Chapter 16: The Battle of Amp Plains
To the surprise of everyone, there came a meeting of all the Pokemon in the rebellion base. They gathered in a room that Trey had never been in before, a cavernous space with barely enough room for their forces. The ninja clan of Bubbles opted to come in from above and sit on one of the ceiling supports. Trey used the grips on his paws to hang to the bottom of the support. He was perfectly fine and could move in a flash in case something happened.
Celebi and Mew were at the front of the room, hovering by a grand sunburst seal, the sign of Arceus. Although Trey spotted two other legendaries in the crowd, he didn't see Mewtwo. He wondered where that one was. Mewtwo was one of their powerhouses, a master of many attacks who could reportedly use a standard attack and knock a foe down senseless with it. There were also stories that he had leveled a settlement much larger than Treasure Town, all on his own. That made fewer Pokemon trust him, but he had already been punished for that. From the numbers and variety he saw, they could probably make due without him. Still, it would have been reassuring if Mewtwo had been here too.
Mew called for attention, silencing the room. "All of you, we want to say thanks for your tireless training and efforts to improve yourselves over the many cycles we have been gathered. We are now prepared to bring an assault to Primal Dialga's stronghold of Temporal Tower."
There were boistrous cheers and whistles from around the room, but Mew quieted them with a flick of her tail.
"We have had some logistical issues before in that Temporal Tower lies across the Sea of Time, a place that few are allowed to cross. However, Celebi has granted us a way to bring Temporal Tower to the battlefield of our choosing. We are currently looking at potential locations. It is a complex prospect, as we have to consider the many varied abilities and types that we have in attendance."
At that, Trey looked to Celebi. He saw her wince, then look up to him. She gave him a slight real smile through her emotional mask, but then went back into her safety zone as a cheerleader for their army.
"We hope to be able to deploy everyone for this battle. We cannot stretch this out any further, or hold back our strength for a future battle as we have before. We must strike hard and we must strike soon. It was our hope to find a less violent way of ending Primal Dialga's reign, but recent activity of our oppressor has convinced us that we cannot afford to wait. It has been said that Primal Dialga shows streaks of calm in his madness, but according to our spies, that is happening less and less with his psychotic episodes occurring more frequently and more harshly. We will try to plan for avoiding his deepest madness, but that cannot be guaranteed. This is a risk, but are you willing to take it?"
"YES!" came many cheers from across the room and above Trey with the ninja clan and a dozen or so flying units. However, Trey couldn't repress a feeling of unease in this battle plan. He felt that the whole thing could be a disaster.
"Trey? What are you doing out here?"
"Being out here," he replied, looking up through motionless leaves at the endless black sky. "Not much better than being inside, but it's different."
Celebi floated up to a branch near him. He had noticed her approaching, but chose to do nothing about it. "You didn't seem too pleased at the meeting," she said.
"I think it's a bad idea."
"Why?"
He shrugged. "I don't know. I've never been in a battle this large before. But it's not nervousness. This situation, it doesn't feel right."
"It feels like one of the major forks to me."
Trey looked over at her. "One of the what?"
"Forks, you know, like in a path. But this is a major fork in time, a very important event. Obviously it's important, but… when you time travel, every little decision is like a small fork in time. it effects things that comes later. But the major forks, if you go back and change them, create very different histories in their myriad paths. The battles that win or lose wars, the tragedy or not-tragedy that becomes a cornerstone of someone's life. You take a risk changing these major forks, so I never messed with them. Still, it makes me nervous whenever I find myself approaching one, not knowing what could happen."
"But you can't travel back in time now. Pity."
"There are ways still," Celebi said.
"So why don't you go and fix this world?"
Her antennas twitched in nervousness. "Even I don't know what will happen while changing history. I can get a general sense, so I could prevent this disaster… or I could bring about an even worse world than this."
"What could be worse than this place?" Trey grumbled.
"There are some nightmares…" she trailed off.
"I think this world is one of them," a third voice said.
Celebi tensed. "Who's there?"
"That's Konga," Trey said. "You didn't think I came out here alone, did you?"
The Sneasel hopped down to a branch in their view. "We're the only ones out here, though. Unless Bubbles is around. She'd be the only one who'd hide from both of us successfully."
Celebi smiled, looking more defensive knowing that someone else was there. "I'm pretty sure I left Bubbles doing some work on the plans for battle."
"One thing I don't get," Trey said, looking up at his clan peer, "is why you're on our side. I'd think a Dark type like you would go with the Primals."
Konga twitched his thin ears. "Most of the others have, yes, but they fell prey to the darkness. Not the Dark. That's two different things."
"What're you talking about?"
The Sneasel scrambled around the branches, winding up closer to Celebi. Reflexively, she leaned back, but then forced herself not to do that. "There is the darkness and the Dark. The darkness is the potential for everyone to be evil, drawn from the instincts for survival that go too far and become sins. It is one of the things that draws the wild magic, along with the purity, the potential for everyone to be selfless and good. Wild magic blesses both darkness and purity, since they both make it difficult to live a civilized life. Wild Pokemon are that way from darkness or purity, or even ignorance.
"The Dark though, the true meaning of my type, is not innately evil. The Dark is the trickster, the challenger. The Dark sees tactics that others say are dirty and says that they are perfectly legitimate." He scratched his head with his back paw. "Unfortunately, that leaves us quite weak to the call of the evil darkness. When you use any tactic that may be seen as unfair, it is doubly tempting to use a purely cruel tactic. But I keep my mind and heart to myself by seeking the purity of the Dark. I seek the light of the darkness."
The light of the darkness… that was something that Kip used to say about his mysterious treasure hunt. "I've heard that phrase before, but not from a Dark type," he said.
Konga leaned towards him, interested, while Celebi listened quietly. "Really, from a non-Dark? Did this one fight the inner darkness such as you do?"
"That's right, he did."
"Hmm." He seemed to groom himself for a moment, then said, "Maybe he got in too deep. Maybe he sought purity. Or maybe he had a Dark heritage and inherited a trickster streak."
Trey chuckled. "He was a trickster all right."
"I see being a trickster as being a challenger to others. There are some Pokemon that will work themselves to the bone to push themselves into improvement, but most Pokemon," he shook his head. "they would rather everything stay as it was, status quo. The trickster stirs things up for them. The trickster unsettles their status quo so that they have to work for it, thus improving themselves, hopefully making them push for beyond that status quo."
"You do seem to reserve your nastier tricks for when the rest of us stall on progress," Trey noted.
"I don't have to with you. You… you seem to have the closest heart to purity in the whole base, that of the mortals, at least. Yet you also have the darkness, and that struggle pushes you on more than I ever could."
"You think that about me?" Trey asked, looking over at Konga. The Grovyle was watching to see if he had sincerity.
And it seemed the Sneasel did. "Yes. Otherwise, I wouldn't have told you all this. In fact, the only thing I have to do to goad you on is simply train with you, as I seem to remind you of somebody unpleasant." Konga suddenly snickered, then hopped to another branch. "We'd best go back in. We don't want our beloved leader to get captured the night before the battle, right?"
"Oh, right," Celebi said, embarrassed. The three went back inside.
By concentrating on her powers and drawing on what influence she had left over time, Celebi was able to transfer Temporal Tower from the Sea of Time to the wide open fields of what was formerly Amp Plains. At least, it looked like Amp Plains to Trey. And the broken down, in the middle of collapse, rugged stone tower was (he realized with a feeling of dread) the location he had first arrived at when dragged into the future. That place had been where his best friends had died.
The darkness struggled to come out in Trey's mind, but he kept it back. Yes he was doing this for revenge, but he wasn't going to lose himself to that revenge. It seemed like ages that he had been training for this moment, for this battle. It seemed almost unreal that they were all doing something so different, finally making good on their words.
As the rebels prepared themselves, a wave of Primals came out of the tower. They came not just from the door, but seeping through the holes and leaping out the cracks. Their force seemed smaller than the gathered rebels and it all seemed to be mortal Pokemon. No legendary Primals were to be seen.
But a roar filled the sky, intimidating all Pokemon on the field, both sane and Primal. Something white was thrown from the top of the tower. An avian skeleton clattered to the ground, scattering its bones across the field. But this avian Pokemon was huge.
"That was Zapdos!" Mew called out in horror.
Although he wasn't sure what incited it after that macabre challenge, the battle was swiftly in full chaos. There had been a plan; the ninja unit under Bubbles was to locate leaders and put them out of commission quickly. But as Trey watched, there seemed to be no leaders on the field for the Primals. They were all fighting on their own, zig-zagging through the rebels, sticking to no one foe. Rather, they caused as much chaos as they could, not even bothering to finish off foes brought close to unconsciousness.
A Primal Duskull came at him, so he jumped out of the way and struck the Ghost with Leaf Blade. It did not come back for revenge, but set after its next line-of-sight target. That did not seem typical of Primal battles. Other times he had encountered these insane Pokemon, they would focus on one target to the exlusion of all others, sometimes beating on the corpse long after it had died.
This chaos caused the rebels' strategies to break down. Their tactics came to be stopping the crazed Primals from their wild rampages and preserving themselves. Trey scrambled out of range of an Earthquake from one of his peers trying to stop three Primals. Then, there was another roar from Primal Dialga, this one longer, louder, and stronger.
You're a ninja now. You should go scale that tower and kill that horrible beast that destroyed your friends. Kill him and you kill them all…
And Celebi, Trey forced himself to think through the sudden sharp hiss from the darkness. He had promised his loyalty to Celebi. She was kept alive by her power, which was tied into Dialga's powers. Thus… he couldn't kill Primal Dialga.
But once his mind cleared, he had to dodge five successive attacks from five different foes. Trey darted around, trying to find a spot to observe from. As he kept getting attacked, he had to go underground to get a moment to think and observe. What was going on?
While he was underground, he heard fierce screams and shouts from all around him. The fight had gotten more savage. But not from more Primals coming from the Tower. The rebels were now fighting amongst each other. Why?
Revenge, the darkness hissed again.
Trey clutched his fists tight. The darkness. The Primals had stirred up the rebel forces and then their leader had empowered the darkness within everyone on the battlefield. So now, the rebels had fallen prey to their inner darkness and had turned Primal.
What about Celebi?
Feeling a sense of panic, the Grovyle shot out of the ground, quickly attacking a Golem who thought to attack him then. Trey then spun around, spotting an old passage gate (now useless) as the highest point in sight. He bolted for that vantage point, swerving out and around the attacks of others. Everyone seemed savage. None seemed to be fighting out of fear, or of any form of purpose. He saw a Kadabra get an Iron Spike jabbed straight through his head, getting killed instantly. That was only the first of five deaths he witnessed heading for the gate. It made his stomach churn, but he focused himself on finding Celebi. He had a promise to keep and he would do so.
When he got on top of the sparking gate, all he saw at first was savage chaos. It seemed like every Pokemon but him was trying to kill each other, no matter who they were. He caught sight of Bubbles killing Scepta, for goodness sakes, by taking advantage of an open wound to send fire past her tough exoskeleton and into her vital soft tissues. Then a Hariyama bashed Bubbles to the ground with two fists and stomped her flat.
Trey was unable to help himself. It made him sick to see this. While his head was whirling, he caught sight of one calm individual in the midst of this hell. Floating above the crowd, there was a phantom figure that blended in almost perfectly with the darkness. He had white hair spilling over his face and down his back; his eyes serenely glowed turquoise blue. He didn't touch anyone in the battle, and no one dared to touch him. He was simply observing in plain sight.
Why was that Pokemon so calm? Trey couldn't imagine the reason. He forced himself to look away from the stranger to find Celebi. This time, he spotted her with Mew, some distance from the gate. They seemed panicked, trying to talk about something while dodging attacks around them.
Trey bolted from the gate, heading for the two legends. More and more Pokemon fell around him, making him more of a target. Sometimes he had to throw off one pursuer by heading straight for another Primal. He kept checking the sky for signs of the two. They could, in a bad situation like this, make themselves almost unnoticed. Or so he had heard.
Just as he was thinking that he missed them, he saw Mew being hassled by seven Pokemon. Trey managed to Leaf Blade one before Mew zapped nearly every Pokemon within a large radius with Discharge. She only missed Celebi and Trey.
"Trey!" Celebi came down to him. "You endured that call."
He shot another Leaf Blade at a Primal that was getting dangerously close to noticing them. "I have things to do still."
"I don't think anyone else survived the call, though," Mew said, right before something big came flying at them. They got out of the way of the rampaging Gyarados. After a bit, she turned to Celebi. "We have to make the attempt now, or we might lose too many."
Still looking bewildered, Celebi nodded. "R-right. Trey, come with us."
The three of them headed for Temporal Tower, dodging attacks and trying to keep attention off themselves. Mew came over to Trey's side as they came out of the battle zone. "Primal Dialga is part Steel, part Dragon, so we're not the best team to face him. But we don't have a choice now. Keep his attention off Celebi while she assimilates the full power of Time. Once he's rendered less of a threat, I'll search for the instability and may have to send you into the Tower to fix something. If I can't find it, we'll have to hold off until Mewtwo and his ward gets back."
Trey nodded. "Okay. Just let me know what needs to be done. So what is the instability that led to the collapse?"
"I'm afraid that we didn't have time to confirm what exactly," Celebi admitted. "They know where our base is located now, which is why we had to call this before we were fully prepared…" the tone of regret was strong in her voice as her words trailed off.
"I pray for the mercy of Arceus for this mission to succeed," Mew added quietly.
Trey had barely heard her over the noise and chaos of the battle, even as it was now behind them. He felt that sense of doubt and unease again. If even their leaders had doubts, if even a legendary had to pray… no, they had to succeed. There would probably never be another chance.
Ahead of them, there was a shift in the air preceeding the appearance of Primal Dialga. He was a massive Pokemon; the two legends with Trey were both smaller than him, but the Master of Time was many times bigger than him. A ring like a sunburst encircled the middle of his torso, but this was not as welcoming as the sign of Arceus. A deep red gemstone was set on his chest. But this wasn't like the legendary Pokemon that had been lovingly illustrated in the books of the old days, Trey noticed. Primal Dialga was a dark blue and seemed to have harsher and sharper edges.
Primal Dialga growled at them. "CELEBI, MEW, YOU DARE DEFY ME?"
"You have lost your mind!" Mew shouted, flying at him and hitting him with a burst of fire that appeared around her body.
Their job was to keep his attention off Celebi. After checking to see that she was beginning to focus her powers, Trey ran over to join Mew. He gave them an edge by casting Agility, allowing all three of them to move and work faster. Or, as it turned out, to move at equal speed to Primal Dialga. He may have been large and bulky, but he was fast. He blasted Trey with a beam of light from his gem, then tried to bite at Mew. The tiny feline Pokemon then managed to call on an illusion of a Machamp, which struck Primal Dialga hard with its four powerful arms. In a fury, the corrupted legend screamed.
Far away in a distant land, Mewtwo was helping Sally by sparring with her. He tried to remain strict and firm as her teacher, but there was something about the match that reminded him of sparring against Mew. There was a touch of lightheartedness and pride that leaked into his composure when she was doing well.
Then he felt a distant scream in his mind, one of pain and finality. It jarred Mewtwo to his core. While all his Psychic connections had been muffled for goodness knows how long this darkness had settled, this one was as sharp and as clear as it had been when the sun was in the sky. And he knew exactly why that was.
Then Sally gave him a strong punch to the chest. He wasn't expecting it this time and got knocked down onto the sand. When he didn't immediately get back up, she ran over and gave him a look of concern. "Mewtwo, what's wrong?" she signed.
He felt a strong impulse to strike her without holding back. Nobody was supposed to do that to him. But Mewtwo held his darkness back. "They… he killed Mew."
While she was shocked, the darkness in Mewtwo's soul tried different tacts. He should go and destroy Dialga, whose fault it was for Mew's death. No, he needed to protect Sally and get her across the ocean. He should go, he could easily overpower any Primal, this whole plan with Sally was needless and unreliable.
"No," he said aloud. Mew had asked him to protect Sally. Mew had trusted him to do so. And since that was the last thing she had asked of him, he wouldn't fail.
When Sally knelt down and hugged him, Mewtwo realized that he was shaking.
Back at the battlefield, Celebi was frozen with fear as she saw Mew's broken body hit the ground. Trey was shocked as well, but then grew concerned. Having lost her focus, there was no chance now of Celebi taking over. Primal Dialga looked angrily at her, murderous intent showing in his eyes. Trey hit the Primal with a Stun Seed, then grabbed Celebi and ran back into the chaos of the battle.
"What…?" she started to ask and struggle.
"Shh," he hissed. "We can't lose you too."
All around them were the Pokemon that were struggling madly for survival. A few came after them, but then Primal Dialga gave off a horrific roar that rattled the fighters to their bones, all across the battlefield. Covering for Celebi the best he could, Trey dropped down and tried to hide among the fallen. More and more of the fighters were losing. But this battle didn't end in a safe unconsciousness. This battle ended in death.
In time, an unnerving thing happen. Silence began to grow. As the fights grew fewer, the screams and clashes grew less. Finally, a lone and badly injured Duskull killed a Milotic as she finished off a Steelix. It seemed to be the only other Pokemon left alive. Although Trey looked all over, he could not see that creepy phantom Pokemon from before. Perhaps it had been killed as well?
There was another mighty roar. Primal Dialga finally appeared at the battlefield itself. The Duskull hissed, but then a light from the corrupted legend hit him. He stopped before he went to kill Primal Dialga.
Trey felt more whispers in his mind, but brushed them off. He listened as Dialga spoke. "THIS TIME OF FOOLS HAS ENDED. YOU, THE VICTOR, WHAT IS YOUR NAME?"
"I am called Drakken, sir," the Duskull replied.
"DRAKKEN. WE MAY HAVE ENDED THE VAIN QUEST OF THESE FOOLISH REBELS, BUT THERE ARE OTHERS HIDING OUT IN THE WORLD. WE MUST BE RID OF ALL TRAITORS. YOU WILL HELP ME."
"It would be an honor, my lord," Drakken said, in the same kind of utter politeness that had won over so many in Trey's home time.
"GOOD. BUT YOU ARE TOO WEAK AS YOU ARE." Primal Dialga shook himself, then cast a strong white glow over Drakken the Duskull. When it cleared, the Ghost Pokemon had skipped directly over his second evolutionary form of a Dusclops and wound up as an even more intimidating Dusknoir. "WE MUST QUICKLY LOCATE OUR BIGGEST THREATS, INCLUDING MY SISTER PALKIA AND MY FORMER SERVANT CELEBI. I ALMOST HAD HER, BUT SHE MANAGED TO RUN AWAY."
He then vanished, taking Drakken and Temporal Tower with him.
That Duskull was Drakken? But then… a myriad of questions popped into Trey's mind. A movement reminded him of his duty. He let Celebi go.
Her pink body was now covered in mud and blood; he probably wasn't looking too good either. Celebi didn't even bother trying to look cheerful. She was too horrified at the sight around them. "How could this have happened?" she said, in a tone of helplessness. "And Dialga…" she suddenly got alarmed. "Trey, we have to get out of here, now!" She cast a blinding light.
When it cleared, they were in a cluster of dark trees, overlooking the battlefield. As Trey tried to comprehend how many Pokemon had died in this one battle, there was a sudden hissing sound. A wall of silver energy had appeared at either end of the field. The walls began to push towards each other. As they passed over the bodies, the flesh was stripped from the bone. In what felt like a brief time, the field had been cleared from a blanket of corpses to a packed boneyard. If anyone else had been alive in that, they were certainly dead now.
The two survivors were there for a long time.
