Chapter 10

Shine Forever

Alfa stared at Kincaid. He was standing on one of the hover stands used by the Pokémon pinchers in Oblivia before they had been disbanded. And above him, controlled by Miniremo, Lugia. It was beyond comprehension that Lugia, lord of the seas, should be controlled by a mere miniremo. And besides, Alfa wasn't sure that it was a miniremo, since any dark shards in the vicinity of the Almia region should have turned clear. Kincaid had invented something else, and nobody knew how much damage this device could withstand.

"None of you, will leave this stadium alive!" Kincaid exclaimed, keying in a sequence on the dashboard in front of him. Lugia roared as it sealed off every entrance or exit using its psychic abilities. Then, it closed the roof of the arena focusing on a point in space. All of a sudden, a geyser burst from the ground in the playing field. Then another, and a third and a fourth and fifth. Geysers kept bursting out of the ground, slowly filling the ground. The players and their teams climbed over the edges of the walls and into the stands. Every single member of the crowd had run to the highest edges of the ring.

The two teams went up to midway before stopping to strategize. Kincaid had closed the arena with the clear roof, so that he could watch. Alfa analyzed the situation, trying to find a way to stop Kincaid. All of a sudden, the gemstone captain's Slaking headed to the top of the stands, and started attacking the glass. Every other Pokémon that had muscle followed and started to pound on the glass as well, to no avail. All of a sudden, Kincaid's voice flooded through the stadium speakers.

"I applaud your attempts, but they are in vain. There is no exit from my death trap." He cackled.

All of a sudden, Norman recalled Slaking, only to throw the poké ball at the roof at high speed. Right before the ball hit the roof, Slaking came out and slammed into it at forty miles an hour. Nothing happened. Norman recalled Slaking as it fell, stopping it from crashing into the water, which had risen up to the first few rings of seats. Everybody had moved to the upper levels now. Out of frustration, Alfa slammed his fist into the roof, only succeeding in hurting himself.

"GO KILL YOURSELF ARSE!" Exclaimed Brawly.

"Now now, watch your language Brawly. There are children in there." Kincaid taunted through the speakers.

"WATCH YOUR OWN LANGUAGE PIECE OF **********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************" The last part was ineligible as Norman had clamped his hand over Brawly's mouth since there were quite a few children in the arena.

"You know what? I think that just drowning you is too boring." Said Kincaid as he keyed in another sequence. "Let's make this exciting, shall we." All of a sudden, the geysers stopped, and Lugia began calling out. The geysers began to flow again as through them came a pod of Gyarados.

"Holy crap." Swore Keith silently. Lugia itself was still outside, crying out again and again. The Gyarados began to rampage inside the stadium, sending twisters every way and causing destruction in every direction. They were showing no mercy. They had been summoned by their master, and Kincaid had taken control of them. Alfa looked up as he heard a different call. Coming up behind Lugia were Zapdos and Moltres. Articuno had already been befriended by Ice, and couldn't be summoned by Lugia. He started to worry about what Kincaid could do to them with all these powerful Pokémon to fulfill his every whim.

An hour of futile attempts to escape later….

Nothing they were trying was working. Lugia was teleporting lightning rods into the Gyarados' mouths and Zapdos was electrifying the water. The Gyarados were safe from electrocution, but nobody else was. Every attempt to make things better by the rangers had failed.

The glass wouldn't break, and for every Gyarados they captured and returned to the ocean, Kincaid just summoned more. It was crazy. Nothing was working. And to top it off, Moltres was setting random parts of the stands on fire. Sure the Gyarados and the water Pokémon extinguished them, but they were just continuously replenished by Moltres. It was all the two teams could do to keep themselves and the citizens safe.

All of a sudden, Ice ran to Alfa and whispered in his ear, waited until Alfa nodded and then went around passing the message around.

"Kincaid can only keep summoning Gyarados so long as he can teleport lightning rods from the defeated ones into the new ones. If we break all the lightning rods before we attack, the Gyarados will be gone!" he had said.

All of a sudden, Kincaid saw every ranger fire their capture discs. He wondered what they were up to. It didn't matter anyways, he could always summon more Gyarados.

But the discs weren't aimed at the Gyarados. They were aimed at their mouths. There was an audible snap as every single lightning rod was broke and the rangers began capturing the Gyarados again. Alfa smiled to himself. On Pokémon type down, three to go. Soon the arena had no more Gyarados in it. The Gyarados may have been gone, but there were still the three legendary birds under Kincaid's influence.

The stadium had filled more than halfway with water and was progressing rapidly. All of a sudden Latios swooped in from above Alfa and grabbed him, tossing Alfa on to its back. Latios sped around the arena a few times building up speed, before heading for the center of the roof. All of a sudden, Latios came to a halt as Alfa realized what it was doing. Mach 1.

The blast that followed was stronger than Alfa had expected, he guessed that Latios had gotten faster. The blast hit the roof and completely shattered the bullet proof glass, breaking it into powdered glass as the other rangers went down to the bottom of the arena for some reason and went under for a bit. The blast was so powerful that it knocked Kincaid into the air, shattering his hover stand, and literally knocked sense into Zapdos and Moltres who flew off.

Lugia was still there though. As Alfa looked at Lugia, he saw a bunch of ranger flying down out of the arena carrying the nets from the goals. The crowd started to escape, jumping out and landing in the nets. And Alfa was face to face with a rampaging Lugia. Alfa launched his capture disc and attempted to calm the enraged Lugia. He failed. He kept on trying, failing every single time. There was nothing he could do. It was beyond him to capture a rampaging Lugia.

All of a sudden, Articuno flew up with Kellyn riding it.

"ALFA, THE DANCE OF DISCS IS OUR ONLY CHANCE!" exclaimed Kellyn over Lugia's roaring. Immediately Alfa understood. When they had been in ranger school, Mrs. April had taught them that certain numbers of capture discs increased the power of the capture by working together, but it took great skill and finesse to execute one of those techniques. They had only been taught three. The dance of discs was one which involved two fine stylers. If two discs crossed capture lines while charging to the higher power levels, they linked.

It was one of the most complex methods, indicating a fixed pattern that had to be followed. Alfa slowly stood up on Latios's back as Kellyn rose on Articuno. He held the charge switch on his styler and sent the disc diagonally across Kellyn. Kellyn did the same and linked the two discs, beginning a formation so powerful that it could capture Lugia with ease, yet so deadly, that one wrong move could break formation and result in Lugia killing both of them.

They began to move their arms in sync, the discs moving in sync as well. Their right arms moved as though they were conducting orchestras and together, they created a blazing trail of light in the sky, all the while balancing on Articuno and Latios who were moving to avoid being hit. Alfa was completely lost in his mind, focusing only on not screwing up. The trails of light formed an image so graceful, you would expect an artist to create the symbol after weeks of labor. All of a sudden, the symbol began to glow even more strongly and shaped as a globe it was, trapped Lugia inside a sphere of light formed by the lines.

The discs returned to the stylers as Lugia was encased in the glowing sphere, captured by Kellyn and Alfa. The sphere faded away and Lugia emerged, calmed by the capture.

'You have my gratitude for saving me from the dark clutches of the human who controlled me' said Lugia through telepathy to the entire arena, which now consisted of the two teams only. Awed by Lugia's voluntary choice to communicate by telepathy to them, the two boys set down.

All of a sudden, Alfa saw a stretcher pass in front of him and get lifted up by some of the flying types and get taken to a helicopter in the sky. He thought he was hallucinating when he saw who was in it.

"Is that?" asked Alfa, not wanting to say the name.

"Yes." Sven confirmed grimly.

"She went into Cardiac arrest moments ago." Said Wendy as tears formed in her eyes.

Without another word, everybody headed out of the arena and the phantom fury immediately set of for the hospital in the bus, with Keith driving, ignoring the speed limits as he furiously swore at everyone on the road.

They reached the hospital in a few minutes and everybody flooded through the doors, shocking the receptionist.

"WHERE IS CHAIRPERSON ERMA FROM THE RANGER UNION?!" Hastings yelled at the receptionist.

"She's in the ICU, nobody can visit her for a while.

"All of you head back to the union and then go home!" exclaimed Hastings. "I will stay here. Now go. That's an order."

Sensing the professor's mood, everybody turned around and slowly headed back to the bus and the union. From there, Alfa, Ice, Sicilia and Alexis headed off for Almia castle, shaken by what had happened. Nobody said a word during either journey. At the castle, the four of them ordered dinner and sat down in front of the TV, remaining silent.

Finally, Ice broke the silence.

"Let's try and get our heads of that topic. Did you see Kincaid's clothes? Has he always dressed that badly?" He asked as they went to the table.

"Yeah. He always used to where that silly waistcoat with those spectacles of his, that horrid yellow shirt and those weird olive pants." Replied Alfa, chuckling as he remembered Kincaid from his school days.

"Is his hair naturally like that or does he do that on purpose?" asked Alexis with a giggle.

"He always used to make it like that when I was at school. He used to use a whole bottle of hair spray every day. He thinks it makes him look menacing, but it just makes you laugh even more." Said Alfa. And so the night went on with tales of the time from ranger school, an example of which was the time Keith and Kellyn had tampered with the school mega phone so that the next morning in assembly, when principle Lamont had pressed the button to speak, it had sprayed flour over him, and another time, Keith had dropped eggs from the second floor window onto Mr. Kincaid as he had exited the building.

The next day, Alfa headed out to Altru mall to meet Isaac, a boy from the ranger school who had graduated with him. The mall had been made inside the old Altru building, and the floors above ten were being used for the new Altru Inc. run by Isaac. He had wanted to show Alfa something and had arranged to meet him for lunch in the mall. Alfa had dropped his sister there in the morning with Alexis and he was to pick them up after lunch, so he had come early to meet Isaac.

He walked into the mall and saw Isaac waiting for him. He walked to Isaac and the two old friends greeted each other. Once they had their lunch and were sitting at the table, Isaac began speaking.

"Alfa, I've invented something new. I call it Star born. What it does is that it takes an enormous amount of energy, filters it through the Luminous crystal and fires it into space, creating a new star." He said.

"That's brilliant Isaac." Alfa replied.

"Yes, and it works. The only problem is that it requires so much energy, that we've only been able to run one test." He said. "The only other source of energy strong enough to fuel it is the life force of someone. And I'm not going to kill an innocent person." All of a sudden, an idea came to Alfa.

"Isaac, how long does someone's life force linger for after they die?" he asked.

"Around three hours. Why?" he replied.

"Good. You know Chairperson Erma went into Cardiac arrest yesterday and is at the hospital right. If she dies, and the professor agrees, I want you to send her life force to the stars, and name the new one Erma, in honor of her." He answered.

"I can think of no better way to honor her. If she does pass, then we will. And once you charge the energy into the machine, we can preserve it for two more days." Said Isaac. At this point, the two were in his lab, looking at the control board for star born.

"Agreed." Said Alfa.

Three hours later.

Alfa was on his way home with Sicilia and Alexis. They had stopped at the fair on the union road and had spent quite a while there. All of a sudden, his styler started ringing. He checked his voicemail. It was from the professor. Dreading what might come, he clicked play.

'Chairperson Erma, …, has passed away five minutes ago.' Came the professor's voice through his Styler.

He stopped the car and sent a message back to the professor telling him to call Isaac.

"How?" asked Sicilia, a mortified expression on her face.

"Her heart must have given out. Let's get home now. Ice is waiting." Said Alfa, and with that, he hit the accelerator and didn't stop until they were back at the castle."

The next day, at sundown, he and Ice were standing at Altru Park, everybody dressed in black. Mournful music began to play as the professor began to speak from the stage.

"Today we stand here to honor one of Almia's greatest citizens; Erma Evans, chairperson and founder of the ranger union. She dedicated her life to making the world a better place, and her efforts saw great change. Now, sent into cardiac arrest, she has passed away, and all of Almia will mourn for her. But she will continue to shine as brightly as she did when she was alive, thanks to professor Isaac of Altru Inc. Now, we send her to live with the stars." He began. With that he pressed a button, and somewhere inside the Altru office space, Isaac received the signal and started Star born. A moment later, there was a blast through the luminous crystal, and a new start blazed in the sky, visible in the night sky, as professor Hastings finished his speech.

"Erma Evans, may you shine forever."