Bound by Purpose

I've lived with a fragile faith built on the ether of vague memories from an existence that I can neither prove nor explain. Dimmed by the merciless clutches of a grandiose being standing aside time and space and the illusory perception of human existence, it stirs me ever onwards into the great unknown, filling me with nothing safe the certainty that I will endure.

And we must all endure if we wish to outlast the lie. The Lie. Or risk perishing into forgotten history in an arrogant act of old self-reliance long held and easily broken.

To know…

We are but visitors on this rock… perchance we are but a tiny speck in an indefinite measure of space… tethered to this burning sphere as we hurtle through a cosmos at 66,000 miles an hour. How can we, upon contemplating the very unlikeliness of our existence in the face of these facts, even nurture a stray thought of doubt on the probability that we are but a meaningless joke in a grand, indifferent, ever-reaching universe?

I mean, assume we could travel the stars with impunity. That we could attain the means to bypass every single law of nature as we've come to understand it. Assume we have gained impunity to nature's wrath, and we travel through the oceans of stars littering our night's sky. Assume we can reach everything, nothing is beyond us at this point.

Is there such a thing as an end, then? Would we reach a point, somewhere, where the universe simply stops? Like a fucking straight line. Like a great, impenetrable wall. For nothing can be endless, right? Not truly. Or heads cannot comprehend infinity beyond merely a fascinating thought of which we have no discernible, indisputable prove of truth.

And we need truth. We yearn for it. For catharsis.

But what if, from a higher vantage point, a point wherein we could perceive beyond walls and underneath boxes, wherein we could perchance see – not with eyes but with minds – that which exist beyond. What if we could breach the barrier of the universe, what then would we find? Blackness?

Oh, if only… My eyes have seen… the coming of the Lord.

It is a blackness, and it is us, and it is not 'us', and it reflects back upon us. Like a flat circle. Glued together by the infinite reach of Eternity. A black mirror that hovers beyond sight.

I've trodden these hollow paths, uncertain of everything safe the certainty that I must endure. Somewhere. In some universe.

Forevermore.

A quarrel that keeps on giving it all to our undying souls that burn on rocks that hurtles through a cosmos we cannot perceive beyond anything other than an entity that must be explained and understood with any scientific measure in which we can cast our faith.

A grand fallacy. A need to 'know'.

And we fight. To love. To hate. To lose. To win. To stand. To be. To… last.

And it fights us back. The universe. The life. The lie. It fight us with everything it has.

And we fight back.

And I fought back.

For barely… reality…

Fuck…

For barely a perceivable moment of reality, the fight existed exclusively in my goddamn head. I'd just burned through a woman and her small, almost infant-like daughter. It should have filled my essence, cast aside any semblance of defiance, and plunged me into darkness never-ending, but somehow…

Somehow the world yanked me out of the abyss.

Somehow, the world claimed me, as it is wont to do. Pushing its acrid existence onto mine, consuming me. Consuming me.

Consuming all of us.

I was thrust straight back into the fight. As if those two hadn't ever existed. As if I hadn't been the one…

I regained composure, habitually so, and grounded myself in the clutches of reality once more.

Pushing off the ground, tucking and toiling away at the forces unbound within, I came to a skidding stop in the middle of a broken street. Realizing that somewhere I must have lost my grasp of the world, broken away from any semblance of sensory experience, for I found myself upon an unknown street.

How the fuck did I end up here? I wondered.

The birds of hell stopped their pursuit of me and listened, it seemed, to the sudden silence of the world – as did I.

It ate at me.

It was deafening.

It was all.

The heaviest presence I'd ever felt. It penetrated everything, filled all with its vast void of regret, of death unbound, of shocked cries in the night, of lives burning out in the fires – it was the silence of a world unmade, swallowing everything and bending lights at will.

What kind of silence was this? What kind of being resides inside such a world of silence. Perchance I saw in a void, a hollowness in time wherein I could perceive with my eyes the home of Eternity, as it looks in upon us, its playthings.

And then there was a voice, descending from within the hollowness.

"Men that has seen what we have seen… men like us… rough men, as you called it… we want to unmake the world, Ash. It's our instinct. It's our belief. This is perhaps the most natural state this city has ever existed in."

Riley strolled out of the shadow, off the block leading to the center of Saffron, to Garden's Alley, like he'd been waiting all morning for me to drop by this corner of the city.

He looked good. At peace with what he'd wrought.

"This mustn't be the solution," I whispered, everything tightening impossibly rigid in every fiber of my wicked being. There was fire in my belly, tempestuous and cruel, waiting to be unleashed. Edging to be… free of all constraints.

At last.

"It is." He looked certain of his path. Mind made up beyond all methods of rationale. And, more disturbingly, it was a mind made up beyond all methods of the irrational and emotional – which, of course, often proved far more convincing to the human perception.

I tried anyhow. Wherein there is a will, there must also be a way, right? I must try. To not try would be to go against that which I had staked my existence on.

"This cannot be all we are." My tone suggested calmness of mind, but my eyes, oh god, they were begging behind a veil of blood. "You and I… we… we were more…"

"Really, it's all we ever were," he said, interrupting me. "We're not doing anything here others haven't tried before. Only difference is… well, we're better at it than anybody before us." He came to a stop right upon the center of the street, in betwixt me and his mighty beasts of thunder, ice and flame, and gazed at me through clear sight. Here stood a man, I thought, of clearer sight than any that had cometh before him.

He cometh by water and flame, I thought, realizing a moment of the past long forgotten. He cometh by water and flame… to taketh away the sins of the world.

"For a world to rise," Riley continued, "there has to be a void for it to step into. A place for the world to exist. We're paving the way. Right here. Right now. This is it! Don't you see? We're standing between worlds. Waiting. This will happen. Without us. Someday. Gradually. In a hundred, maybe a thousand years from now our vision will be reality, because we're right. But we have the power to effect change now. Generations after us need not be soiling away their existence in meaningless plight. In meaningless wars. In simple… mindless meaninglessness. You can be the light, Ash, spearheading the revolution. Don't you see? Not for a smarter, more sophisticated world – you know technology doesn't bring us together, not really – but for a kinder world, a forgiving world free of awry ambition and ill intent. I want to… no… I need to unmake the world. As do you. This is the way. I've found the way at last. To see their dreams, to stop their screams… to end their schemes… end the nightmare of living once and for all."

I hesitated.

Fuckin' hell.

I saw… it. It.

The dream. The Dream. The one we all awoke from. The one we yearn for in the night, and try to forget in the day as we search for the will to last above it… without it. With its illusory allure.

I stood there with one foot in between the worlds of dream and reality. I could see the dream, see the shape of it, see its goodness, its virtue, its greatness. I could see the lives existing in such a world, prosperous and free of the shackles that bound us in this existence. I could see it as clear as I could see the real world before my eyes, as real as the fire, as Riley… as my broken heart and shattered soul.

"If we did this," I said, entertaining at last the notion of a we, "we could put a stopper to it all. End war between men, find true equality between gender and races… be what we must have been destined to be… to cease the struggle of becoming simply for the virtue of becoming… to stand for more than simply just standing by…"

Riley nodded. "They will fight it, of course. Initially. Man is a creature of habit. They won't like it if they have to live without Poké Balls, without internet, without a constant affirmation of their worth. But then, after a time – shorter than you think, I reckon – they will realize that the cloak of depression that clouds them have been lifted, the stress of always adapting to an ever-changeable world erased. Nature wild and free and beautiful – as we have always seen it, Ash – so too will they. And we can finally start over from there, get it right, design it and share it freely… everyone free to be one and free to be all."

"To have more than a superficial choice… To witness a true miracle."

"They will take it away from us – that world. They will claw and rave for their precious cars and their precious laptops and their precious phones and their precious fucking Poké Balls. Never realizing that their lives could be so much more without. They are shackled to them! Instead of being out and about, experiencing the world through their own eyes, through their own body, walk wherever they desire, they see it through a goddamn television screen. And then they complain about everything! 'Oh, honey, if only we could do that' they say, 'if only my life was as great as these fake celebrities and their fake lives that I'm following on my phone every night.'

"They wake up every morning from the sound of some infernal gadget, rush out the door to get stuck in traffic, get stuck behind the red lights, get stuck in the same old office doing the same old things that they secretly abhorrer above everything else. And when they are finally free of their jobs – and here comes the highlight of the fucking day – they rush home, stuck in the same traffic, the same red lights that someone once told them to obey without question, and then they are finally home again. Where they can complain about the day and watch the world through a tiny box of lights. Is that living? Freely? Is that what life was meant to be? Given the choice, as a child, no man would choose such a life for himself…"

"No…" I paused. "Nobody desires such a life. It's forced upon them. So cleverly that no one ever stops to question it."

"Yes. It's a cessation of the spirit. Fuck that! I cannot defeat you, Ash. You're too otherworldly for me, too powerful, too everything. You stand on the precipice aside our world, aside life, looking in upon us like a visitor from some fantastical place… too bound in greatness to truly comprehend our flawed existence. I found you in the light of darkness, in a crack in between worlds, and your strength scared me. Above and beyond us you stand, and your quarrel must decide in which way our world will move forward. Ash! I implore you, fight for our vision."

I stood between worlds, man. Between choices. I decided. I decided for all of us. And I could see our vision. Not just imaginatively, no, really see it rise before me. See what we ascended towards, together, back when we found each other in that forest. This was the first world, first life, in which I'd met Riley. And it had deviated completely from there.

I had deviated.

It had changed everything.

I was… divided. Almost indecisive.

Almost.

But I was not – not even faced with the abyss – without the spirit to hold up against the torture.

"You're right. We're right. There's a better world out there. A world for all of us. This is not how man was supposed to live… but this cannot be the way. How many people have died in the midst of our quarrel?"

"How many people died in the Dark Ages in search of a better world? How many through the unforgotten and the forgotten pages of history has perished in order for the world to move along to this moment?"

"And this is the result. This broken old thing, discarded and unloved even by the gods that created it so long ago. Because no parent can love a child this hideous. Our world cannot stand on the backbone of such deeds… of a slaughter…"

"New worlds, more often than not, are founded in flames. You cannot talk sense with society; it won't listen. You have to scream – scream and rave and claw in their fucking faces before they'll listen. But afterwards, in the flames of your rage, you'll notice that you have their full attention. As we do now. You – and you alone – can be the founder of our dream."

"I'm not a founder of worlds." If anything, I thought in my darkest of hearts, I was a destroyer of worlds.

"You can be."

"Not like this," I said, "I'm… I'm simply too weak. I lack of true resolve to see such a tremendous task through to the end. I'm sorry, Riley. Truly. I've fought my programming to this point. Fought my involuntary compulsions. I can't fight it here. Any longer. I'm… simply too compelled to stop you. I'm bound by purpose."

"That's a shame. It must be a race, then." Riley looked heartbroken, but there was a determination I'd never faced before touching his eyes. A resignation to fate. The fate of his dream. The end of it. Of it all.

The only possible fate of all true dreams in this world.

"A race?" I inquired, then shook my head. "No, Riley. This is a fight. And you cannot defeat me."

"You're right. And wrong. True, in a fight I cannot best you anymore. As shown, I can break every single bone in your body, and you'll simply rise above your human shackles. I can tear your soul asunder, and somehow you can cope. Maybe because of the love you have in your heart, however flawed, and that may sustain you. But I can turn that love against you. I can turn it into a cancerous cell in your soul. And trust me, after that you won't lay a finger on me. After that… you'll be bound not by purpose, but to my will."

"I swear…" Fear and rage mingled, touched my voice, and hardened my resolve into something meaningful. Something cruel. "If you lay even a single finger… if you kill… no place in any existence can keep you save from me."

My threat, of which men would cower beneath, seemed to only touch a hollow place in his heart, for he paid it no mind at all.

"Have you never wondered just what it is I'm capable of, Ash? How I do it? The means of which I use to influence these beasts of the wild world we view in such affectionate a light."

"Aura. Of a sort."

"No. And I have a feeling that, in time, you'll find that what you have is not Aura either, but rather something that resides within the cracks in between life. But I digress. I enslave them to my will. That you must have guessed. I can do that… because I transfer onto them a part of me. A part of my soul. My life… becomes their life. In a sense. A sort of contractual symbiosis. Should I die, well, then my power over them will die. But my power, the force I yield, is their life…"

"So if I kill you, I'll kill all of them?" I laughed. How peculiar a faulty assumption he'd made. "You think me above that? That I would hesitate simply because with your death comes that of thousands of innocent creatures. I wouldn't. Hell, I doubt there's even a place left in me where it'd hurt."

"You misunderstand. I know you wouldn't. But, you see," he had on his face the strangest smile. A smile I hated.

A smile I feared.

"The reason that I can… control them… catch 'em all in my web… is because that for all their strength and might they are in possession of a simple-mindedness that, while hard to fathom, is easily enslaved. Look at how willingly they bind themselves to our bidding once captured. A man cannot be controlled so easily… at least not by a being on par with man…"

I felt my jaw slacken as a door with forbidding knowledge opened itself before inner eye. Shit! Was he saying – somewhere within his ramblings – what I think he was?

"But he can be controlled nonetheless." He held up a finger, like a teacher admonishing a class fondly. "Or she in this case. It takes a little more work, and a presence of a physical entity, a more profound symbiosis. It's hard work. Killing work. But it can be done."

"You have to touch them. To be physically present in the transfer of your will…" He was going after them, to control them, to…

No…

"Is that realization I see in your eyes? Good. Realize that it is not too late yet. That we can unite. End this world, admittedly in flames, and move on in search of our perfect future."

"Fuck you! I can't. You know that."

"Then you have lost. A fight, however long and hard, you'll win in the end. But to reach the peak of the mountain, you'll have to fight every step of the way, while I'll ride the wave upon the backs of my diligent, faithful army."

A Rapidash, as if yanked out of non-existence and into this hell on earth, stepped out of the flames. It looked clean and pure as fuck, as if fresh from a shower. As if it didn't belong to this nightmare. It came to a rest beside its master, the puppeteer.

The mastermind of my plight.

"I think you'll spend another twenty minutes fighting these birds into the ground, probably less now that you know their fates are sealed. Truth, however ugly, does set one free. The rest of my army, admittedly, is child's play to your skills. But even mowing the lawn, however tedious, can take time… precious time…"

I swallowed thickly. My confidence, despite my superior strength, was blown to pieces. "My Pokémon touched ground about half an hour ago and went in search of Serena and May… They'll…"

"They joined forces with Lance and his League to combat my army, which won't be enough, either. They haven't reach the Gym; they aren't anywhere near it. In fact, they are an eternity away from it. I think you might be forced to save them, as well. You see? You and I, we will reach them first. We decide this. As it was meant to be."

"You don't know that. You can't know that for sure." There was a desperate quality in my voice, pathetic and impotent, as I begged with the universe, begged for a way in which my prowess could be of worth again.

Riley favored me with a smile. Cruel and cold. Reading me. "I'm afraid, Ash, that there's little in this city I don't know about at this point."

He mounted the Rapidash and, without gesture or word, he sent the fucking birds right at me.

War had transformed into a race.

And I stood no chance of winning.

Mind racing, searching for a way, I braced myself for one last toss of the dice.

Can we acknowledge something?

To acknowledge something, you have to first imagine it.

Imagine this: we have come to a society in which its citizen are forced to live in ways that bring them mental and maybe even physical distress. Imagine that kind of society. Now take this imaginary society and imagine further what such a society would do if someone ever spoke up against it.

What do you get?

Imagine, man, imagine a society in which their citizen's mental health really doesn't matter, as long as they, in a productive manner, can conform to the system and its needs. Be the workhorse.

As long as their obedience is not compromised…

Imagine what such a system would do if someone threaten its existence.

Imagine… reality… The difference is imperceptible.

They conjure drugs to cure the diseases of our minds. They infest us with a dulling pill to take away our voice of dissent. They kill… our oppression of their will. They break your will.

Your back is hurting today, sir? Take a pill and do your goddamn job. You suffer under a crippling depression, is that it, young son? Take a fucking pill and get back to work. The system has no use for your excuses.

But it needs you work. And your money. And your time. And ultimately, your life, and the choices of said life. It needs you to give all of what you have to give, every last lance of life that you possess – give it all, man, to become something for someone a little higher up the food chain. Never realizing how they spin their wheels for a reality that no sane man would ever fight for.

That's what Riley saw.

A machine has unmade who I was. Turned me into something… unnatural, something… otherworldly.

A machine has robbed you of your free will. Has taken away your dreams and your hopes. I know, Lance, that a man like you cannot fathom this. You're too deeply rooted within the system. Too deeply rooted to possibly fathom that there might indeed be another way.

You are the system.

But you'd be frighten by how many of the people you've sworn to protect who'd sympathize with my sentiment.

With Riley.

We have come to a society that hurts us, breaks us. And what does society do to remedy its faults? It offers no self-insight, no sense of its flawed nature. It only offers a band aid to a broken bone. It offers you pills. Gives you someone to talk to – but only if you're truly crazy, of course. Only if you truly cannot conform to the rules, laws, and morals owed to you by society's nebulous schemes.

And everything is getting worse, isn't it? Stress, depression, you see it all everywhere now. Suicides. All the fucking time.

One day society will find its solution to the only problem it has left: the human error. The little dreams we allow to nurture when no doubts creep in the corners and nobody is watching. They will find a way to end that, too. I know what it will be. I've stood between worlds, awaiting with a plea in my heart the coming of some world worthy of its people and its host. I've seen those worlds, the other worlds, the ones behind the doors, beneath the boxes, beyond our time and place.

I've seen the world our society is heading into.

It will be some drug – or some machine – that will ensure the complacency and faithfulness of the human will. Ensure your obedience – for your own sake, of course, because the system is never wrong.

If it ever acknowledged that, it would be torn asunder.

Feeling a little down today? Well, look into this screen and you will no longer feel that. We can numb the wild thoughts you labor under. You fear for your job, your future, your very life now, do you? Look into this screen, my friend, it will make all of those nasty feelings go away. It's all for your own well fare, you see, for you need not be feeling those things. You're no good to society feeling discontent with existence. You want to skip work, skip school, skip the entire day in favor of a day spent in the arms of a girl you fell in love with? Do that on your own fucking time and get back amongst the spiritually deceased.

I saw… like him.

Like Riley and his Pokémon… they will enslave us to do as they and their society must have us do.

We're almost there already. Almost. I can almost touch it.

Riley, and his powers, well, they're only a little ahead of the curve.

Can we acknowledge something?

Our society is broken. And it will break us.

Do I regret, then? Should I have joined arms with Riley? Even entertaining these thoughts will have you people look at me as if I'm something beyond mad. To think, that the act of thinking a singular original thought could seem so dangerous…

Lance, you know, I think you might be a slave.

And yes. I will regret it for the rest of my life.

But going through with it, I would have regretted that more. Regret running eternally.

Fucked either way, I fell back into old habits of defiance.

I once asked my own Pokémon a question. I never got an answer, but I wondered if they… essentially I wondered if they were aware enough to understand that I'd, in a way, forced my will upon them.

Do you feel lucky… or are you just dead inside?

I said that to Drew, if you recall. I had said that when I first met them, Riley's army.

I had spoken to my own Pokémon. Is it really that different, what Riley asks of his army and what I – and other Journeymen – ask of their Pokémon?

I wondered, quite arrogantly so, if they felt lucky that they were now in my fold. That they now had a purpose in their existence beyond merely surviving. If such a thing even exists, really. That they could now become… for me.

Or if they just didn't care. That they, deep down, were just mindlessly following the ride of life. That they, where it counts, were just dead inside. Or maybe, in ways unfathomable, more alive than we could ever hope to be.

And then I, whenever my mind happened to ride along those lanes, thought in triumph that that was where man truly set itself apart. We had in our minds a sense of wonder.

But I've seen too much, and I've dared to look beyond the veil most men ignore, and I know… I know that we are just as mindlessly following along.

No matter.

I was about to be immortalized.

I ducked below the swoop of the one-eyed Articuno, spun about upon the ground to evade the fires of Moltres, and blasted back Zapdos with a jet of blue force.

"Clement, are my Pokémon being held up together with Lance?" I asked, calm in the storm.

I was born for this shit.

"Yeah, it's-"

"Tell them to leave him! Save May and Serena! He's coming for them. Riley's coming for them. He'll make me kill them!"

A pause. Comprehending my words and finding himself unable to truly grasp the depth of my knowledge.

"You're not making sense…"

"Get them to safety, man!"

"Ash, it's chaos down there! They need all the help-"

I interrupted him again. I was beyond a care for this world. I'd sacrificed enough. No more! Not them. The truly frightening thing was that I knew, as did Riley, that I would indeed sacrifice them. Sacrifice was what I invested in, after all. My sole purpose for which I breathed. "I don't care if the whole world is coming apart. You save them now, fucker."

"No."

I paused, lost a step, gazing intently upon the three birds as they encircled me. "Sorry, what?"

"Lance needs them. They're still people there. Innocents, Ash. They need to stay. The center of the city is overrun."

He chose this moment to defy me! But… fuck it. He was right. Of course he was. But goddammit I hated him at that moment. And fuck it, but had I ascertain a way in which I could convince him to obey in time, I would have done it.

But time was running, stretching thin, distorting beyond measurability, and I had to run with it.

"All right." I thought, adapting to the circumstances. All I ever did well, Lance, all I was ever really, truly great at, was thinking outside the box. Adapting. Fast. Upon the fiery streets of Saffron City, I adapted once more. "Listen… fuck it, I don't know – spare Pikachu and Garchomp, then. Tell them to head for Sabrina's Gym. Let the rest of them fight with Lance."

"I don't think they can make it through. It will take them hours to fight their way through just the two of them. And that's assuming they'll make it. They're powerful, god, more powerful than any Pokémon I've ever seen, but… there's an army between them."

"Fuck!" I jumped backwards, evading a blast of spearheaded ice pillars, which were about as thick as a fucking Snorlax. Acting with a measure of will, I took flight and glided beyond the skyscrapers of this street. I felt three forces follow in pursuit, gaining fast. In flight, they were vastly superior; the only ace they still held over me.

Plans needed to be made and executed fast. How to turn the tide all around? I needed to hit 'em all where it counted.

"Okay, listen, track down Riley. I was just talking to him, in case you missed it."

"Didn't. Fucking psycho."

Something in me twitched at the nickname, but I let the sentiment go in favor of the presence of mind to combat the coming of the end. Or the end of the beginning, at least.

"Track him down, follow his trajectory towards the Gym. He'll move around the center, but not by a wide berth. Have Pikachu and Garchomp – no, Charizard – have Pikachu and Charizard intercept Riley to stall him. He's on a Rapidash; they should stand a chance to buy us some time, at least. If things get too hot, tell them to stand down. Don't let them die."

"What will you do?"

"Lead me to center."

He actually fucking gulped at that. "What will you do?"

"Evening the odds. I'm done holding back; they'll die anyway."

Was I talking of the monsters threatening our borders…

Or was I talking about the worlds of dream and reality and all the little existences in between it all?

Or still, was I talking about the scattered remains of my fucked-up-beyond-all-regocnition soul?

Fuck it all. Who knows at this point? Certainly not me.

I just wanna watch the world burn.

John Clay, for the first time in his life, stared down the barrel of a gun. The man he faced looked deranged, like the sickness above had touched his being.

He felt rather than saw his two sons step in behind him, hugging up together, arms in arms.

"Listen…" What should he say? What could he say that could penetrate his ire? "Put the gun down, please, you don't have to hurt us…"

The Earth rattled above them, the epicenter of the commotion seemed to be a little ways off, further into the tunnels. But it was so powerful a force it seemed to almost split the grounds under which they hid.

God… What was happening now? What was he doing now?

It only further pushed the crazed man along the road to the point of no return. And when he reach that point, John knew that he'd drag them – he and his boys – along with him.

He had to find a way. To get out. To protect… come on, there must be a sequence of words, a key sentence, that could make sense to this man.

"We mean you no harm… we only want to get away from…" John pointed up with a tentative motion.

The man seemed to consider him, and John couldn't tell if he was about to be killed or let off the hook.

"You stand where I can see you," he said at last, "you move slow, all right. You play nice." He waved his gun, beckoning them to go around him. "Slow, slow," he said as they started moving. They itched by him, hoping the world wouldn't crumple until they were outside his crosshairs.

Fate was not on John Clay side this morning.

The Guardian was not on his side.

There was an explosion of sound, and he felt like something was breaking inside his ears. A second and an eternity later, the earth above them broke apart and revealed a nightmare, as a vast creature of ice fell through a hole in the Earth.

Then the man started shooting.

Lance fought united with his forces and Ash's small army against their controlled foes. Everywhere, together, they stood and fought to the best of their hearts' will and their training.

But they all died divided. It was a slow grind, of two equal forces, but something about the uncaring way in which their foes went to battle provided them with an edge. It was a matter of time, but time would grind them into the ground.

Beside Lance and his team of Pokémon, only precious few could make their mark on the quarrel. Even fewer stood out.

And only the selected ones carved through the opposition like it was no goddamn thing.

One of them was a damn rotten that barely reached Lance to his knees.

There was a high-pitched screech, a gathering of clouds from the heavens above, and lightning screamed through the air as a Pikachu of insurmountable strength coalesced from within the beam – seemingly out of nowhere.

Lance, acting flicker-quick, covered his eyes and threw himself to the ground as a beam of an array of colors, like a fucking rainbow, lit up the Garden's Alley, Saffron City, the center street of the city, in infernal lights.

The beams, Lance felt from behind the cover of his hand, took life and deflected into multiple different directions, striking down foes all over the open street.

How did Ash train his monsters to reach such a level? What was his secret? His method. This was beyond insanity. But Lance also knew that it wasn't enough.

Pikachu, seemingly not exhausted at all despite the devastation in its wake, landed almost before Lance's feet and ran off in blinding speed. Taking a running leap, it carried itself above the quarrels that had continued blindly in its light and flew straight into a vast dragon of fiery color, which then took off towards Sabrina's Gym.

Charizard.

Ash's Charizard, Lance realized. They're leaving? What's going on?

A second later, all fighting around him ceased as three beasts of legends claimed the streets. Pushing back the helicopter that had been heroically recording to the world the massacre of Saffron City, the birds of legend pushed apart foes and friends and landed in the middle of the street, screeching madly for the world. Against the world.

Dread. There was nothing left in his heart. It felt like a punch to the gut, fast and enormous and all-consuming, and he felt his legs wobble beneath him.

Ash had failed. There could be no other explanation. Pikachu and Charizard, Ash most trusty companions, leaving in the middle of the fight, and the appearance of Ash's foes.

Ash must have failed.

And now they, too, would fail.

He fell onto his knees, sudden and painful, and gazed hollowly upon the world. There was nothing left to do. No man stood a chance against this. No Pokémon, not even Ash's, had any business in a fight against these creatures of myth.

He gazed to the man beside him in search of some semblance of catharsis, in search of a way – not of a way out of this, but a way beyond what came next… a way to accept his demise.

His gaze found not a man but a woman.

A woman caught like a statue in jubilant awe. There were traces of his fright in her face. None of it touched her eyes. Something had expelled it as swiftly as he had been filled with dread. Her face still held that hollow quality that comes with the certainty of your own demise, but her eyes… her eyes!

Misty's eyes breathed life into his soul; it reawaken his spirit; it yanked his existence back from the fires of hell.

Lance followed her eyes, and beheld as Ash Ketchum, the Last Guardian of Aura, strolled onto the street, heading for the center of the center, heading for the stage beneath the lights of a world on fire, beneath the eyes of the world gazing through the millions upon millions of television screens all over the world.

Lance had a feeling nobody slept at that moment, that everybody had found a screen to watch, to be here in spirit, alongside Ash Ketchum.

The Guardian.

He hoped for it.

He hoped.

Fuck… there was hope in his heart.

One man… could make the difference.

He must.

I'm a fucking rockstar, I thought, breathing in the air. Never had the odor of Saffron City felt so pure. Like the cleansing flames of a forest that had grown too erratic, the city would be reborn come nightfall.

One way or the other. I almost didn't care at this point, man.

No matter.

I stood at the center of it all. I could feel the eyes of the world linger upon my presence. Fascinated. Frightened. My appearance invoked all sorts of illusory facts in the hearts of men.

Beneath the infernal helmet of my suit, of which carried with it an abundance of souls, of which festered in Eternity, of which screamed from the abyss, screamed for a world on fire, screamed for a world worthy of our plight… I smiled despite it all.

I'd feared this all along. Being in the spotlight. Allowing the world to see me. As I was. As I am. But there's nothing to fear, man. I mean, they will mock or hate or ridicule you for your quirks, but fuck that, man. Fight for them, but fuck their opinions.

Set the world on fire. It deserves nothing less than all of your passion.

Protect live with every ounce of your being. Do it. Do it. Do it!

DO IT!

And… this is the hardest of them all, Lance… set yourself free.

"Set yourself free," I whispered, feeling the last remnants of doubt leave in favor of conviction. "Burn the world. It deserves our dreams…" I swarm through the muddy swamp, reaching for the surface of the waters, the surface of deliverance. "Protect life with every ounce of your being… is it that simple…? Do it… do it…"

Oak…

How was it?

Your life is your life.

Fuck…

If you're going to try, Lance, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. No matter the cost, you mustn't stop in the clutches of mediocrity. No matter the loss, you mustn't compromise with your life, with your dream. It is your dream. Your life. And their existence… belongs only… to you.

This could mean risking everything. This could mean starvation. This could lead to a padded cell. This could mean… mockery. Isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. Do it. Do it… do it! All the way. Go all the way… You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.

And I promise you… you will be free… at last.

I took a step forth into the day, reaching slowly for a burning crimson evening sky. Face-to-face with creatures that could reshape the world, unmake it, I felt my life ignite deep into the edges of my being, filling me.

I'd go the distance.

I was the only one that could.

Knowing that it was inevitable, that these creatures would die no matter how I went about what needed to be done, it set me free of the shackles I'd bound myself to.

Fuck it. Do it.

Lashing out, quicker than my eyes could perceive, I drew my arm across the street, sweeping the three birds off their feet. Energy pulsed through the air, alive, vibrant – feeling like life itself was supposed to feel. Glorious and free.

Acting with only my intent, I yanked Articuno off its feet and towards me. Taking off, blasting across the street a couple of feet above the ground, I intercepted it halfway across and knocked it right through the burned and bruised grounds with my fist, wherein it disappeared into a darkness beyond sight.

It screeched in pain; I heard gunshots, too, as it went through below. But I paid it no mind. Barely seconds into the fight, unchained and kicking, I rushed onwards, covering the rest of the street as Zapdos and Moltres gained their feet.

They were outmatched.

Placing myself between them, fist and elbow infused with energy, I struck down Moltres with my fist, its right-eye burning in my wake, then yanked my arm backwards and smote down Zapdos, elbow to its neck, blocking its airways with a blunt force trauma.

Zapdos went down, dying slowly. Moments later its body would feel it too. I hated killing such a thing – a thing of true wonder, a miracle – but Riley had made it abundantly clear that it was gonna die no matter what.

Moltres, though feeling the loss of its eye, rose with a challenge in its voice. Pointless bolstering of a soul that – albeit controlled – still clung onto life like it could evade the inevitable.

It would see the truth in moments.

Beasts of a mindless army joined the fray. It became a true cosmos of plight. Every creature abandoning its prey in favor of the new kid on the block, realizing that my defeat would mean the defeat of all.

They stood no chance. As Riley had foreseen. Child's play to my skill.

With barely an utterance I had laid to waste almost the entirety of the army that had been ordered to break asunder the center of this magnificently sinful city.

I weaved past them, blocked with shields of power and deflected bolts of lightning with barely a gesture. With half-made thoughts and ill intent, I set ablaze legions.

I was legion.

A Dragonite, out of nowhere, came at me from my left. I was reminded, strangely reminiscently, about my time in the forest, moments before I'd meet Riley. I'd fought such a creature then.

It had been harder then.

Moving quickly, my whole body a blue blur in the air between us, I covered the distance and burned through its throat with the tips of my fingers, which I'd turned afire with nay a thought.

Turning about, feeling foes abound, I spread the five fingers on my hand – whishing there were ten – and shot out five pencil-thin beams of red-hot, blinding light, sizzling and cruel, and killed five different beasts instantly.

My powers complete, as such that had I but the imaginative capability I could conjure all sorts of nonsense, yanking it out of the void in between worlds to fight for me against these creatures of the wild.

It was a blur, all of it. It was easy, man, too fucking easy. They went down so fast, in seconds, really, that Articuno hadn't even gotten out of the hole in the ground yet.

I intended to make use of that.

Taking flight once more, I prepared in my hands twin spheres of blue infernal lights. Lights of which incinerated bones and perished souls. With the will of forgotten lives manifesting itself into something real, and taking careful aim, I beheld as Articuno, beaten yet still undefeated, struggled to escape the hole in which I'd left it.

I gave it no chance of survival.

Unleashing the first sphere upon it – sensing with half a mind movements coalesce behind me – I pushed it back into its hole. Its grave to be, motherfucker. With the other sphere, pouring all of my love, all of my hate, all of my life – all the illusory sentiments that creature such as I labor and yearn under – and blew to kingdom come Articuno and the underground station.

It erupted like lava outta the fucking volcano, killing everything in there.

Blue fire oozed and spat angrily in spurts out of the grounds, as the streets split apart, as the city shock, as an earthquake-like force manifested itself in the void of my supremacy.

I felt its life force, so wondrous and large and contained, die. Articuno was no longer. Gone in a blaze of glory.

It had a moment, though… between life and death… where I sensed it letting go, sensed its detachment from Riley's will. It was a moment, I think, filled with hatred – it had to be, man.

They all had to be brimming with hate. For Riley. For me. For all of us. For all of this world. None of them deserved this.

None of us deserves this world.

You see? You understand now, right?

Sacrifice isn't noble. You must see where we're heading.

Life, as you know it, is made up. Is a scam. Is a fucking disgrace! It's an insult.

I felt Moltres – the movements behind me – bathe me in flames. And I welcomed it. Welcomed the pain. Welcomed my screams.

Can you hear my screams now!

Do you wonder?

Where is my goddamn miracle?

I am the miracle. The only good fight there is. Do it. Go all the way. There is no feeling like it.

Spinning about upon a windless streak of air, I flew straight through its pillar of flames, blind sighting it; it never stood a chance. Grabbing its neck between my hands, thinking I ought to be quick about it, I twisted in opposite direction. And I heard the most sickening sound of my life as its head popped clean off, blood of fiery heat splattering my body…

I hated – fucking hated – how oddly satisfying that felt.

I looked up, straight into the faceless helm of the helicopter, straight into the camera, recording my deeds, recording my bathe in blood, my baptize in fire, my becoming. I looked straight through the screens of the world. Behind me, to illustrate my rise to stardom, the billboard – the largest of them, which hung upon one of the skyscrapers – was filled with my helmet and its single, opaque, crimson eyes. It depicted me, man, as I hovered there in the sky above Saffron City, Garden's Alley.

We're live, I thought. Dead inside but live… At least that's something.

I looked straight through the screens, man, straight into the eyes of the faceless beholders, sitting in their couches with those damn judgmental eyes.

And I knew.

I fucking knew, man…

The Crimson King was born.

The Crimson King rises.

Had he orchestrated it, Lance wondered. Orchestrated it in such a fashion that the whole world would bear witness to his greatness. He had saved, singlehandedly and without any semblance of difficulty, the entire city.

Maybe even the entire world.

Had he been holding back all this time, waiting for the moment when every set of eyes turned to him? Had he waited this long – costing thousand upon thousand of innocent lives – just so he could make a memorable entrance into the hearts of the people.

No. Something must have simply clicked at last. Some piece missing. Lance, at least, couldn't reconcile the idea that Ash waited until all the attention was on him before he made his final move. No, Ash hated attention. It must have killed something in him to even step foot beneath the camera of that chopper.

And here he came, the man of the hour, descending the sky towards him.

"The fight is not done. I need you to hold them off while I go and finish this."

"Finish this?"

"Trust me," he said, as he slowly ascended the sky again. "It will all be over soon. Just hold the boat afloat a little longer!"

I know you wonder? You must. Why did I go about it the way I did?

Why did I deviate from the plan in my heart? Why did I not go straight for May and Serena instead of coming to the Center?

Simple, the battle of the center decided the battle for the city, which decided the battle for the world. That, if personal feelings are cast aside, is the most important. It is that of which I have staked my existence.

And further, I reasoned, had I won the race, beaten Riley to the Gym, he would have just left the city to its ruins. Fought upon a different city on another day.

I couldn't tolerate that. I couldn't tolerate another day like this. Couldn't outlast that certainty.

No, I needed to time this right.

I needed to save the city. I needed to end this now. On this day.

I played the odds, man. Pikachu and Charizard were put out to delay Riley, not to stop him. They couldn't. So delay, but not enough to discourage him to get to May and Serena.

There is a fine line. And the love – loves – of my live hang in the balance of that line. They were my bait.

Meanwhile, as I strived to save 'em all, I could – as they say – kill two birds with one stone.

Or in this case three.

I could save Lance and his league and the innocent bystanders and I could defeat the birds once and for all, and lastly I could get to Riley. There was a way in which everything came together.

I knew that there was no way that I could spare them, the birds, none of them, courtesy of Riley, so there was no reason to hold back any longer. The choice of their lives was no longer in my hands.

It had never an illusion.

And I was just… really, just… so damn tired. Of everything.

But I needed to be quick now. To keep my head in the game for the grand finale. Riley had to get to Serena and May first, but I had to be right behind him so he could not lay a finger on them. So he could not claim them.

So he could not force me to… fuck it all to hell…

I took to the skies anew, leaving behind a befuddled yet ever-defiant Lance – that's high praise, man – and a world on fire unfolded below me. Distant sirens broke apart the oppressive silence, rushing to the ones in need. There was a sense… of a day turned ablaze, the windless air burning across tempestuous streets. Screams of the despairing, of the defiant and unyielding, of children and women, and of men caught in a hellish reality resonated and reverberated of the sides of the skyscrapers.

All of it traced back, like a knitted web of sin, to me. I intercepted their entire plight. I saw. I heard. All of it.

I endured.

I must.

I was a desperate soul in a swirl of chaos. It's all a grand cosmos of plight, of yearning to become, of illusory experiences and hopes that in darkness a light can grow. Can become.

Nothing becomes.

Nothing grows.

It's an endless quest… Filled with hope but ending in despair…

And I was born to run. Born to fight and born to set alight the broader reaches of destiny.

I was born to choose – to see a world knitted together by strings. Strings of which were about to snap apart.

And only I saw it, man. Saw the strings that bind us. Contain us. Imprison us…

Along with Riley…

Fuck that shit!

I was fighting for my sanity, burning for a will to last above the horrors, for fear had claimed my heart. Fear of the deeds I'd commit if forced into a dark corner with no other way out.

And I would deliver the deed, the sin; of that there could be no doubt. I would tear asunder my own soul if necessary. If the world asked that of me, I'd comply, as a willing soldier, as their dying light… as a…

As a slave.

Their slave.

Your slave.

Fear and certainty gave birth to an uneasy feeling of excitement, which rose inside my belly, threatening to burst the tight-lidded hold I'd enforced upon myself.

Pokémon, mindless foes for me to slaughter, rose out of the flames below, coming to slow me down, for they knew – Riley knew – they wouldn't be able to stop me from reaching Sabrina's Gym.

A fucking suicide squad, that's what they were.

A swarm of creatures, the size of which plunged the world below into long, distorted shadows, consumed the air in which I hovered, surrounded me. Ate me.

I smiled.

They unleashed their plight. Jets of beams and fires and ice and water and whatever the fuck you call that purple beam of destiny… they unleashed it all upon me, man.

Several things within me fought the silent fight, surging with an intent that barely belonged upon this side of existence. Light of destructive intent, of fire and might, struck out against me. I laughed it off, as it glanced off my body like a damn fly.

My laughter turned shrilly and mad as I braved onwards into their midst, stepping upon the sky. The world was alight with a sound, a constant, ever-growing sound of winds rushing and lighting screaming, and I opened fire.

I opened a gateway straight to hell.

Blue flames, jets of kinetic, unstoppable forces, oceans of bright lights and invincible strings of manipulative forces… I unleashed it all as my flight took my plight to new heights. As my murdering of innocence took on a whole other life form, becoming almost art.

We ascended the air. And the world grew darker. Grew colder.

I noted it, barely, scarcely carrying at this point, and fared onwards into the fray. Ascending the sky. Ascending. Ascending.

Ascending the throne of the world.

And then the shadows moved.

As the Earth grew distant, as the sky grew cold and beasts, of visible bones and dark edges, unknowable entities that even the fucking machine within did not know of, claimed the last rays of the sun.

Breathing, living – I think – manifestations of shadows rushed to greet me with greed in their hearts. They had a faceless, mask-like countenance, the only thing worthy of note was their maw, with that of which they swallowed lights and life, it seemed.

They glided, almost serenely so, as they floundered about, looking so light that the smallest of breezes could knock them off course.

Here, I declared, was something new. Something yet unseen by the eyes of man.

Something new for me to kill.

Here is Ash Ketchum, ladies and gents, first murderer of shadows.

I breathed into them fires so vast they ate shadows. Fires of which I had drown cities. In lives past and lives future. Destroyed worlds and founded yet unwritten history in the blood of the forgotten.

They ate their way through the impossibility that I'd become. As if I only tickled. They came at me from through my own flames, blind-sighting me, as I'd blind-sighted Moltres not long ago. And I was knocked back, tumbling around yet somehow not losing my flight.

There was a wispy, smoke like trail of shadow behind their flight, and it was the last thing I bore witness to before they were on me.

Fuck, I thought, marveling. They were fast.

Then the world became a canvas of agony.

But just before the agony – not even measureable in seconds – there was a moment, you know. Existing in between all the other moments. A moment in which nothing existed, in which the only thing I saw and felt and heard was the darkened silence borne by the shadowy beings that attacked me.

Was this the unseen barrier between worlds, between universes?

No matter.

Then the world exploded upon me… broke upon me and broke me with it. My body became a roadmap of scars, new and old, fresh and exciting, and I screamed in pure ecstasy, searching for a way back amongst the living.

"ASH!" Clement was shouting from behind the veil of agony. He sounded strange, like he came from some place very far away. "GOD, WHAT ARE THOSE THINGS?"

I sensed his dread, and I pursued it like a man stranded in the dessert pursuits water. With a desperate, uncontrollable thirst. And somehow I found him in the dark. Or maybe he found me.

Maybe, just maybe, man, we found each other.

And I shrieked, man. In sheer fear.

"SHADOW POKÈMON!" I yelled, containing my shrilly, desperate laughter in one of the last lances of sanity I found within. "OF SOME SORT! I NEED HELP, MAN!"

"YOU JUST DEFEATED THREE LEGENDARIES? HOW HARD CAN… WHATEVER THEY ARE BE?"

"CLEMENT, NOW IS NOT THE TIME. I DON'T KNOW WHERE TO START! NOTHING I DO STICKS!"

It was a soundless world in which I floated; yet both Clement and I felt it necessary to shout as if the whole world was moaning for mercy.

"BLOW IT TO KINGDOM COME!" Clement yelled.

"SEND ME BACKUP!"

"HOW?"

The suit – the fucking Suit – found a way.

There was a flash of bright, blinding light – like the purest of starlight – and I felt something creep with hurried steps along my spine.

Then lightning forked across the world, splitting reality, eating the world away from my sight, and somewhere within this cosmos of darkness, there was a light. And it may not have been much light, but it defeated the darkness.

Along my crimson visor crawled a Pikachu, alight with fiery, furious thunder.

It cried out in utter defiance, beating back the monsters that were trying to eat its master… its friend.

And suddenly there was a way, a hole in reality, a hole in which I could behold the setting of a sun. My sun. The sun of the world.

We are the children of the sun.

It burned the afternoon sky crimson, almost like a flowing river of blood.

And I followed the trail. Jumped between worlds. And found my way back into the light with Pikachu.

My Pikachu.

I let go of the intent to fly and we descended away from the beasts of the night. Quickly, barely seconds behind, they descended with us.

"Thanks, buddy," I yelled, above the rushing of the wind, and Pikachu, though I doubt it heard me – for I couldn't hear myself above the wind – nodded at me, understanding.

I turned around then, upon the air, my front facing the sky, facing the monsters that hunted us with a sick kind of eagerness. I felt Pikachu crawl back along my spine, placing itself upon my shoulder.

Then, with a measure of will and a pinch of imagination, a blinding light coalesced from my abdomen, and I gave birth hundreds of feet into the air, plunging for the world.

Out of the light, in our fall, Charizard manifested itself, roaring and raging against those who dared to threaten me.

Pikachu seemed to share the sentiment, jumping into the air like it was no damn thing. It caught the air, timed it right – with the impeccable precision only a beast of the nature could produce – and landed in the place where the bones of Charizard's wings met along the spine.

And then there was light.

And for a time… man, there was nothing but light.

Pure white lights and white-hot flames screamed across the evening sky, as an explosion of energy sucked away the air, leaving me gasping for air like a fish out of water, knocked me about in the great vortex of my Pokémon's combined powers, and – most importantly – pushed back the monsters of the shadows.

They were not defeated – how do you defeat such beings? – but it was a standstill between opposing forces, and I escaped – once more airborne upon the wings of knowledge from past lives.

Lives lived and lives died, motherfucker. Lives spent, man. Spent and shattered.

I've had lifetimes, man. And all I ever amounted to was shattered lives.

Fuck it, this was the moment. A new will was in order.

I was met anew by other beings of wicked will. Foes of all shapes and sizes, foes of which would leave me stranded upon this small touch of the sky for a good deal of time, encircled me within their frontier.

Their intent had clearly changed. No longer did they possess the will to end lives – at least not mine – but simply to be my canonfooder, simply to be my things to kill as time passed mercilessly.

Suicide squads. That's all they were.

But I'd changed my ways, too. I'd found the way at last.

They had quantity, but lacked the quality of my men, my soldier, my comrades in arms. My team.

My body went through a cascade of multi-colored lights, plunging me into a blind dimension of white shadows, and three distinct shapes and sizes coalesced in the circle with me.

Garchomp.

Bravery.

Pidgeot.

Defiant. With me.

I let them deal with the waves of the madness, releasing the will to fly as the fight descended from the heavens, and plunged straight for Earth in a way to gain grounds for my dispute with the voices of within.

They sounded like Riley. Screaming. Laughing. And I knew – I was too goddamn late to be first. I could see Sabrina's Gym… falling towards it. Closer and closer it got, man. Slow at first, then it was almost upon me.

Shit.

I was almost upon it.

And, man, listen… I don't…

I didn't know if it was real or not, didn't know if it was only the last remains of a mind beyond repair screaming for a light to be seen – but all I could hear was his voice. His words. Speaking my dream of a life worthy of our quarrels, for something true, something real… to take away the empty feeling that resides in the corners we hide.

It was a mind screaming for an ear to hear my pain.

For a heart to understand my plight.

And I yearn to be touched, to be heard, to be accepted as I am. But that would never be, for… for…

No matter.

At last above these broken streets… I found my way.

"ARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!" I screamed, mind made of pure nonsense, as I crashed straight through the rooftop of Sabrina's Gym. Like a plunging star upon a night's sky.

The grounds trembled beneath my might as I hit the floor. The floor of the lobby in which I now lay came undone like the earth beneath a bomb. Doors crashed inwards, wind and sheer power howling against the walls; windows burst in a shower of blade-like raindrops. And beneath it all, beneath the uncontrollable chaos I'd wrought, I arose and ascended the hole of my making with a final challenge in my heart.

The doors leading into the main part of the Gym, the place in which I could feel the presence of three souls and a horde of Pokémon, hang onto its hinges in silent defiance of my entrance.

"This won't do," I whispered, raising my arm, awaiting the moment, preparing for the last bout, the final toss of the dice. The door blew away like smoke upon the howling of the wind, and I claimed the Battle Grounds with my presence.

And came face-to-face with a parade. Of which could only have been waiting for me.