Alright, so I'd originally written this chapter something like three months ago.

However.

I read over it, only to realize I'd made a horrible gigantic plothole because I don't know, my brain was turned off or something. So I had to work up the strength to go back and fix it, but I knew it'd take a bit of reworking the chapter, so I've just been kinda dreading it since whenever I wrote it and found the plothole. It's pretty dumb too, so this whole time I've just been like UGHGHH REWORKING THINGS IN MY DUMB FANFICTION.

But now there's another story I wanna write, except I still haven't written this one, and arc 3 is much shorter than the first 2 arcs, and I really wanna get to arc 3... so here I am. Trying again. Finally. (I mean, nobody's frequently reviewing this old thing anymore, so I might be talking to a wall for all I know, but I might as well say it for myself to vent my frustrations xD If someone actually is reading, neat, but if not, that's neat too. I just I just want the lesbbsbsbians to meet againnnn)

So, welcome. Welcome to my return!

Oh, chapter 19, by the way, came to me in practically a vision when I wrote it the first time. I know it's horrifying, but, I dunno. Good thing I made this story rated T. I honestly can't decide, though, if Marlun will actually die or not. To be completely honest, she no longer has plot significance after that scene with Iris, but... like... to commit to that... but like, if I don't, then it's like, there are no stakes... which isn't true but it feels like I'm not ballsy enough for it... I don't know! If someone comes in and demands I save Marlun, maybe I will.

Alright, let's get this over with. Geez, what a long author's note xD

Chapter 20: Distasteful Family Reunion

The elgyem has infiltrated my thoughts. The elgyem that could have saved my best friend if he had only stayed behind—if he had waited a moment and watched the claws plunge into her chest—if he had—if he—if I had somehow treated him with the respect he desired.

If I had tried to understand him.

Someone's fingers have twisted about my own, tugging me forwards. My bare feet stumble over a cold floor, and I kick up dust with my clumsy footsteps. This ancient ground has not been trod upon in more years than I could begin to count.

Again the slash of red—it spreads across my vision, coloring my senses, painting the room of my mind in too-bright crimson, coating the dust in the stench of pain.

The warm hand, the tugging, the whispering. A voice laced in song, leading me ever onward.

My name, repeated unendingly by warm breaths.

"N," I'm muttering, "N," and he pauses just a moment. "N, we have to go back..." but my whimper falters. "We... We have to..."

Ghetsis is lying somewhere beyond, somewhere up at the top of this musty corridor. Even as my vision clots I see the single track of dragged robes N has been leading me to, all that stands out in the otherwise undisturbed corridor. Only he could be ahead.

Of course there is only one thing he could be doing... only one plan he could possibly have in mind. Kill the gods. Is that what we want? Is that what we need—to lose the pokemon who have been watching over this cursed land?

What happens... when we kill a god? Where does its power go?
Can a god be rendered into this form, such as how I was transformed so many years ago? Does Ghetsis seek murder—or—?

Then it occurs to me. They are gods, idiot Filloma—

"Could they save Marlun?" I gasp, still reeling with the shock of what happened, and N's breaths echo mine.

"Filloma, did you hear a word that I was saying?"

His cool blue gaze. I focus, watching the pale girl with green hair who wobbles between his eyes. When I shake my head, his disappointment shimmers. My heart pinches. "We don't know what the gods will do until we can find them. But we have to go on ahead."

Stupid Marlun... stupid, stupid Marlun... I think—I think I hate her. I don't think I've ever hated anybody this much.

I flex my fists; N winces when I squeeze his hand. But then he leads me on, and we look up as the lights grow sharp, dazzling timeworn marble and ravaged runes in the shape of angular dragon snouts. The wind whistles through the air here, where the tower's immaculate stained-glass ceiling has fractured and now reveals the rise of a mid-morning sun.

"It's too bright, N."

His thumb rubs against the back of my hand. His lips have drawn together, pressed tight.

In the midst of the sun-drenched glow, I make out a shadow of movement. Then the twirl of robes—a man.

My heart seizes.

"You don't have to come with me if you don't wan—"

I scowl. "We're doing this together."

His breaths hitch. His hand grips mine. His bracelet twinkles at his wrist like a promise about to be kept.

Finally a sound comes in on the wind, drifting down the hallway, splintering into us as the figure stands to its full height. His shadow stretches from his feet to the ground before us, draining the stone floor of its pallor.

"My children have finally arrived."

There's a flash as slit eyes spill wide open, red and blue. They're too strong, too colorful. They stick out against his pallid skin like marbles wedged into his face. His waist-length dusty green hair is unkempt, and it clings to him like long, rancid hands.

The vines tighten about my body, clinging to my skin. They answer to me easily now, as if an extension to my own mind, and they ripple with disgust at the sound of the voice that has haunted my memories for years despite the fact I have not seen him in so long.

There is a hush of a pause, then a scratchy cough.

"Shay." An ancient memory stirs at the base of my skull within his voice's low trembling tremor.

Where's the god? I can only focus on him for so long—

As N gently tugs me onward. I try to keep his pace. "Her name is Filloma." We've stepped into Ghetsis's shadow. The air bites harder, delving into the spots where the vines don't quite envelop me. My all too white back shudders in the breeze's cold clutch—similarly to how a hand had clutched and torn into it mere minutes ago—

"She is your sister. My daughter. Her name is as I say."

My head falters from the heavens.

Ghetsis. I force myself to keep my head steady and jab my gaze into his rotten complexion. He's practically a corpse. He doesn't scare me. He doesn't scare me.

Biting into my lip, I mutter, "Just talk over my head." Ghetsis's eyes flicker over to mine. There's a sickening bejeweled texture to them.

N stops when merely three paces separate us. I watch the way his feet threaten another, the way he forces his movements to halt, the way his hand rests against my own, exhausted.

The god. We need the god. I can feel Marlun's breaths fading even as we stand an agonizing age away from her.

But there are no gods present. I'm going to—I'm going to... I don't know. I don't know what to do. I've always had some sort of ulterior plan, some sort of deep-rooted desire, but now the man who calls me my father is here and I've lost sight of myself.

"Father," N utters, so soft I even I strain to hear him. "Father..?" He's testing the word, testing to see how it feels on his tongue after the weeks he's spent apart.

Ghetsis hovers before a dais painstakingly scraped clean of dirt and grime. In his fisted hand he squeezes a filthy washcloth.

All this time we've been looking for him, and he's just been sitting around in this musty old tower, cleaning off an altar.

"My son, what is it?"

I flinch. How did Ghetsis hear him?

Yet apparently he did. He now tosses the rag back and forth, staring imploringly to the boy he—I guess—raised.

N straightens, lips pursing. "We wish to speak with the gods. Please let us."

"Oh! So you already... Oh! This is good. This is very, very good." I must admit that Ghetsis's slithery snaky tone doesn't make me feel all that good, but perhaps it is just me. "If my research findings are accurate, they've been dormant for centuries now, requiring this altar to reawaken. Someone must have sealed them away long ago as to keep them from meddling with human affairs.

"But that is not enough. Even now, a brave and stupid person could come in and revive them. And even dormant, their powers are ever present, their slightest influence still fully capable of controlling us."

I break in. "How do you know any of this?"

He shakes his head, his choppy green hair blanketing his weathered, malnourished face. "There are many things you could never understand of this world, Shay."

"Just tell me." I stomp my bare foot, and it makes so little noise that I feel my eyes pinch in frustration. I miss my boots that made actual sounds when I stormed off. I miss my—my best friend, who spoke up for me. My best friend who...

And what does Ghetsis do? He turns to N. He turns to N to continue his speech. "I've been preparing for your return. I knew you would be drawn to this place, and once you were, you would arrive with the power needed to destroy the gods completely. N—

"Let go of her hand. You'll just get in the way."

He stumbles, fingers slipping from my grip already. I hiss and tug against him—don't do this again—don't leave my side again.

But he steadies. "I cannot, Father."

My heart shudders. N looks over to me, and in spite of the circumstances, here it is: the smallest little flicker of a grin. He whispers, "I will not make that mistake again."

I roll my eyes. "Making it once was bad enough," I utter in reply, and he flushes, his bashful gaze skittering away from me. "But I... I remembered how to use my powers because of you. So I for... I..." Oh my goodness. "Later," I mutter, facing the travesty at hand. His fingers squeeze mine.

Ghetsis has teetered off into the light filtering in from the broken ceiling, as if already tired of us both. It must be reflecting off the stained glass before falling in a halo upon us. He's been reduced to a smudge of yellow in a swampy white expanse.

Surely we cannot let Ghetsis out of our sight so soon as he reentered it.

And besides, if he intends to revive any sleeping gods for us...

"My child," his voice lumbers in a hush over us, "we are going to save the world from prejudice. We have already examined the ties that break pokemon, that force them as a yoke to humans. You, my dear, revealed this to us."

Suddenly the sunlight is cold on my skin, cold and uncomfortably sharp.

Don't call me your dear, I want to say, but somehow I—somehow I can't. It's the way he whispers it, a delicious secret, that shatters the last of the shackles on my muddy memories. Keebae leaps to action before my eyes, her fumbling sandy fingers hugging a cage's bars—her little hand taking mine and leading me away, our bare toes resounding against sparse metal walls. Then I'm plunged into the further past, the deep past, N showing my his pokemon friends, my laughing at his shoddy attempts to speak our language—Keebae again in the corners of my visions. Her head is down. Her face obscured by starchy white hair cropped about her head in a cruel frame.

The one looming over her—Ghetsis. The one telling her what to do, snapping at her across hallways and N's barren castle corridors, watch them, don't let them out of your sight. But she was our friend, so of course we wouldn't want to—

The whiplash of our father meeting our periphery and exclaiming to me "my dear Shay!" pure moments after shooing Keebae away into the depths of the facilities.

There was a cage, yes, but there was also a taste of the outdoors. There was a boy raised by pokemon whose mere father figure distorted his views and misguided his hand as to ease it out of my grip. A girl whose origins I still know not who hovers upon the horizon, so desperately out of my reach.

And there was Shay. There was Shay, a child whose hair was softly brushed, who was bathed and cared for and loved by a man whose hands never hit her but whose eyes hungrily shot behind her, shooing away the girl hovering behind me to her—cage.

...these memories are not my own.

These memories were never my own. No wonder—No wonder N can't comprehend why I do not love Ghetsis, why I do not wish to see him, why I can't handle being called the name this man had gifted me anymore.

I was trying to save Keebae. I was trying—to get her out—and somehow—and somehow N fumbled on the plan and got Keebae sent off to a horrifyingly unknown region when I got away. I must have been so young—I must have cared so deeply about her that I began to confuse our memories, was so close to her, was so confused, such a small pokemon—no, human—that I got myself lost with her.

Maybe it was even my fault. Maybe I had convinced myself I was in the cage and Keebae had to save me, that we had to save each other.

I realize now that I don't know. I'll never truly know. I was so small, so confused—confused enough that I couldn't even recall, at times, whether I had four legs or two. There are pieces of me I may never truly be able to comprehend.

That doesn't have to change who I am now. I don't need to go scouring after the memories I wanted to hide. I don't need a memory of Ghetsis hitting me to recognize that he is a total cretin masquerading as a man.

It sure is interesting how Ghetsis once desired the same as us: to see a world in which pokemon and humans were not subjugated to one another.

I open my mouth, finally ready to retaliate—when a whiplash of air breaches the very edge of my hair. Gasping, I crouch, hands over my head, and sense the splintering flickers of embers cresting over my hands. The searing of my own flesh leaves me woozy, and I crumple to the ground, my breaths squeezing out of my lungs and getting trapped somewhere in my throat.

A roar erupts overhead. At first I think it's Iris, the dragon girl, claiming her victim—but no, it's too deep, too harsh, too masculine. Ghetsis.

I glance up as Ghetsis fishes an item from his pocket.

A poke ball. He's the one who told me never to lay my finger on them—

Its upper shell is a poisonous violet. But then his free hand drops around his throat and he presses the button hidden in his golden necklace, and a beam of frightening light shoots from his necklace to Iris, stopping her flames mid-breath.

Her form falters, then crashes to the ground, a heap of—

No. Before my eyes her very flesh rewrites itself, the scales of her wings overtaking her body, hunching her shoulders, straightening out and elongating her neck, her hair falling out in a fan before her as the scales shed her skin. Her jaw gains angles, and monstrous dragon teeth grow out and pervade from her snarling maw.

The shark-like dragon stands hesitantly, struggling out of her collapse.

She's no longer a human at all, but a pokemon, a garchomp.

Her beady eyes flit to Ghetsis, so profoundly black and so full of betrayal despite their size. My lord, wh-why did you do that? Why would you hurt me so?

I wait for his response until I recall that he can no longer hear her. N falls to my side, scooping me up into his arms, and I let his hands unravel my own and gasp at the deep crimson sears wrenching open my alabaster skin. He reaches for his shirt and I shake my head, struggling with the lichen at my shoulders, imploring it to drop over my wounds and cover them like seals.

The pain of protecting them causes me to crumple into N's body. I let out jagged breath after jagged breath, my hands locked in a deathly snare like shackles to his wrists. He just watches, his eyes a miserable stormy blue.

He whispers "did you hear what Iris said" to me and I frantically bob my head. He winces, moving just a morsel ahead of me, blocking me off from Ghetsis's sight.

But Father is not paying any attention our way. He's been swinging about his poke ball, the rag a forgotten heap at the dais. He's testing his aim—pointing to the heaving form of Iris. "You are not allowed to hurt Shay, you bitch," he whispers, his voice a raspy scratch, and then he swings.

The ball beans her in the head, and she flinches as a reddish light pours out of it and envelops her. Ghetsis opens his palm for the ball, and it flies back to him, landing squarely in his hand.

That's... Iris.

But if she's here then that means she didn't try to help Marlun—I-I thought they were traveling together?—and that means Marlun—that means Marlun...

I stumble to my feet even as the pain eats away at my hands. N hurries after me, but he freezes when I step up to Ghetsis and cry to him, "Where are the gods?"

He backs away one shabby step. "My child... what do you mean?"

I drag a messy hand against my cheek and grunt through the incessant burning. "My best friend is bleeding out as we speak and I-I-Iris should have saved her. And she didn't. And if she's not going to, then I'm begging the gods to do it."

I see myself collapse to the floor, the reflection in Ghetsis's eyes begging for his help. His help. My stomach, it's... squeezing...

My head has crestfallen, my hair covering my face. I do not see anything. I am completely vulnerable to his next action.

A hand. A shaking hand rests upon my fluffy, tangled hair. "Child, stand up." So I do, forcing another inch of distance between us. There's this—There's something clawing up my throat at the thought of begging his mercy. And yet—there I see myself trembling back in his eyes, and I notice the pained light of sympathy within.

"Why is your best friend bleeding out, Shay?" He tilts his head, the creases on his skin tilting, tapering his features, sharpening the curve at his lip.

"B-Because Iris tried to kill me."

That flash, again, in his eyes. The hurried thundering in my heart directs me back, back, back until I feel myself fall against N who places an arm at my shoulder. The knots of breath at my throat dissolve, and I ease against him.

"She wasn't supposed to do that." Ghetsis runs a hand through his mangled hair, and I feel for a moment the tearing sense that he is searching through me, staring deeply somewhere beyond us. He is no longer tethered to this spatial realm. "She was supposed to be a replacement, an experiment. If we did not recover my beloved child Shay, then we must work on without remorse... without remorse...

"There are always sacrifices, always human mistakes..." His eyes momentarily lose their glimmer. "Like that slave girl I'd picked up from the gutter all those years ago."

My heart—

He's putting his experiment who tried to kill me and the girl who helped me escape into the very same category?

"Keebae," I whisper, flustered, "her name was Keebae."

"Was it?" Ghetsis's laugh is weak, harsh. "I don't think it was Keebae. I don't remember now, but I'm certain it was not that."

I open my mouth to object; N's hand tightens as he whispers, "He is convinced, Filloma. There will be no altering his conviction."

And my spirits slink through the ground, falling lower, lower...

Ghetsis's hand is lost in his hair, a fisted weight tangled in aging green strands.

"But now you have been recovered. Natural succeeded in finding you..."

N mumbles, "I still don't know why he named me Natural."

"Natural Harmonious Gropius." I can't stop the snicker that escapes me. It's released as if once caged, leaping out of my spirit. For a moment it all falls into place: the man before us was our father, and we had made a sort of mismatched misfit family.

But Ghetsis's crazed eyes sharpen, focus, and I am standing between them. There's this horribly particular shiver that comes from being stared down by a gaunt man, overwhelmingly tall, who lingers and enjoys his position between loss and retribution, as if only his suffering could bring such delight.

With a sort of ceremonious flourish, his hand dips into his robes, and it exits clutching a strange, chalky orb. He places it upon the ground in the midst of the dais, then moves a great deal out of its way.

His head falters back in our direction, and he says, "Ask it for your wish. Then we will destroy it."

Destroy it...

This is why he instructed Colress to steal me away from my own kind. This is why he carried me all the way to his home region and held me in a little cage, working day by day by excruciating day to stretch and rework my very body, carefully transfiguring each piece to reflect back the human he had envisioned within me.

I was powerless to stop him; despite the fact that I was able to flee from him, here I am again, under his influence. He speaks in a slow, restless, windy tone that has been worn away by uncountable years.

A breeze picks up once the stone slits into place.

Then a light, an earth-shattering light careens through the storm, picking up the dust and plowing it into a vortex, and then the very air in the room disappears and slips through my lungs and is gone with a pressurized cry.

And between the musty rubble peeks a monstrous white head.

I sense myself fading as I catch its—her—eyes, a pale cloudy blue. Long sleek fur blankets her, and her massive wings flutter at her sides. Her tail ignites; a beam of flame encircles it. Simultaneously, the two twin tails of fur sneaking down her head glow a gentle orange.

When she speaks, her voice overpowers: all else remains silent as to hear her roar.

I am called Reshiram, the creator goddess. Who is the one I owe my resurrection to?

N and I each glance at Ghetsis, glaring up at her, but he does not respond. And so N speaks up. Myself, and my sister, and my father.

Then I can't take it and I break away, the vines at my body threatening to tear me apart. Please! My best friend is lying all alone, b-bleeding out at the end of this hallway! Please can you save her?

Reshiram's head shifts but slightly to take in my demeanor.

Slowly her maw opens. I am unable. What restorative powers I once held have been long barren.

Wh-What—I whisper, but she's not done, and her voice easily overpowers mine.

Long ago, our creations rose against us. They enslaved their own kind, their own family, and the most hateful, the most powerful of these drained myself and my other half of our godly strength. We were then transfigured into the rocks you saw. All I have left are my wings, and my fire; and even that I am unsure as to how long they will last.

Oh... Oh.

Th-Then fly her to a pokemon center! I cry.

She is confused. I sense her very essence pouring into my mind, delving through my thoughts and memories, and plucking at the image of the pokemon center. I grasp N's hand—Do you know where the nearest one is? And while he struggles to follow, he sifts through memories of Plasmic pilgrimages and sends them to Reshiram.

And I sense him whisper, Please. This girl did not deserve what happened to her. She is much like you.

Already the sympathy wells up in Reshiram's great sky-blue gaze. Releasing a smoking breath, she takes off down the hallway, her massive, lumbering form gliding easily through this highest floor of the tower. No wonder it was so large, of such spellbinding scale: the building was created for her.

Was... it created as a prison for her and her "other half," if the dais was created to unseal and perhaps seal them as well?

When Reshiram yanks a wing back, the very air throws us after her, and N and I land by the side of an unconscious too-pale form.

Involuntarily I look away, shivering.

I didn't see Scamp, her little skitty, but I hear him now. She's just unconscious, Filloma. But it doesn't look promising.

We have to try, I reply, stubborn. And it's true. How could we forsake her now?

And then another voice pipes up—Filloma! N! Oh my gosh!

My gaze breaks away to the staircase, and before I know it I've been launched into a hug full of black fur and red claws. The zoroark launches an arm behind N and squeezes the both of us between her, head lodged somewhere on our shoulders.

Asha, I breathe, and for a second I think I'm going to break down. Somehow, in some inexplicable means of holding myself together, I don't, this time.
Maybe I'm just too tired to fall apart once more. Maybe I'm still in pieces, and I can't bring myself to recognize it.

She's about to ask what happened, but then she sees it behind me, and she releases a long, mournful keen.

N gently jostles my side. "Filloma, let's go."

I've already released them to wrap my arms around Marlun. I've got my eyes shut. It hurts too much to see, to open them. N's protective weight settles at her other side, and I sense him helping me hoist her onto Reshiram's back.

Scamp hops onto my head and lets me know when a rock is coming so I don't cause any more damage than I already have. Once we've secured ourselves on Reshiram's back, Marlun between us, Asha behind us, the goddess takes flight.

I glance down only once to find the robed skeleton of our father following Reshiram's arc with his eyes just moments before he pulls out his purple poke ball. Asha lets out a low growl and hops to the ground, ready to confront him.

I about jump after her, but N grips my arm. "She knows when too much is too much. I don't think she'll try to do anything other than distract him. A-And Father would never kill another pokemon."

We both pretend his voice is not fraying.

The flight passes with dizzying speed. Already we've reached an orange-domed center, and we've taken in Marlun, and all the inhabitants, whether doctor or patient or otherwise, have gasped and conglomerated about us. A nurse takes her from us, and two more find a stretcher to lay her on, and the nurses are asking us for our phone number. But N doesn't have one, and I always relied on Marlun's, except I don't know where it is now. So I tell them the professor's in the hopes that she'll handle the news best and know what to do with it.

They've already warned us that her chances look terrible.

Scamp has left my head to go and curl up at Marlun's feet, and he promises me, quietly, She will not be alone, no matter how this goes.

I want to take off after them. I want to cry at Marlun's bedside and beg for her forgiveness, then demand her to do the same. We've both been idiots drunk off of our own ideals of freedom these past few weeks, and now it's ended in the most hysterically terrible situation possible.

But the doctors tell me they need time alone with her, to check her pulse, keep her stable. I would be a liability.

A small part of me is upset that I was not born a happiny. If only I had become a chansey versed in the art of healing, and I had been transformed into a human with miraculous healing powers—and I could have saved her on my own when the wound was first opened.

Instead I return outdoors to where Reshiram waits and people have flocked about her. I hadn't realized this center would be so busy, but now it doesn't matter. All that matters is my best friend might survive.

When we exit, N's hand on my shoulder, we find in the throng of people a robed figure, disembarking from a garchomp, who he now forces back into its purple poke ball.

No. How could he—

Like he smelled it in the air, like he knew we were coming, Ghetsis turns to face us. "Shay, it has saved your best friend. Now we can kill it."

The harmless bystanders encircling Reshiram have overheard him. They start to move towards him, in fear or in agreement I am unsure, when his mouth splits open and Ghetsis cries, "THIS GODDESS FAILED ITS ROLE OF DIVINE PROTECTOR! IT ALLOWED THE TRAUMA THAT CORRUPTED OUR VERY EXISTENCES!"

I try to speak up, but my very words are drowned by Ghetsis's shrill squall.

"WITH ITS DEATH, HUMANS WILL FINALLY EXPERIENCE TRUE FREEDOM. NOW, SHAY. KILL IT." I'm hesitating. His movements have become erratic. "KILL IT!"

Perhaps because his anger is directed towards me, or perhaps because I'm so strange-looking, the throng of villagers have begun to encircle me. My vines lash out as my heart pounds, harder, harder.

"Filloma." N's tender tone blooms at my ear. It's the only thing keeping me sane now. "Focus. Focus on what you truly desire, what you have desired from the start. That is what should guide your next decision. Not this."

"G-Good thing my one desire is to find Keebae," I wheeze, as my breathing grows faster, too fast. I can hardly keep up with my heart beat.

"Ah." N considers this. "Then perhaps we should ask Father—"

He doesn't even remember her name. There's no way he knows where she is.

Some tiny, grasping part of me keels over deep within as I look Ghetsis in his sickening red-and-blue eyes and come to accept that there is no reason I will ever find her again. Years ago, I lost her, and for all I know, she has left this world behind.

Keebae. My heart thunders. What would Keebae want?

He's moving toward me now, his robes shuddering about his skeletal form like a second layer of skin. I tear through our audience, dragging N with me, rushing to the side of the goddess. One of her pale wings blankets me. She has no idea what's going on. She can't understand anyone's words, and she stares into me, her crystalline eyes great pits of confusion.

O-Of course I'm not killing her. That would be so stupid.

In my bare feet, my bare, bloodied feet, I move in front of the goddess, separating her from Ghetsis. "Gh-Ghetsis. She has been drained of all that made her the beautiful goddess she once was. Killing her would be the same as killing myself, to forsake someone who has experienced my own suffering." I swallow tightly as he meanders ever nearer, his nasty fingernails reaching. "I will protect her, you old hag."

Reshiram stiffens.

What now? What can I do? Ghetsis has frozen. He must be re-calibrating.

...It's no wonder I was forced to live this... strange, freakish existence. There was no dragon goddess there to watch me.

Where is your other half? I ask the goddess, and her breaths hitch.

The legendary dragon struggles to piece her words together. The creator of our people stumbles when she responds to me.

I believe he was taken in by humans. Possibly... he has become one of them. I am unsure. It was very long ago.

I glance over and watch the way Ghetsis stands there, his face unresponsive.

They can't hear each other.

So I translate for her. "Father"—he shudders with a cruel delight at the sound of it—"Reshiram's other half, the dragon"—she whispers it to me—"Zekrom, has been missing. Do you know something about this?"

There. The strange twirling in his eyes, the almost-sympathy, the freakish glow.

"No," he says, and the vines at my side launch at him, pinning him to the ground. I am careful not to tinker with any vital organs, but I tie his limbs together and leave him wrestling with the grip of a girl who has finally unveiled her true strength.

Our audience crackles with the fervent energy of the moment. N flanks me, eyeing the crowd nervously, a hand held out though he knows we have no means of protecting ourselves other than me. A secret the Plasmic Dukedom kept for years and years, finally out in the open.

I wonder if things would have been different, had the professor not told me to keep silent. Had I told Unova what I was, what had corrupted me, who had corrupted me. And yet—at the time—I had been too afraid to do any of those things, and so I remained at home and stayed silent.

Grunting through the sensation—the sensation of being held captive—the sensation I have wrestled with for much of my life—Father's face struggles to meet mine. "Shay, daughter I love, what are you doing?"

"What am I doing? Father, you idiot, I am not killing a goddess for you." As I finally vent out my frustrations, a delicious ecstasy blooms within me. I sense N touch my shoulder and move back, towards the goddess. Whatever it is he is doing, I decide to trust him and refocus on binding Father's ancient wrists.

"N-N-Now tell me where Keebae is, Father."
No harm in asking.

To feel his name crunch against my throat... to know that he no longer holds power over me... I am trembling.

But Ghetsis's hand fights against my vine with a strength I could not see in his sallow body, and I stumble, and he grips at the necklace in his throat. I gasp and duck down as he aims and the tears slither down his hollow cheeks and he whispers "I am sorry, in any other circumstance I would never take you away from me" and he fires like the horrible lying father he is—

And the beam overwhelms me like burning ice, and then all too quickly the light fidgets off of me, as if unable to settle, and rebounds.

And it hits Ghetsis squarely in the face.

I—Hurriedly I check my hand, still human, still fingers.

Between my thumb and forefinger I watch as Ghetsis releases a carnal groan. His body quakes, heaving, and it implodes into itself, his sallow bones unable to hold him upright any longer. With the tearing of flesh comes a horrid darkness spilling out from his concave figure like ink, and it overtakes him. His hair dyes itself white before my eyes, repelling the once-green coloration, and the frantic fight between blue and red solidify into a cold lilac gaze.

Freakish shadowy hands wrench upwards and the ghastly figure follows, leaping into the heavens and taking off, a comet's vile shadow, through the sky.

Darkrai... he malformed into Darkrai, the nightmare god... I don't know if that means he himself was originally a pokemon or if... if his desire to transform me back into what I was clashed against my desire to repel it, and our combined wishes revealed his truth.

I'm shaking. Shaking horribly.

Then of course in the puddle of robes at the ground, out rolls a purple poke ball. Quickly I scoop it up and launch Iris out of her prison, and she struggles at the sensation of her returned dragon body.

I almost—for a moment—wish the mechanism had worked on me.

But then I realize that I do not want to stop being human. All along I have been fighting this truth, this truth that I am stronger, more sure of myself than I ever was, and to leave N—Marlun—Keebae behind would destroy me. And so my body refused to transform into what it once had been.

But now I face Iris, crunching the poke ball under my foot. You are free. Do not follow him.

She flinches, but she does not take after the receding monstrous form.

When I turn around, N is waving to me from Reshiram's back. He holds out an arm, and I leap into his grip, and we settle against her together. I wrap my arms tight around his waist; he giggles and runs his hand through my hair—only to get caught on a flower.

I try to quash the sudden, giddy smile that pulls my lips up, but I can't stop it, I can't stop the bubble of happiness that filters through me. I've defeated my father. I really showed him. Gently I take N's hand and lead it out of the tangles, and then I settle against him.

Reshiram, we must follow that shadow.

Her wings snap open; I squeak into N's shoulder and cling tight as he adjusts to Reshiram's weight and the sky pulls us into its arms.

The world peels before us like a massive blue pearl. Reshiram faces ahead, searching, searching until she finds the blurry blot of darkness ahead, and she hits a turbo speed.

I squeal, hugging N tightly, listening to the sprinkled nudges of laughter that I catch before the air steals his voice away from me.

For once, something is going right.

And I can't tell where Ghetsis is going, but we will not let him escape.

! YEAH WOW. This chapter was sure a lot. Apologies for the length xD usually I try to keep chapters for this story waaaay shorter, but there was just so much more going on than I realized until it was time to wrap everything up. Plus, Marlun's fatal wound kind of came out of nowhere last chapter... (Is she ok? Once again we do not know! Though to be fair Layke is in the same position what with being MIND-CONTROLLED.)

Poor Asha just keeps getting left behind C,:
To be fair... she's not as cool as Lucaro. Y'all I tried, but it's so hard to come after him. I did NOT realize how much I'd miss Lucaro until I'd gotten into arc 2 and Asha tried to take his place and she just absolutely couldn't. I don't wanna spoil too much for arc 3, but I will say that finally our boy returns.