A/N: There seems to have been a bit of confusion- as the number of chapters has suddenly increased despite there being no new material whatsoever. That's because I was a bit annoyed about the gap because a chapter was missing and I wrote it all from scratch to fill in any plot holes that may have been there.
"Charizard!" Ash shouted in disbelief. It was his own Charizard, not the black one that His Majesty had.
I contacted your Pokemon, Arthur said.
"How'd you get through the barrier that was there?" Ash asked his Charizard.
The barrier's long gone, Ash. Selena broke it, Arthur said.
"Charizard, just get me out of here," Ash said.
Charizard opened its maw and let out a huge burst of flames at the chains. Ash turned away, trying to stay as far away as possible from the heat. Normally his Badges would've shielded him from such an attack, but for whatever reason they weren't working here.
Charizard stopped after a minute and noticed that the chain was unharmed.
"Wait, forget about that, free Hoopa," Ash said. "Hoopa can probably find a way out."
Charizard raked its claws against the net and it opened up to let Hoopa out.
FINALLY! it screamed. It feels so good to be out of that!
"Great, now can you get me out?" Ash asked.
Hoopa tried, but it seemed that the chains were resistant against its psychic powers.
"No problem, just send out my Greninja," Ash said.
He remembered that there was a certain tactic he had used against steel before, and it had been pretty effective.
Hoopa, as he didn't know which Poke Ball was which, sent out Ash's Fearow before Greninja came out.
"Okay, Charizard, burn the chains, and after that, Greninja, cool them immediately. Then Hoopa, try using a Ghost attack like Shadow Ball on the weakened chain," Ash said.
First Charizard let out a stream of red-hot fire. It was then that it occurred to Ash that some of the protective effects of his Badges were probably still lingering as he was able to withstand the heat much better than he thought he normally would have. That and he had always been told that their protective effects were the ones that were the most potent. He still remembered that girl's face as if it had been just yesterday when he had learned that...
Ash tried to push those thoughts away, because if he went down that path, he would be stuck on it for hours and he needed his head clear. For now.
The steel was red-hot in the middle, and now Greninja rapidly cooled it with Water Shuriken and the steel then appeared rusty.
"Great, now break it," Ash said.
That dealt with one chain, and with it loose Ash finally unrolled it from his arms.
He then stepped away from the platform and found that he could use his Badges again. As he stared at the platform and he shuddered- something told him that whatever this place was, whatever had happened here before- and something definitely had, it seemed…. unholy somehow. He wasn't sure how he knew, but a tragedy had taken place here. He could feel it.
"Great, now let's fly outta here," Ash said.
NO! No, no, do not try to fly. Phineas' power to detect things works similar to mine, much like, ah, I do not remember what it was called when I heard of it…. echolocation? Ah, no, sonar. Yes, sonar. He was able to find you when you were on the ocean's surface because your size and shape stood out from the relative flatness of the ocean. Should you choose to fly again, once again you will be remarkably easy to find against the sky and he will just warp you towards himself yet again. Stay close to the ground- the trees and rocks and these mountains and the other Pokemon that are present will interfere to some extent with his abilities.
"And you're sure that this will stop him from catching me again?" Ash asked. He could already almost feel the cold steal of the prison wrapped around his wrists yet again as he thought of His Majesty approaching. "Wait… by Phineas you mean His Majesty? The Eighth Gym Leader?"
Yes, that is, or was his name. In addition, try attempting to use the Badge's powers, or the ones that you have, to try and hide yourselves. That combined with the terrain and distance should help you evade him for a while.
"Okay, um, Badges, I want you to uh- shield me from people finding me telepathically," Ash said.
Wait! Do not shield yourselves from my presence as well! Arthur cried out.
"Uh, and make sure that Arthur can still talk to us, and shield my Pokemon and Hoopa from me as well," Ash said. "Uh, thanks…."
He wasn't sure if anything happened, but a weird rainbow halo seemed to surround him and his Pokemon for a minute. He stretched his arm and noticed that the halo wasn't gone- it was still there but very faint and moved as he moved.
So Ash, why don't we fly outta here? Hoopa asked.
Ash relayed what he had heard, and he found it odd that for some reason Hoopa couldn't detect Arthur's voice, but there was little that he could do about it.
"Okay, but rather than running away, we'll have to face him sooner or later, right? So why not I just turn around to fight him?" Ash asked. It was true that last time, Phineas had simply captured him and refused a challenge, but if Ash took the initiative and attacked firs-
Ash heard some sort of weird vibrating noise which snapped him out of his train of thought, but it took him a minute to realize that Arthur was laughing. At him.
Fight him? From my reckoning and analysis of your forces, you would not be able to last very long against Selena… no, your odds of beating her in your current state are but eight percent. Let along Phineas. No, what you should do is head towards me, perhaps if you are close enough I can try and teleport you towards me as well. Then, you can free me and the others, and we can form a plan to deal with Phineas.
"Oh, okay," Ash said. "Thing is that there's just so much that I want to know…"
We can discuss it as you travel here, Arthur said.
"Okay guys, let's run," Ash said and then realized that there was a way faster than running. "Hey Arthur… would it be okay if I flew there on Charizard, so long as I'm just a few feet away from the ground?"
Giving the size and speed at which you're going I believe…
There was a long pause here.
No, no, as per my calculations the odds do not justify taking such a risk. You'd be faster yes, but at the cost of you being easier to find I do not think it is worthwhile. Now please hurry, if Phineas will come he'll come on his Charizard, and it will not take long for him to reach near here. He must have set up a signal to know whereupon you left the prison, and he must be rushing towards here with speed.
Phineas looked at Selena. He raised his arm to order his Charizard to tear off her head when a strange buzzing noise filled his head and he got a vision of broken chains and a platform. It was his alarm in case the chains were ever broken.
Phineas whirled around to face towards the mountains. How? How was it possible that the child had escaped? That prison had been meant to hold Arceus himself… and granted that over a few thousand years and it having been broken once it was no longer as powerful, but still, it should have been able to hold the boy!
His Charizard looked at him intently but Phineas gave no further orders. He instead projected his mind to scan the mountains to look for the boy.
After five minutes he quickly gave up. At this distance there were numerous objects about the same size of the boy and he saw nothing of the sort in the sky. Which meant that the boy was sticking to the ground for some reason.
It was then that he felt as if ice had slid down his throat. The Elite Four! If the boy managed to reach them, even by accident, he could free them! This would not be a major problem if it weren't for the fact that they might awaken Arceus, or that the boy might learn how to do so himself.
But he glanced back at Selena and her troops. Something had to be done about them too. Decisions, decisions.
Eventually he told himself that Selena was no longer a threat- she hadn't even gotten up from the fetal position she was lying down in right now and was still trembling. He had clearly won.
Deep down, he felt as if he welcomed this opportunity to hunt the boy down, because it meant that he could delay in what he decided to do with Selena. it gave him an excuse to hurl in case ever asked as to why he didn't finish her when he had the chance- after all stopping the boy right now was a greater priority than dealing with her.
"Charizard, come, we have to move at all speed through the air back to the mountains," he said and got on his Charizard and departed, all the while sending his mind out to scan the land. There were numerous people of course and this made his job difficult, but at the moment the boy couldn't have gotten very far from the prison, and those mountains were always empty aside from the Pokemon that inhabited them. Once he got close enough, he would be able to find the boy.
On the ground, as Selena realized that His Majesty had left, she stopped shaking and pulled herself together as she got up.
Tears of desperation rolled down her eyes… she had failed. But that just meant that she had to steel herself for the last phase of her plan- her backup plan that was. She got up and moved slowly back towards her head ship.
Her people seemed to be surprised to see that she had made it back.
"Milady, are you alright? When we say that His Maj-" Jenkins began before he was cut off.
"Silence! Tell me, is the reactor ready?" she asked.
"Yes, yes it is," Jenkins said. "But-"
"Take me to it," Selena said.
Selena's mind was full of certainty- if she, the true Empress of Galea, couldn't have all of it, then well, no one would.
Ash panted as Pikachu scurried along beside him. He had been going in this direction for half an hour, and he was painfully aware of how little he had moved since then. He gasped for breath, and then started running again.
The scenery was monotonous, a river, some trees, a waterfall, a river, some trees, a waterfall, and this was repeated on a seemingly endless loop. There were several Pokemon that he saw, but all of them seemed to ignore him, or in case they did seem to want to fight him, he managed to scare them off.
Wait! You have to turn back!
Ash tripped over a root at the sudden interruption and fell into the dirt. "Why?" he asked once he had gotten up.
It is Gregor. The others besides him are quiet, but I can feel his mind… it is slow. But he asked me if Phineas had defeated Selena and I replied in the affirmative. He has then told me that Selena would have a contingency plan for this and said that there is a ah… I believe a sort of nuclear bomb she plans to set off. She will harness its energy in order to release all the power that has been stored within her for the past millennia from the Badges, and it will be enough to cause a total collapse of Galea.
"What?" Ash said again. "Okay, first of all, why I can't I hear Gregor myself?"
Telepathy is not his specialty. Psychic types and telepathy, telekinesis, and teleporting are all things that fall under my area of expertise. He is a bit slow in those areas but better than the other two. Anyhow, I'm not sure how he knows this given that he's frozen, but he apparently does and you need to turn right back around and stop her. Phineas is flying your way and has, in a move of supreme idiocy, decided to spare her life for some reason and of course he won't believe anything I tell him.
"Wait, what happened to the 'you only have an eight percent chance of beating her' thing? How am I supposed to win?" Ash asked.
What's happening, Ash? Hoopa asked and Ash told him a quick version of what was going on. After that Ash waited because there was a long pause before Arthur gave him any more instructions.
Well, it appears that given the circumstances… it is a chance that we must gamble on. But no matter, Gregor says that all hope is not lost and you will find help when you reach there. Again, that is all that I was able to extract from his mind and what exactly that is supposed to mean is far beyond me... but anyway it appears that Gregor has something in store for you, those odds were assuming you were in your current state. As it stands, I sense certain untapped power coming from that Pokemon by your side. I know it is a Psychic type but am I wrong in assuming that this is not its true form? If so, it can be turned to a stronger form with my help and your Badges.
"Hey Hoopa, I think you're going to have to transform," Ash said. "I'll try helping you out."
Arthur then gave Ash some instructions that he didn't understand at all, something about waving the mental energy of his aura or something along those lines before Arthur gave up on trying to teach Ash and just told him to provide Hoopa with as much power as possible from his Badges.
"Uh, Badges, yeah, load up Hoopa with energy," Ash said. "As much as possible."
Hoopa began to change, and grew six arms each holding a golden hoop.
Great, now, I am going to attempt to transport you back to the shore, Arthur said. Just know that once you're there, it will be difficult for me to communicate with you and also that I might not be very accurate and you may land a mile off here or there. Good luck, and forget about the statistics that I said. Selena is probably not in a right state of mind, and that should give you another advantage. Good luck.
And then, after that, Ash felt the world black out around him and noticed that Hoopa was also doing something as well- it was taking both Hoopa and Arthur to transport them to the shore, Ash realized.
He just hoped he'd be ready for whatever was in store for him.
"Hey, aren't we forgetting something?" Cynthia asked. "How are Ash's citizens… that feels odd to say, 'Ash's citizens' almost as if Ash is a foreign king or something… going to react to seeing us? As far as I recall Ash only told a few people about his plan. We would spread a lot of panic throughout the land going like this."
"We don't have much choice," Steven said. "But we have a bigger problem- does anyone know what Selena's minions look like? We could end up attacking the wrong people."
"Well, there'll be a lot of them and they'll probably be in uniform," Gary said.
"That isn't much to go on," Lance said. "Oh look, I think that's the city! Weird how we missed it by over twenty miles though. We should be able to find someone there, and they'll point us on our way."
What Lance didn't mention was the reason that they had gotten off of track. Without any form of leadership, it was hard to coordinate the small band to keep going in one direction. And they made sure to sound off in numbers one, two, three, four, etc. every fifteen minutes to make sure that all of them were still there.
This arose from the fact that Ash wasn't here. While no one had formally elected Ash as leader of the expedition, he was the one who knew the route the best as well as the area, and he was the one who had brought them all in once place to begin with, after all.
As such, they had no leader and were operating like an ideal democracy (or perhaps, anarchy would be a better word)- and getting almost nothing done in the course of things and so of course with so many people going whichever way they wanted, it was a complete and utter mess for the most part. This was exacerbated by the fact that not all of them had flying Pokemon capable of lifting a human's body weight and so some of them had to share while others just chose to slow everyone down by deciding to go on foot.
"So, who's going to introduce our group once we get there?" Lance asked. Truth be told, he was kind of miffed that he wasn't at the head of the group- he was kind of used to people just going along with whatever he told them to. But he knew that Steven, Cynthia, and Diantha were unlikely to humor him in that regard, even if most of the people there were Kantonese. He was as such, hoping it would be him.
"I say we send Gary," Diantha said. "He looks the least threatening out of all of us."
"Yes, well, wait- what's that supposed to mean?" Gary asked, face flushing.
"Nothing, I mean, the rest of us Champions sort of have an… air to us, I guess?" Diantha asked. "You look more like a normal person than we do. An overconfident person, maybe, but you look far more approachable than the rest of us."
"Right, okay," Gary said, seemingly pleased with this explanation, though Lance honestly thought the whole thing seemed to be an insult wrapped around in a sugary coating. "Okay, let's find the most impressive looking building and land there and demand to see whoever's in charge." He glanced around at everyone else. "Yeah, I know it isn't a brilliant plan, but hey, it's all we have. And just maybe we'll run into Brock or Misty."
The first thing that Lance noticed was that most of the city was ruined- some buildings were on fire as people milled about like ants trying to put them out. And from somewhere, he noticed that trumpets suddenly began playing.
"An alarm's been sound off!" Lance said. "They must've noticed us."
"Well, how couldn't they?" Diantha asked. "We haven't exactly made any attempts at hiding ourselves."
"I think we shouldn't try and fly over the walls then," Lance said, returning from flying over the city. "Let's gather by the gates. Gary, your idea was good, but this way it'll be more… uh, formal I guess? And I guess this is the way things are supposed to be done. Say, does anyone have a white flag? Or a lemon branch? Those are symbols for peace, right? I didn't know this would be like an actual ancient city with a huge wall around it."
"Uh, let me see," Diantha said. "A white cloth wasn't exactly high up on my priorities list, but let me ask someone if they have one."
In the end there was one guy who had brought a clean white bed sheet. It had stripes on it as well, but they cut off a part that was blank and so they had a small flag. And almost everyone had bought a few sticks so finding a big one to attach it to wasn't that hard.
"Oh, and I believe, Lance, you were asking about a lemon branch?" Cynthia asked. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's an olive branch that you're supposed to have when you're trying to parlay. Not that we have either of those on hand with us."
"Yeah," Lance said, not really listening as Blue walked up near the gates of the city and waved the flag back and forth, so that the guards could see it.
"Hey, all of you!" Gary shouted at the guards on top of the walls. "I'm a friend of Ash Ketchum's, Ash Ketchum of Pallet Town! My name is Gary Oak, and we all uh, come in peace. These are all allies of Ash and your people, we've come to help with the invasion that Serena has planned."
"Uh, Gary," Diantha whispered to Gary. "Serena is someone else- Selena is the name of the person who planned this invasion."
"Ah, right, Selena's invasion," Gary said, cheeks flushed now that he had made a huge mistake in front of everyone. "Yeah, so we're friends of Ash Ketchum! So yeah, open up the gates and ah, take us to your leader! So that we can discuss how we can help fight off the invaders."
The guards gave no reaction to this that Gary could figure out the meaning of, but they did seem to be busier than before.
"Okay, that was good," Steven said. "Let's just wait for someone to come then. I think this is better than barging in- it will prevent unnecessary panic from spreading."
"Yeah," Gary said. He couldn't believe himself.
'We come in peace?' '
Take us to your leader?'
Since when did he start quoting alien movies?
Nothing happened for a good fifteen minutes when suddenly there was the sound of gears turning and the gates began to swing open.
