Chapter 9
On edge

It wasn't long before Cain emerged from the caves. "There you are, Laresa."

Laresa turned to face him. "Ah, Cain," she said as she got to her feet. "I was wondering when you'd show up."

He gestured to Tyranitar. "You expecting trouble?"

He's on edge. Most wouldn't find that worth mentioning. "No, but I'm ready for it anyways. You never know what you'll run into in a place like this."

"I suppose. Anyways, what happened to meeting in Oreburgh?"

"I decided to go on ahead," Laresa said. "I assume you activated both of your focus points?"

Cain nodded. "I did. You?"

"Yes. You ready to do this?"

"Um, Laresa," Cain said after a brief pause, "I guess you didn't figure it out. Um, were there drawings on the walls at your focus points?"

Laresa nodded. "Yeah. Most of them were impossible to make out, though. I didn't learn anything from them that I didn't already know."

"There were a lot that I couldn't make out, too. But I guess more of mine were decipherable, because I did learn something. I was expecting you to be waiting in Oreburgh, and I wish you had been; it would've saved us both a trip."

Thought so. He knows we're here to break the seal, and he doesn't want to. "What do you mean?"

"Laresa," Cain said, "what we're doing isn't going to fix the seal. It's going to break it."

And there it is. Okay, signal time. "Um, what exactly the hell are you talking about? There was no visible change, but Laresa knew Sceptile had heard the signal phrase, 'exactly the hell', and was waiting for her chance.

"It was pretty clear," Cain said. "There were images that clearly showed the objects being used to break the seal. Laresa, this isn't going to fix anything. The distortions, all that will just get worse without the seal, not-ah!"

Sceptile made her move. She ran out of hiding and quickly snatched Cain's object from his belt. Something dashed out of the caves-an Arcanine. It moved to attack Sceptile, but then Absol was there. And although Absol wasn't Laresa's most durable Pokemon, he was decently quick and agile, and he hit extremely hard. His well-timed slam knocked Arcanine out of its charge.

Sceptile gave Cain a long scratch, drawing blood. She pressed the jewel of Cain's object up against the blood, then stepped back and went towards Laresa. And then she took an ice blast to the back. A Vaporeon emerged from the cave towards Sceptile, but it didn't get to her, either, as it suddenly found itself having to dodge a series of electric blasts from Luxray.

A Sandslash was next out of the cave, headed for Sceptile. Sceptile got back to her feet. And then an Electrode flew into the back of her head, knocking her to the ground, as the Machoke that threw it emerged. Sandslash snatched the object away from Sceptile.

Not so fast, Laresa thought. "Nidoking!"

Nidoking burst out of the ground where he'd hidden himself, directly in front of Sandslash. He creamed Sandslash and took the object, which he tossed back to Sceptile. Sceptile knocked Electrode away and tossed the object to Laresa, who slipped it into her pocket.

A Weavile emerged from the cave, heading directly for Laresa. Then it got hit and knocked over by a blast from Espeon, who came running out after it. Espeon's psychic blasts were ineffective, of course, but thay could still knock Weavile down. Nidoking moved in, grabbed Weavile, and slammed it into the ground.

Sandslash dashed around Sceptile and made a beeline for Laresa. It leaped at her, only to slam directly into Tyranitar. Tyranitar grabbed it, then dropped it as he took an Electrode to the face. Espeon turned her attention to Machoke as Tyranitar tossed Electrode aside. Sandslash ducked around the distracted Tyranitar to reach Laresa, and got a bowling ball slammed into his face as a result. But then Weavile came in too quickly for Laresa to get another swing off, took Cain's object out of her pocket, and made an expert toss to Cain.

The initial fight came to a halt. "Why the hell do you have a bowling ball?" Cain asked.

"What, you didn't think I'd be ready to defend myself? Never underestimate the value of a good blunt object. You never know what'll come in handy."

"Damn it, Laresa, just what the hell are you up to?"

"You seem to have figured it out already," Laresa said. "I'm here to break the seal. And I thought you might not agree with that, so I was ready with an ambush. Although I thought you might be expecting one. I have to say, though, that you did quite well. I especially liked the Electrode toss."

"I guess you just weren't ready enough," Cain said. "Looks like you lose this round."

"Not really," Laresa said. "Sure, I don't have your object, but that was just a bonus, anyways. It's already active; Sceptile got your blood on it. So now..." She grabbed her own object. "Give me a little scratch, please, Tyranitar." Tyranitar did so, and Laresa pressed her object's jewel against the wound. The jewels on both objects lit up. "There we go. Now for step two."

"I don't think so," Cain said. "I'm not doing anything."

"I don't plan on giving you a choice," Laresa said. "I don't care if you don't want to do it. Forcing you to is just fine with me." She pressed the jewel on her object, and Ho-oh promptly appeared.

"Looks like you screwed up," Cain said as he pressed the jewel on his object, causing Lugia to appear. "I can match you on that one."

Laresa laughed. "I was counting on that, actually."

The symbols on the objects began to glow, as did the jewels. Ho-oh and Lugia positioned themselves at the far end of the Spear Pillar, and they too began to glow. Then there was a series of flashes, and then...

And then a... I have no idea how the hell to describe that, but I think I know what it is. It's obviously the connection point with the Distortion World. Which means I should start seeing some sort of-there, that's got to be it. There were... Ripples, I guess. It reminded Laresa of the shimmering effect visible in the air over a significant heat source, only much more... substantial? Hell, I don't know. They seemed to be drawn to the connection point. And then things went crazy. Everything beyond the Spear Pillar appeared... well, distorted. The distortive effects are being drawn in. The Spear Pillar is protected from the distortions, but they're passing everywhere around it.

"What the hell did you do?" Cain said.

"Oh, you mean getting you to call Lugia? Both birds are required for this, so I went for a situation where you'd have no choice but to call Lugia. If you hadn't taken the bait, of course, your team would've gone down quickly, and I'd then have no problem taking the object from you and calling Lugia myself. But this isn't their fight, so I was hoping that wouldn't be necessary. And fortunately, I was correct. And don't expect that to work," she said as cain pressed the jewel again. "This is where the birds are supposed to be right now. They're not going to leave just because you're pushing a button. Hey," she called out to the birds, "Let me know when it's time for the next step, would you? I think I may be a little busy here." She turned back to Cain. "Okay, so now what? You want to fight?"

"Damn it, why the hell are you doing this?"

"This is what we're supposed to do; not fix the seal, but break it."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Well, maybe I'll get to that. I am, after all, trying to explain all of this. Actually, you got most of it back in Canalave, but there's one thing you didn't figure out. I had the thought, and confirmed it after you left. Breaking the-"

"You know what, no," Cain said. "No explanations now. You're out to stall for time, aren't you? 'Let me know when it's time' and all that. You're just wasting time."

"I suppose, although I did plan to tell the truth."

"Do it later," Cain said. "Go!"

Cain's team sprung into action, as did Laresa's team, and the battle resumed.

As the battle continued, the distortive effect around the Spear Pillar intensified. How much time is left? Shit, I have no idea how long-

Ho-oh gave a cry. Well, I guess that answers that question. "Okay, stop!"

The battle came to a halt again as Laresa's team stopped fighting. Laresa walked up to Cain and held out her object. "Here, take it."

Cain didn't take the object. "Wait, what? You're giving up? No, hold on. You're trying to trick me into doing something, aren't you? You were just waiting until it's time for the 'next step', and now it is."

"Yes. And it just so happens that the next step is to stop this. Which is what you want to do, right? Both objects are needed for that, and I doubt you'd agree to let me have this one during the process, so the simplest solution is to just give it to you."

"I think you need to explain some things," Cain said.

"Then you should have let me do so earlier. There's no time right now."

"Well, too bad. I don't know that I can trust you. Why would you break the seal only to replace it?"

"You know as well as I do that the distortion is worsening."

"Yeah, because the seal's weakening."

"The opposite, actually," Laresa said. "The distortive effects are actually the result of the seal being too strong."

"What?"

"The thought occurred to me back in Canalave. I did some more investigating after you left and confirmed it. The Distortion World is an outlet for distortions in this world."

"And that means what?"

"It means that the Distortion World is not leaking through to this world. The distortions originate in this world. Any setup degrades over time. If not addressed, the degradation builds up until the setup can no longer function properly. In this world, the degradation manifests as all these 'unnatural phenomena' that've been happen-" Laresa stumbled as the world suddenly flipped. She kept her balance this time, though, and her perspective was soon back to normal. Well, shit. "Okay, we're out of time. The distortions are starting to overwhelm this place's ability to keep them out. There are three ways this can happen. You can take my object and do this by yourself, you can give me yours and I'll do it, or we can do it together."

"I'm not cooperating with you," Cain said. "especially not when you keep dodging the question of what you're trying to do."

Laresa landed a gut punch. As her team sprang back into action against Cain's, Laresa took Cain's object. "Sorry, but there's no time for that right now." Okay, so just the usual, then?

"What the hell do you want?" Cain said as he caught his breath. "Damn it, Laresa, are you crazy?"

"Basically, yes." She pressed the jewels on both objects, and as had happened at the focus points, the objects began to glow. Then there was a bright flash, and-

Something knocked Laresa to the ground. As her vision cleared, she got mack to her feet, and noticed that Cain and most of both Pokemon teams had also been knocked down. Laresa looked around for the objects, which she'd dropped as she hit the ground. Except that they hadn't dropped. They were somehow suspended in the air, the jewels facing the connection point.

Another... blast, or whatever it was, knocked everyone down again. As Laresa got to her feet once more, she saw the objects stop glowing and fall to the ground. As she picked them up, she noticed that the view from the Spear Pillar was no longer distorted. She looked around for Ho-oh and Lugia, but the two birds were nowhere in sight. And the connection point was no longer visible. Laresa pressed the jewel on her object, but nothing happened. Okay, so this thing doesn't work any more. Does that mean we're done here?

Cain got to his feet. "Okay, what just happened?"

"Okay," Laresa said, "there's time now, I think. I'll finish explaining myself."

"Good."

"As I was saying, the degredation in our world manifests as the unnatural phenomena. If left alone, the distortive effect accumulates. There's not much moticable effect at first, but as it builds, you get the effect of unnatural phenomena. However, there is a meants to deal with this. That is the function of the Distortion World.

"The Distortion World exists in opposition to this world. What here are unnatural phenomena are normal in the Distortion World. This world's distortions are that world's normal state. As a result, the distortions in this world are... drawn, I guess is the best word, to the Distortion World. Sure, you still get an unnatural phenomenon every now and then, but that's it.

"I told you that the problem was that the seal was too strong, remember? That seal was blocking off the Distortion World. It cut off the outlet for the distortions, and as a result, they began to accumulate in this world."

"Hold on," Cain said. "If that's true, then why didn't anything happen until now?"

"There are several possibilities. One is that the seal wasn't in place until fairly recently. Or maybe it was originally meant to seal off only Giratina, and the distortions were still able to pass through until for some reason they no longer could. However, I think it's most likely that it simply took until now for the distortions to build up enough to have a noticable effect. I don't think we'll ever truly know, however."

"So you broke the seal to let the distortions pass? But, what, you replaced the seal after that?"

"I doubt it," Laresa said. "I didn't actually do much at all. It was Ho-oh and Lugia's show; I just activated the objects twice, once to break the seal and again after enough time had passed. The flow of distortions through the connection point was intense; it's likely that without intervention, the flow through wouldn't have stopped with the distortions. I'm not sure what would have happened in that case, but regardless, the flow couldn't just be left to stop on its own. It had to be cut off. That's what I activated the objects the second time for. Then it was all Ho-oh and Lugia. And while they did, obviously, stop the flow, I don't think they replaced the seal. After all, doing that would just mean the same thing would happen again at some point."

"Wait, but then what was the seal for?"

"Giratina, most likely. I don't know that it was ever necessary, though. Think about it. What reason could giratina possibly have for entering this world? It can't even exist here in its natural form. This world is everything it's not, and the Distortion World is everything it is. Why would it leave? No, my guess is that the seal was established unnecessarily, out of fear of Giratina. We'll never truly know, however."

"So now what?"

Laresa handed Cain his object. "Here, take this. I don't think it'll do anything any more, but this one's still yours. Do whatever you want with it." She put her own object in her pack. "We're done here, I think." She recalled her team, and Cain did the same with his.

"You know," Cain said, "if you thought, back in Canalave, that there was more to this, why didn't you say anything? You could've just told me you didn't think we had the whole story."

Maybe I should have, but... "I wasn't thinking clearly. And don't ask what I mean by that. It's personal, and I don't want to talk about it."

"Um, okay. Well, come on," he said. "I don't know what I think about all that stuff, but it's done now, right? So let's get out of here."

The two of them had done their job.

It's not likely, I think, that they truly know what exactly it is they did. Cain certainly doesn't, I would say. A fairly uninteresting person, I think. He doesn't even know about me; I never showed myself to him the way I did with Laresa.

Laresa is most certainly a more interesting individual. I have to say it's quite interesting that she was Ho-oh's choice. I have to wonder if it was truly coincidence, but I don't see how it could be anything but. Ho-oh couldn't know that Laresa and I had already met before. And Laresa doesn't know, either, does she?

Both Laresa and Cain, I'm sure, think that all this is over. They don't know what's really going on, after all, do they? And as far as Cain is concerned, it probably is over. I find it unlikely that he'll be involved in this anymore. Laresa, though, she may very well continue her involvement. I may very well encounter her again. She fights. I knew that from our first meeting; my battle with her at Iron Island only confirmed what I already knew. You fight, don't you, Laresa? Even when you shouldn't. And sometimes, because you fight back, you only worsten your situation. Sometimes, because you fight back, everything falls apart.