A lone figure stands on top of a hill. The wind buffets his gear which includes both state of the art technology in the form of the latest in Pokéball technology as well as something as rustic yet generally useful as a backpack. Its textile work was slightly frayed around the edges and it carried an emblem, upon which the number '3' had been sewed on.
In lamentation he views the corpse of Groudon through a pair of binoculars. Though anyone within a 50-mile radius could see some part of the hulking behemoth sticking up by the horizon, this person examined it in detail. Made of note of its every wound. But it did not bring him the elation he had hoped.
"Hmpf. Capturing wasn't an option then?" Brendan mutters to himself, seeing his old foe reduced to slabs of meat and broken bone, "Leaves a bad aftertaste in my mouth…"
He had never really sought vengeance for what happened that day. He knew it had been his own hubris and May's soft heart that had doomed them. So being late for the butchering wasn't as big of a deal as one might think. But missing the chance to train and tame a mythical beast of these proportions? That was a loss.
He viewed the area. There was a storm raging, making it nigh-impossible to see anything besides the dead Groudon. There were a few regular Pokémon there too, some that were even quite rare around these parts, but no Lucario, no Entei, and nothing really worth his interest. Unless they were on the other side of Groudon, of course. He would have to move closer to find out, and feeling that he had been too late to rock with Groudon had sort of taken the wind out of him. Like arriving at a party where everyone's already drunk and puking all over the place.
As he swept the area with the binoculars, he suddenly detected unnatural movement. A group of Pokémon, and even some people, moving away from where Groudon was. While he wasn't a charitable person by nature, he decided it was better than standing around here. He walked over to Suicune who lowered his head, allowing his trainer to climb up and ride towards the unsuspecting group.
"Lucario! Lucario!" the annoying voice repeated and pierced Lucario's ears as he reluctantly spun around. Mesprit was a nostalgic sight, although he did not fondly recall their last meeting. Or any of their meetings, for that matter. Many restless nights had been spent thinking about how badly he had hoped to remodel her face one day. However, to his surprise it seemed that day had finally come without him actually doing anything.
Mesprit was in terrible shape, bruised and showing multiple lacerations with fresh beads of blood trickling out. She was rather clean though, like she had just taken a bath and nicked herself while shaving with a cutlass. A particularly nasty wound stretched across one of her dreadlock-like appendages, which had been severed right down the middle and by the looks of it quickly cauterized with fire. The horrific sight took Lucario aback; despite her condescending personality, she was a very small and innocent-looking creature after all. Now she carried all the markings of a veteran at war. Who could've done this to her?
"Where's Celebi!?" Mesprit demanded as she descended from above and hovered in front of Lucario, making sure not to get too close, probably sensing his hostility.
"What the hell happened to you?" Lucario asked with astonishment. Mesprit blinked.
"What the hell happened to YOU!?" she responded with equal astonishment. Lucario had no idea that he too carried the appearance of someone roughed up pretty bad. Caked in blood and vomit, kept standing only by a healing potion, his ruffled hair and disheveled expression spoke of someone who had been through hell.
Not eager to get into a long explanation, Lucario merely pointed towards the hulking corpse of Groudon and Mesprit's gaze followed.
"I just beat the tar out of a deity," he said. Mesprit stared at the dead Groudon for a bit before huffing.
"Same," she replied curtly.
"Heads up down there!" the voice of Zapdos suddenly came from above. Lucario and Mesprit spun their heads upwards to see that Rayquaza was suddenly staring right at them. For whatever reason it found the little sprite to be the most interesting creature in the vicinity, and important enough to target specifically. Without hesitation, it opened its mouth and fired.
Reacting faster the speed of thought, Lucario threw himself on the small legendary, who was already in motion to get away, but without any ground to step off from wasn't moving fast enough to actually make it. It was a gallant sideways jump, and he grabbed her as the spot they had been in just a moment ago violently exploded. The shockwave caused Lucario's skin to vibrate, and rattled Mesprit's bones. Then came the purple lightning; it painfully licked across Lucario's back, coursing through both him and the little legendary with a very unusual sensation, not at all like the burn of electricity but rather a more primal ripping and tearing of their insides. Despite this, Lucario gritted his teeth and landed on his feet, as Mesprit quickly escaped his grasp and hovered higher up. They both looked up and saw that Rayquaza had not stopped staring at them, despite the three legendary birds' mostly useless efforts against its massive form.
"Can't you make a barrier or something!?" Lucario shouted in fear, his body trying to decide on which direction he was going to move in next to dodge.
"Against THAT!?" Mesprit shouted back, contemplating similar options and following Rayquaza's every twitch for a sign of the next beam, "Who do you think I am, Mew!?"
It happened again. This time Lucario was prepared and leaped to the right while Mesprit quickly moved up. The impact from the explosion as the beam hit the ground was diminished, yet the lightning that followed still hit them both quite hard, Lucario struggling to land on his feet this time. Mesprit took the full brunt of the whipping lightning this time, and yelped out in pain as she suddenly fell from the sky. Lucario moved to intercept, but she was able to stop her fall a few meters before hitting the ground.
Knowing that any second now a third purple beam of electric death could be ending his existence, Lucario resorted to desperate tactics. Without a moment's hesitation, he slightly adjusted his plan to catch Mesprit to instead grabbing a hold of her two tails.
"OW!" Mesprit yelped again before looking down, "Hey!"
"Fly us out of here!" Lucario yelled, holding the two flailing tails over his head, "As long as we're not on the ground, the explosion can't hit us!"
"Let me go!" Mesprit screamed as she with futility tried to fly away, feeling a pain in her spine as her tails were completely stuck in the Lucario's iron grip, "You're too heavy, I can't lift you!"
"Use Psychic then! Use your head for a fuck-" Lucario began, and was abruptly interrupted by Rayquaza firing a beam at them. Lucario refusing to let go, and Mesprit being stuck in his grip, they were both caught like deer the headlight, neither making a move, knowing nothing they could do at this point would let them escape fast enough. In a panic, Mesprit followed Lucario's advice and sent a blast of Psychic against them. The invisible kinetic forced brutally slammed into them and sent both flying high up into the air. Then came the explosion. And then came the lightning. Despite untold pain coursing through his body, Lucario refused to let go as he shared the coursing dragon force with Mesprit and dragged her down to the ground once gravity reasserted itself. They fell flat on their face on the ground, some kind of sizzling smoke emanating from their bodies.
Wheezing and panting, in a world of pain, Lucario finally managed to formulate his thoughts.
"Why do you suck so hard?" he asked after lifting his head from the dirt. Mesprit gasped for air for a few moments.
"Because you're holding my tails," she finally replied with a weak, somber voice, "That's my weakness. It makes me lose control of my powers."
"Oh," Lucario muttered sheepishly. He realized he was still holding on to her tails and quickly let go. The instant he did, Mesprit suddenly flew up into the air, well out of his reach.
"As if! Dumbass!" Mesprit chided before sticking her tongue out at him. Lucario saw this and was instantly filled with anger, quickly getting up on his legs despite the pain.
"Fuck you!" he shouted and replied with a considerably ruder gesture. Mesprit twitched with annoyance and she quickly began to saunter off into the air and leave this boorish Lucario to his fate, but there was something blocking her path.
Tired of having its tiny prey actually dodge its attacks, Rayquaza had undertaken the truly monumental task of creating a new attack on the spot. Frozen, burnt and paralyzed, it had channeled its dragon pulse into a condensed form, and spat out several tiny little particles of immense destructive power. As they headed down towards Lucario and Mesprit, the points suddenly sprung to life and purple lightning began to jump between each particle like electricity moves from node to node in a never-ending stream. To the naked eye it looked like wide net of dragon lightning covering the entire sky, and the two fighters knew in an instant that they had been caught.
"Y-You wouldn't happen to know how to make one of those human lightning rods, would you?" Mesprit stammered dejected as she fell down, moving in the only direction that could be considered moving away from the gigantic attack.
"No. Hold on," Lucario said as he grabbed a hold of Mesprit and cradled her to his chest. Mesprit not protesting as the net closed in. There was no place to run to, no edge to break out from, no gap in the net to slip through. Bracing himself, he lowered himself to a crouch and close his eyes as the sizzling noise quickly approached.
In the darkness, he could hear a beautiful voice ring out. It was like that of an owl, but higher pitched, and drawn out into a calming serenade. It was both beautiful and strangely familiar, in a way that no other encounter thus far had been. This was something much deeper. Wondering what was happening, he felt something latch on to the scruff of his neck and lift both him and Mesprit into the air. But instead of being choked to death like by a hangman's rope, it only felt of minor discomfort until the sparks began to hit him and forced his eyes open. There he could see himself being lifted off through a large opening in the purple lightning. Dangling and being only slightly roasted by Rayquaza's attack, he had no way of turning his head to determine who or what was saving him.
Eventually all the points of concentrated pulse connected with the ground, creating the mother of all explosions, an apocalyptic display of blinding light and raging dragon force. Thankfully not one creature was actually hit by it, though mostly because those that weren't dead had already fled across the hills. As for Lucario, he was holding onto Mesprit who had entered a similar mental state of "if I close my eyes, maybe I won't die," until he felt himself get spat out and fall on the ground. Quickly spinning around, he turned to face his savior with the beautiful voice, but instantly the sight was so shocking that he tossed Mesprit aside and fell to his butt.
It was God.
"I think we're in the clear now," Exeggutor's frontal head said. The other heads were busy keeping an eye on Rayquaza, the baggage train and Zoroark, respectively. They led a train of athletic-looking people and strong Pokémon, carrying the wounded on their backs. They were exhausted and wracked with mixed sensations of victory and defeat. Some were in high spirits and ready celebrate that they had stopped Groudon, or merely escaped from Rayquaza with their lives. Others were mourning the loss of those that hadn't. Regardless of their current status, herd mentality dictated they move at a brisk pace away from the field of battle and on towards No Man's Land, where Zoroark had through some clever gestures shown that even the humans would be given shelter for the time being.
As it turns out, not a single one of them had any means of teleportation or flight. Those with such capabilities had already departed, if not once the battle against Groudon dragged on then most certainly once Rayquaza's indiscriminate massacre started. At the moment Zoroark was having trouble thinking up a clever way to handle the situation, still coming to terms with their narrow escape from Rayquaza, but also knowing they were still extremely vulnerable like this. Unable to send out scouts ahead of them, she had to rely on her own keen senses and experience from traversing the hostile desert all those years ago. Plus having Exeggutor's four heads nearby didn't hurt. Yet still, it wasn't until Zoroark noticed some of the people in the train pointing up towards a nearby hill, where a single man had suddenly appeared at the top that she realized they were being watched. Behind him stood a Pokémon, shimmering with cerulean colors in contrast to the dusty terrain.
"… Torana takes the lead… Nobody ever gives a shit about the rules, so use Gardevoir for personal protection…" Brendan muttered to himself as he dug through the contents of his trusty backpack, which was full of nothing but Pokéballs and various recovery items. He had already analyzed the enemy formation and decided on which ones to pick out, but the insides were a hurried mess and it was taking him a while to find the ones he wanted. Feeling impatient, he sighed and instead put down the backpack, hitting the Pokéballs on his belt.
With a satisfying click he activated two of his Pokéballs, both of which looked very old and worn out. It sent out red flashes of light which then took the form of two different Pokémon. A lot of the people and Pokémon below were now noticing the legendary Suicune and his trainer, and there was more than one gasp of surprise as the mighty Blaziken Torana came into being. By contrast the Gardevoir in all her morbid elegance elicited no such reaction. She wore a bored expression, feeling miffed that she was nowhere near as popular as the big firebird and rarely getting an opportunity to show off.
"Alright, Groudon is already dead. So forget about that," Brendan stated bluntly to his Pokémon. Torana appeared stunned for a moment, but quickly nodded in approval, as Brendan suddenly began to shout, "But I know what'll cheer me up! Torana, go down there and fight Zoroark!"
Torana quickly perked up. A passionate fire burned in her eyes.
Zoroark's jaw dropped. She had heard that alright. Among the crowd there were mutterings of "what the fuck?" and "is he joking?". Even the Gardevoir exchanged her bored expression for one of confusion. It seemed that only two beings on this battlefield thought this was a good idea.
"Brendan. Those Pokémon are seriously hurt," the Gardevoir spoke with a soft, calm and almost motherly voice, appealing to Brendan's somewhat lacking sense of chivalry, "This resembles an ambush more than a battle."
"True, but I doubt we'll get a better opportunity than this," Brendan replied smugly while remembering how heavily fortified both No Man's Land and Nomad's Land had been, "Besides, if that senile old fart can capture Zoroark, then so can I! And unlike him, I'm not letting the bastard slip out of my grip!"
The train had stopped now as everyone was staring up at Brendan and his three Pokémon. There was a general sense of uncoordinated confusion mixed with the instinctual need to protect the wounded, as a few of the braver creatures suddenly formed a protective barrier in front of the column. The Conkeldurr known as Connor slowly put down the Centiskorch he had been carrying and moved over to Zoroark as person dressed in gear typical for an ace trainer spoke up.
"Brendan, what the fuck are you doing?!" he shouted with an exasperated voice, holding a Greatball in his hand. Brendan examined him for a moment before huffing with disdain.
"Be quiet, you nobody," Brendan responded haughtily, "Why haven't YOU captured Zoroark yet? Did you just forget than that thing's a wanted terrorist or what?"
"We just took out a legendary!" the trainer continued shouting before pointing at Zoroark, "With HIS help, and NO thanks to you! None of us are looking for battle, we need to heal up right now! You lay one finger on us and I'll see your ass in court!"
"I said I only want Zoroark, you deaf piece of shit!" Brendan bellowed as his face turned red with anger, "Gardevoir here will gladly teleport all of you back to the Pokécenter in Celadon, where you will be treated, except Zoroark who will probably be murdered on sight by a bunch of opportunistic vultures. Am I making myself clear enough for you? Or is it illegal to fucking catch Pokémon out in the wild now? I hope they put you in the same cell as me then you goddamn hypocrite!"
"Brendan… You asshole," looking over the wounded, Pokémon and people, "Fine, send us back. But you better not do anything stupid…"
"Oh, I won't," Brendan answered with all the conviction of a man who sometimes almost kept his promises. Zoroark watched helplessly as her train of followers began to move up the hillside towards the Gardevoir.
"Hey, wait a minute!" Zoroark spoke up with exasperation. What the hell was going on? First most everyone abandons her right in the middle of battle and now this? She looked around and noticed about half a dozen of her closer associates staying behind, among them Connor who had single-handedly formed a rampart of muscle and flesh between her and Brendan.
"Worry not, Zoroark," Exeggutor said as the rest of the heads made various expressions of defiance, "We won't leave you."
"That's fine by me, as long as you don't get in my way," Brendan suddenly said as if he had understood the four-headed palm tree, giving off a sinister snicker, "Hehehe… Of course, I'm not the one you need to convince…"
Brendan looked towards his left and nodded. Having been given the go-ahead, Torana nodded back and leapt into the sky. It was not a graceful jump with flips and twirls or anything, yet everyone stared in awe regardless. The Blaziken's form was enough to provoke a sense of wonder and envy, coarse and roughly hewn muscles creating a display of the ultimate physique. The ultimate fighter.
She landed in front of Connor, who was staring her down with the implacable gaze of a dead man. Normally his kind would be more equipped with two pillars of stone to fight with, but these had been dropped in favor of carrying the wounded at Zoroark's orders. Having nothing else to use nearby, this particular Conkeldurr had gotten used to relying on his own strength, which was usually more than enough. The two creatures both surged with power, and it seemed a fight was inevitable.
"Torana, stop! This is madness!" Zoroark suddenly shouted as she move out from behind Connor's muscular frame, "Rayquaza appeared after Groudon, the battle isn't over yet! Tell Brendan-"
"You will not sway me with your talking like you did Entei," Torana interrupted her with a deep and imposing voice, staring down at her before shifting her gaze to the rest of the group, "We are warriors. The fight begins. Who's first?"
Zoroark groaned and raised her hand to her forehead in annoyance. Never in a million years would she have guessed that among these two, Brendan was the more reasonable one. She considered trying to convince the Gardevoir, but she was much too busy teleporting people and Pokémon to god knows where. It was best to go for the big prize.
"Brendan! You would pass up a chance to catch a dozen legendaries just to get to me?!" Zoroark shouted, not feeling like she was throwing the legendaries under the bus so much as just getting Brendan to help them out against Rayquaza. Or catch them; as long as it meant leaving her alone. After her troublesome encounter with Red she read up on the personalities of the former champions and made suitable preparations should they decide to attack No Man's Land, and with this knowledge she had assumed Brendan wouldn't listen to pleas but would listen to an opportunity to catch rare Pokémon. Turns out, neither was the case.
"Nope, didn't catch any of that," Brendan replied while poking around inside his ear. Understanding Pokémon was a trait he picked up after spending a lot of time with them and learning their mannerisms; this was the first Zoroark he had ever encountered. She groaned again.
"Just look to your right!" she pointed with frustration towards the sky, which was dark and cloudy yet still showed glimpses of emerald and thunder. Those with extraordinary vision could even make out the three legendary birds pestering Rayquaza. Brendan was not one of these people but he looked in the direction anyway before shrugging.
"Don't really care about Rayquaza," he muttered. Though his trainer's instincts betrayed him as his gaze lingered a little longer than would be considered normal for someone completely uninterested.
"Whenever you're ready, Torana," he egged his Pokémon on, subtly suggesting she get a move on so he could tend to other business. The Blaziken had remained as still and silent as the Conkeldurr before her. If not for her discipline she probably would've been shaking from excitement, edging at the precipice of battle for so long. She decided on the target that seemed the least keen on wasting her time with more talking and rushed towards the Conkeldurr.
Connor held out his long, thick arms in front of him. The Pokémon's body mass was somewhere around 40% arms, so this effectively guarded any weak spot from faster opponents. Many enemies would try to attack his comparatively spindly underside, but the truth was that even without two pillars for support Conkeldurr were naturally good at maintaining their balance. It usually ended up with them getting punched from above by two tree trunk-like arms.
Torana made no such beginner's mistake. She was a mixed attacker after all, and stopped herself just outside of Connor's range, buffeting him with a Fire Blast. The resulting explosion of heat forced Zoroark and the rest of her gang to back away. The Conkeldurr made an attempt to lunge forward and grab Torana, but she formed a barrier of Protect in front of her to completely stop his approach. All the while her speed began to increase from the heat of battle, she had determined the strength of her opponent and decided to end it. With a minor leap, she kicked Connor's shin with her powerful leg, before making a flip in mid-air and bringing down her other clawed talon on top of his head.
The brutal attack caused Connor to flinch, but he refused to go down. Noticing his guard was dropped, Torana continued her barrage of kicks with her right leg across the Conkeldurr's veiny body. A fire burned across her lower body as her speed continued to pick up, causing more and more devastation to the fading Connor as he held his ground.
A sharp pain suddenly struck the back of her lower left leg. Torana instinctively looked down, but there was nothing there. Fearing danger, she made a gallant backstep away from the Conkeldurr, or at least attempted to; her left leg refused to obey, and she made a tumble to the ground. Trying to get away, she quickly began to rise up, before yet another pain shot through her, this time from the other leg. It was not particularly painful, but she noticed how it was followed by a numbing sensation spreading through her body. In a single motion she tried to stand up, but both of her legs were completely paralyzed. Like a lame person fallen out of their wheelchair she lay, until she used her respectable upper body strength to throw herself into a sitting position, only for the familiar stab to striker her right in her back, twice now. Not able to spin around to see what had happened, she threw her arms behind her head, and to her delighted surprise actually grabbed onto something this time. Whatever it was she could not tell, but it was hairy and desperately twisting and turning to get out of her grip, all while she felt herself going numb across her lower body, her back and up to her chest.
There was a resounding gasp around the area as Connor wordlessly slumped down, beaten to a bloody pulp. But nobody was looking at him. In Torana's hands was a sight too peculiar to describe. There was a tuft of black and red stuck inside a tear in reality. Amongst the distortion, there was the occasional appearance of Zoroark's head. Yet Zoroark was also standing a few meters away, where he had been standing still for the past minute. The Pokémon stared in disbelief while looking towards the passive Zoroark for an explanation, as it suddenly vanished into thin air. There was another round of gasps, but none were as taken back by this display as Brendan was. To the fearsome trainer's own surprise, he noticed a bead of cold sweat running down the back of his neck.
Zoroark twisted and turned to escape Torana's grip, but the monstrous bird refused to relent. She dearly wished she had brought some kind of slashing instrument to cut her hair and escape, but all she carried were vials of highly concentrated paralyzing drugs, which her claws were covered in, and allowing those same claws to make contact with the rest of her body would be a poor idea indeed. She had gotten greedy injecting Torana with four doses, and now she was paying the price. She could no longer hide herself, their close proximity making the illusion too difficult to maintain, and whatever was happening to her illusionary double it wasn't convincing anyone anymore going but the horrified gasps around her. For a moment Zoroark feared one of those massive legs would whip around and smash her skull like a brittle cracker, but instead she felt Torana's grip around her loosen. The paralysis was doing its job, and noticing her chance, Zoroark wrested out of the stunned fighter's grip.
She made a small leap away from Torana as her opponent fell on her back, twitching painfully. Looking around, Zoroark realized every single one of her Pokémon were staring at her dumbfounded, except for Connor who was laying on the ground face down. He wasn't moving. Dispelling every illusion except the one that obscured her gender, she ran up to the fallen Conkeldurr. Her actions were mirrored by Brendan, who likewise made his way over to Torana. His face was stricken by an emotion it rarely got the chance to exhibit; fear.
"… Master…" Torana mumbled weakly as her body went completely numb, yet her heart ached something fierce. A wave of unpleasant memories of the past forced their way into her mind, crumbling her strong disposition and eroding away at her façade.
"It's OK, Torana, it's OK," Brendan replied as he quickly sprayed her with paralyze heal. For a moment he was so concerned with the well-being of his starter that he had almost forgotten the insurmountable fury he felt towards the one that had put her into this position. Almost.
Zoroark's endeavor was not as lucky. Careful not to touch Connor with her paralyze-laced claws, she laid her head against one of his usually throbbing veins. There was no life. Helpless to turn the behemoth over, she ran around him and checked his breath. There was no life. A few of the other Pokémon quickly approached the two to shield them as Brendan's Gardevoir did the same for their opponent, but a rudimentary examination led them all to come to the same conclusion. Connor was dead.
There was no time to mourn, however. In a flash, Torana reared back before leaping back up on her feet. The Pokémon looked up in horror, Exeggutor taking a careful step back while a few of the rest made a stance preparing for battle. Brendan ignored them, and Zoroark suddenly found the champion pointing straight at her.
"Torana…" Brendan said calmly, "Kill him."