Episode 54: The Untrustworthy Story Teller.

"Fake! I've come to bargain!" Anto stopped himself after screaming that sentence out loud. Those were some really odd choice of words.

"You do realize that I'm right next to you, right?" The young amnesiac looked down to his right. He saw Fake sitting down on a beach chair, wearing sunglasses, and he was previously drinking from those fancy coconut drinks with the cute umbrellas.

"Sorry, I didn't know how to contact you," The teen shook his head. "That guy who attacked me. He had the same telekinetic ability like me. You know him don't you?"

Fake continually sipped his juice despite Anto asking for information.

Anto was losing patience fast. Who knows what could be happening to N and Black at this very moment, but then he realized something. Whenever it came back to this lucid dream state, the reason why both Fake and Hoopa paid any attention to him was because he acted differently than other humans. If he got angry like a normal person, they would lose interest and therefore be harder to convince to help him save his friends.

"I guess I was on to something when I first came back here after all. What will it take to get you to talk?"

Immediately, Fake stopped drinking as a mischievous smile slowly formed on his version of Anto's face.

"For a teenager, you're very good at controlling your emotions. If only your ex-girlfriend knew the storm you always tried to hide."

"Wait what?"

Fake stood up to meet with Anto. "Nothing worth mentioning. Now you were saying about a bargain?"

Anto gritted his teeth. Did this mean Fake had his old memories? In hindsight that did make sense, but he had to focus on saving Black and N. (Though that comment about him having an Ex did catch his attention.)

"I need to know who that guy was and where he took Black and N… also maybe what he's doing and how he—you know what? I want to know everything about him!"

"Oh my~"

"I'm not in the mood, Fake."

The demon pouted at the response. "You're no fun when your hero mode is up. Alright, let me ask something first then: how did you make the connection with him to me? How do you know he didn't have anything to do with Dimension Enterprise?"

"The enterprise uses science. I highly doubt there science that can forcibly turn the Dragon of Ideals and Truth back into orbs. Secondly, I recognize his telepathic ability. It's the same one that I'm sure you had something to do with. And here the last reason why I think you know him: he called me Subject Five and wasn't part of Dimension Enterprise, I'm willing to bet he was the other Subjects—the other Hosts before me that you were previously in."

"… I suppose it wasn't that hard to assume. He was my very first host, a powerful human before his death and after it. However, I can't give you the information just like that. I want something in return."

Anto started to sweat, but he clenched his fist and steeled his resolve. "What do you want?"

Fake walked up to Anto and poked his chest. "I want to be in control of the body—don't worry, it won't be for long. Give me… an hour of control."

Fake was asking him for control? Why? Was he still too weak or…

Anto turned his head around and saw his answer. It was the spirit guardians, The Animals as they called themselves. Fake was not only in some kind of weakened state, but Anto recalled that they were protecting him from the demon from taking completely over.

A smile came across Anto's face. "You can't get past them, can you?"

A frown crossed Fake's features for the first time. "What can I say, Anthony? At the height of my powers, they would stand no chance against me. But as I am right now, they would only cripple me further than I would like. Thankfully, they are bound by a powerful magic to just protect you."

"Bound to me? How? I'm just a normal kid." Well… he tried to be at least. It's not his fault everything else happens to him.

"Oh you dear child… you are a normal mortal. It's just where you're from that makes all the difference."

Mistralton City? What did that have to do with anything? Or… was he talking about somewhere else?

"But enough of that. If you want answers…" Fake placed his arm out to Anto. "Let's make the deal."

"How do I know you won't betray me in some way?"

"… You don't."

Arceus dang it. Anto sighed deeply and thought about this one more time.

"Don't you dare harm any of my friends."

"I suppose I have no choice but to oblige to that at least."

It wasn't much, but Anto sighed in relief because he at least agreed to not harming them.

He took Fake's hand and shook on it.

(My my. Each and every one of these people have strong souls. If only I had met you earlier, Anthony. Especially if you could attract these types of people.)

"You… so you're the demon that lives in Anto's head." The purple eyed being looked upon the narrowed eyed teen from Orre who was the first to say something.

"That is… one way of putting it? But if you're all anything like Anthony, you all probably want me to just cut to the chase?" Zeed snuggled into the comfy hospital bed he was sitting on and pressed button to raise the top portion of it like a seat.

However, when Zeed was done, he raised a hand up to motion them all to quiet before they could start. "Hold it. I know you want answers, but I don't believe it's fair that young Anthony has to do all the brain crunching for you. So… I will only answer one question."

Zeed felt annoyed that his human ears were taking in a large amount of screaming and overlapping voices of annoyed people. He didn't know or care how Anthony dealt with this, but he wasn't going to deal with it anymore.

The purple eyed demon flashed his eyes brighter, silencing everyone from the action.

(Cursed guardians… I can only just flash my eyes at them without my destructive powers. Not that they need to know that.)

"If Anthony can make use of that rule for the better, then I'm sure all of you can do the same. With that said, choose very carefully."

"One question!? We only get one question!?" Cheren was understandably upset.

Zeed blinked at the boy before a smirk appeared on his lips. "You're going to waste your question on that?"

Bianca and White calmed the boy down before he did anything rash. They were dealing with a complete unknown here.

With that everyone got to brainstorming on what the question should be. Despite their bitterness, some ongoing claims, if they could even trust whatever was happening, or if this was all really happening they all rather quickly decided what they were going to ask.

Drayden stepped forward first. "Where is the location that the stranger brought Black and N—"

The young boy on the hospital bed had both of his eyes closed, but he suddenly spoke up. "You might want to stop right there," Zeed opened only one right eye and continued on. "Now, I may have Anto's most recent memories, but I should warn all of you that I have no idea, nor care for geography. If you were going to ask me about a location, I would be bound to answer honestly in which I would say that I have no clue where, in the most twisted and mind scaring dimensions, an area would be."

At that revelation, everyone momentarily stopped thinking. It was like he was admitting that he had no idea where Black and N could be at this very moment! And if that was the case… what could they do about it!?

Benga was the first to break the silence and quickly pointed to Zeed. "Well in that case, tell us who the heck who kidnapped them in the first place!"

"Since you didn't phrase that as a question, I won't answer that. However, if you did ask me who he was, I would have just told you his name, nothing more about it. Oh and if you ask for his name and what he's doing, I will count that as two questions and only answer one of them."

"You are impossible! How are we supposed to get the answers we need if you put this many limits on us!?" Aran was the one who shouted this, and to be fair some people were starting to feel the same way as he did.

"Anto was able to bypass these conditions and I didn't even warn him about the restrictions. He already assumed as much and still found a way to allow me to reveal far more than I wished." Zeed calmly responded. "If you can't do that much, then consider your friends as good as gone."

"How did Anto get around all of that?" Tiana noted with confusion as she tried to imagine the boy seemingly doing something to get Zeed to reveal what he needed to.

"Are you asking that honestly?" The demon warned, only for Tiana to quickly shake her head. "In that case, you'll all have to figure it out. I also recommend doing it quickly, I promised Anthony to return his body in the hour and by then… well… I assumed you're pressed for time as is?"

Again this prompted everyone to get back into discussion but this time it was going nowhere fast.

While this was all happening, White of all people was thinking. Anto was able to bypass the one question rule, but how? Anto was rather simple; if it wasn't for his horrible luck, he would be a pretty average person with a caring heart.

Wait. There was something she was overlooking. She quickly thought back to Anto's battles. Each one was unpredictable and creative as the young trainer helped his Pokémon fight through the most unorthodox ways.

The amnesiac thought outside of the box, so maybe… she should to? Zeed was offering to ask only one question, but the question had to be done in a way that makes him want to talk more than just a single word. Wasn't there something like this from one of the movies her mother…

Wait. Movies?

White's eyes widened. The girl walked up to Zeed, stopping everyone from arguing and looked Zeed in the eye.

"What is your story?"

And like that, the room that was so loud just mere seconds ago was silenced to the point where you could hear the wind passing through someone's hair.

"Excuse me?"

"What are the circumstances that brought you here at this moment? Tell it in the form of a story."

For a while, Zeed simply stared at the girl before a small smirk came across his features. "I can see why my host has a crush on you. Tell me was he your first kiss or what?"

The brown haired girl fought the blush and tried to fight the feeling of all eyes on her for different reasons. "Th-That's not important and answer the dang question!"

Zeed shrugged his shoulders. "Well for figuring it out, I might as well."

Perhaps it happened in the future, perhaps it happened in the past, or maybe it was happening at this very moment, but the fact remained that it happened in a time that was far separate from the reality you all lived in.

There were these beings of ᵹᵠᵜᵙᵕ, or the closest translation to your kind would probably be scholars or scientists. Unlike humans and Pokémon their entire species were completely identical except only in mind. They all had the same height at around nine feet tall, they bodies that worked similar to foam, their heads where cubical and they had three eyes that formed a triangle with arms as long and willowy as tree branches. It doesn't take the wisest of people to realize that these beings were entirely different from both humans and Pokémon, but my story begins with one far too curious than the rest of his kind.

And then there was another world, a world full of primordial beasts where the strong became stronger after devouring the loser's corpse. In a sense, a far more blood thirsty version of your world's Pokémon.

Why am I telling you of two different worlds, you might wonder? Ha… ha…

That makes all the difference.

The one from the race of wisdom seekers sought to unlock a secret written in the oldest star within their system. Their elders believed it to be some ancient message from their gods, yet the seeker saw that it was not a message, but an equation; a formula for their kind to travel far beyond the rules and laws of their cosmos and beyond.

The seeker went to work, crafting the formula to perfection until one day… they finished it.

On that day, the seeker had made their first and last mistake.

They had no idea that the formula they were reconstructing was incomplete. It lacked a string of sequences that made the process unstable and random.

A tear through the fabric of space and time violently opened up and its destination? The world full of the primordial beasts.

The wormhole wrenched the seeker away from the first end, and a very powerful and battle-worn creature from the other end. Through the unstable space-time tunnel, the two being's bodies clashed together to create an explosion.

They felt their very minds, their very souls, and even their very molecules down to the last electron shift and change in unimaginable madness as everything that gave them a physical appearance was twisted and malformed to the point of utter cosmic monstrosity.

On that gap between time and space, I was born.

The remnants of both conflicting species' essence drove my infant mind to lunacy and berserk rage. One battle became another, and another, and another until it came to the point where they had surpassed my ability to count.

As time grew, so too my new conscious did; with it, I grew more powerful after each enemy I defeated, gaining powers and knowledge the likes would never believe.

Eventually, I had become invincible: a being capable of traveling the near infinite cosmos and had slew more gods than you humans have stepped on blades of grass in your life time.

Of course to be fair, I had lost to far stronger beings than me, but every time I survived all of my defeats. Very few could not say the same, and even less remained untouchable to my power, humbling me in ways not the greatest of imagination could fathom.

But strangely enough, I am not in this state because of those select few stronger than me.

You humans would call it a day, I would call it a moment in my eternal combat. During that period, I had come across an army you could probably refer to as Angels. This group of beings was much like the former of the beings I mentioned in that they were not worth mentioning at all along with the countless others that had fallen before me.

What made them stand out was their leader, a strange angel that spouted much grandstanding. That being came at me with a weapon that was unfamiliar to me despite my long existence of travels.

This weapon was different because it seemed like even the angel did not truly understand that weapon's power.

I say this because it ruptured not through my great defenses, but its power also backfired and killed him, his men, and the worlds he was ironically trying to protect.

I felt pain like no other at the aftermath. It wasn't like the other few strong cosmical beings before me, there was something about that weapon that was tearing me apart from within just like when I first became realized.

It had dampened my powers to travel across the cosmos, and I found myself falling through time and space.

No matter how much I tried, I could not land within a new world to stop the state of falling I was within the gaps of reality.

I was falling down eternity…

Catching anything and everything I could.

I grabbed on the stars, the planets, the galaxies—on light and darkness themselves.

I even tried to reach for the fabrics of the very space and time that birthed me.

But I still fell.

I fell into the forever.

Yet… I stopped.

Somehow, one day… I had woken up in your world, battered and weakened to the point where my old form was lost.

I was still injured, but my ability to feast and evolve was still there. However, I seemed to have reverted to a much weaker state. So I attempted to regain my strength, but something was preventing me from truly returning to full strength. It wasn't long that I was found by the legends of this world followed by their so called heroes.

The supposed heroic dragon and the two heroes came to stop my supposed rampage. They battled fiercely, and I was not at my full strength. Their cunning had out smarted and out maneuvered me.

With my defeat, and with my inability to die, they tried to seal me away in chamber of stone. But I was not one to sit idly by and let such a thing happen.

Before they finished the seal, I threw a piece of my body containing my soul on to one of the heroes' head. His soul was boorish, but I soon made work into eating it.

The dragon and the other hero brought me in front of a wise man of their kingdom. He crafted his magic to separate me from the soul of the hero. However, I had made sure that I would not be removed without a failsafe.

If the piece of my mind was removed, it would unleash a powerful wave of destruction. The wise man saw this and quickly he placed my seed into his own mind. The weight of the transfer killed him and his guardian creatures instantly. After the event, the man and his partners were buried and that made the two heroes legends for stopping me in the first place.

He thought that he would be able to resist me. He did not realize that he could not keep it up for a time. He also did not realize that even death could not separate him from me.

I invaded his mind, his memories, I attacked all the insecurities of his life and found out he had someone he called a blood brother. Oh how "honorable" he always liked to boast. He claimed nothing could separate his bond with his brother much like the two heroes and their dragon.

So instead, I did something else. I revealed one secret of this universe to him. That was all it took. One secret, and he was driven mad and saw me in a new light.

And so we began to reanimate his dead body. With bits of my power combined with his, we strode the land in search of a way to undo the seal on my body. Unfortunately for us, by the time we came back, the dragon had split himself into three and had been lost, hidden away by the two heroes' descendants and followers.

Annoying fragments.

We searched and searched, gaining power and followers over time. However, we were eventually tracked down by none other than the descendant of my first host's sworn brother. I did not care for his name.

Somehow, he had found out about our dark powers and called the host mad. With another group rallying behind him, we performed the most universal act of life: glorious battle.

I will not bore you with the details, but simply imagine it to be a heavy battle until the end when they finally subdued my host. They locked him away and tried to use something to split me away from the host in such a way that would not cause mass destruction.

However, another problem arose. Once more, they would have to transfer the seed to another host to fully contain me, or what they called an evil abomination.

It wasn't until much later that I found a very fitting human quote of history repeating itself. I suggest you keep that phrase in mind.

As you could imagine it went as well as the last one. However, they did one thing differently: again there were details, but they believed that if my next host was already dead, I wouldn't be able to control it to my will. The noble friend of the hero sacrificed his life and used his body as a vessel to seal me within it.

You would imagine that would be somewhat backwards in logic for it to be stopping me. However, the magic they produced did indeed work. I could re animate the brain, but without a soul I lacked a medium to express my powers through and escape.

So I bided my time and waited. While captive, I learned more and more about the human body and brain… along with something deep within the human genes that allowed some humans… psionic powers. I started training the use of using the human mind to lift rocks, read minds, project my thoughts into others… and best off all mind control and memory erasure.

I turned noble, sworn brothers in to hateful enemies in mere seconds as I rewrote their minds to my whim.

Eventually I escaped, and who should I meet but the first host? He was still animated…

Though there was an interesting problem. Without me in his essence no longer, he seemed to have slipped into an unstable mental state where he became obsessed with the secret I revealed with him.

He then ripped me out of the second host and tried to put me back with him.

Unfortunately for him, he did so when I was caught off guard. My old failsafe was primed, and an explosion engulfed him, my second host, and whatever landmass we were on. I don't know what happened to it after nor did I care.

I was found again by my third host, a conqueror. He thought I was some treasure meant to be put on his crown.

Yes, it was fairly easy to get into him because of this, but not in the way that you think. The old spell of the society still worked in that I could not possess a living being. Though that was easily rectified as I killed my host and then entered into him.

However, it looked as if my failsafe I had placed so long ago had mutated. The magic that I used did something the host when I entered into him. It erased his memories and took away his physical voice. This wasn't much of a problem for me as I still had my powers, and over time they were slowly growing enough for me to get out of my tomb.

But this time, I would try to avoid creating new hosts if the first, and potentially the second host would come back more unstable if I was removed from them. Of course this wasn't my first concern due to the stupid fact that I was once more drained of a chunk of what little power I had left due to the fail safe. I had to retreat back into the mind of my third host and let him wander around aimlessly like some lost fool.

Over time, he seemed to regain himself but not his voice and started rebuilding himself from the ground up. He had one advantage this time that was different before. I wasn't allowing him to die again.

He thought himself immortal, which he technically was because of me. And I ended up being a back seat driver as I watched him do whatever he did. Though this part was boring except for that other immortal King he fought, but that's not important.

Of course, history repeated itself and my first and my second host had found me again. This time, they had gained a following of strange Pokémon along with their now twisted personalities.

This time, I tried to calm them both down. It seemed to work better.

If it not for the stupid fact that the secret society was still flipping alive and following the other two hosts that whole time! They attacked and this time, they were able to capture me and my current host.

Knowing from their past mistakes, the society tried to permanently weaken me by placing me on a decapitated host, a small girl who had long been dead.

That did not stop me from growing back the body, but with this new technology they had, I had no means of escaping.

They kept shifting my fourth host around, and they also separated me from my third host—who I briefly learned in capture that he escaped by himself, not that they seemed to place that much effort into an empty husk anyway. As for my fourth host, she was far more annoying than my other three hosts even though I took away her voice. She might have been some spoiled princess or something—I was not interested in her.

In fact, she annoyed me so much that I forcefully ejected myself from her while still under the care of that blasted order.

…

That was number four, and by this smile on my face, and the tense look on all your faces, we finally come to number 5.

The order had started to do experiments over my time captured with the fourth host. Their tech and their powers grew because of their studies to me, and now they had to find a new host to contain me in lest I destroy another continent off the map. However, it seemed like my old seal had mutated once more. My seal rejected dead bodies, yet it seemed to be more aligned towards dead young children.

After being ejected out of what felt like the hundredth dead body, they brought in a new corpse.

But this was finally my ticket out of here.

For you see, while they were studying me, I was studying them. They had no idea I was adapting to their machines, slowly tacking control over them without their notice. As soon as I got into this host, I would unleash my new powers and free myself.

Or at least… that what should have happened.

You see, there was one thing I was practicing while still captive in my fourth host. I seemed to have been regaining my ability to traverse dimensions. I could open small tears that allowed me to peek into other worlds.

I imagined that if they placed me in front of another host, I would strike and jump into the body before they could properly restrain the new body.

What I didn't know was that there was a traitor among the secret order that were not following my previous hosts.

I do not know his reasoning, but he made his move the same time I made mine.

Many things happened… and curiously, when I opened the tear…

Hmm…

Well let's just say something happened that I wasn't expecting to.

And then… I was in my new host. The traitor seemingly rescued me. He seemed to assume I was some sad child and had no idea what he was doing. The order desperately tried to get back my host and me, but then, the heroic traitor gave himself up so Anto could escape.

...

"And the rest? That is history." Zeed finally finished, looking at the frozen faces on everyone in the room. Of course, many people tried to say something within his story, but he ignored them and continued on. After all, he was only going to say the story of how he got here.

To them it was all unbelievable. Right before them was a foreign deity the likes only old tales and epic fantasy could describe. This... being... he had just revealed the strange story of how he got to this state.

It was like he summarized the whole event without revealing any details! Not one true name was spoken that they could understand! And that wasn't even including how that story only brought up more questions!

What was the secret that drove the first host mad and made the others follow him? Why did he leave a part out when it came to Anto's part? What was the society; where they really Dimension Enterprise? Where did this all happen? Why did he make it sound so vague and say no real names?! Did that mean that the man who captured N and Black… he was actually an undead immortal?

"So you're saying…" Everyone had turned to Benga who slowly seemed to be piecing things together. "That everything that came up to this point was because of you?"

Zeed shrugged his shoulders. "Perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn't. I lack the ability to care for many things."

"Hmm they made you sound like some kind of evil cosmic horror, but you're rather just a presumptuous brute, aren't you?" Caitlin of the Elite Four commented while sitting quite proper like. It seemed as if she was someone who was losing interest very quickly.

"I will not deny that. I have been cursed many-a-times in tongues that speak in flowery words but mean less than crap of insects." Zeed seemed to be the only one in the room who wasn't paying attention to how Caitlin's hairs seemed to be levitating…

"In any case," Drayden stepped in time to prevent any bodies from being thrown. "The story does help us in some way understand what seems to be the end goal in all this madness: Zeed's body. If he truly is tied with the legends of Unova, it explains why they took Zekrom and Reshiram. They are probably key to undoing the seal-where ever it is."

"Hold up." Victor spoke out. "I caught what he said earlier about a chamber of stone. Isn't Dragonspiral Tower…. Wasn't Dragonspiral Tower a giant stone building?"

They all froze at the mention of the old ruins.

"Well yes, but because of the events of when Anto was there, the tower was destroy—" Brycen stopped talking when he heard his phone vibrate. He quickly opened it up and—

"I recommend answering that, ice user." Zeed mysteriously blurted before Brycen could dismiss the call.

They all looked back at the former actor as he decided to look at the caller ID. "It's from my doctor, Logan." He spoke up as he answered the call. "Yes? Hmm? Logan-Logan? Calm down! What is the… open the news channel?"

Tiana saw the remote and quickly pressed the button that switched on the television on the corner of the room.

The sight before them had robbed almost everyone's ability to coherently string proper thoughts.

"Well if no one is going to say it, I will: so this is why that guy was so confident in Anto following after them." It seemed Wes could still show sarcasm even in situations like these. He was nothing if not consistent.

No one called him out on it though.

They were all having trouble processing the fact the destroyed tower was not only back to normal, but back into a pristine state that looked completely new and had large, glowing red symbols all across it while being covered in a giant forcefield.

And as if the universe had some kind of sick sense of humor, the clouds above the tower were cut in such a way that you could read words.

These words said the following:

Subject 5, only you and your partners are allowed into this field!

The news cast seemed to be confused as all heck, but no one paid much attention to them.

It was at this moment that a snapping noise caught the attention of everyone in the room where they noticed Zeed out from the bed wearing Anto's usual clothes.

"Now if you will excuse me. I have an appointment to meet with. Kryx? Would you be so kind?"

It took everyone one millisecond too late to notice that all of Anto's Pokémon were in a hypnotic trance. The little alien had warped all seven of them away in an instant.

"Dang it he escaped!" Sebastion cried out quickly before something else happened just as quick.

Wes jumped out of the window and threw his Hydreigon out before he jumped on it and commanded to the dragon to fly as fast as he possibly could.

"Everyone, stop!" Drayden shouted out loud, startling everyone to freeze before he turned to the psychic Elite Four member. "Ms. Caitlin, can your Pokémon teleport after Anto's?"

The pink themed woman stood up with a huff. "If you want my Pokémon to set up a mass teleportation, it may have been faster to do the same thing with that brute did who rode on his dragon. I sensed the teleporting Pokémon to only go two miles from this location before the rest of his Pokémon started to bring him towards the tower."

"In that case, everyone? Godspeed." Drayden spoke before all trainers that could split into their own way of racing to Icirrus City.

Meanwhile, in Icirrus City, a young man wearing black while standing next to a Charizard wearing a bejeweled necklace stared in awe at the tower before them.

"What is going on here?"

He looked at his wrist at the incoming call and answered it. "Alain. We've seen the news. Have you…"

"Lysandre, yes. I'm here. What is going on?"

"I don't know. But even I know it's not natural. You'll have to put hunting down the boy on hold and try to help as many people there as you can. It won't do good to ignore these unpredictable times."

The young man from Kalos nodded. "Right. Come on, Charizard."

However, it seemed as if the man's strongest Pokémon was looking somewhere else. Alain followed his fire type's gaze to ironically see the boy he was just told to forget about hunting.

As Zeed walked in front of the barrier, four people suddenly made a dramatic entrance form the sky and landed right in front of him.

Zeed took in the sight of the four in front of him. "Time changes, but fate seems to like repetition so much if you look exactly like your main ancestors."

"So it is true," Sied of Dimension Enterprise slowly took a battle stance along with his three agents and their army of Mega Pokémon and Dragonite. "You have rapidly adapted to this host than all the others before."

"Actually no. In fact, the only reason why I could do this was to abuse a loop hole. Other than that, I harmed no one, and my time is about to expire… now."

In one second, Zeed shook his head vividly before his purple eyes were replaced with Anto's brown ones and he looked in front of all the best members of Dimension Enterprise. All of Anto's Pokémon seemed to snap out of their trance as well.

When Anto realized the situation he was dropped in, he swore under his breath. "Zeed, demon or not, you are a prAWWSHII—"

Then all Dimension Enterprise Agents pounced on him with resolution rivaling that of the hounds of hell upon their unwitting prey.

Best of luck… to the agents.

They were no longer attacking a hapless boy running for cover.

They were fighting a Champion, and deep inside, Anto would honor that title from the spirit of the two people named champion before him and honor the title of the strongest!

…

As soon as he gets out of the way of that really dangerous looking Dragonite while mentally screaming like a lunatic.

{Author Notes}

And thus the plot starts to unfold. We finally see the cause of all this madness: Zeed's true body sealed up within the Dragonspiral Tower! However, not all questions have been answered and Zeed chooses to withhold important information with his haphazard story telling.

The Unova Saga is coming to a close ladies and gentlemen! This is the last Arc! The Ascension into Madness! I am so excited of how this is going to go down!

*Points to whoever can correctly guess which chapter had a piece of Zeed's story foreshadowed in the earlier chapters. +Hint: It's less than 10* (Yeah, I planned that far ahead so long ago.)

And check it! SEE Pokémon!? YOU CAN HAVE AN ACTUAL STORY EVEN AFTER A TRAINER BECOMES CHAMPION! I'M LOOKING AT YOU PEOPLE WHO DECIDED TO MAKE ASH SECOND PLACE IN THE KALOS REGION! WE WILL NOT LIVE THAT DOWN DANG YOU! AND YES I'M STILL SALTY ABOUT IT WITH ALL THESE CAPS LOCK! YOU FLIPPING LET ASH WIN IN THE ORANGE ISLANDS, SO YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE SO THEN TOO!

...

Yeah. On a more serious note: I, like many others have been going through a rough patch-heck this time? It's kinda worse than usual. I'm still trying my best, but it's kinda hard sometimes though. And there are fears that I may not be good enough.

... But what kind of person would I be if I didn't go out there, kicking and screaming with every once of courage that I put all my characters through?

I wish you guys all luck in your life. It'll knock you down hard, but hey: You decide when it will truly be over, circumstances be damned.

And I'm done ranting.

...

The next chapter... *SMILES BIG* Oooohhhh yeahhhhh.