Today is truly a momentous day, His Majesty thought to himself as he soared above his territory on top of his beloved Charizard.
Charizard was not his first Pokemon- but still was his favorite. Of course he wouldn't ever admit that openly to his first Pokemon, Eevee, which was now a Vaporeon. One reason was simply its color of course- it was a rare black Charmander which he had found off the coast of the Kanto region many years ago. And the moment that he had seen the color of its coat- he had know that he wanted it for himself.
He couldn't help but think about the other odd Pokemon he had seen today- that one that that child Ash Ketchum had. And he really was a child- His Majesty had assumed that people had exaggerated about Ash's young age, but no, he seemed no older than eleven! And if even half of what he had heard about him was true, well then, that would still mean that the boy had accomplished much for such a tender age.
Truth be told, he felt very bad about having imprisoned Ash. It wasn't something he had wanted to do, but he had known that eventually Ash Ketchum would have to be dealt with for the good of Galea. Ash, much like the rest of the Elite Four, would probably never understand why he had done what he had along with Selena and the others. Of course, he would try to explain things to Ash once he had handled Selena, and if Ash agreed to sign an agreement that would ensure he would cause no more problems to him he would be freed or else… well, His Majesty would think of the 'or else' part when it came to that.
It didn't take far too long for him to reach the southern border, which was smoldering with fires from the projectiles that Selena and her ships had launched at his forces.
His Majesty growled as even from this height, he could see the bodies of the dead floating in the sea. It didn't matter if they were from his side or Selena's- it saddened him all the same, for he knew that it was Selena's fault that those people fought his, and none of their own. It occurred to him how easily, had fate been different, he could have ended up in their shoes.
To die was a sadness, and to kill was a sin, he reflected as he descended. It appeared that all of his forces had been decimated, despite putting up a brave last stand. Thankfully though the majority of them had had enough sense to retreat rather than to start fighting to the death.
Not that she would care. This was all probably a game to her- and those people chess pieces to be sacrificed simply so that she could fulfill her aim of beating him.
But if it was a fight that she wanted… well, he was going to give it to her.
He landed on a hill overlooking the landscape from where he was and his Charizard were very clearly visible to anyone with eyes to see.
He saw the invaders disembark from their ships. All of them were wearing some sort of weird costume which reminded him of those old space movies that he had seen long ago… yeah, they looked like those kinds of old astronaut costumes.
But it was nearly impossible to miss her. Was she actually wearing that traditional ceremonial armor? If so, why was she dressing up her other soldiers like they were from a bad science-fiction movie?
She took off her helmet, and with good reason- that thing must have weighed several pounds and severely limited your peripheral vision.
His Majesty's fists clenched and his Charizard let out a loud roar. Yup, it was her all right. She looked exactly the same as she had all those years ago.
And it was clear that she had seen him. He waited for her to make her move. She moved away from her followers quickly enough and walked towards him.
His Majesty could almost feel the hatred and rage emanating from her as she crept towards him.
"What is the meaning of this violence?" His Majesty asked. "What are you doing? Do you want to unravel all that we have done? Your stupidity and greed has cost us the Barrier, even now I can feel it thinning and weakening. If you keep up like this Arceus will-"
"I will deal with the Barrier soon enough," she spat out.
"Well, you were never very smart, were you teacher?" His Majesty asked. "If you are truly so blinded by a desire to defeat me, your better…. well then let us begin. I challenge you to a battle!"
Selena snorted. "You challenge me? You are the Elite Four Champion you fool… you are not allowed to challenge gym leaders. Or have you forgotten? And you dare call yourself my better."
"I don't think I'm the one who's forgotten," His Majesty said. "You're the first ever Elite Four Champion… the rules don't even apply to you like they do to other people."
"But you still want to challenge me? You are going to fight against my own special rule?" she asked. "Fine then, I presume you already know what it is."
"Ah yes, an Inverse Battle," His Majesty said. "All battles with you are Inverse Battles if you want, no? Moves that are normally super effective are not effective at all and vice-versa, yes, I know, and I am ready. I have been ready for a long time."
She sent out a Skarmory. That was new… he had not seen that one before. He had sent out his Zoroark. There was no point in transforming it, so he let it out as it was.
"Feint Attack," His Majesty said with a grin. The attack landed despite Skarmory's attempts to dodge it, and it fell to the ground. "Dark is good against Steel now."
She didn't reply and sent out an Alakazam.
"Slash!" His Majesty ordered. His Zoroark clawed the opposing Alakazam and did a lot of damage, but not enough.
"Psychic!" Selena said and the attack his Zoroark. The attack was strong… but not strong enough and another Slash ended her Alakazam.
She sent out a Milotic and he switched up with his first Pokemon, his Vaporeon.
"Water Pulse!" His Majesty said. It was strong enough that it took out her Milotic in one hit.
And now Selena was getting nervous. He could see that she had not anticipated for how well he was doing.
"Ninetales, go!" Selena said.
"Nice try, but Ice Beam," His Majesty said. The attack took out her Ninetales in one hit.
"What…?" Selena said in disbelief, now clearly shocked.
"What?" His Majesty asked. "What were you expecting? That I had spent all my time just gardening and tending to my berries, or frolicking around this place? I have been training, teacher, training in the mountains where the Elite Four called home. I have abandoned my other duties so that I could train… and only train."
"All of that so you could beat me?"
"Oh, do not flatter yourself teacher, defeating you is as easy as lifting my hand," His Majesty said. "I have surpassed what you could dream of. No, I trained for a different reason… and I must profess that it never did occur to me that you would go to such lengths just to challenge me again. It was only when you brought that boy here that I was sure that you were serious."
She was shaking with anger now.
"And I suppose you managed to convince yourself that my earlier victory over you was a fluke?" His Majesty asked. "That I won that time so many years ago only because you did not have your strongest Pokemon with you? Well, I suppose you were wrong, were you not? True, you were bereft of your strongest Pokemon at that time but it would not have changed the outcome of our fight." At least, His Majesty thought so. He could never have been very sure what would've happened had Selena had her original team with her so long ago- after all he was beating her but then again he was much stronger than before.
She didn't answer now and sent out a Dragonite. It was her oldest and first Pokemon, and His Majesty remembered his days as a student about how Selena would talk about how proud she was to have a Pokemon like that by her side.
"Surf," His Majesty said. His Vaporeon unleashed the Water type move and finished off her Dragonite in a hit. "Are you forgetting your own rules? Or did you think that your Pokemon's power would negate any advantage that type gave me?"
"Go! Frosslass!" she answered, though it was clear at this point she had no hope of winning.
"Ice Beam," His Majesty countered and finished it off in a single hit yet again.
Well, it appeared that Vaporeon was actually pretty good after all, he thought to himself.
Selena's Badge drifted towards him, but that wasn't what he had come for and didn't bother claiming it. And given that he was Elite Four Champion now, he was forbidden from collecting any more Badges anyway so it would soon drift back towards Selena. But for now, its protection over Selena was gone for a moment. Selena dropped to her knees and she was shaking… oddly even. It looked like she was having some kind of a seizure. Perhaps having her entire team knocked away like leaves in a thunderstorm was too much for her. Or maybe it was the Badges- she had been Elite Four Champion for so long and absorbed so much of their energy, perhaps it was just a side effect. Or maybe it was the inevitable fact of aging, after all, the Badges did extend life to a very large extent, but His Majesty had always thought that it was stupid to think that they could extend your life forever. Sure, they could extend life to several thousand years, but he was sure that at one point, you'd either just go insane thanks to living for so long, or that some sort of irreversible neurological degeneration would lead to eventual dementia and death. All of those were theories which could explain why the former Empress of Galea was twitching in the dirt at his feet this very instant.
But His Majesty knew that there was not time for pity right now. He had thought about this moment quite a lot, and knew it was necessary to finish her. She would always be a threat- the rules didn't bind her like it did the other Elite Four members. And he very well couldn't freeze her like he had done with the other members of the Elite Four- she was too powerful for that, which also made imprisoning her like he had done with Ash impractical. She would escape someday.
And it wasn't just that. It was that he felt that if there was any justice in the universe, she deserved to die. It wasn't just for the crimes he felt she had done upon him- yes, she had said that he would amount to nothing. And yes, he had run away from home thanks to that. And yes, his parents were dead… he had come back to find that out.
But it wasn't just that. She was unnecessarily cruel- she had attempted to usurp him and lead to so many deaths. And, His Majesty couldn't help but think, those deaths that had so recently occurred were in part his fault. He hadn't been sure how strong Selena was, so before challenging her to a battle he wanted to see just how powerful she was and wanted to send a few forces to challenge her. Of course, he had swept through her easily, but he hadn't known about that earlier. If he had, he wouldn't have bothered with this whole charade of a naval battle. He would have just swept out on his Charizard and finished her himself. And he would have been here so much earlier if he hadn't spent time in making sure that Ash was imprisoned, but the thing was that once he had seen that the boy had come so close to his island, he couldn't but help try to warp him here and catch hold of him. But now he regretted that as well, if he had been here earlier several lives could have been saved. He could've captured Ash Ketchum some other day.
But now another problem had arisen- now that he was sure that she had to die, he realized that he had spent so much time in trying to convince himself as to why she should die that he had given so very little thought as to how he was going to carry it out.
Come to think of it now, it occurred to him that she may be nearly impossible to kill given how much of the Badge's energy she must have imbibed after all those millennia. Of course, if there was anyone in Galea who could do it, it would be himself, the current Elite Four Champion… but just how was he going to go about it? No weapon would be useful. His Badge was almost worthless too in that regard.
But what of his Pokemon? He nodded at his Charizard, and he could tell that his partner knew what had to be done. His Charizard stepped forward and opened its jaws.
Ash had tried everything to escape from his current predicament, and those tries had become increasingly desperate as time went on.
First of all, when all of his attempts to break the chains using his Badges had failed, he had tried breaking them manually. But given that his only tools were his arms, this failed miserably.
What he tried next was using the Badges to try and shrink his arms. He imagined them becoming thin like spaghetti. He wasn't sure if this was going to work, and it didn't for that matter.
He then remembered an old legend that he had heard of, that of Gym Leader Wang Chuks who had supposedly lived before the first Empress of Galea and was said to be able to transform into Pokemon using the Badge's energy. Mr. Jennings had said that it was probably just a rumor because he had never heard of anyone else being able to do it, but Ash decided to try and give it a go.
He closed his eyes, breathed in, and then out, and then pictured himself turning into a Pikachu, as a Pikachu was the Pokemon that he was most familiar with. He concentrated really hard until he was blue in the face. Nope, no change at all.
With that option exhausted he sighed and took out his Pokedex. It was unlikely that it had an escape plan in there but maybe he could find something…
Oh yeah, he remembered. Bill had taken his Pokedex after he had told him that Selena had bugged it that night before they left for Kalos and ultimately Galea. It was kind of hard for Ash to remember it given all the stuff he had to do that night and most of it, really, was a sort of haze. Maybe it had been upgraded or something.
It was in his back pocket though, and hard to get to with the chains around him, but with a little bit of stretching he managed to get it out.
There still wasn't an option to call, but there was an option to message. The only contacts though were Professor Oak, Professor Sycamore, Bill, and Gary Oak.
Ash chose Gary Oak and began typing a message,
Gary, I'm sorry I'm not with you guys, but I was taken and kidnapped by His Majesty, the Eighth Gym Leader. I'm not sure exactly where I'm imprisoned, but it's somewhere to the north of his island. I'm in the mountains to the north of the island. Plz send help ASAP.
He then hit send for a message to appear:
'There appears to be no signal in this area. Would you like for this message to be saved and sent when a signal can be found?'
Ash sighed. Of course. He had forgotten all about it, no telephones worked in His Majesty's island for some reason. It was probably related to that. But, in case he did manage to escape, it would be good to know that at the very least the others would know where he was, so he said that yes, he wanted it sent as soon as they got a signal.
After that he got to work on something else. He thought about grabbing one of His Poke Balls, but they were scattered so far that no matter how he tried he couldn't go far enough with the chains on him. The chains were pretty loose but prevented him from walking too far away from the platform or high enough where Pikachu or Hoopa would be tied so he could free one of them.
He then began looking around to see if there were some pebbles around. If he found one, he could try and hit the central button of one of his Poke Balls and release a Pokemon inside.
But no such luck. There wasn't anything near the prison, which Ash assumed was on purpose. He thought he might try his shoe for this purpose rather than a pebble, but all he managed to accomplish was to send it further away from him than it already was.
It was then that he slumped against the ground and watched the sun's position in the sky. He had never felt so defeated before. There was no way out of this place that he could imagine.
Maybe you could try doing what they did in that movie, you know? Hoopa said. I think it was called 127 Hours or something.
"I'm not going to cut my arm off," Ash said. "I don't even have anything that could even remotely do that."
Wait, that's how it ends? I didn't watch the whole thing and I just kind of assumed that he wriggled out or something. That's kind of more like Saw, you know now that's a movie that I really liked. At least the first one though.
Ash had heard that there were deposits of oil beneath the ground. Maybe he could extract some using the badges and lubricate his chains? He tried, but he couldn't feel more than two feet below the ground using his Badges. He then tried helping Hoopa transform into its Unbound form using his Badges. It wasn't something that he thought was possible and for that matter didn't work either.
Ash! Can you hear me?
"Of course I can hear you Hoopa," Ash said.
I didn't say anything, Hoopa said.
"Huh?" Ash asked. "Then what was that?"
Ah, I see you're much closer now, and Ash realized that the tone of this person or creature's mind was different from that of Hoopa's. It was the same voice he had heard coming from this island earlier.
"Uh, new phone who dis?" Ash said.
I apologize, my ability to communicate with you is severely restricted. I am Arthur.
"Wait, Arthur?" Ash asked. "Arthur of the Elite Four?"
What's going on? Hoopa asked.
"Uh, Hoopa, there's someone communicating with me," Ash said. "Could you try not talking too? It feels like a conference call with too many people and it's weird trying to talk in my head."
Ugh, fine. But whoever it is, I can't sense them at all. Are you sure that there's someone really trying to talk to you?
"Yeah," Ash said.
Yes, I am Arthur of the Elite Four. I am currently imprisoned on top of the mountains here. I lost you for quite a while when I noticed that you had suddenly vanished from where I was communicating with you, and then I found you here…
"Wait, were you the one who transported us here?" Ash asked.
No, no, I lack such power in this state. It was most probably either Selena or Phineas who did this.
"You're alive?" Ash asked.
Yes, all of us are, but we're imprisoned within ice. But Phineas forgot one thing when he did this to us, namely, that the sun shines on the part of the cavern I am in. Over time it has defrosted me to some extent and with the help of my Psychic type Pokemon I can occasionally look over the land and try to communicate, but these abilities are extremely intermittent.
The voice suddenly stopped coming and for ten minutes Ash was just sitting there.
I apologize, but like I said it is difficult to do this in this state. The others are all practically completely comatose in this state save Gregor. Thank Arceus that you're closer now than before or it would be hard to even get a word through. What I need you to do is to come here, up on top of the mountain and defreeze me and free me and the others.
"I kind of can't you see, I'm imprisoned here," Ash said.
The reply came over two minutes later. Oh, I see. Let me see if I can get you some help.
Fifteen minutes later came another answer. Don't worry, help is on its way.
But half an hour later and nothing had happened, until Ash heard a large roar and a shadow obscured the sun for a second as something swooped down from the sky.
A/N: Thanks for reading. I'm probably going to try and rewrite Thombdolt's missing chapter now- it feels weird to have that gap in the story. And I'll probably also make sure to smooth out any missing pieces of the story while doing that.
