AN: Apologies for the delay - life got hectic. I hope this chapter is worth the wait! Thank you for reading. :)

The helicopter landed back on top of Team Rocket Headquarters. Wobbuffet, still shining with a mirror coat, circled around Giovanni, keeping a watchful eye on the Earth Leader. Jessie stood behind her former boss, pressing his own pistol into his back. Mondo and James walked together behind, hands in pockets. Mondo shared Team Rocket gossip and what had happened since Jessie, James, and Meowth had left the organization.

"—And you remember Steve, the actuary? Iced."

"No!" James gasped.

"Yep. Questioned the old Prime Minister's life insurance policy…"

"So everything was strict after he became 'Earth Leader' then."

"It was awful."

Giovanni huffed and gestured towards himself. "Watch it! I'm right here!"

Mondo ignored him. "And then he made us start bowing to him whenever he entered a room…said it was for morale."

Giovanni sighed and stopped, letting the pistol dig into him. "You make it sound so horrible, Mondo." After a push from Jessie, he started walking again. "Our profits were never better."

Mondo paused to press his thumb onto a scanner beside a solid-looking door. A green light blinked, a click sounded, and Mondo held the door open, bowing towards Giovanni. "After you."

"Wise-ass."

"Your office, sir." Mondo bowed again.

"Fine." Giovanni stepped through the threshold, waiting to be pushed forward. He turned his head. "Well, are you going to come in or not?"

Jessie glanced at James, who nodded his head. James stepped in, followed by Jessie, Mondo, and Wobbuffet.

"Nice place!" Wobbuffet remarked to no one in particular.

The office was lavish. The carpet was a plush, a deep red, with exotic potted plants lining the walls. Fine pens and stationery were carefully placed on his desk, and a brass lamp illuminated a dark paperweight in the shape of an obelisk. Giovanni, back turned to his captors, sighed.

Jessie followed Giovanni as he walked to the other side of his desk, still pressing the gun against his back. "Now make a call to the Parliament. And resign."

"Whatever you say."

James leaned forward. "Where's his phone?"

Mondo gestured towards the obelisk paperweight. Giovanni, flicked it over, and a video projection rose from the desk.

Giovanni smirked. "Computer: Initiate Rock Slide Alpha for One, Confirmation Nidoqueen-4—"

"Stop him!" Mondo lunged towards the desk. "He'll kill us all!"

Jessie pulled the trigger only to realize the cartridge was empty. She dropped the gun in disbelief.

"—And initiate HQ Lockdown and Self-Destruct, Confirmation Persian-8-Alpha…"

The floor opened up beneath Giovanni and Giovanni alone. Before dropping out of view, his eyes lit up with pure delight. Just as quickly as the panel in the floor disappeared, it reappeared. The door to Giovanni's office then slid shut and locked automatically. A red light flashed from a single bulb above the door.

A robotic voice spoke through the video projection. "Lockdown complete. Self-destruct in fifteen seconds…"

Mondo slid over the desk, knocking down the lamp, and started clawing at the carpet.

"…ten seconds…"

James tapped the video projection and sputtered, "Uh, Rock Slide Alpha for—"

"…nine…Confirmation Persian-8-Alpha prevents further adjustments…seven…"

Jessie hugged Wobbuffet and shouted, "Counter! Mirror coat! Safeguard! Anything, please! Just do it!"

"…four…"

With one arm, Jessie yanked James behind her, and James pulled Mondo beside him.

"…three…two…one…" A siren wailed through the room, and then, fire.

In a matter of seconds, the skyscraper that had been home to Team Rocket operations for decades was reduced to rubble.

A piece of the wreckage shook, and then a shock of blue jumped out.

James, a thin trail of smoke billowing out behind him, crawled out behind Wobbuffet and said, "That was close."

"You're telling me." Jessie licked her fingers and pressed them against one of James's wayward hairs which was glowing with hot ash.

Mondo stuttered, the words were incomprehensible. Flabbergasted, he sat down on a large piece of debris, holding his head in his hands.

/

Misty's shouts of "Code Miracleberry" through a megaphone had turned the tide of the battle. The Officers Jenny started wandering away from the field, dazed, and the enemy Ditto returned to their base form. The tanks continued firing, and the soldiers continued advancing, but their intensity was less than before. The rare non-Ditto Pokemon in their ranks attacked only sporadically, and the opposing hyper beams and earthquakes didn't do much damage thanks to Alakazam's force field.

Charizard was in his element, weaving through Pokemon and humans alike, landing accurate blasts. Each lick of flame scattered the confused Officers Jenny and separated the soldiers from their stockpiles of ammunition. Venusaur, still underground with his Ditto copies, had sunk several tanks. A trail of disturbed earth traced his path. Wartortle stood on the front lines, informing others of shifting strategies.

A small group huddled around the turtle, who spoke forcefully. "Okay, now that we've got the upper hand, we're going to concentrate on taking down the big attackers one-by-one. Like that Team Rocket Dragonite…" His voice trailed off as the Dragonite in question charged a hyper beam.

The white light screeched across the sky, arcing above the battle—and Alakazam's force field. It fell back down, gaining speed. There was a tiny sound, a single blip, as it slipped through the force field and neared its intended target.

Wartortle shouted, but there was nothing that could stop the attack at this point. "Alakazam!"

Brock kneeled over an injured Marill behind Alakazam. He had set up a medic tent of sorts here, guarded by the powerful psychic-type. Brock's hands slowed. He stopped dressing the Marill's wound and rose as a bright light approached.

The hyper beam hit Alakazam right between his eyes. Alakazam, dropping his spoons into the mud, fell over in a heap. The protective force field dissipated. Bullets and attacks from enemy Pokemon started landing, and the ground shook every few seconds from consecutive earthquake attacks.

"Not good…" Brock scooped up the Marill and another injured Pokemon, an Aipom. He ducked and ran towards the forest. "Let's go!" Dozens of Pokemon followed him, dragging their wounded friends behind them.

Wartortle gritted his teeth and released a hydro pump attack towards the Team Rocket Nidoqueen, the source of the earthquakes. She dodged his attack and retaliated with yet another earthquake, which knocked Wartortle off his feet. He tried to land another water attack on her only to be hit again. Wartortle got up again and again, but each time, he was hit. And each time, his attacks—and his stance—got weaker.

Charizard only noticed that Alakazam's force field had disappeared when a bullet nicked the edge of his wing. Hissing in pain, he dove towards the soldiers firing at him. Flames erupted from his nostrils. Another bullet hit his wing. And another. Charizard attempted to sweep fire across the soldiers' formation, but he could not control his flight. He was falling.

As his some of his allies mounted last-ditch attacks and others fled the battlefield, Psyduck kept walking forward. He passed Misty, whose voice had gone hoarse from shouting out the names of attacks. He passed an Abra, who, in a panic, was teleporting to random locations on the battlefield, blinking in and out of his vision. He passed another human on their side, hidden from the battle, curled into a ball behind the remains of a destroyed building. Psyduck tilted his head as he reached the front.

He began to glow. It wasn't a concentrated glow, like that of a hyper beam. The light surrounded his whole body. The Earth's pull no longer had any effect on him, and he floated a few feet into the air. Psyduck was no longer yellow; he was gold, radiant as any Ho-Oh. Just at the point where the light obscured Psyduck's form, it grew in size, expanding out towards the soldiers and the tanks.

The world turned white. Sight no longer meant anything. Then, a sound shook the Earth, an echoing crack that seemed to clap reality itself, and sound no longer meant anything. The silence afterwards lingered.

But, in time, the light began to fade. The shells of destroyed tanks were revealed, as was the resulting carnage to the soldiers and Team Rocket affiliates. Smoke trailed from the ground, and the air stank from burning plastic and metal. One by one, Pokemon and their human allies became aware of their surroundings once more, shaking their heads to try and regain their senses.

Misty struggled to hear her own voice over the ringing in her ears. "Did…did Psyduck just explode?" She whispered to a Lickitung who sat down beside her. "Are we dead? Is this...real?" She examined her hands to make sure they existed. To make sure that Psyduck's explosion wasn't the result of a near-death hallucination.

"Beats me," the Lickitung said. The pink Pokemon retracted her tongue to clear it from the taste of ash.

Charizard's eyes lit up at the sight of the destroyed tanks, and he roared in triumph even while clutching his wings and wincing. "Yeah! We did it!"

But Wartortle frowned. He limped forward toward the tanks and started digging underneath. He brushed dirt away from a green leg, which twitched in response. "Oh thank—" The leg started turning purple and losing detail. In Wartortle's claws, it became slime. He recoiled. A Ditto stared back at him.

Wartortle scanned the brown and grey for any hint of Venusaur. He dug and dug, shoveling piles of dirt the size of his body. He then tripped over something—someone. Someone dead.

Charizard walked up next to him. "What are you doing?"

Wartortle didn't respond.

"Oh. No. Oh. Oh…the explosion…" Charizard reached out towards his friend.

"The explosion."

"But wait…Alakazam was hurt and out of it. Who—who exploded?"

Wartortle crossed his arms, staying close to Venusaur's body. "Psyduck, I think. He didn't know—"

"Venusaur…"

A small distance away, a powerful-looking Golduck, hands on its head, lied unconscious.

/

Each branch in Bill's garden was lined with a light dusting of snow that gleamed blue in the moonlight.

"It's all below us." Pikachu closed her eyes and felt a grid of electrical lines running beneath her feet, leading to stories of power, organized and housed in cubes.

"There's gotta be a way to get in." Ash shrugged and pointed to a small shed with a door at the corner of the property. "That'd do it."

They walked across to that door, stepping on half-frozen vines and shrubs along the way. Ash then attempted to open the door.

"You really think it would be unlocked?"

"Heh." Ash smiled before ramming into the door full-force. It wouldn't budge.

"I got it." The door was locked electronically, a security system with a sensor on the upper right hand side. Pikachu shot out a controlled thundershock at it. The device whined in a high pitch, and the lock clicked.

"You make it look easy." Ash turned the knob, revealing a brightly lit staircase.

Descending the stairs, Pikachu and Ash were met by the hum of a functioning ventilation system. Rows of servers spread out like a labyrinth. Pikachu fried each one they passed. Ash's sneakers squeaked against the immaculate floor.

"There's got to be more than this…can you sense anything? An Aura?"

"Me? There's no life down here that I can tell." He paused. "Uh, there's a flicker of something, but I don't even know if it's real or I'm just feeling things. It's almost like a ghost. I'm probably just making it up. I don't know."

"Weird."

"This is all really weird, Pikachu."

The data center seemed to stretch on forever. Hours passed as they wandered through, and Pikachu began to wear out from shocking so much equipment. Out of breath, she propped herself up against a server. She concentrated on the electricity only inches away from her back. She followed its path as it snaked through the floor and consolidated in another device.

But this device—a solid black cylinder—wasn't a server. And the electricity changed somehow within it. The electricity outside and inside this cylinder seemed to be of different types. Pikachu shook herself of the thought: electricity was electricity, and that was that. She had never felt electricity having something like a color to it before.

"I have to go in there."

Ash nodded and stepped back. Pikachu stood still, cheeks bristling with static, feeling for what to do. Without realizing it, she had surrounded herself with a powerful electric field. And then she put one foot forward and sniffed the air. Another foot. After a few steps, she had slipped through a solid wall, into the center of the power structure. As she felt herself transform into something not-physical but not-energy, she wondered—just for a second—if this was what it was like for Porygon who went online.

In here, Pikachu's sight was the same whether her eyes were open or not. But it wasn't dark. She wasn't blind. No. The separation of charges was clear all around her, bright as day, bright as lightning.

A long beam, lightning-like, stretched before her. There were no ends to it. As Pikachu approached it, the beam displayed…types…of electricity. One color would flash occasionally, then the other. One type, color, kind, of electricity oscillated evenly, its amplitude tightly controlled. The other seemed wild, untamed, and would move in an unpredictable wave. Like Meowth's heartbeat. Like a Pokemon's heartbeat.

Pikachu put her paw up to the beam and felt the urge to pull it apart. She felt silly, like a human child playing cat's cradle except with unbridled power, but continued stretching the charges away from each other.

Something must have happened because Pikachu couldn't see any more, and she was solid. She felt her own solid weight standing up on the cool floor.

Ash covered his head as the black cylinder exploded into shrapnel. An arc of electricity shot through the ceiling and ripped it apart. It had opened up the ground above them, dusting the servers with plaster and clay and dirt. Moonlight seeped through the opening.

There was another arc rising from where the cylinder once stood, where Pikachu now stood. It was red and light and it shot up into the sky, circling around the moon.