Alright...
Man, I really think this story can't get any crazier, only for it to do exactly that at every single turn. I feel like I'm not just surprising whoever might be reading this with each chapter... I'M ALSO SURPRISING MYSELF...
On that note, make sure to check who the POV has shifted to in this chapter C:
Chapter 24: Godhood
Lucaro
Commander Cyrus's voice shifts to a deep, throaty grumble. He has not yet conjured intelligible words, but I notice that Keebae can no longer hear him. He keeps fumbling over what eerily resembles her name, but she stares blankly ahead at him, unable to comprehend his voice any longer.
Filloma's arm protectively locks around her shoulders, so she must hear it. Reshiram, taken aback, has whispered, Zekrom, have I finally found you? but she has received no response yet. On my other side stands N, Filloma's companion. He looks a little forlorn without her paying him much attention now that she's attached herself to Keebae.
But he is beautiful in spite of his loneliness, or perhaps his beauty is enhanced by his pain. His lightly tanned face catches the odd darkness of the reverse world, and the shadows bring out the brightness of his breathtaking eyes, a mixture of a brighter, paler and deeper, darker blue. Like ice caps swirling in a soothing ocean. His long green hair easily passes his waist, and I am sure it is of the texture that would make any human desire to run their hand through it. While not in any particularly notable clothing—a white tee shirt, pair of ripped jeans, a nondescript jacket, and green sneakers—it only draws out what is already prevalent within him.
Yet now he stands off to the side, allowing himself to be forgotten by the girl I sense his heart calling his sister. His aura has soured, slightly, a greenish haze, but I believe I am the only one who can tell.
I wonder what brought him here. Filloma has been completely open about her arrangements and thoughts, and there are no contradictions in her dense aura—shifting between a bright blue relief and a bitter dark violet fear, with streaks of reddish anger intermixed. While Keebae never quite states what roams in her mind, she has let me in recently, and I now can read her bright orange waves of exuberance almost entirely covered by green anxiety, and lumps of graying self-doubt.
She's too difficult to focus on—it causes my stomach to clench—so I let the smallest distance separate us. Of course I will be here if she requires me, but it can be sometimes headache-inducing to stand too near a person with such conflicting emotions swirling amid their aura. N is the only one here struggling with a mere singular emotion.
My heart aches for Niri. Niri was the same way. Whenever something new affronted us, her aura would entirely color to fully compensate for the new feeling bounding about her. One might call such a reaction childish, but I found it soothing, a wonderful relief against the wildness of the rest of the world.
But Niri is not present. While she didn't appear to be too hurt, she will most likely not be joining us today. We have to finish this—for Layke's sake, and therefore for hers as well.
But it is a little difficult to figure out where I must focus my energies. The emergent Zekrom still struggles to come to terms with what just broke his body into the form of a long lost god. Reshiram, in response, has also failed to properly react. I glance back down into the deep pink crater where the god Giratina and the transformed body of a man named Ghetsis still do battle.
How confusing. I had expected a god—a god with a world all to himself—to be able to summon the power to defeat such a foe easily. But as I observe, I recognize their tactics—Giratina fights in an overly defensive manner, usually counterattacking rather than battling to contain Ghetsis. At first this appears the incorrect tactic, but I realize soon that Giratina does not know what to expect from this strange pseudo-Darkrai. If he attacks too strongly, he may be overtaken by a surprise.
And the Darkrai, I realize, has more recent fighting experience than Giratina. His clawed midnight hands lance out with a horrid power that tears into the ground before Giratina, slinking through shadows before jumping out at him. Giratina whirls around most of these, but one jolts into his side, and there's a twitch across his unseemly expression.
He is tiring out. He has not fought something in a very, very long time, even if that something he fights now is a pokemon who only became a pokemon today.
That Ghetsis... He has abandoned Keebae, kidnapped and destroyed Filloma's prior existence, and improperly raised N under a monsoon of biases. And apparently he had a role in the discovery of Commander Cyrus—in human form—if I am following all of these overly complicated plot twists correctly.
I'd tried entering that battle back when Keebae ran straight through it, but my aura spheres fizzled before reaching their targets, and I dared not grow any closer. The energy of the gods demanded a mortal such as myself unworthy of joining their spat.
As I stand, lost in my own powerlessness, a voice like that of a chiming bell calls out to me. Lucaro.
I turn and meet Reshiram's pale gaze. She has recovered herself, and her maw is set to bare her once-powerful fangs. What is it, goddess? I cannot tell if she expects me to bow when speaking to her, so I make an efficient little curtsy just in case.
Lucaro, of all the capable souls here, there are a surprising two of you—yourself, and the girl who was once the mythical pokemon Shaymin, Filloma. However, Filloma tends to act without thinking, but with a consistent reliance on her prejudiced views, assuring that she will most certainly make a wrong decision somewhere.
She glances to Zekrom, and my eyes follow. My other half is coming to his senses, but it appears neither of us are able to host the powers we lost long ago to cruel humans. While we sense them lying here, we cannot regain them. Perhaps our own powers have deemed us irredeemable, or perhaps we are simply too weak now to use them.
Lucaro, we discovered a worthiness in both you and Filloma, but we have come to a decision that we would like you to accept our lost powers.
I wish Niri was here. If I asked her to make sure I wasn't dreaming, she would happily pinch my cheek or slap me. I also wish I could see her response to such a request.
Eventually I swallow, struggling with my gut reaction. In all honesty, how can I possibly craft a reply to such a gift? There are no words. Yet Reshiram expects some, so I will have to see what I can do. I, um, I thank you, Reshiram. My tail is wagging. I try to ignore it. I've never been so honored before.
There is really nothing else I could possibly say. I was simply in the right place, at the right time, with the right upbringing and the right heart. It could have been Filloma, if only she wasn't so prejudiced.
It is my mother. My heart pangs, weakly. My mother raised me to be kind and think of others, for we are all struggling to get by in this strange and unrelenting world. However, that kindness worked against us when I used it to help some humans who had discovered our island locate our village.
She taught me everything. How to speak to humans. How to fight with aura. How to be kind. How to escape, if anything ever happened to her—and how to take care of myself if I ever needed to. I evolved earlier than most riolus are expected to evolve due to her kindness and compassion, and it made me a bit of a prodigy in my tribe.
And now Mother is long taken from me. I wonder, I wonder if using the power of the gods would allow me to find her again. But I fear—I fear she can no longer be found.
Reshiram regains my attention. Are you ready, Lucaro? Without our powers coming into play, Giratina may not be strong enough to take down that pseudo-Darkrai.
All I can do is nod. To refuse a goddess would be sheer foolishness.
The white dragon goddess of flame and the black dragon god of thunder raise their arms to the sky. A hush develops between us; even Keebae and Filloma, who had been giggling and kissing, grow silent and stare up above. A massive marbled cloud descends, engulfing me in a vortex of lightning charged with flame. I've lost sight of everyone, of everything, and when my eyes grow bleary from the resonant brightness of sheer godlike power, it pours into me. It jams open my mouth and powers down my throat, squeezing into my eyes, smoking through my ears, traveling into every orifice of my body.
I stumble, one leg falling back against the ground, as my shoulder blades wrench apart. I glance back and find a pair of wings, thick black feathers blanketed in white, rippling at my back. I sense electricity charging through my eyes, and when I release an aural sphere out of pure unbridled agony, I watch its usual blue center unsettle and surround itself in jagged lightning-flames.
I wish I could describe it any further, but I cannot.
With a sensation like wind passing through my pelt, the coloration of my fur alters. What was once a midnight blue now bleaches to a pale, effervescent white, though the black stripes across my muzzle and at my paws remain. My chest fur darkens to an odd grayish sheen, and when I stand, I realize I have gained the slightest increment of height.
I used to be a little shorter than Niri. Now I will be taller. She'll be disappointed.
Niri...
When I open up my paws, a whorl of flame glistens over the pads, and Keebae, from across from me, gasps. "Lucaro! I thought lucarios couldn't learn fire attacks!" Then she's looking at the god and goddess, and down at me, and she must see the lightning charging through my frame, for her mouth falls open. "You're... wh-what..."
Ah. It appears my last vestiges of power are fading.
From behind me, Reshiram falters, her sleek dragon form dissipating. Zekrom, her dark mirror, does the same, until both have descended to roughly the height of the humans before us.
It's an odd sight. I am taller than them, though I do not nearly reach their original girth.
Facing me once, Zekrom's once-charged eyes darken, and he says, Go, directing me toward the losing Giratina. And he is right, and so I listen.
I have been gifted the power of not even one but two gods. Already it's weighing me down; I stumble as I struggle on too-large feet. When I reach the crater, I dive in, sending a wake of flames up behind me once I've hit the ground. Threatening thunder rumbles as the air splits to whirl around me. Like I cause my own weather now—or like I am a force of destruction of my own worth.
It is frightening to look into myself and realize it is true. Hurriedly I move in front of Giratina and take the brunt of yet another aural sphere of dark power. Darkrai's spindly limbs twirl about in front of us, much too fast for Giratina to keep track of him. I, however, catch up—and his grazing attack only just winded me. I leap after this pseudo-Dakrai and lob a flaming aura sphere after him. It whirls upward and smacks into his face, a ball of fire. There's a cry out as Darkrai's hair catches flame, and he collapses, shocked.
I rush after him and run an electrified paw into his body, only for his form to dissipate and a shove to launch me into the ground. Grunting, I pick myself back up and swing my static tail. It connects, and Darkrai releases a sharp yowl. The electricity jumps from my body to his, and when I clench my paw, those static fragments erupt into explosions of flame.
Breathtaking. I hardly understand my own power, but it acts naturally, like an extension of me. I do not even have to really think and it reacts, following my desires to exhaust the terrorizing Darkrai.
I glance back once, at Giratina, who has collapsed against a far wall of the crater. His shining crimson eyes display a startling amount of relief. Thank you, little one, he calls, softly, and I am struck by his sincere gratitude. Before I can dwell upon it, however, Darkrai has clutched my face in thin, spidery hands, and I grapple his hands with my paws and shoot the raw energy of a blast of thunder up his arms before he can put me to sleep.
Even as I break away from him, I shudder, shaking away the sleep spell he almost succeeded in putting onto me. It appears he must breach my personal space to use it, so I'll have to keep my distance from now on, if he's desperate enough to attempt such a defenseless tactic.
His frantic lilac gaze continually jabs at Giratina. I recognize his desire to drain Giratina of his own power. If he can defeat and make the ruler of the reverse world defenseless, he perhaps can steal those powers and use them to break back into reality. And what he would do, once he escaped and trapped the rest of us in here... I cannot imagine.
My throat tightens. If he escapes, he will sight an unconscious Niri at the peak of Mt. Coronet. He might hurt her—or worse.
I cannot let that possibility become tangible. My paws form fists, and they erupt into a static flame.
I will protect Niri, with everything vested within me.
Her kindness fills me as I rush after the out-of-breath Darkrai and kick him across his face. She was not my first ever friend, but she was the first to accept me as I am. She listened to my problems even when she had so many of her own, and she never forsook me. Leaving my side was never even a thought on her mind.
(She likes me for who I am, but, more than that, she doesn't obsess over me, either. I met a few... interesting trainers who were scarily attached to me to the point where they made incredibly odd requests for me, such as kissing them, as well as other concerning actions, and that is when I mysteriously disappeared overnight.)
And so I fight for her safety. Darkrai clutches me with hungry, papery hands and I smash his fingers, electrocuting him with my focused touch. I knock him to the ground and shackle him with aural bands reinforced by a stasis that locks them into place, and I leave him, screaming and kicking, on the ground.
I still sense it, the hovering clutch of a nightmare, threatening to seize my mind. I blink again—
o—and the hot, hot sensation of hands clutching about my neck causes me to collapse. I blink through my sudden sheer canopy of exhaustion and discover the Darkrai I had enchained has disappeared. Another illusory Ghetsis.
My last thought before my mind drops off a cliff and into a spiraling pool of midnight ink.
Niri. I get up and soar skyward, searching for an exit. I have to save Niri still. The longer I dally, the worse her—our—chances become.
She's calling my name. "LUCARO! LUCARO!" It's the cave. Boulders rain from the heavens, and one crashes over my wings and sends me down. Through the aching that spills across my back I pull myself to tired feet and listen for her yells.
But they've gone silent.
Niri. Niri... Niri...
W-Wait. Wait. Ghetsis. I have to find Ghetsis. The electricity shocks me like a bolt of creativity and I sit upright, crunching the looming Darkrai's throat in my paws. Then I shuck him to the ground and do not release him until I've ensured his limbs have been immobilized.
And then he does not move again.
I had expected the fight to last a little longer. I shake myself, pinching an arm. Conscious.
It's over. Already.
That thought scares me. I had enjoyed a good, challenging fight. Now I might never experience that thrill again.
And how long has my lifespan been extended? Will Niri and everyone else grow old while I stay at this age evermore?
These questions... I cannot answer them now. Perhaps I will find some worthy candidates to foist my own given powers upon, once I am tired of being ageless. Or perhaps I will still age perfectly well. I shouldn't trouble myself with worries when the man-turned-pokemon Ghetsis still lays right in front of me, writhing in place.
His twitches are weakening.
Upon sensing the fight draining from Ghetsis, Giratina flits over to me, his movements slow and pronounced. They chose well. You might just be the most powerful pokemon to ever exist.
Oh, dear. I flush. That cannot possibly be true. What of the creator god, Arceus? I will have to challenge him to a friendly battle later. Perhaps he will still pose a mighty fight.
Giratina gives me a look, like, calm down, little one.
When it becomes clear to the others that the battle has ended, my other friends descend into the crater to come stare at Ghetsis and ensure he is successfully ensnared. Filloma glares over him and spits on his face. Keebae gives him one nasty look after another. N just stands, and I once again angle myself beside him, where his deep purpling aura of remorseful sorrow relieves me of the sick colors of the others.
When he glances over to me, the only other person near him, he cracks a timid smile and asks, "Why aren't you with your friend?" gesturing to Keebae.
"You are much more calming to be near than they are." I bow my head. "Keebae is... perpetually confused with herself at any given moment. She is not too difficult on her own, or with someone like Niri—someone dear to me—but combined with your friend Filloma, it is a little too much for me."
N's soft, somber laugh floats over me. "What an honor. A newly-crowned god finds me a worthwhile companion."
"So you heard their conversation?" I peek up at him as he nods.
"I have a little trouble at times, but much of my childhood was with a teacher and caretaker who helped me learn the language of pokemon. She—Actually, she was a lucario too."
The band at his arm glows beneath his jacket's sleeve, and I glance upon it as if seeing it for the first time. "Her name... was it Mor?"
"I'm sorry, I never knew her name. But if you recognize her aural bands..." No other lucarios I know make them. There's an odd disconnect in his eyes. "You knew her."
I swallow thickly. "She is my mother. Please, tell me. What happened to her?"
His face has already crestfallen. I steel myself for his response. "I never saw it myself, but my pokemon companion was told that... she was hurt by my father's cult followers. M-My father would never hurt a regular pokemon, but I suppose he was not paying enough attention to her, or..." His lip twists. "He no longer had a use in her. I-I only know my own pokemon companion told me she was all but dead when they were done with her. I... find it unlikely she...
"She would have been able to locate me if she were still here to sense the aura she placed on me..."
My mother...
The worst part is recognizing the deep aching within me, the hurt that already knew, somehow, the end of my journey would lead me here.
Those humans found her, and they took her away when I led them straight into my tribe's little village. They destroyed my home, and I was one of the only lucarios who escaped. Now I know my mother, in all this time, is not someone I shall ever see again.
What were my last words to her? I cannot even recall. I'd been hoping against hope we would have more to share before her demise.
"I'm sorry," N utters, "I didn't mean to hurt you. It... was all so long ago. I was too young to understand what was happening. Or perhaps too ignorant..."
I shake my head. "Do not blame yourself." The tears streak down my cheeks, lost in my fur. "She must have loved you, to have given you one of these." When I touch the band, he lets my paw pad stray along his milky skin. A lovely color.
"She was like a mother to me, too," whispers N, and for a moment we share our long-pent-up grief.
I wish I could have stayed there in that place, with that boy, and cried to my heart's content. Unfortunately, I now have powers that render me above most regular folks, and Reshiram and Zekrom have to redirect my attention to the captive Ghetsis.
Apparently, now that he has been caught, his form will soon untangle and the reverse world will return him into his original body. There was a worry that Filloma would also lose her human form—Filloma who now could not bear to be parted from her fellow humans—but Giratina reassures her that her will is too strong to be broken. She has now lived for longer as a human than as a pokemon, and the ease with which she has come to understand her body cannot so easily be broken down by the reverse world.
While this world takes in lost items, gods, and powers, and is capable of redoing what has been undone, there are certain limits to its power. Only Giratina understands to what extent the lost and the broken can be restored.
I have to stand next to Keebae and relay his explanation to her. Upon her understanding, she gasps, then asks, "Giratina, do you have my missing dress?"
Once I translate back to him, Giratina's crimson eyes widen. Yes, little one. I do. It shifted between the cracks of a dumpster and settled into the reverse world, saved by your desire to reclaim it. With a wave of his long, spidery appendages, he summons the pink dress, and it lands in a heap in Keebae's arms.
She's sobbing uncontrollably. I gently lay a paw at her arm, and she leans into me, rubbing her snotty face all over my fur. I let it happen.
Filloma stands near, but she cannot bring herself to look away from Ghetsis until his destiny has been ordained.
As Giratina and the other gods surround him, his body lets out with this heaving finality. The darkrai form collapses into itself, reforming ancient, sagging skin and bleached green hair that travels down past the waist. His robes reconstruct, a courtesy of Giratina.
I would say we shall see it fit that Ghetsis receives his due destruction, but I realize now that he already has. As he states it, Ghetsis begins to flake away like sand before us. We all gasp and lurch back, and Giratina exhales slowly. He kept himself alive with the dwindling dregs of Zekrom's lost power. He must have found the lost Zekrom, somehow, and claimed that power for himself even while Zekrom returned to reality and started anew as a human boy without any memories of what he once was, and lacking the emotions he had had in full force as a god.
Soon enough, sand is all that remains to show to us that Ghetsis once existed. There is a collective shudder across the group as Giratina's tail swipes through it, and Ghetsis ceases to provide any proof that he was ever real. N's lip screws up, and he chokes on a breath, eyes squeezed tightly shut.
Even if Ghetsis was delusional and had made a terrible cult, he still raised N. N wasn't lucky like Keebae to discover that the reason his father wasn't great was because he was secretly a god who had had his life destroyed by humans.
With Ghetsis gone, my power returns to me at a full force, like a brick to my bloodstream. Reshiram glances over to me and says, Zekrom and I have decided to remain here for now. We are tired of humans, and we must decide if we will ever desire to regain our powers and rule over them, or let our lifespans come to an end. I apologize for gifting you such a great burden, Lucaro, but know that you are always welcome here if you desire respite.
What I desire is to make sure Niri is safe, but I nod and give thanks anyways.
Zekrom hovers by Reshiram's side, then reaches out awkwardly to the sullen, ashen Keebae. Keebae. I am sorry. I was not enough. Filloma grabs her arm and starts to translate, but Zekrom cuts her off. No. I do not want her forgiveness. I merely wish her to know I am grateful, and I hope she lives a much better life without me.
He sort of pats Keebae on the head, hovers a moment, then steps back, returning to the sides of Giratina and Reshiram. As we all huddle together, exhausted and ready to leave this realm behind us, Giratina opens up a portal that leads back to the peak of Mt. Coronet.
And there she is, blanketed in a worried blue-gray aura that rapidly pinks as soon as she sights me. At some point, Commander Jupiter moved by her and kept her company, and I see the afro man Flint and his sullen boyfriend Volky have relocated us as well. Even now they are tying up Galactic grunts.
But they matter not.
I rush past the others and tear up the somber gray staircase before throwing Niri into my arms and hugging tighter than I've ever hugged before.
She's laughing weakly, and her voice sounds a little strained, but she's here, and she's standing, and she's alive. "Lucaro, you look like a Yu-Gi-Oh monster."
"A-A what?" I wince.
"Oh. It's from a television show. You're looking pretty cool, that's all." Then she hesitates. "Wait, are those wings? So you can fly now?"
I break into a chuckle. There's nothing else I can do about it. "Yes, I can fly now. It's a very, very long story, but I believe Layke will want to hear it."
She releases me a little to step back. Her eyes have softened. "Lucaro, Layke got mind-controlled by Team Galactic. Didn't you hear?"
I shake my head. "You misunderstand, Niri. On our adventure through the reverse world, I gained the powers of 2 gods. Surely I can erase some force as paltry as a mind-controlling power, yes?"
Her mouth falls open.
"You know what? I'm not gonna question it. Let's go pick up Layke and, I dunno, reunite with Keebae and her new girlfriend, I guess. And that other boy. And whoever the heck else is about to leave that portal."
But she holds me first. And she doesn't care that I look different, that I smell different, that I assuredly am not the same as I was when I first entered the reverse world.
All she does is give me a stink-eye, mutter, "I don't like that you're taller than me," and hug closer. We are bathed in the pearly pink of her lovely aura.
Yeah... I think that's it...
(what about Asha? And Marlun?—Asha's fine. She's out vibing in Unova. Marlun's either dead or alive, you get to choose because I didn't wanna ruin the end of the story by rushing back over to her and finding out. Maybe that sounds bad but I really wanted the story to end with Lucaro and Niri xD because they deserve that! Also I am So Indecisive about Marlun. If she lives, the stakes weren't high enough, if she dies, I ruin the story's pacing. EhhH! She's one of them!)
Well, over a year of sporadic updates later, and I've finally finished this wild wild adventure of a story. I swear I feel like at some point my creativity decided, how can we make this more insane, and then that's what this story ultimately became. How insane can I make this story. To be fair, it made it very fun to write~
Thanks for sticking around if you made it this far~
The moral of this story is that the talking lucario accidentally creates romantic tension with every single character he interacts with.
