"Soon, Dragor. Soon we will defeat Xyrule and his pathetic excuse for friends and this world will be ours. Can't you just feel it? Pain and death everywhere. Disease and destruction in every city on Pokearth. Ahh, it will be a glorious day. Everyone, everywhere in this universe will bow down to me, Flarimist, king of Evil."
"Dad…" Ash said after seeing the memories of his deceased father, "You never left us, only physically. Xyrule, who did this? I'll get him for this."
"You can't. Flarimist did this, and he is much too strong. You haven't been trained to use your powers yet. He knows that Darkell is your weak spot. You have to move on, if you want to avenge him." Xyrule explained sadly.
"Teach me, then!" Ash said, directly at Xyrule's face, almost yelling.
"I can't teach you immediately, but I know something that will help you understand Flarimist more. It is an ancient legend, called The Legend Of Life And Death. Here it is:
The Legend Of Life And Death
In the Beginning, there was a void. The only one in the void was Xyrule, the first life. He created a single egg, which hatched into a baby Arceus. Arceus had two older brothers. The youngest was named Dillemel. The oldest was named Flarimist, an evil being who loved only chaos and destruction. Xyrule fought it while Arceus created all dimensions, and when he was done, Xyrule exiled the new terror into Earth. The people of Earth were terrorized by the newcomer for thousands of years, and pleaded with Xyrule to ban him from their home. Xyrule agreed. He exiled Flarimist into the deepest parts of the world, called the Bottom Realms. There, Flarimist was put into a sleep that was meant to last for all eternity. The trance failed after only a few thousand years, when the Chosen One was born to destroy the evil and bring happiness forever to the universe. Flarimist had indeed awoken, but was trapped inside of his rotting Bottom Dimensions. He only could get out with the help of someone in the family tree of the new Chosen One. It is believed that if Flarimist got out, the entire universe would be in grave danger of collapse. No one who is still alive knows if this legend is true.
"So you see, Flarimist had to be banished from Earth to prevent the universe's downfall. He will not stop until he is ruler or until he is destroyed. We must prevent the first option from happening at all costs. He is pure evil, and is why bad things happen anywhere in the universe." Xyrule said, after he told the legend, "It's time to start your training."
"Okay, we'll start by teaching you Aura moves, as you already know how to use your Aura. This month's lessons will all help you adapt and build your Aura to any climate and opponent's condition. Watch me closely for the first lesson." Xyrule said, curling his arms into a full circle, "First, you must blank your mind. Then, you must imagine the target. Next, you must imagine your Aura Sphere hitting the target. Last, you must imagine yourself reenergizing after the attack."
He blasted a nearby tree into smithereens with his Aura Sphere (he weakened all of his attacks during training so that Ash would be able to see a more similar effect to his own attacks).
"Okay. Blank my mind." Ash's eyes closed, his arms instinctively forming into Lucario's Aura shooting position, with his arms in a broken circle, palms facing each other.
"Imagine the target." Ash said blankly, his arms, still in their position, moving toward another nearby tree.
"Imagine the shot." A small, greenish sphere issued from his arms, quickly.
"Move hitting the target." The Aura Sphere connected to the tree, blasting it to a crisp.
"Reenergize." Ash said, loosening up as he did so, putting his arms back into their positions at his side.
"Well, how did I do?" he asked, looking at Xyrule.
"Perfect at the first try. Look at the tree."
"Wow! It doesn't even seem like it ever existed!" Ash exclaimed.
A few months later, after Ash had perfected most moves, Xyrule thought it time for the hardest test of all: Tossing Ash off a cliff, and having Ash hit every target with any move that he has learned, without getting hurt.
"Are you sure that you want to do this, Ash? Because if you do, there is no turning back." Xyrule asked.
"I'm ready." Ash said, breathing deeply.
"Okay. Here we go." Xyrule said, picking up Ash with a Vine Whip, tossing him off the edge of the rock canyon, under which, 500 miles down, was a valley. There were targets nearly everywhere, in the sky and on the ground.
"WOO-HOO!" Ash yelled, falling toward the bottom below. About halfway down, Ash used a Fly, shooting upward twice as far as the canyon was deep.
"Now why is he going away from the targets, I wonder? " Xyrule thought to himself, watching his student's progress and not really unsure.
Ten minutes later, his question was answered. Ash had gone into a freefall, straightening out into an arrow, gaining speed as he shot straight down into the abyss below.
"He's using Pulse Meteor. I don't remember teaching him that move." Xyrule realized.
Too late to stop it now, though. Ash had begun to show the characteristic asteroidal shape, with his body covered in the flaming smoke that all meteors had around them. Right before Ash hit the ground at a speed unmeasureable to anything, he stopped all of a sudden. The core that was around him kept going, though, until it hit the ground. The force of the impact created a mushroom cloud and an extremely powerful shock wave, blasting not only the targets, but the entire canyon into pieces. After the dust cloud disappeared, Ash walked out, unharmed, of the smoking debris field.
"How did you do that? That Pulse Meteor is the strongest that I've ever seen. I can't even make that strong of a Shock Pulse after it." Xyrule revealed.
"Really?" Ash said, collapsing. He started sweating uncontrollably.
"Oh, no. I knew it. He can't use Pulse Meteor, he's too young. He's got Pulsemotium. I have to get him to the fields as soon as possible. I can't teleport, that only will aid the disease. I'll have to carry him by hand." Xyrule said, picking Ash up and racing as fast as he could without dropping his load towards the Fields of Karkoul, the field around Xyrule's kingdom that Ash and his friends slept every night.
At this point, Ash's bleak state got worse. His skin started turning purple and his hair had started coming out in chunks. When Xyrule got to the Fields, he set Ash down on the soft grasses there. He made the third tear since he had met Ash, which he placed on Ash's cold, nearly stopped heart. The tear slowly sank into the flesh, emanating a soft, golden light, which quickly disappeared.
"What's going on?" Iris asked, running up to where Xyrule was sitting. Cilan and Aran followed.
"What happened to him?" Iris asked shakily when she saw Ash.
"He was training with me when he used an unexpected Pulse Meteor. He's caught Pulsemotium, a disease that is only caught if something uses Pulse Meteor when the user is too young or inexperienced. I'm afraid it's always fatal, but one of my tears can slow the process down considerably. There is no known antidote." Xyrule said, feeling sadness for the first time in his long life.
"Is he…?" Iris shook, unable to finish the question.
"Not yet, but he's close." Xyrule told them grimly.
"Ah, so the so-called 'Chosen One' has managed to up and kill himself, with no hope of coming back this time." a cold, harsh voice suddenly said, "It looks like you've lost, Xyrule. You cannot defeat me without him." The voice drawled on, poking Ash's cold, unfeeling body.
"You will not win, Flarimist. His Aura still exists. With it, he can still defeat you, for his Aura is pure. Your Aura is tainted with every evil thing that you have ever done. Remember, Good always defeats Evil." Xyrule told the voice, which suddenly took on form in front of him.
It was the ugliest thing that the humans there had ever seen. It had a gargoyle body, a cloak made of shadows around its neck, dark red eyes, and its head was made up of molten lava, with no face.
"You and I both know, Xyrule, that you can never defeat Evil, you can only rise above it. That doesn't go the other way around, for you can corrupt everything, living and dead, so that good is inexistent in this pathetic excuse of a universe." Flarimist told Xyrule, quoting the Golden Rule of the constant battle between sin and purity.
"That is true, but once you are defeated, that rule will be obsolete. Xyranna has spoken. You will soon be no more." Xyrule warned the thing that was the Devil.
"Bah! Your precious 'last hope for the universe' is dead. His Aura has gone into me now, with all the other souls who have died on this wretched excuse of a rock that you call 'Earth'. You think he can still hurt me, but nothing can happen if his Aura is part of me now. You will fall, and I will rule the universe! Flarimist screamed, Psycho Boosting a nearby tree.
Xyrule blasted him with Slash, his arms splitting into six and lengthening into seven-foot blades, sending Flarimist careening into a mountain ten miles away. Flarimist shadow-teleported back to his spot.
"Really? A Slash attack? You know that it doesn't affect me, just like every move that there ever was. You might as well give up and hand the universe over now, because I'll get it soon anyway." Flarimist spat at Xyrule, spraying venom directly at his face.
Xyrule blocked it with a simple Protect. Ash's arm lashed out all of a sudden, grabbing Flarimist by the leg.
"What the…?" Flarimist said, tripping from the sudden, unexpected movement, "How did he do that? I feel his Aura inside of me right now. How?"
Ash stood up, looking as if nothing had happened over the past few hours, except for an angry look on his face.
"I heard everything that you said, Flarimist!" he yelled angrily, "You've destroyed my life twice, you've killed my father, you've contaminated the entire universe with your filth! Go back to bleep!"
Ash started punching and kicking Flarimist, who only had to turn into shadows every attack to easily block it.
"That's not Ash! I know his voice, and what he says! He would never say that!" Iris started repeating, over and over again in Xyrule's face.
"It's him. He's just angrier than he's ever been in his life. I can feel it in his Aura." Xyrule said matter-of-factly.
"Aaah!" everyone heard Flarimist shriek.
They turned around. Ash had Flarimist's neck held tightly in his arms. Somehow, he had been able to stop Flarimist's shadow transformations. Flarimist had a look of…Was that pain?
"I got him. What do I do now, Xyrule?" Ash asked as if he had simply picked an apple from a tree.
"Let him go. It's not time yet. Soon, you will be able to destroy him, Ash. Remember the trick that you did to manage to stop him from reverting into shadows. It will be very useful later on." Xyrule said, following the prophecy that he had told them about. Ash let Flarimist go, reluctantly.
"What is the Great Prophecy, anyway?" Ash asked.
"We were wondering about that, too, Xyrule!" Aran said.
"Here it is, then." Xyrule said, understanding their curiosity.
The Great Prophecy
The Enemy, the Evil One
Will return with a vengeance
His return set by the Chosen One
Who must teach him repentance
Should the Evil One succeed in returning
The world will indeed fall
Unless He sees reason
From the Chosen One's own call
Death by three
Caused by the Evil One
Should the Chosen One fail
The End of Days be gone
No other may stop
The King of Evil, not alone
With Friendship's help, and belief see
His Destiny is set in stone
"Wow. That makes no sense at all." Aran, Cilan, Iris, and Ash said simultaneously.
"That's because it's fake!" Flarimist said.
"Don't you have anything better to do than bug us, Flarimist?" Aran asked, feeling brave.
Iris looked away, sure that Flarimist would blow Aran up on the spot. But instead, Flarimist leaned close to Aran's ear and said something that no one else heard, except Xyrule, who decided to keep it a secret.
"You're lucky you are a good spy, or I would blast you to a crisp right now." he whispered, sinking into the shadows.