit busy at the moment," Alder half shouted, his voice muffled as if he wasn't speaking into the phone. "What do you want?"

"To pass the fucking time, what the fuck do you think?" I turned back to look at the TV and caught Sherys crying into her phone. She'd pulled her platinum blonde hair into a tight ponytail and was half-dressed. I ignored her, watching the UNN feed crackle and die in the middle of the broadcast. "What the hell is happening Alder?"

The scuffling on the other end slowly abated and died. I heard the phone lift off the dock and somebody breathing heavily. "The same thing that happened two years ago," he said. "Except this time we don't have a hero to save us. Plasma is back. They have some new weapon. It just… It freezes everything..." He trailed off and I felt the hurt in his voice. "Iris is gone." He said suddenly. "They hit the league HQ first. All the elites, the executives, Iris…" He trailed off again. Alder had lost his family in a terrible accident at sea a few years back. Only him and his grandson had survived, and he had turned to the drink for it. Iris had been close to Alder since she'd defeated him and become Champion. He'd looked at her like another member of his family and she'd saved him from the bottle. Her loss was sure to send my old friend off the deep end again.

I took a second to breathe. "What do we do?" I asked. As much as Alder was grieving, he'd have a plan for this. He always did.

"Get out of the country. They'll shut off the teleporters within the day. Our best shot is the Mistralton airport, as long as we get there before Plasma does."

I nodded and turned to look at Sherys. She was peering out the window, rapid-fire panicking into her cell. At least she'd finished dressing. We'd have to leave immediately. "Meet you there?" I asked.

"I'll try, but I just had a member of the Shadow Tri-"

The line died in a sudden burst of static. I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at it suspiciously. That hadn't been a normal disconnection. One of the lines had been cut. I put the phone down and hung up on the call. I picked it back up cautiously, praying that I would hear a normal dial tone. Angry static answered me.

"Sherys," I called, turning away from the phone. Our line had been cut. Somebody was here. "Get away from the window."

She turned to look at me, still panicking into her phone. She lowered it and opened her mouth to say something.

I never heard what she said. The window exploded, peppering the living room with a thousand shards of glass. A dagger of glass impaled my right shoulder, but I was saved from the brunt of the blast by virtue of standing in the hallway between our kitchen and living room.

Sherys hadn't been so lucky. She'd been at the window. She fell back and hit the floor hard. I could hear her desperately gasping for air. I tore out the shard of glass in my shoulder, probably doing permanent damage in the process. I didn't care. I crawled over to my wife, cussing under my breath with every agonizing movement as I painted the chic carpet she'd picked out with my blood.

It was too late for me to do anything for her. She was dead by the time I'd crawled across the room. My gorgeous, innocent wife was dead and I couldn't do a damn thing to save her.

She sat back, stretching her arms. "You said that it wasn't a marriage of love. But at the same time, you've previously mentioned the death of your wife as one of the hardest hitting deaths of the war. Why do you think that Sherys' death has weighed on you so heavily?"

I sighed and shrugged again. "I couldn't say. We were never overly close, except for at the beginning. But you don't just live with someone for almost ten years without coming to care for them."

She looked up at me. "There's more to it than that though. You gave a completely different answer to your League handlers during your debrief."

"You aren't supposed to have access to that," I growled. I'd been downright hostile to the League spooks when they brought me in. As little as I cared about my public image, that recording was not one that painted me in a good light.

She smiled. "I'm a good reporter, Mr. Rykker, despite my age. It wouldn't be the first time I got a hold of something the League didn't want released."

I stayed silent for a moment, just studying her. I wasn't sure whether to open up or kick her out of my house. She was smarter than I'd given her credit for

"Look," she started. "I can tell that you've got a whole little blood feud going on between you and the League. It's plain enough to anyone with a brain. I know that you're planning on hijacking this interview to paint the League in the worst light you can. But I'm here to tell your story. This interview? It's not for the league. It's for the people of Unova. They want to meet their heroes. They want to know that they're people just like the rest of us." She sat back and glanced down at my drink, brushing her hair away from her face again.

I nodded slowly. I reached down for my bottle and picked it up. I slowly and methodically topped off my glass and produced another one from my side table. I poured a generous amount and held it out to her. She took it in silence, still watching me as I put the bottle back beside my chair. "I told you already that I'm not a hero. A real hero would have saved the people they cared about."

"Instead, you just saved hundreds of innocent trainers and directly contributed to the downfall of a dangerous madman. Not all heroes are straight from legend."

I smirked. She really was good at using words to her advantage. Probably why she was a reporter. I raised my glass and clinked it against hers. "To heroes then," I said solemnly.

She raised her glass and we drank together.

Sherys just looked up at me with that stiff, terrified expression. I didn't know what was happening, or what to do. I felt like anything but a hero in that moment.

Fortunately, my pokemon weren't so lackadaisical in their own responses. Demeter, my trevenant was bellowing a ghastly warning out in the yard. Phantom roots and vines had risen from the dirt and wrapped themselves around the assailant. My phantom tree had always felt more at home standing guard outside the house, and now she had turned my front yard into a nightmare of haunted foliage. I couldn't tell where Soulfire was, but the chandelure had to be close by. I could feel his careful gaze on me, watching for any further disturbance.

I left Sherys there, something that haunts me to this day. She was just a pawn like me, used by the League for their twisted version of control. She was an innocent woman, married to someone she didn't love. She didn't deserve to die for the fact that she lived with me. The fact remained that I didn't have the time to spare a proper burial. Demeter may have stopped the attacker, but I doubted that he'd be the last. Plasma had planned on wiping all Champion level trainers off the board during their first attempt at bringing down the League, and if this really was them I could be sure that they still had that plan.

So we ran. I returned Soulfire and Demeter to their balls. As much as their presence would have comforted me, they were far too conspicuous for easy travel. They were the only two remaining members of my championship team. They were celebrities in their own right, with Soulfire's league highlight page eclipsing my own in viewership.

I released Mandagar, my mandibuzz outside. She was a relatively recent capture, having only recently wandered onto the property and found herself captured by a pair of obscenely powerful ghosts. Still, I needed to fly halfway across Unova in the dead of night. She'd taken to my orders relatively well, but I still had my reservations about the bird. Mandibuzz are vengeful, patient creatures. If she'd wanted to he could have gutted me and flown off, or simply just bucked me off mid-flight. Thankfully though, she had no such plans for the moment.

"We made it to Mistralton just before morning," I said. I tipped back my drink again, downing the rest of it. "I bought myself a one-way ticket to Kanto. I thought we were home free."

"So you never planned on gathering in Mistralton?" She asked. "It was just all a coincidence?"

"Coincidence, fate, call it whatever you want. Just because that's where we fought together for the first time, doesn't mean anything."

She scrawled madly at her notes before looking back up at me. "So, what happened next?"

I sighed and lifted the bottle again. This was the part that I'd been dreading. The part that I had never wanted to tell another living soul again. "I found her alone, crying to herself."

"Would you be referring to Ms. Mayweather?"

I winced audibly at the mention of her name. "Yeah," I replied in a cold tone. "That's where I met Liza."

She sipped at her own drink and then looked back at me. "So, what actually happened next?"

I frowned, thinking back to that god-forsaken airport. "We survived. Despite all of fate's best efforts, we survived."