The Champions

Part 3

What it Means to Lose

Demeter was in her usual place in the yard, feigning innocence as a normal tree. As if the misshapen hollow trunk could be anything other than haunted. There was a rustle of movement on the fence line and I watched Demeter's eyes light up.

Phantom roots tore free of the dirt, wrapping around the intruders eagerly. A pair of lillipup writhed in Demeter's grasp, howling and yelping madly as my ghost lifted them into the air. Demeter scuttled over to them and her trunk cracked open to reveal rows of jagged, razor sharp teeth.

A deafening bark interrupted her meal. A pair of stoutland leapt over the fence, landing between Demeter and her morsels. They growled as the lean forms of nearly a dozen herdier slunk through the underbrush to join their pack leaders.

Demeter looked back at me with one baleful eye. She had the strength to tear the entire pack to pieces if she decided to do so, but she looked to me for guidance first.

I shook my head. We did not need to make enemies of the wild pokemon out here. This was their home as much as ours.

Demeter closed her maw and slowly lowered the two pups, reluctant to let her catch go. I would have to let her hunt soon, she was getting restless.

The pack departed a moment later, one of the stoutland glancing up at the human watching from his study. The pokemon's eyes lingered on me for a long moment, and then they were gone.

"Enjoying the show?"

I turned. She was standing in the door, haggard and half asleep. Her hair was up in a messy bun, loose strands poking in every direction. The stoutland must have woken her. It was easy to forget that normal people slept for more than an hour or two each night.

"Demeter is restless," I said. "She misses battling."

"Don't you?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Save the questions for your interview, miss Hall."

She smiled softly and I couldn't help the flutter of life that I felt in my chest. She really did look like Sherys. It almost wasn't fair. "It's a fair question. People don't just disappear into the woods." She shrugged. "I don't know, you just got me thinking. What are you really out here for? What made you move to the middle of the damn wilderness?"

I sighed. She was insistent, so we might as well start. "Shower is down the hall from your room." I stood up, draining the rest of my coffee. "I'll get another pot brewing."

We fought like madmen, like demons had possessed us. There was no option for mercy, no truly safe place we could retreat to. Each battle was simple. Kill or be killed. Win or die. There was no middle ground. If we lost just once, it was all over. With travel in and out of Unova locked down, we had no other choice but to keep fighting.

Liza lost her delcatty, Beauty, when we hit the rail yards in Nimbasa. Elesa had been feeding us information on a new staging ground being built just outside the city. Our best chance was taking out the rail yards and lines that led to Plasma's new base.

It had been a bloodbath, with civilians caught in the crossfire on both sides. Plasma didn't care about the civilians and we couldn't afford to spare our attention for them. More than once I came across the body of someone who'd gotten too close to one of my ghosts, to say nothing of the carnage Benga's dragons caused. Not one of us was innocent that night, save for Liza herself as usual.

We rescued a pair of trainers from the fledgling base before Alder's volcarona laid waste to the construction site. Brothers, from Undella town. They thanked us and disappeared into the night. I never saw them again.

A week later, we stopped Plasma as they raided the store that had been feeding us supplies. We weren't fast enough to save the store owner or his family though. Plasma had left them outside as bait, still bound to draw us in. That was the last time we had any willing help from the civilian population. Too many people were cowed into silence by the threat that came with aiding the resistance.

Those opening months of the war burned through the last of my tattered morality. I fought like a Champion once more. I killed. I had no other choice. None of us did.

There was one time where I'd been knocked out by an explosion. Something hit the gas tanks of the fuel refinery we were attempting to sabotage. I was thrown like a rag doll, woke up half an hour later with the rest of the poor bastard that had been beside me plastered across my body. I still smell that damn stench every night when I think that I might sleep.

Liza lost her innocence and half of her team in the first few months. Years of work raising them, and in three months Plasma took half of her progress away as if it meant nothing.

Alder retreated into the drink again. It was rare a moment that he did not have a bottle or a flask in his hands. His mood turned sour, much like it had done after his family's accident.

Benga was the only one who didn't lose himself. Mostly because the savage little shit lived for battle. He fought with a ferocity that surprised even Alder, if you could get him to admit it. His dragons left more bodies behind than any of ours, more than Plasma ever dared to.

N was changed more than any of us by the war. The compassionate hero of ideals that stole the hearts of half of Unova was a wreck of his former self. He just didn't have the same spark, that same heart that he used to. Watching your father commit genocide and being forced to commit atrocities of your own would break even the strongest person. It broke N utterly. Well, that or the deaths of half his team in the Black City rebellion did.

She flipped open her notepad and leaned back in her seat. "The League paints the resistance as a tragic effort, doomed from the very start. In their portrayal, you barely held on until the Hero of Truth saved Unova for a second time."

I couldn't help but to snort in laughter. "That's an understatement if I've ever heard one. We were hopelessly outmatched by Plasma's new weapon. Even with the two inferno bugs, we couldn't do more than scratch the paint on the fucking thing."

"So what was your plan?"

I shrugged and looked down at my coffee noncommittally. "Hit them wherever it wasn't. Oftentimes, we'd have Alder or Benga draw that damn war machine away so we could strike at a holding facility or hit whatever infrastructure they were setting up."

"But it did work, at least for a time?"

I nodded. "We barely slowed them down, but we made a difference. We saved less than five hundred trainers. Out of tens of thousands, less than five hundred. So many cocky young kids just starting their journey, retired trainers like myself…" My voice dropped to a whisper and I fought the urge to seize up. "It's the things like this that still haunt me, miss Hall. The unimaginable horror that we witnessed on a daily basis. Not a day went by where the spectre of death did not hang over us all. I forget sometimes, for an hour or two. I let myself rest. Their faces always come back in my dreams."

She lowered her note pad and I saw the concern etched on her face. "We don't have to do this," she said softly. "We can sto-"

I slammed my fist on the table. "No, we can't! Those people deserve better than to be swept under the rug like they never existed, like they didn't lose their lives because of us!" I slowed my breathing. I couldn't come off as unhinged in the interview. I needed people to see the hurt in me, to see the pain of knowledge that I carried. "Sixty-two thousand trainers were registered in Unova at the time. There were less than a thousand at the end of the Second Plasma Crisis." I scowled. "I don't have to tell you the math for you to understand that."

"When I was Champion, the League was already crumbling under the weight of rank corruption among our officials. I did what I could, but who listens to a kid? I couldn't make a difference then, and by the time I was old enough to be taken seriously I'd had enough of fighting the system." I sighed heavily and met her piercing eyes. "I failed Unova as a Champion. She deserved better than a jaded fool like me. I let the system create the monster that was Plasma. I let our country be overtaken by extremism and ran when the task was too much for me."

She was quiet for a moment while she studied the notes she had made. "In your opinion, did the League react sufficiently to the first Plasma insurrection?"

I met her eyes with a sad, knowing smile. "Not at all. They let the rank and file walk with some community service for the most part. The leaders were forced to pay a fine and pledge never to participate in politics again." I snorted at the thought. "They wanted N, and Ghetsis, but how were they planning on finding them? They'd both disappeared after the Hero saved all our asses."

"Mr. Blake did go after them though."

I shook my head. "No, he went after N. Poor bastard was a misguided fool, but Ghetsis was the real threat. N had always just been a pawn, even if he was the figurehead on Plasma's throne." I paused for a long moment and drained the rest of my coffee. "Nobody went after Ghetsis."

She frowned. "But the League-"

"Assigned a task force to hunt him down," I replied curtly. "Which was never funded and never began field operations. Almost as if someone didn't want Ghetsis found."

She frowned. "Who would have wanted that?" She asked.

I shrugged. "Like I said, the danger of not punishing insurrection leads to more insurrection. Someone at League HQ was on Ghetsis' side. Not like anyone who knows who is still alive. Why do you think Ghetsis had his flying fortress ice League HQ first?"

"Covering his tracks," she commented. "He destroyed all the evidence of League involvement."

I nodded. "What makes you think Benga's new League is any different?"

N had us a plan to end the war. It was madness, absolutely insane bullshit, but we had nothing else. There was no other play. Just the mother of all Hail Mary plays.

We were to stage a two-pronged assault on Plasma's main base, a facility that they constructed over the Great Chasm. Benga and Alder would lead the trainers we'd managed to recruit against the fortress while Eliza, N and I snuck past the outer defences and blew the generators powering its weapons.

We had help from a few other regional Leagues, notably the Indigo and Hoenn leagues. They had their own Plasma sympathizer movements brewing and wanted to uproot the entire source. I wasn't going to complain, especially when nearly two-hundred elite level trainers appeared on our doorstep. Even had a few Elites that came in real handy.

Ghetsis was struggling for control by this point. He couldn't be everywhere at once and we knew it. The general population seemed to know it too. People weren't offering help anymore, but the tone of conversation grew in volume. People had seen Plasma struggle to stamp us out and it gave them hope.

We put out feelers into the civilian population for aid. I didn't expect much, but N put out the call. He denounced what Plasma had become and called on any former members to join the final fight against true evil. Plasma would catch wind of the plan, but we wanted that. We wanted them to meet us with everything they had. We would be meeting them with everything we had and more. It was only fair.

When we finally met at the ruins of Humilau City. The tropical waters had been frozen solid when Ghetsis had first gotten wind of Resistance activity. Six months later, the entire lagoon the city was built over was still on ice.

We had the our people bunk up in the city. Nearly two-thousand trainers and armed civilians, all hardened by half a year of brutal war. To my knowledge, it was the largest force of trainers ever gathered in Unova. We were a bunch of scared kids and exhausted retirees, but we were an army.

We'd gotten word that Plasma was pulling back, drawing down their numbers in the occupied cities nationwide. They must have realized what was going on. Alder and I made the call. There was no more waiting. We marched for war. Unova had been spared true war during the first Plasma Crisis. This time, she would not be so lucky.

I leaned back in my chair. My drink was heavy in my hand. I looked down at the glass and drained it. "I've never repeated this story to another person," I started. "That day… that battle… it was the closest thing to hell on earth, except it was frozen." I shuddered and closed my eyes. "The main thrust of the army charged the fortress, braving the fire of those frigid cannons with the help of the foreign Elites.

I led N and Eliza ahead, using Soulfire to keep the fire off of us. We cut our way through Plasma's lines and kept going, catching them off guard with the suddenness of our attack."

"All reports of the battle itself are muddled at best. Owing to both the scarce number of survivors and the lack of transparent public documentation, we have no clue what really happened there." She looked up from her pad. "So tell me," she continued. "What did happen? Plasma fell, but Champion Benga was uncooperative to say the least."

I looked at my empty drink and scowled. "We were saved yet again, when we didn't deserve it. The Hero of Truth and the Hero of Ideals came to our rescue. And they paid for our victory dearly." I rose to my feet, a stoic mask hiding my brooding mind. Just thinking about that day was bringing back the horrors, like I was reliving the events with every word. "I am sorry, miss Hall. I seem to have run out of whiskey." The face of the young Plasma guard as Soulfire immolated him roared to the front of my mind. "If you'll excuse me," I mumbled. I turned and walked away, leaving my interviewer sitting quietly in my study.

I wandered for a few minutes, mindlessly pacing the kitchen before disappearing into my liquor cellar. Down there I could hide. Down there I was alone. Down there, the faces couldn't find me.