A furious roar splits the heavens, more fearsome than any boom of thunder.
A strike of lightning in the distance gives rise to a rapidly growing fire.
A collective scream rises from the town, civilians waking to the horrific sight of their impending doom.
Their final battle has begun, and Mott isn't ready for it. His heart is racing in his throat, yet it has come to a complete stop. The air is too thin for him to breathe, yet he finds himself breathing too fast. Everything he's worked for has led up to this moment; yet, he hesitates. He's frozen.
All his preparations went toward defeating Zekrom. Not Florian.
Not Florian.
A deafening burst of thunder shakes the world, and Lenny screams, "Look out!"
An instant later, a bolt of lightning strikes the base of the inn. The wooden walls crackle and burn at an ever-growing pace, the flame consuming everything in sight. Hot and furious, the blaze climbs through the window and begins crawling toward them. The smells and sounds of the burning building plunge Mott's stomach as if hurling him back into the Roselake Museum.
"We need to get out of here and evacuate everyone else!" He shouts over the roaring inferno. "Lenny, Torquil, work on getting everyone to safety; I'll try to buy you times by putting out some of the fire!"
Lenny nods, not wasting a second. He bounds over a smoldering fire that started in the hallway, racing down the corridor in a search for other residents. Right away, Mott focuses on the growing flames, targeting them with jets of water. The sheer heat in the room keeps his attacks from gaining their full potential, restricting them and making them weak. It takes several tries before a medium sized fire begins to dim. Meanwhile, Torquil stands, just as frozen as Mott had been, and gapes at the world around him.
"I don't understand," Torquil utters, mostly to himself. Mott can barely hear him over the crackling and groaning of the building. "This can't be happening."
Mott shoots another stream of water at the flames eating away at the rafters. "Go, go help Lenny!"
"This can't be happening," Torquil repeats, in a daze. He stares at everything with wide eyes as if he's in a dream. Then, with an almost delusional break in his voice, he says, "It's just Florian, just Florian—"
The fire is closing in, and Mott isn't strong enough to keep it at bay for much longer. "Snap out of it!"
"He's our friend," Toriquil asserts, vehemently, as if he's desperately trying to convince himself. "He's Florian, he's our friend, he wouldn't—"
"Torquil!" Mott shouts, and he snaps out of whatever trance he was in. "Go get everyone else out of the inn!"
He nods, still somewhat in shock, and staggers out of the room. Mott prays he'll be alright, and that he'll be able to bring himself and others to safety. Then, he turns back to the blaze surrounding him.
In a flash, he sees himself surrounded by the crumbling walls of the Roselake City museum. He sees the fire clawing its way up the bookcases; he sees the flames circling him on the smoldering carpet. His heart races with panicked fervor until he blinks and the nightmarish memory of the museum vanishes like smoke. But it doesn't give way to a much better scene.
The fire around him is too strong. It's already swallowed up so much of the building that there's no chance of him quelling it. At this point, all he can do is hope to slow it down so everyone can get out before the structure collapses. Hopefully, he can escape it, too. But if not, he better be ready to go down fighting.
So, taking a deep breath, he musters up every scrap of aquatic power residing inside him and summons the largest jet of water he's managed all night.
It smashes into a looming cluster of flames, beating them down. Despite the heavy force of the water, the fire still simmers in place, dampened but not defeated. All around it, more flames continue to rage. And they're closing in.
He's just about to blink the dark spots out of his eyes and force another stream of water when he hears a faint Mott! Whipping his head around, he searches for the source until he spots it out the window: Lenny, standing beside Torquil and all the other inn residents, battered with rain. Cupping his hands to his face, he yells, "You've got to get out of there!"
As if emphasizing his point, one of the beams overhead snaps and falls with a resounding CRASH! He narrowly manages to avoid it, stumbling aside and nearly tripping into a wall of fire. Jerking back, he escapes the blaze, but not without singeing the tips of his fur. All around him, the creaking and groaning of the building grows louder, more insistent. Smashes and snaps can be heard throughout the floor as beams and walls topple down elsewhere.
This place is coming down, with or without him inside.
He turns to race out the door, only to find it consumed by the swarming blaze. Above him, another beam snaps, threatening to crush him in seconds. With no other way out and the ceiling starting to cave in on him, he barrels toward the window and lunges out just as the inn collapses in on itself.
He hits the ground hard and comes to a rolling halt, every muscle in his body aching in protest. Hissing with pain, he slowly picks himself up just as Lenny comes racing over to him. Rainwater bombards them like sharp pellets of hail. Lenny's hands are on him, cold and soaked to the bone.
"Are you okay?" Lenny asks, a hand at his cheek.
"Yeah," Mott rasps, surprised at how hoarse his voice is. He wheezes and coughs for a minute before he can talk again. "You?"
"I'm fine." Turning back to the group of trembling, terrified inn residents, Lenny says, "We need to do something about them."
Mott nods in agreement, eyes turning up toward the stormy sky. He only needs to wonder for a second where Florian ran off to when he spies him on the back of the dragon, soaring through the air. "We need to do something about him." To Torquil, he asks, "Can you take these people and anyone else you find to safety?"
Torquil nods. He seems much more alert than before, although he's fidgeting like an anxious wreck. Mott doesn't blame him.
"You're all going to be okay," Mott says to the people gathered, clutching each other in the war-like torrent. Looking to Lenny, he declares, "We're going to end this."
Lenny meets his gaze and nods determinedly.
Without a word, Lenny hops onto his back, and Mott takes off after the raging dragon. The rain pounds against him and floods the street, but it doesn't slow him down. No, it invigorates him, shooting pulses of energy through his body with every splash of water his feet kick up. With no burning building standing between him and Zekrom, a surge of anticipation courses through him—anticipation like strength. He picks up speed.
The minor boost in power won't be enough to go toe to toe with a legendary dragon, however. He knows this. If he doesn't want this battle to end like every other encounter he's suffered through, he's going to need a miracle. Divine intervention, perhaps.
Or, a really, really good plan.
Howling wind screams against them, tearing at their skin and fighting to push them back. Mott powers through it, straining himself to catch up with the rampaging beast. And it is on a rampage, one unlike anything Mott has ever seen. It smashes buildings with reckless abandon, frying trees with bolts of lightning and toppling bridges and aqueducts in a show of chaotic destruction. With a hint of nausea, Mott wonders if this sight was the last thing Sapphire City saw before it's decimation.
He shakes that thought from his head. He can't let this place be razed to the ground. He can't let any other place be wiped off the face of the Earth—not again. But if he's going to do that, he needs his fateful plan.
His mind races itself dizzy in a frantic attempt of constructing some grand scheme—to no avail. No matter what angle he examines, he comes up with the same solution: failure. There's no outcome to this that ends in victory; there's no universe in which someone like him can defeat something like this. But goddamnit, he has to try.
A bolt of lightning strikes dangerously close to his feet, so close that he can feel his hair stand on end and he can taste metal in his mouth. He screeches to a halt, bracing himself for another attack, but his ears are ringing so loud he's not sure he'd be able to hear well enough to anticipate it. Luckily, he doesn't have to rely on his sense of hearing, not when Zekrom swoops down from the clouds and into plain sight. On Zekrom's back, he can just barely make out the blot of green puppeteering it.
"Florian!" He bellows, his voice cracking to be heard above the storm.
He doesn't know why he called out for him. If Florian can even hear him from so far away, he doubts it would accomplish anything. It's not like they can sit down and talk something like this through. But a part of him wishes he could end this differently than he knows he has to.
It's a mystery whether Florian heard him or not. It's a mystery whether he'd care or not. But what's not a mystery is the imminent danger he poses to everyone, especially when he thrashes his tail outward and Zekrom mechanically smashes a fist into the street. A quake tremors through the earth from the collision, threatening to throw him off balance. He keeps his ground, though, refusing to lose footing when he's holding Lenny.
He braces himself for Zekrom's inevitable attack, poised to dodge whatever is thrown his way—but it never comes. Instead, Zekrom turns and soars away from the center of town. Mott immediately recognizes this as the second mistake Florian has made tonight. If he had any hope of keeping his deadly secret, he should've wiped the whole town to ensure it never escaped. But that would mean killing Torquil and Mott, too. And he doesn't think Florian is prepared to do that.
It's the only thing he has going for him: Florian's hesitance. He doesn't want to kill Mott. That might give him a chance at weakening Florian enough to put an end to this. But if there's anything the Roselake Museum incident taught him, it's that Florian does not have the same hesitation towards Lenny's life.
Mott nudges Lenny off, and despite his obvious confusion, Lenny goes along with it. Taking a few steps forward, Mott states, "I'm going after Florian alone. It's safer that way. Go find Hilda and try and help the rest of the town evacuate."
With a deep frown, Lenny closes the distance between them. "Montgomery Alcott, you're dumber than a sack of bricks if you think I'm letting you do this alone."
"I have a plan," he lies, because how could he have ever planned for this, for a battle against a legendary being, for one of his closest childhood friends to be the villain of this story? "He won't kill me. He can't. If I keep chasing after him, eventually I'll run him down."
Lenny crosses his arms. "So, what, you're doing this to protect me? I don't think so. I'm coming along, whether you like it or not."
"Beating Zekrom is my mission, not yours," he argues, turning away. Lenny stubbornly follows after him. Mott frowns, looking over his shoulder to frown at him and demand, "What are you doing?"
"I thought I made myself pretty damn clear when I said I was coming along," Lenny responds, standing his ground.
"I already told you, beating Zekrom is my mission, and mine alone. I'm not dragging you into this."
"Remind me who snatched you out of the river after Zekrom nearly killed you, in a storm just like this?" Lenny snaps, throwing his hands outward as if gesturing to the catastrophe around them. "Remind me who dragged you to safety and nursed you back to health? Remind me who dove in front of a bolt of lightning that was about to kill you?"
Mott winces at that last one, feeling it pierce straight through him. Lenny seems to sense it, as his expression softens. He takes a step forward, putting a hand on Mott's arm, just over his bandana.
"I've been here since the very beginning, and I'm not about to tuck tail and run now that it's all coming to an end," he says, his voice gentle. Somehow, Mott can still hear him over the raging storm, as if they're the only two people that exist. A small, playful smile dances on his face. "Like it or not, you're stuck with me now. I've got a mission of my own, you know."
Mott swallows the lump in his throat. "And what's that?"
"Ain't I already told you?" Lenny asks, pressing in closer. "I want to be with you."
Thunder crashes all around them as his heart breaks.
Lenny's hand slides up and down the bandana on his arm as he continues, "Rain or shine, in sickness and in health—it don't matter to me. My mission is to stick with you, and if that means saving your sorry butt from Zekrom for a third time, well then count me in."
A short laugh escapes him in spite of himself, and his forehead drops onto Lenny's. Despite every instinct screaming at him to keep Lenny out of this, he knows there's no use. Lenny is as stubborn as they come—a lesson he soon learned after being hung upside down from the roof of Lenny's house.
"Okay," he relents, "come save my sorry butt."
Lenny grins, hopping back on board and holding on tight. Taking a deep breath and trying to ease the anxieties festering inside him, Mott takes off and resumes the chase.
It's not long before they enter a part of the town that Mott has never been in, before. Rather than the buildings and cobblestone streets and technology, this part of the town is heavily agricultural. The streets are fertile soil now turned to slick mud in the relentless rainpour, and the buildings are replaced with towering trees that host wooden houses in their branches. He's sure it's a gorgeous sight, and that knowledge somehow makes all this chaos seem even worse. The sight of townspeople screaming and fleeing what looks like a normally quaint and lively place brings pain to his heart.
He can't imagine that anyone is still asleep in their homes with all this pandemonium, but in case anyone is hiding inside, he shouts, "Everyone, evacuate to the town square! Go to the town square and meet the others!" All he can do is pray they hear him and listen as he dashes after Zekrom.
"Where is Florian going?" Lenny wonders, his voice drowned out by the pouring rain.
Mott squints, straining his eyes to see far enough through the thick mist of rain in order to catch a glimpse of Zekrom's direction. It's not until they reach a small clearing from the trees that he gets a decent idea of where Florian is headed.
"The mesa," he pants, exhausted. Still, he picks up the pace. Near the horizon, a mesa juts out of the ground and rises above the forest. Despite Zekrom's occasional bouts of destruction or rampaging, the dragon maintains a rather steady path toward the mesa. Mott can only imagine that Florian is hoping to buy himself time on the mesa by forcing them to scale it. To Lenny, he asks, "Are you ready to climb?"
"As ready as I'll ever be."
By the time Zekrom lands on the mesa, it takes them another ten minutes just to reach the base. He worries that Florian will take off as soon as they do, but as of now, Zekrom hasn't lifted off. When Lenny hops off, Mott takes a hold of a ledge and begins to pull himself up. Much like with running, his body isn't really made for this sort of thing. But his strength is enough to back him up, and pulling his own weight isn't as hard as he thought it would be. As for Lenny, he nimbly swings himself from ledge to ledge with String Shot, but he has to pause more often to catch his breath.
With their own unique disadvantages, scaling the mesa proves to be an arduous task, and a dangerous one at that—there's no room for error on a vertical cliffside. Everytime a rock gives under Mott's hand or foot, his heart leaps into his throat. It takes every ounce of willpower to not look over his shoulder and watch the rocks plummet to the surface far below.
By the time they finally drag themselves to the top of the mesa, Zekrom is still there. Mott hasn't seen the beast this close in a long time, and the sight nearly gives him whiplash. But the ominous thrum of electricity pulsating from it keeps him gravely grounded. As he slowly takes in the sight, he realizes something horrifying: it's eyes are trained directly on him.
His heart nearly leaps out of his chest at the sight, and he braces himself for a sudden attack—but nothing comes. Zekrom remains as still as a statue, regarding him with cold indifference. The only indication that it's even alive is the heavy, ragged rise and fall of its chest along with the sheer power emanating from it.
After he manages to rip his eyes away from the dragon, he spots Florian. Florian doesn't seem to see them, too preoccupied with pacing and muttering to himself in the rain. He rubs his family pendant anxiously, obsessively, as if it's making his very heart beat.
"Florian!" Mott shouts, his voice turning almost to a beg.
Florian whips around to face him, eyes wide. Mott can practically feel his pulse racing from over here.
"Just come with us," he pleads, taking a tentative step forward. Florian darts back. Halting and remaining incredibly still, he adds, "Come peacefully. Let's figure this out, together."
Florian scoffs, a nervous parody of his characteristic arrogance. "Come with you? So I can be thrown in a prison? Left for a mob? Executed by the state? I don't think so!"
Mott doesn't know what else to say, because he knows Florian deserves all those things, but he wishes more than anything that he didn't. "Just come with us. We don't want to fight."
Florian's eyes flare with a wild fury, more expressive and uncontrolled than Mott has ever seen. "Oh, you don't want to fight? How charming! Why didn't you quit when I told you to, then?! Why didn't you just listen to me when I told you to forget about your—your idiotic, stupid, suicidal quest?!" With a hint of desperation, Florian screams, "Do you think I want to kill you?!"
"No," Mott says, his voice cracking once. "I know you don't."
As if trying to regain whatever fraught composure he still has, Florian straightens his back out. "Then take my offer while it still stands: leave. Forget about all of this and go. Now."
A teary smile wavers onto Mott's face in spite of himself. "And you know I can't."
That frenzied rage returns to Florian's expression, morphing it into something unrecognizable. "You're truly going to die for your family pendant?!"
The thought nearly makes him sick. "No," he blurts without meaning to, an instinctive, visceral reaction.
"Then what?!" Florian shrieks, his voice louder than the thunder. "What are you dying for?!"
Florian's words stop him in his tracks. He's just as frozen as he was at the beginning of this mess.
What is he dying for? That's just the same question he's been asking himself for months, isn't it?
Why is he doing this?
He doesn't get much time to think about it. Because in the span of one second, two things happen:
Lightning strikes all around them, lighting the forest ablaze.
A single bolt strikes directly between Lenny and Mott, throwing them off the mesa—in separate directions. Lenny screams.
And then he's falling, falling, failing.
