This story was co-developed by Titan127 and beta read by ShonnaRose and JhinoftheOpera.
[9-3] All The Colors Birthed By the Sun
"Brisa!" Ciel's satellite weapon dove from orbit and almost ripped her arms from her sockets, but she predicted his action and snapped away from the dive's path with centimeters to spare.
A Dusk Ball was in her palm. He didn't see her retrieve it. And despite his headstart, it shared the instant with his own Poké Ball as they both bathed the grotto in neon red. Their Pokémon lunged before their colors met reality.
"Arden, Flamethrower!" he said.
A blazing tower erupted from his building Pokémon, flames slipping between his stacking cells. When the sacks on his neck came to life, the tower flared in size until it engulfed the entire edge of the forest. Ciel couldn't feel the heat even as it burned his arm clean.
A dark shadow formed behind Arden, and with his focus on his flames, he didn't notice it in time. A shape leapt from the ground with its claw outstretched, but Arden's body had already dematerialized before it could tear into him. Ciel switched the Poké Ball in moments, and a lithe body appeared in his place. Her fur stuck on end, and she was ready to fight immediately. Her tremors couldn't affect her when the disaster was already in progress.
This wasn't a sanctioned battle, and he cared about nothing but the safety of his friends, his family, his Pokémon. There were no rules, and no penalty for recalling Pokémon as means of evading attack.
Raven twirled to build momentum and slammed her sickle against the shadow. A golden zipper hung from its face, and while blocking her strike with one of its arms—it was a rigid blade, unlike the jagged fingers that terminated the other—used its free limb to unzip a gold-toothed smile. A Banette.
He had a Type advantage, now if only he could—
A heel caved in his stomach and robbed his lungs of their stores. His neck met the bark of a tree, and an audible crack came from within his cast. Ciel would have screamed at the overwhelming burning sensation, but he was far too focused on keeping oxygen flowing to his brain.
"That was a dirty trick," she said, leaning over him. A glint of metal made his neck burn. "And here I thought we were going to have a nice, even discussion."
He sucked in a massive breath only to expend it before it found his windpipe. "Night Slash!"
Though he didn't have time to specify a target, Raven chose for him. Her blade stole a piece of the woman's dress and a few crimson drops, just as the Banette's blade took something from her side. She howled in pain, and the woman was nowhere to be found.
Ciel accepted their bought time and scrambled to his feet, returning Raven once again to nothing and substituting his Typhlosion. A second of unnatural red, followed by the fiery glow of nature's fury. He placed a wave between them as a shield, and both the woman and her Pokémon were forced to hold beyond the wall of flame.
Raven was injured, and she knew this monster wouldn't hold anything back. That left only Arden and Hector. He wouldn't risk Brisa, untrained as she was, and heaven forbid he put that heartsick newcomer in harm's way. Ciel had to trust the team that won him his Johto Challenge Sigil. More than ever before, he needed their power. He needed to make her never touch him and his family ever again.
The burn in his right arm traveled through his shoulders to his outstretched left when he issued his next order. "Inferno."
Blue heat from Arden's neck lit every leaf in the vicinity like a candle wick, and it erupted from his neck with enough force to blast smoke up through the trees. The torrent struck the ground and raced outward like liquid, incinerating every remaining moss at the center of the grotto. Fires spread through the bordering trees—he could already see furnaces within their glowing bark, and they leaked that ominous glow into the grotto. Ciel skipped breaths knowing those he took would be toxic.
"Shadow Claw." Her voice, somewhere within the hellfire, was calm. No fear, no worry, no care as elysium burned around her.
"Stay on guard!" Ciel ordered. He didn't aim the Inferno directly for their opponent, instead hoping that the area-of-effect was wide enough that the Banette had no chance to dodge. But, the massive display let him lose track of their opponent.
The silhouette leapt from his left, and he issued another Flamethrower. The Banette was swallowed. Another claw, however, pierced deep into Arden's back, causing Ciel to scream his name.
It was a completely different Pokémon. A lithe feline body, not unlike Raven's, stood on wide paws built for grappling, and the only thing that broke up its tan skin was the red crystal embedded in its forehead. The Persian ripped its claws from Arden, swirling blood with his dwindling flames.
Camella stepped through the flames, seemingly unfazed by them licking at the hem of her dress. "You have your dirty trick. I have my own."
Two of her Pokémon were on the field, not just the Banette. Shit. Shit! Now his Typhlosion was injured, enough that his entire teal coat had darkened with his own gushing wound. It didn't look critical, but he wouldn't let Arden go on longer.
He refused to risk his Pokémon, even for this battle. And that made it all the more dangerous, because this woman would gleefully tear into their flesh. His primary objective was to stop her with minimal injuries.
Ciel grabbed another capsule and swapped again, and this time the soil trembled under the weight of Arden's replacement. Hector's armor rattled within the roar of the flame.
"Bulldoze!" he shouted.
In most battles, he couldn't get away with using Hector's stronger Ground-type moves, as he was rarely in a location that encouraged destruction. But here, isolated and nowhere, there was no collateral possible.
Hector slammed his forelimbs into the soil, and cracks splintered from the point of impact. The Banette—whose body wavered from a burn—and the Persian fled the epicenter to the edges of the forest, only for the trees to begin to collapse around them. Just as planned. Ciel's fiery destruction of the grotto, if reckless, was intentional, as nearby trees were weakened from the flames eating their insides. Now he had a free supply of weapons ready to fall.
"Hector, at two-o-clock!" he said, praying Hector understood his meter-per-second thoughts. "Then go for the Persian!"
A fissure opened where his fist met the soil and swallowed the base of a dying tree. It snapped and toppled by the time Hector was already barreling towards the feline opponent. Attacks from two fronts forced a split-second decision, and it chose wrong. It leapt back towards the center of the grotto to evade the falling tree only for an armor-plated fist to catch it in the side and bury it in the ashen soil.
"You're growing very irritating," she said, still somewhere beyond the growing flames. "Perhaps I should make this game a little more interesting."
Ciel stamped out a lit branch by his right foot, grasping for his capsules. Though he tried to track her voice, he couldn't place it amidst the roar, and it unsettled him that the Banette hadn't yet reappeared.
"Perhaps I could head back into town. That lovely couple you're staying with would love to know what you're doing right now."
Don't say it. She wouldn't dare say it.
"And so would that sister of yours."
"No!" It was ripped from his throat. "I'm the only one that's important here! That's all this has ever been, that's the only reason I've played along!"
"Oh, but you haven't. You've broken our little agreement time and time and time again. So perhaps a little refresher is in order," she cooed.
And then she cut through the trees, and he could somehow feel her escape amid particles and swirling currents. He grabbed Hector's capsule and locked his teeth together, unable to process his own rage as a syllable. She couldn't escape. She couldn't get near his sister. Even after the return completed and the fires swallowed themselves behind him, his vision remained ruby.
Ciel couldn't identify his legs, or his arms, or his chest, or anything as he broke all safety protocols and forced himself onwards like a freight train. Within the cast and within his arm, the fractured bones sharpened themselves on each other and punctured surrounding muscle, but he couldn't feel anything. Hector's Poké Ball only remained in his other hand because his fingers had locked in place.
The forest's shadow only remained for a few more moments until he threw himself out into the open flowers. The clouds had swallowed the sun, offering every flower the taste of death. When Hector once again appeared by his side, he granted the full course to those beneath him.
"Come back!" he shouted. Hector was his only member not yet injured, and he couldn't catch up to her due to his limited speed. They needed to stop her, now. He only had one plan, a completely destructive one. She couldn't be far enough to avoid it. He said, "Earthquake."
Hector hesitated. He glanced around him at the patches of beauty with his plated fist raised. When Ciel nodded, he took no pleasure in punching straight through the soil to the rock. The earth fractured.
Grinding vibrations tore chunks from the surface and surged the tides among the ocean of flowers. Trees fell from the burning grotto behind him. Though Ciel hugged the ground to maintain his footing, it wasn't his priority.
He waited for a sound. A scream, a fall, anything to tell him that she hadn't escaped. That he still had a chance. As the vibrations settled, he searched through the roaring winds of the cloudy afternoon. When nothing came, he began to panic. He debated calling Brisa, despite her being barely reliable and not ready for a real fight. She couldn't get to Laina, no matter what. No matter what. No matter what.
Ciel was so wrapped up in his mind that he didn't notice the puncture in Hector's stomach until he turned his head and saw it spilling along his entire back plates. The Rhydon dropped to a knee, soundless.
Hector's name from his tongue was equally silent. Ciel tried to throw himself at his Pokémon and was cut off by an instant jet of water centimeters from his nose. He blinked as it had vanished, spraying into the forest, but it had sprayed stinging droplets across his face.
She stepped out of the forest. He had been too distracted by rage to recognize she'd never left. Trees landed in her path, some having caught from the spreading fire, but she stepped over them without care for the burns that painted her ankles. A violet star-like creature adorned with a red gem floated over her shoulder. The second set of arms on its back spun to a stop as a glow in the gem vanished.
"Now look at the mess you've made," she said. Her heel plunged into the fire to kick away a fallen trunk that was many times her height. She was inhuman.
However, all he could think about was the Starmie she had unveiled, and how Hector was in mortal danger.
Just one Water-type attack had slipped cleanly through his armor plating and pierced the organs beneath, illustrating just how grave a delta weakness was. He needed medical attention soon, and Ciel was out of uninjured Pokémon.
With no other choice, he raised Hector's Poké Ball to sub for Raven. The beam fired from his unsteady hand. The recall process only took a second or two at most, but this time he could see the excruciating detail as the red found the tip of Hector's right claw. The device's scanner polled every adjacent cell that matched his DNA and spread upwards, racing to read, digitize, and return the Pokémon.
But the process stopped short at his shoulder when the capsule in Ciel's hand shattered.
He screamed in pain as the Banette slashed a gash in his palm through the Poké Ball, filling the wound with plastic and metal shards. Ciel struggled to keep his eyes open against it and the overwhelming pain in his sling, and between waves of black, he was horrified at Hector's condition.
His arm was gone, lost as corrupted data. The socket where it once laid pooled fluid—red of blood, orange of fat—into the soil, as his weight leaned towards his heavier side. Like before, Hector took the blow quietly, and to Ciel's horror, remained standing against the evil woman, her Starmie, and the Banette that had returned to her side. There was no sign of hesitation on Hector's face, not a wince as he stepped forward, even as his life drained out his wound.
The woman said something, but he couldn't hear. The Banette leaped forward and cleaved its blade against Hector's plates, easily able to dodge the next, impaired punch from his remaining arm. Ciel ordered—pleaded—him to run away. It fell on only his own ears, as a second Hydro Pump speared another organ through Hector's abdomen.
When the Banette came for him again, he reached up for his horn and tore it from its home. He wielded it like a stake and drove it through the Banette's small body. The Ghost-type was nailed to the uneven soil when Hector threw the point down. It tried to shift its corporeality to free itself, but the previously applied burns sapped all its strength and trapped it in a realm between. It laid motionless, unable to continue.
Hector stood his ground, missing an arm, a horn, and what must have been liters of blood. He was nearly leaning over, summoning all his remaining strength just to keep one leg standing. Ciel's hoarse voice reached him.
"Hector, please… you have to stop. Just stop it, please." The tears in his eyes crept up on him and forced sobs between his words. "You j-just… you just did it! You figured out how to detach your horn. We still have more stuff to work on."
Hector did not move. Hector did not growl. Hector did not glance his way. Ciel wanted him to respond somehow, to tell him he was wrong. Anything to let him know who was making this choice.
"Please, Hector! You have to evolve, remember? I have that Protector!" Ciel managed. "Just run!"
The Starmie's second set of arms spun up again. A third wound appeared on Hector's back, which was now dyed a deep red as fluid settled into every microscopic trench in his armor.
"Stop it," cried Ciel.
Another hole. This one was further up, closer to his heart.
"Stop it!" Ciel couldn't manage to shout as his own, lesser pain immobilized him. He despised not being able to move even as Hector refused to fall.
And when Ciel managed to crane his head up to his Rhydon, so monolithically tall like a damaged building giving its last salute to the skyline, he saw one single, unblinking eye. It was pointed at him, and it wasn't sad.
In fact, Hector was almost… happy.
And the Starmie's gem, glowing with another Hydro Pump, aimed this time at Ciel himself. The shot rang out across a quiet field.
The monolith appeared between Ciel and the enemy. Though the attack was not meant for him, it found its home in Hector's chest. There was no exit wound. It was stopped from reaching Ciel by armor, muscle, and the undying remnants of Hector's will.
Finally, he fell.
When Hector's body slumped in the grass, there was no one beyond. The woman and her Pokémon had vanished, leaving them to the wondrous fields.
Ciel couldn't move. His nerves couldn't connect with his brain. But he still saw his Pokémon clear as day.
Hector slept in the most beautiful place in the world, outlined by every color birthed by the sun.
Some stupid weird insect wasn't her first choice for a chaperone, but Laina Fauder supposed, with a mouth full of funnel cake, that it could be worse. She ripped off bits of it every so often and stuffed it in the Scizor's pincers. If he was eating it, she hadn't seen him do it yet.
Her pits were starting to sweat at this point despite the cool air. She, Ren, and Eva had been out and about for a few hours already, hitting every wooden stall for food and to toss some darts or whatever. Eva exchanged flowers at each, giving some from her—no, their—bouquet and replacing them, until the blue was but one hue of many at her waist.
It was fun, sure, and she'd stuffed her face, sure, but she'd dozed on her classwork the previous night and now she couldn't get the workshees out of her eyelids whenever she blinked. Why was it so hard to have fun when she had a deadline coming up?
On the stage of a circular ampitheat—amphit—big theater thingy, a group of actors surrounded one small child in the center in a tiny white suit with a flower in her hair and a bundle of leaves on her back. Must be that Shaymin thing, and the flower was a Gracidea that Ren and Eva kept talking about. The other actors, clad mostly in flowers above skin-tight suits, chanted in a language she didn't know about how Shaymin was the greatest thing to happen to Floaroma since… sliced bread, probably. Ren attempted to keep up with the translations, offering a whispered explanation throughout the scenes, but he was so interested in the history that she was mostly forgotten about. That was fine. She still had funnel cake.
When she noticed the smoke column on the horizon, she seemed to be the only one. The entire theater was too busy in their trance, so she decided to take another look. Ren asked her where she was going, but she told him to enjoy the play, and grabbed her "bodyguard" by the pincer to head to find a clear view free of the stage.
The gray pillar rose until it melted into the clouds, and Laina realized when she saw it through the houses that it came from north of town. Where her brother was.
Her hand found the red-armored insect's thin forearm, and though his wings buzzed in alarm, he allowed himself to be dragged by her past the houses and to the forest outside of town. She'd been pretty unsettled by the past weeks, constantly seeing Ciel face down some horrible problem that knotted her stomach, and this only resurfaced those fears. What if it was those space guys from the news again?
Once Mantis got a good sight on the cloud itself—and the smell hit them—he took flight. Laina shouted after and followed through the forest to the fields, where a fire roared on the flower plains. Only the dark shadow remained of a forest beneath the flames, and she broke into a sprint to catch up.
"Wait up! Aren't you allergic to fire or something?" She tried to distract herself from bad thoughts, really bad thoughts, and just kept pumping her legs.
There were no wild Pokémon around, nothing to endanger her even with her "bodyguard" distracted. The field contained nothing but flowers and the inferno.
Laina ran for too long until her legs ached. She ran and ran, and the fire never seemed to grow any larger. In fact, by the time she realized it was right in front of her, the fire had almost completely burned out, leaving nothing but a memory of a small forest. Mantis approached no closer, and Laina's eyes fell on the two figures.
One lay peaceful in the flowers. The other cried on his knees like she had never, ever, ever seen before.
Laina couldn't comprehend what she saw, like her mind blocked out the truth. But she could see Ciel, how he wouldn't stop looking ugly. Her unsteady feet took her to him, and her arms fell around him automatically.
It was the only gesture she could offer, and he didn't respond at all to her touch. He kept crying, and she kept holding, hoping he would eventually break the embrace.
If she was in his position, she wouldn't be able to.
Next is Volume 10. See you someday.