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2b2tEternalLegend presents...
An exclusive tale from the Legends Canon.
This story takes place in the same universe* as all my other stories. It is based on the story "Under A Fuchsia Sky" by Prof. Gingko. I have obtained the author's permission to write this spin-off tale and use the characters in the original. I also encourage you to read the source material.
May you enjoy this compelling tale of men and women struggling for their freedom, and a stunning, emotionally wrought look at the impetus behind humanity's rebellion against Pokemon tyranny.
*Different universe, recurring characters.
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Pallet Town, Gnarl Corn Company
If we turn around and gaze into the remote past, we sometimes can hardly discern it, so clouded it has become.
-Chairman Bronze Tercano, private journals
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Up in the smoke-filled skies of Pallet Town, the silvery moon hung low over the twisted mass of metal that was the Gnarl Corn Company Factory. Resources poured into voracious apertures across the hulk's length, its inefficient internal systems demanding an enormous amount of resources and power.
That meant slaves, human slaves.
Several Murkrow flew through the skies, and while the other Pokemon overseeing the factory did not notice the overbearing observation, but the enslaved humans knew that anything that could be considered a violation of Company rules would be noted and submitted to the intelligentsia that ran the corporate division. The Pokemon would retaliate with terrible force, and the survivors would regret having toed the line or entertaining thoughts of revolt.
But some of the slaves made whispered plans, always hoping...
Crimson was one of those deviants. Broad-shouldered and tanned, the man would have been considered handsome if it were not for the labyrinth of scars and dirt that ran across his body. Although healthy and virile in appearance, his insides felt as though they had been scraped down with a radioactive wire brush. Like the other slaves, he wore a denim suit and a red cap, identifying his station and privileges.
Standing over the thrumming open-air packaging line, two men in black jumpsuits watched the toiling masses, themselves flanked by two ominous-looking Bulbasaur guards. Some humans gained the elusive trustee status, having found the favor of the Pokemon overlords. These trustees aided in the oppression of humanity in exchange for a scant increase in privileges. For this reason, the trustees were hated almost as much as the Pokemon. Almost.
Crimson kept his head low, and thought again about the story that his father had told him many times.
Human complacency and cruelty had allowed the Pokemon to unite and gain aggressive supersentience. Twenty-five years ago, wild and domesticated Pokemon had waged an aggressive and cohesive form of warfare, destroying city after city, decimating a full half of the worldwide human population. The Day of Fuschisa had been swift and devastating, with regional armies and their supporting levies having been unable to raise any substantial force against the anomalously-empowered Pokemon.
Of course, one could not forget the High Chancellor.
The evermind, the God-killer, the One Above All. The High Chancellor had been the Pokemon that instigated the war and led the armies of Pokemon-kind to a final, crushing victory. Few knew what it looked like, even those who had eyes upon it. The stories and shapes in the tales always seemed to change...
Some called the High Chancellor a Dark Lord. Others called it a "he" and said it looked like a pharaoh, of the old native blood from Orre. Many said that he was an Old God, risen from the darkness of twenty-seven centuries to exact his vengeance upon the human race. There was a rumor of substantial credence that it had fathered all Pokemon, and upon its imprisonment by the gods, the Father Of A Million Favored Ones had lost control over his brood, at least until it had returned.
But the gods were dead. The look in the High Chancellor's eyes proved that its had removed them from the equation. The spirits and magi of old had fallen, and now no aid would come from Heaven or Hell.
Over on an observation deck covered in a suspension umbrella, the executive director of the Gnarl Corn Company, Morganna Gnarl the Venusaur, sat. Foul, chemically abrasive smoke emitted from her weedwood pipe. Five spoons were tied around her vile neck, tokens of the Glorious Revolution. The old hag would boast and bluster about her glory days in the war, although in his heart, Crimson suspected that Morganna had been incapable and weak.
Crimson sighed, and continued his packaging. Hatred was now the only defining characteristic in his life now, and that hatred was usually directed toward Morganna. Sometimes he remembered that Morganna was just a tool in a far larger game, but in the face of his burning fury, reason left him.
Yesterday, Crimson had watched a man he had admired be melted into slurry for leaving a withered rose for a girl whose life had been tattered by trauma she had never deserved. Desertion of a shift.
Long ago, Crimson had watched the soldiers of a small rebel group fighting against the corpses of soldiers that had fallen before them, animated by a Gengar. Conspiracy against the state.
Several weeks ago, Crimson had watched a visiting Beeheyem sit comfortably in an armchair, lift its hand, and laugh as it ordered a woman to simply stop breathing. Disrespect for senior staff.
You want happy endings, don't you? Crimson thought. Dammit. I'm alive to think about it, but they aren't. May the Orginal One help us all.
...
When dazzling sparks and flashes unexpectedly erupted in the sky, Crimson turned away from his work to stare. Many flicked their glances over to the stars, and then turned away, refusing to believe that anything about their present misery would ever change.
Still, something in Crimson's heart, twisted and hardened, told him to rebel. He also knew that he must not hesitate.
Crimson dropped his tools, and stood high on the packaging line. He lifted his arms and shouted to the other workers. "This is the moment we have been waiting for! Our rescuers have come! We must throw off our chains and side with the liberators before it is too late."
The two trustees laughed along with the Bulbasaur guards. "Not a chance in Sheol! I'll bet it's just a few ragtag Army of Humanity satellites engaging with our Minor paratroopers. Twenty lashes for interrupting your shift! Get down here, worker!"
Thinking for a moment that he had made a grave mistake, Crimson grabbed one of his heavy tools and jammed it into the whirring machinery that moved the production line. Sparks flew and smoke poured out. The complex system ground to a halt with a shriek that sounded like machines in pain.
A Bulbasaur threw a vine whip toward Crimson, but he leaped away and fell behind the lines of confused and agitated workers. The trustees immediately radioed in their situation, hoping to have a brute squad of Poochyena come in from the countryside in case of a riot. Crimson realized that he would surely be thrown in the holding cells, or sent to Noxos.
He did not want to be sent to Noxos.
Suddenly, a burst of communication came in over the speakers on the packaging line. Normally, Pokemon used the speakers to disseminate harsh commands to their captive laborers, but now a distinctly human voice broke in across the comsystem.
"Citizens!" a woman said. "The time has come for you to break free of your cruel overlords. We have enough firepower to retake this world! One of the surrounding Minor contingents that attempted to impede our progress is destroyed! Hold fast and disrupt whatever you can-"
A Bulbasaur threw a whip around the speaker, and crushed it with a sudden constriction. "What are you looking at? Get back to work!"
In the sky, Crimson saw furious flashes of light, like sparks flying from a grinding wheel. As the intensity of the blasts increased, Crimson saw a beam of plasma streak through the sky and shatter a storage silo apart with a massive explosion. Pieces of debris spread apart like parts of an eggshell. The lights disappeared and then began anew, and now red-hot streaks were visible on the horizon, coming through the atmosphere.
By the gods, it's really happening!
Seeing this destruction as a clear sign of imminent victory, the hesitant slaves now had the courage to throw their lot with Crimson's sudden insurrection. Casting aside their fear, people began to run loose, laughing, screaming curses at the trustees and Bulbasaur guards, and wreaking as much mayhem as possible.
Morganna's foul pipe dropped from her mouth in shock. Was this an attack by some isolated rebel faction? Even so, the armies of Pokemon on Earth would repel the space-based assault and re-establish peace and order. These unruly workers would have to be disciplined most severely, and judging by their enthusiasm and violence at even the remotest possibility of freedom, they most certainly deserved it.
How could these bipedal apes rebel against natural law? Against the only system that some of them have ever known?
The chaos and unpredictability made it impossible for the Murkrow and Bulbasaur to respond effectively, so they resorted to brute force. Edwina Gnarl, a deformed Ivysaur, led the security contingents of the Gnarl Corn Factory in retaliation, using violence and superior physical ability. They pursued the unprepared slaves in the streets and production lines around the factory, attacking the crowds. The bloodshed and screams were terrible.
But as if a flame of desire for their own freedom had been ignited, the workers fought without regard for their own safety. Crimson allowed himself a wash of pride. Many of these slaves he had thought cowed and submissive, but now they were destroying machines and fighting Pokemon as if they were feral Kantoian dogs.
He had thought rebellion a fantasy, an exercise, but now it might just come to pass. They had hope again.
"Come on!" Crimson shouted. "The people in the air will be here soon; we have to make the way clear for them!"
Jeremy, a pale and slender man that Crimson considered one of his few friends, still felt that their chances of even a temporary victory were slim. "Even if the ships above make it through the atmosphere, they'll focus on the large cities, not backwater factories like this. The old militaries fought with conventional weapons in the past, and lost. What makes this any different?"
"Give us liberty, or give us death," Crimson responded. "And if the liberators had technology advanced enough to hack into these speaker systems, then why couldn't they help us?"
The two trustees were dead, killed in the fury of the mob. A single Bulbasaur had been injured with an electrical discharge from a now-broken generator, lying unconscious and wounded. But even as more slaves joined the revolt, more security forces closed in around the factory. There were many of the deadly Pokemon, and they were too strong to be defeated by the desperate slaves with their primitive weaponry.
Intense white light blazed in the sky, and at least a dozen black orbs descended from the heavens. Strange aircraft and bulky transports soared through the air like Braviary. A massive shockwave shook the factory grounds as the ships slammed into the ground, crushing several Pokemon in their way.
Crimson watched the bay doors open on the sides of the silvery orbs. How could anything have survived that crash?
Instead of human soldiers, a massive sandstorm began to billow out of the large craft and form a green-yellow haze that swirled through the air. Dust boiled into the factory and over the production lines. Crimson braced as the dust haze hit him, and thought he saw human figures pouring out of the indistinct orbs, weapons glinting in the streaming sand.
Morganna retreated back into the factory, moving her lumpish body into the comparative safety of an observation deck guarded by a Sawk and Throh. She turned to a bruised Edwina Gnarl, drooling green saliva in her wrath. "Get those Murkrow into action! I want the complete liquidation of the workers here after this rebellion is put down! When are those Poochyena-"
Her words were drowned in a metallic roaring as the factory walls trembled and rocked. A forty-meter section of the scaled walls had been blasted away and now drifting sand fell into the factory. Static lightning flashed outside and the noise of Murkrow screaming in pain could be heard in the tumult.
Morganna glanced out of the hole, and saw to her horror that the industrial plains around the factory were surging with combat: Bulbasaur, Murkrow, Poochyena, freed slaves, and leaping, gyrating uniformed men who seemed to come down from the storm in a dreadful tempest of wrath.
All this as a frame for Morganna's gaze.
Out of the sand haze came a churning mass of shapes; great rising curves with crystal spokes that resolved into the gaping mouths of Sandaconda, a massed wall of them, each swarming with green-and-gold uniformed soldiers riding to the attack with lusty cries. They came toward the factory in a hissing wedge, weapons shining in the wind as they cut through the melee on the plain.
Onward toward the factory they came, as the corrupted Pokemon stood awed for the first time since the Glorious Revolution. This was an attack by the human scum that they found difficult to even accept.
But the figures leaping from the Sandconda's backs were men, and the blades flashing in that raging yellow light were a thing that the Pokemon knew how to face. They threw themselves into combat. And it was man to Pokemon on the fields of the Gnarl Corn Company while picked bodyguards brought Morganna to the depths of the factory, sealing door after door behind them, preparing to die against the human invaders.
...
Crimson could hardly believe his eyes. The Sandconda had emerged from the landing orbs with their human commanders, completely unscathed despite the hard impact. These were Pokemon, fighting on the side of humanity! Such a thing was not unheard of, even after the Glorious Revolution, but the dozens of Pokemon on the liberator's side were far too great to have been casually obtained.
The sandstorm was beginning to clear, and Crimson saw that several Tyranitar had summoned it from within the polished craft. Traces of Hyper Beam blasts and abrasive scouring from the dust vortex covered the fields, and the vast gullets of the Gnarl Corn Company Factory were dead, covered in inert sand. The bodies of Bulbasaur, Poochyena, and Murkrow littered the ground, overborne by many wounds.
The remaining forces of the Pokemon had retreated into the factory, their wailing cries still audible in the air. The Sandaconda regrouped around the fallen orbs, readying for the second charge against the massive hulk. Human soldiers brought out exotic weapons, cheering at their success. Even a few pampered trustees from other areas of the factory had fought against the Pokemon in an attempt to regain their freedom.
Crimson looked at the human warriors in the clear light, and realized that their appearance was nothing like he had ever seen. About half of them wore the green-and-gold uniforms emblazoned with a strange symbol, while another half wore military fatigues and exosuits, as if they could not breathe in the environment. On their chests, they bore a Poke Ball surrounded by seven stars, no insignia that Crimson had ever seen.
The slaves were dumbstruck at their complete victory. Crimson found Jeremy in the chaos, and sat on an intact crate. "We won. Fuck! We won!"
Jeremy pointed a metal rod at the factory. "Not yet. While the factory still stands, Morganna lives. But our saviors will help us fight." He raised his voice, speaking to the rallying soldiers. "Who are you? Why did you come here to free us?"
A woman in flowing green-and-gold robes emerged at last from a landing orb, as if summoned by his cry. Her dark hair reached her shoulders, and a scroll was tied around her waist. Beside her was an older woman, with Johtoian features. The robed woman had a tame Garchomp by her side, while the older one had no Pokemon.
"Allison," the robed woman said, her eyes glazed over into a milky grey. "We must devise a plan for the rest of this world."
After speaking her share, the robed woman turned to Crimson, and met his gaze with an unblinking stare. "You are clearly the alpha of this group of men and women. Come here, and speak for the assembled." She pursed her lips. "What is your name?"
"I'll tell you my name if you'll tell me yours, woman. I'll thank you for your help, but we don't know anything about who you are or how you came here."
"You may call me Tess," the robed woman said. "We come from another world, not like this one. This universe is Shadowed, but you are fighting. Accept that our presence means your freedom."
"How can we trust them?" a slave shouted. "They have Pokemon!"
Tess shook her head. "In our world, we have Pokemon like yours. Wicked men have tried to corrupt them in the past and turn them against humanity, but a hero always rose up to stop them. Our Pokemon are companions and fighters, just as it was in your world before the High Chancellor came." She ran her fingers over Garchomp's head, scowling. "We will attend to the High Chancellor soon enough."
"You can defeat the High Chancellor?" Crimson said, shocked. "How? It is the God-killer. You can't win with these shitty weapons!"
The woman named Allison put a hand on her hip, grasping a strange device. "Watch your language. If you were mine to train, I'd have given you a better respect for authority. Rest assured that we have ways to deal with enemies such as the High Chancellor."
Crimson fell silent, not out of grudging respect, but because he had seen that not all of the warriors were entirely human. Some were blue-skinned, or had multiple eyes. One soldier possessed shiny, synthetic skin, and colorless mechanical eyes like light clouds. However, all the men wearing military fatigues were human, and seemed to command more Pokemon than the green-and-gold soldiers. This menagerie of mismatched deliverers knew more than they had let on.
About a hundred troops had assembled around a man in a black jumpsuit, who carried a blade in his hand that sparked with an electrical charge. An inkvine scar ran across his jaw, and the look in his eyes was of feral hatred. He saluted Allison, and bowed toward Tess. "Ready to move into the factory, Cano L.S. I request your permission as well, Bibliographer."
"Permission granted, Jake Albans," Allison said. "Leave none alive. We move to Cerulean City after we wrap up here. From there, Rustboro City is our next target."
Jake shouted a war cry. "Courage is our creed!" His followers trailed after him, charging into the depths of the Gnarl Corn Company Factory.
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Morganna heard the approaching warriors make their bloody path through the factory, and judging from the winds coming from the upper floors, the sandstorm had begun again. Machinery broke and rusted in the withering gale. Her corporate empire was falling apart as she retreated deeper and deeper, unvaliant yet toward the end.
Transmissions coming from other major Pokemon-controlled cities indicated that other parts of the world were under attack by humans with Pokemon on their side. Had the rebels somehow gathered together and brainwashed some Pokemon once more? But these Pokemon were immune to even the High Chancellor's direct control...
The world seemed to be ending. After looking over the data once again, Morganna realized, statistically speaking, the human scum might win.
It seemed that only minutes had passed before the noise of combat reached the lower levels of the factory. The Sawk and Throh formed a double barricade toward the door to protect Morganna, ready to facilitate another retreat. "Save yourself, madam! Try to breach into the sewers!"
Edwina Gnarl and her Bulbasaur began to batter the walls, hoping to access the depths of the factory's waste system. The two master warrior Pokemon opened a blast door, and went out into the tunnels to meet their foes.
Morganna heard human screams, and the dull sloshing of slimy liquid through the door. She grinned, a toadyish expression covering her saurian face. Noxos was on the prowl, loosed from its enclosure. Limbs could be heard thumping against walls, and gurgling moans. Security cams revealed at least a dozen half-dissolved corpses in the Muk's wake, the rubbery, monstrous amalgamation of living ooze pressing onward into the facility.
Then there was a flash of blue light from the hands of a robed warrior that stood in the Muk's path, and Noxos was no longer existent. Its atoms had been shredded, reduced to a blistered scab on the durasteel ground. Morganna began to tremble.
They had thaumaturges!
The Sawk and Throh, gathered around the exterior of the blast door, saw a man in a black jumpsuit approach, holding his charged blade at the ready. Did this human think that it could stand against the might of two Pokemon trained in martial arts? The duo grinned. Both had killed more rebellious humans than either could remember, and this middle-aged upstart would only be one more in a long banquet of victories.
Stepping forward in an aggressive, taunting ritualistic walk, the swordmaster activated his pulsesword. The Sawk ran at the warrior, making its first mistake. Overconfidence.
The pulsesword went to the legs of the Sawk faster than the Pokemon believed to be possible in the hands of human scum. A massive charge went through the creature's body, causing more pain than any Pokemon supposedly could ever feel. The Sawk's left arm came toward the swordmaster's torso in a wild chop, but it was effortlessly deflected.
Leaping over the crippled Pokemon with a triumphant shout, the swordmaster threw a small slap-explosive on the chest of the Sawk. As Jake Albans engaged the Throh, a targeted blast shattered the Sawk's chest, killing it.
Shocked by the unexpected death of its companion, the Throh fought with wide, sweeping blows, delivering a roundhouse kick that Jake so easily evaded that it almost made him weep from the shame of having such an easy foe. Jake plunged the pulsesword in the Throh's throat, and sent a charge in its body. Another one of the High Chancellor's minions fell dead to the floor.
The blast door was thick, and no slap-explosive could ever breach it. Sending out an Infernape, Jake had his Pokemon use Flare Blitz, crashing into the barricade. As he stepped over the broken door and came into the room, Jake's other Pokemon came before him in a frenzy of wrath, attacking and fighting in a wonderous dance of death.
More shouts came down from the upper levels. Edwina, interrupted from her work, fell to a Dhemise's swing. The Pokemon guarding Morganna were excellent fighters, but they had only ever brutalized weak humans. Fighting against their own kind was a rarity, something that none of them were prepared for. Having never lost a battle before, the Pokemon now cowered or fought with brute strength as the human invaders slew every last one of them.
And then it was only Jake and Morganna.
The swordmaster pointed his blade at the Venusaur. "You're the one running this place? Makes sense why they were all trying to protect you. We've commandeered it. You are going to tell us everything that you know, before we execute you."
"Why should I tell you anything, if there is no way out for me?"
"I can drive this pulsesword through your head, or I can knock you out with my Pokemon and bring you up to your former slaves to have their way with you."
Morganna considered the odds again. Her mouth trembled. Spoons jingled around her neck.
...
Morganna's body and the corpses of the other Pokemon were buried in a mass grave dug by the Sandaconda, but the bodies of the human liberators were covered in shrouds and brought into the landing orbs, to be buried in their home worlds. The Coalition Army (so they called themselves) passed out food, medical aid, weapons, and advanced technology to the battered workers.
Exhausted from the wonderous day, Crimson sat with the aging Professor Oak, having been summoned to the ruins of the factory by the chaos hours earlier. He was weeping as Tess told him that the Coalition Army's efforts against the High Chancellor's armies had succeeded with an attrition rate of nearly zero.
"I saw the beginning of the reign of Pokemon tyranny," Oak said. "I never thought I would see it end."
"And ended it has," Tess said. "The High Chancellor itself, may he be forever unremembered, has fled to another world, so great was his cowardice. But we will find him."
"What now?" Crimson said. "There still is a fight before us. Humanity has been decimated. A lot of these guys have families to feed; we can't just go on the warpath again."
"We will aid you and protect you," Tess assured them. "We will give you Pokemon uncorrupted by the High Chancellor. Inside these landing orbs are genetic databanks of every single known Pokemon, with thousands of different copies designed to minimize inbreeding. You might be able to repopulate the Earth with these, under our guidance."
"And we still don't know who we are."
"Well, we're not from around here," Allison said with a wan smile. "One-half of us come from a place where we can go to different worlds and help people struggling against Evil, while the exosuited soldiers are from a single world that has been getting itself increasingly involved in extrauniversal affairs. There are places where different worlds can be traveled to."
"Of course, I cannot stay forever," Tess said. "I have duties back in my own world. One of my old friends is about to appoint new Pokedex Holders in Galar."
Galar? I've heard of that place. "Are the places in your world similar to ours?" Crimson asked. "And what are Pokedex Holders?"
"Yes, although I'll bet you don't have Roria. We should not speak of Pokedex Holders any longer."
"How did you know?"
"No other worlds with Pokemon have Roria."
"You must learn to be a people of hope," Allison said to the crowd of once-slaves. "Learn to grow your own food again. If our careful hand and the power of Elyon guide you well, then this world will be freed from the hideous strength of the High Chancellor forever, the dark wing of his malice never to return. You must not become dependent on us, however. Despite our help, a struggle lies ahead."
"I'll bet that some of you have never experienced true struggle a day in your life!" Crimson said, suddenly angry. "Who are you to order us around? You saved us, sure. But-"
"Many of us have witnessed horrors that would drive the stoutest among you mad," Tess said, a cold tinge in her voice. "And in our world, even children have fought the Dark Powers and emerged alive from their quest. Do not doubt our resolve. The Pokemon Association and the Rorian Confederation are your allies, and it would be foolish of you to spurn our aid."
Satisfied, Tess turned to leave. "Allison, you will instruct the rest. This brings me back to the good old days, but duty does call."
As Tess vanished into a landing orb, something that had never happened in decades came to the lands around Pallet Town once more.
Rain, a sudden outpouring from the morning sky, covered the burnt and tormented land. It was not acidic or fouled with chemical fumes, but cool, clear, and clean. It was as if a spirit had touched the clouds and seeded them with holy water. Crimson reached up his hand, and felt the whisper of far-off seas.
Regardless of what would come next, the former slaves were now free. They would become people that would have to relearn the seasons and live without the crutch of dictatorial leadership.
A world would have to be made where people would have to choose good instead of evil when faced with both.
There were tears down many cheeks, happy and sad. Yet mostly they were filled with hope.
That was what the survivors had become. A People of Hope.
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Fin