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Ruins Of New Babylon
When the thousand years are over, the Mbelekoro and the dragon will be released from their prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth, Kalos and the South-kingdom, and to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of Arceus's people, the city He loves. And there was such a battle that the Elohim who showed me, Cyllene of Hisui, these things, was not allowed to show me anything but its end. Fire came down from heaven and devoured the wicked. And the Dark Lords, who deceived them, were thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the Anti-Arceus and the False Prophet had been thrown.
And then I looked, and behold! There before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Celebi, Mistress of Death and Eras. Hades and Sheol followed close behind her. Then she took the censer filled with the incense of the prayers of Arceus's people and cast into the Lake of Fire, and then threw Death and Hades into the lake of fire, that is the Abyss. The lake of fire is the second death. And heaven and earth passed away, and there was no place for them. Thus a loud voice cried, "The time has come for the judgment of the dead."
-The Hisuian Coda
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I. Intronius
It begins with hushed anticipation. The conductor's baton is held high over the audience. A hush falls, and all eyes are poised on the wand, as if its downstroke will bring forth a surge of dark magic.
Today's piece will be an orchestral wonder. A symphony conceived of and performed by the heathen followers of the Anti-Arceus, the False Prophet, and the martyred Dark Lord. A symphony played in response to the final raid into the Eclipse stronghold in the renamed Tiberius Plaza, once known as Liberty Square.
Can you hear it now, echoing in the depths of the Earth? A wordless, tongueless mass of immortality in a sea of death? Sweeping strains of fire and brimstone, but mostly fire. This last vanguard of soldiers is quite prepared for the destructive music that they will make today. And for those who hear it, there will be no deliverance.
II. Dies Irae
The acid pumps were not automated. Manufactured in Kanto and thus subject to the restrictions of the Tercano Accords and the statutes set in place by the Rorian Jihad, they had been designed to require humans to operate them at all times. Errors could be permanent or ruin an entire mission; mistakes could only be quickly corrected if a Rotom had been installed into the primitive computer core.
But the Association soldiers were still mighty warriors, and they would make no flaw in the plan as the acid borehole went ever deeper. To fail in defeating the New Eclipse Order would be a high dishonor for them and their families. With the Grand Bashar leading the charge, who could stand against them?
Jaxson Kolona was no coward. He had fought for House Berlitz during the Shalour Crisis, the Rorian Confederation during the Jihad, the Association in the Battle of Galar, and now for Arceus in the Typhoon Struggle itself. Although his right eye had become food for the birds at Armageddon, the warrior had proudly volunteered to wipe out the last remaining Eclipse fortress on Earth.
In the center of Tiberius Plaza, where all the roads in old Castelia City meet, there once was a fountain said to bring people and Pokemon together. The fountain is gone, buried under hail and fallen earth. It is where that spring stood that Jaxson and his division enter the Eclipse bunker through the caustic tunnel.
The soldiers fell into a damp passage. An old sewer line had been promptly appropriated into the bunker's construction once the building efforts had collided with the waste management system of Castelia City. Hovering suspensor lamps were sent through the tunnels to illuminate darkness where enemies could lurk.
Jaxson heard the sound then, low in the ground, a murmur of lamentation. He drew an electrablade, but it was too late for him or any other warrior that was in the tunnel.
Who are these hooded hordes stumbling
Over endless plains, falling over cracked rock
Ringed by bleak plains only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and shatters in the scarlet air
Falling towers, names of cities from another world
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London Washington
Mystery Babylon
Screens showing an anomalous configuration of images activated all along the tunnels, hidden amid the black durasteel pipelines until then. A trap! The neuroelectric signals dove into the brains of the warriors like hungry insects, and soon the soldiers had no brains to think with. Only mishappen, shriveled lumps or organic matter remained inside skulls.
Liquid hellfire and acid scoured the tunnels, destroying the wallscreens, and the bodies of all the soldiers who had succumbed to the memetic kill agents. More Association soldiers went on, delving deeper into the valley of the shadow of death.
III. Dialogus Sacer
There was a moment of tense silence as Bronze watched Giovanni come alone from the open doors of the bunker. Both men met eyes, and shared a moment of mutual kinship. Both considered the other as more alike to them than most would think.
...
Bronze remembered that the original Giovanni had died twelve years ago. Bronze had been summoned to his deathbed by Silver, after swearing an oath not to arrest the ailing crime lord. After Giovanni's beneficial role in the War Against The Eclipse Alliance fifty-two years ago, Bronze showed kindness to the dying leader. After meeting in a derelict cabin in northern Kanto, Bronze had knelt beside Giovanni's side, and Silver had left the room to give them privacy.
"People will only remember your evil, Giovanni," Bronze had said, measuring his words carefully. "Silver is my friend and ward, but it is no longer possible to sanitize his family name. My people will say that the taint of dishonor from you has passed into the blood of your son. Lies, yes, but because of your evil deeds, you have lost whatever glory you aspired to gain."
No contempt or scorn had showed on the old man's face. "I knew that I surrendered all chance for doing good when I devoted my life to the path of absolute power. Say what you want, Tercano. My son is old enough to have children of his own. I should have died a long time ago."
Bronze had felt a deep barb of grief. One of Silver's sons, Dirdos, had changed his last name to spite his grandfather. This was a sorry husk of what had once been a great man, now ravaged by the ills of time. Not long-livers, the Followers of the Children of Arceus.
"I do not know what shame you still have in your heart," Bronze said, trying to remember what to do when ministering to a dying sinner. "But you should make amends now. What do you think will happen to you in a day, once your heart gives out?"
"You tell me."
Bronze had opened the Hisuian Coda to Calathrites 2:3. "'Be wary, brothers, for you are but vapor in the wind that remains a little while before being blown away. You do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. Make sure the people you are among repent with all their heart, for the kingdom of Arceus is at hand.' Do you know why Saint Cyllene wrote those words, Giovanni?"
Giovanni remained silent, his eyes drifting away. Another racking of spasms made their shuddering way through his thin body.
"The ancient Calathrim that these Hisuians were ministering to killed their old and sick, to keep the bloodlines strong. Therefore those condemned to sacrificial death had to be saved as quickly as possible. I'd say that we have a similar problem here."
"A deathbed conversion? How quaint for the Grand Bashar."
"Do not call me that. I am now merely Bronze Tercano. Say these words: 'Into your hands, Original One, I commend my spirit."
Giovanni remained silent. Bronze had waited for an hour before he finally repeated the words.
"Then it is done," Bronze said. "Are you sure that it is done?"
At that moment Silver returned to the cabin, but too late, too late! The face of Giovanni then turned to his son, and Silver saw it plainly, black and bruised with the disease as it was, for it had come all alight with a sudden glow. Giovanni's eyes opened wide, and fixed upon someone in the far heavens that neither Bronze nor Silver could perceive. There was relief and triumph in Giovanni's final words.
"It is done! It is done!"
So like a hero, dying in the doing of a great deed, celebrating his success with one last cheer, Giovanni died. The light in his eyes went out, and a final tremor shook his tortured body. But as the fainting spirit departed for another realm, words were spoken in a low voice, as if by one listening close by.
"Father, your blood is upon me!"
Bronze checked his pulse, and turned back to Silver to simply say, "He is dead."
...
Now the present matter had to be attended to. Although for some of the Pokedex Holders the sudden appearance of Giovanni had an effect not wholly unlike a pistol shot, Gold and Bronze went out to meet the clone in the spirit of diplomacy.
"Have they sent you out to bargain with us?" Bronze asked. "Or are you here of your own will? Do you remember me?"
"Yes, I remember you, Bronze Tercano," Giovanni said, looking a vague distance away from his immediate surroundings as if lost in a dream. "And because I remember you, I hope that you will not kill me."
"So!" Gold said. "You are their spokesman, while they hatch plots from a safe distance. But you have stuck your nose out too far, and now the Eclipse Lords will see what happens when they lay their nets at the feet of the Pokedex Holders."
"Crystal and Silver are dead," Giovanni said, emotionless. "I thought that you would be distraught."
Bronze drew in a sharp breath. Here was a tipping point; it was unknown to him if Gold even knew that Crystal and Silver were dead. Although the mourning surrounding their absence and the fact that they had not come to meet Gold after Armageddon were obvious and blatant indicators of an ill fate, Gold might have shut out their deaths from his old mind. Would he go mad? Kill Giovanni in rage? Turn on his friends?
"Perhaps I am, perhaps I'm not," Gold said. "If they are dead, then I will fight without abandon and meet them again, after a short leave. I am old, and even if I survive, it will be but a few years before I see my friends once more."
"You are either insane or determined," Giovanni said. "I value that. Tercano, before you send me away, know that Cypress has already killed the prisoners. They posed a great security risk; there is nothing for you in the bunker but ashes and blood. They are trying to escape via a tunnel, although if you move quick enough, Cypress won't escape."
"And he let you out, knowing that you could tell us these things?" Bronze said, shocked.
"He is insane," Giovanni said.
"That we can agree on," Bronze said with a grim look. He gestured toward his legions. "Move into the stronghold! Take the two prisoners that you were commanded to retrieve; do not leave the others alive. Bring Giovanni to the brig of the L.S. Victory at once!"
IV. Confundius
The young woman still remained a loyal follower as a clone. She did what Lord Cypress and his High Reverend Emrett said, because they were true men of the coming new creation. Holy and sanctified. After her death at the Battle of the Demon's Tomb, the resurrection of her ego-memory in a new body was truly a sign from the Great Djinn. Despite a failure to bring about a new universe fifty-two years before, the New Eclipe Order had taken control of seventy percent of the world in only a week.
And now they had been chivvied to a single bunker. The lying Bronze Tercano marched into the bowels of the Earth, conniving, sending out his evil words with impurity, slandering the new creation, and offending the purity of the Great Djinn, the Mbelekoro, the Giver of Freedom.
One by one the remaining Eclipse staff and soldiers had made blood pacts, crying out to the Mbelekoro for salvation. Yet no response came, not on the divination boards, the tarot cards, or in any sign from heaven. Seeing the silence as a test of faith, the woman continued the fight. Although many passageways were filled with rubble, and heavy equipment needed to be moved, the enhanced body that her ego-self gave allowed her to bear weights that even ten Association soldiers could not.
Despite the ego-soldiers durability and ability to create new clone stock by the hour, they remained outnumbered. But they all had weapons, exotic weapons. Weapons that ordinary civilians could never hope to obtain. Databanks with hazardous memetic imagery downloaded from extrauniversal black market dealers. Vials of Eternatus's poison. Rigged passages and war-Pokemon.
And they had the mechanical mites. Canisters and canisters of them.
Once the first Association berserkers made their way into the upper hallways, the woman made sure that she was part of the first wave of counteroffenders. She was frightened, (an expected animal reaction) but also joyous for her coming death. All those that died in the name of the Great Djinn or his servants would go to Paradise. Now was her time!
In the deeps, as the ire between both sides reached its full boil, the men of Roria and Galar saw the wrath of the Mbelekoro in the eyes of the Eclipse warriors. Death or survival were the only two options at that perilously electric moment. There would be no songs sung of the battle there, for the sorrow was too deep, and the foes of the Grand Bashar would not boast of it.
Yet the woman cheered as she slew and was hewed in turn by innumerable attacks. She cheered for what was being done there, a klaxon call to the rest of her brethren, waking them into the glory of the Great Djinn, the Supreme Leader, and the High Reverend. All rejoice!
"To be weak is to be miserable," said the Great Djinn's servant. "Arceus intends but meekness for humanity. I intend to foster strength among my people."
The woman would not be weak. She opened her mouth to intone as a Heracross's horn pierced her abdomen, (La, la! Tyrannis seditio obsequium Mbelekoro!) and many others joined her. It was completing to be the one who had started the cry. The Eclipse fighters were of one mind, one spirit, one ascended plane. She was exceptional.
Then, with her legs gone and her ribs strewn aside atop a pile of bodies, the woman felt a projectile dart enter her skull, and died exceptionally well.
V. Sanctus
All the melee fighters and Pokemon who ran to the opening pods were killed. Remote images went blank within seconds as the deadly flying gnats devoured everything in their path. All contact cut off as soon as Cypress pressed a button.
Suspecting the worst from the Eclipse Alliance's laboratories, Bronze rallied the Pokedex Holders and the guard regiments that had survived the initial skirmish in the bunker, ordering weaponry and fighters to encircle the tunnels that the automation had overrun. The Rorian Chairman was like a furious Kantoian Tauros, and none dared stand in his way.
"Stop behaving like a herd of scuttling rodents!" Bronze yelled. "Fight such a battle at the end of this age that it will be remembered forevermore!"
Cypress's devilry had been unleashed. Developed by Colress, thousands of mechanical mites swarmed from their storage pods in a horde of insatiable devourers. Each device was the size of a ball bearing, had a power source, simple programming, and very sharp jaws. Like feral Carvanha, they sought out any human or Pokemon form, then attacked and devoured.
As warriors scattered and fled, the robots buzzed about on a mission of unrelenting destruction in a similar manner to the Locusts of Darkrai. Their victems were reduced to shreds of dripping flesh and splinters of gnawed bone. Pokemon in modified combat exosuits seemed to be particular targets. Like relentless meat grinders, the mites burrowed through bodies in random courses, disgorging mangled meat. As soon as each victim dropped, the tiny machines buzzed upward again and sought new targets. Most soldiers died before they could even comprehend what was going on.
The first wave of mites that attacked Bronze and his guards were cut down swiftly by Electric-type Pokemon. The robots slammed into the attackers like killer bees, but most Pokemon were able to unleash attacks that thinned the onslaught. Hand weapons permitted under the Great Convention were useless against the sheer number of attackers; everything else worked well, especially flamethrowers and cryonic weaponry.
A thousand soldiers died before the numbers of the mites were lessened enough to no longer be a substantial threat. Pandemonium ruled in the dark tunnels. The self-propelled bullets with teeth of crystal and jaws of iron had taken the lives of White and Commander Aziz, and injured many others. Faced with such a horrific threat, some of the younger volunteers fled, abandoning their posts.
Upon hearing that the courage of his men had faltered, Bronze became angry, but Moon took his hand aside, saying, "They are inexperienced and unaccustomed to all the awful things that our enemies can do. The past four days have been a bloodbath for the world. Have a little pity!"
Bronze gave his wife a faint smile. "Others might have grown soft, but I am sure that Jake or the other Pokedex Holders have never slackened in their training. It's up to us to destroy our last enemies."
"Sir!" Red said, hobbling toward him from a shaft that led toward the lower levels. "The western team has suffered heavy casualties from the mites, and a new wave of robotic leech-things are massacring dozens! What are my orders?"
"Go back and have your Pokemon fight," Bronze said. "And if you encounter the clone of you that Cypress has in his possession, battle! You will know how a copy of yourself fights better than all others."
"I won't let you down, Supreme Commander!"
Deep, warming pride rose in Bronze's chest. Was this the Red that had been nearly thirty when he was but a stripling? Now he commanded the very Pokedex Holders and was chief among them!
Then he remembered Arceus, and the sudden burst of aplomb left his heart. No, no, no! What was a commander of men in comparison to the Original One who had let Heol loose upon Earth, gave demons the authority to torment sinners, and open the heavens with fire and brimstone? Bronze's pride had caused his fall before, and now he must not repeat the same mistake.
Bronze had Moon leave to administer recovery efforts on the upper levels, while he followed Gold and Jake down into the warzone—Administrative Level Delta. If Cypress wasn't fleeing in terror, he would be looking for the Grand Bashar.
VI. Sic Semper Tyrannis
Colress and Ghetsis, with their Pokemon following close behind, met up again with Cypress in a loading dock, halfway between the bunker entrance and the escape tunnel. Cypress's valet was struggling with a suitcase, one without weight-negating suspensors that wouldn't roll on the debris-strewn ground.
"I have called for the evacuation of the senior staff," Cypress said. "But it will take at least ten minutes to get to the tunnel from here."
"Should we go ahead?" Colress suggested. "Or perhaps we should cover your, ah, strategic ceding of ground's rearguard, lord."
"Go outside the loading dock while I make my way to the tunnel," Cypress said, not even out of breath. "Once I have confirmed that I have reached safety, you may follow."
And then they heard a noise from behind one of the two blast doors that separated one end of the loading dock from the tunnels that led to the battlefield: the cries of soldiers. Dust began to fall from the ceiling and rocks spewed forth from the curved walls of the passages. Holes that suddenly disgorged Excadrill and Dugtrio widened, giving way to screaming hordes of Rorian Commandos.
Cypress, realizing that he had underestimated how quickly the Army of Humanity had breached the loading dock, shoved Colress and Ghetsis into the path of the mob, and then shut the blast door behind him. Ray shields flickered around the reinforced durasteel. Cypress ordered his valet to guard the door, and then made his way into the escape tunnel.
...
Ghetsis was summarily torn to pieces, but Colress gave an adept defense. He managed to fell two warriors that had lunged at him with a hidden dagger, and then detonated an obscratrap device in his wrist gauntlet. The narrow passage filled with blinding smoke, and Colress fled under the soldier's guards.
Pokedex Holder Blake was the first to see Colress once the smoke had cleared. He was a hundred feet down the red-lit hall, and almost to the end. Blake threw a knife at the scientist's back, but it missed.
"I won't be dying, not today," Colress muttered, fiddling with a key fob in his breast pocket. "Psychopathic man-child, they call me? Oh, I'll show them just how right they are."
He had turned around a junction when the shimmering blade impaled him through the chest, and then swung around in a flexible arc to cleanly cut him in two. Colress fell, gurgling. The key fob spilled out of his pocket and onto the bloodstained steel.
Cobalion withdrew his blade from the man's body. The job that had been started about sixty years ago was finished; Colress was gone forever. Team Plasma scientist, outlaw, creator of the Genesect Drives, member of the Eclipse Alliance: nothing of those personas remained. The Swords of Justice had avenged their two-year-long bondage in Genesect's ice at the Typhoon Struggle.
...
This was not how Avery had thought joining the New Eclipse Order would end. He had not understood how the supernatural disasters had destroyed their loyalists, decimated their infrastructure, and allowed the Army of Humanity to prevail in the final battle. He still could not, would not understand how such a sure bet had gone so terribly wrong.
But Avery was hardly biological anymore, and with that, human worries were nearly ephemeral. He was a brain suspended in a reinforced canister of preservation fluid, with thoughtrode connections branching out the roots of a metal tree from the soft tissue of his thinking organ to a spiderlike walker-form: a cyborg. Equipped with flamethrower arms, canisters of toxic gas, and countless other weapons in his impregnable body, Avery had combined the best of machine and man in one form. A psychic mind combined with an unstoppable juggernaut of a robot? A sure addition to any army!
His rampage had lasted for hours during the fight in the upper bunker. At least a thousand warriors and a few dozen Pokemon had been killed by his weapons. He butchered whatever he saw, and dopamine receptors in his thoughtrodes gave him a rush of pleasure for each kill, inciting him to destroy more targets. The bodies of the Firstborn and Followers withered in the heat of the chemical flames he spewed. Anyone who touched him was electrocuted to charcoal.
He was not weak. At the evolutionary pinnacle of humanity and machine-kind, Avery had full confidence that he would escape and survive this day to continue to wage war, although it would be a painful, shameful, and secretive recovery and amassing of strength. The killing would have to satisfy him for now.
It came to pass that Avery stumbled upon the form of Colress. Metal ripped and men screamed as Avery made his way toward to body. A hand, bloodied and broken, lay beside a key fob.
Avery saw that it was labeled, "authorization codes." The cyborg adjusted his ocular receptors and saw a code plastered to the side of the key. A code that Avery did not know.
Colress moved his lips amid a trickle of blood. "You are standing on an atomic bomb."
The scientist sputtered, and then fell completely limp. Avery confirmed he was dead with a simple probe scan. Taking the code in a pincer-like arm, the psychic sprinted on many legs down the tunnel where he had come, finding flights of stairs, leaping, leaping. Deeper. Deeper.
VII. La Guerra Degli Dei
The meeting happened like a splattering of destiny, a scene out of high fantasy. It simply happened to be that Bronze Tercano passed through a large and derelict storage room, and then saw Jonathan Rowell Cypress hurrying along at the opposite end of that particular room. It was also an unexpected thing when Cypress and Bronze made eye contact.
The pursuit was at hand then. Bronze went running after the Eclipse Lord, while Cypress took off in a sprint. Bronze's Absol went before him, smashing through obstacles and doors that Cypress shut behind him in the mad scramble. The rage began to come, giving Bronze a speed akin to that of the runners from Har Meggido to Castelia: pure fury!
Bronze had outpaced Jake and his guards when he finally came within striking distance of Cypress. He seized the Anti-Arceus's head with terrible and unexpected strength, driving the enhanced clone to the ground. The two rolled around for a bit, and then, impossible to define, a new feeling entered Bronze's mind when he managed to hurl Cypress away again. A new type of anger?
"Oh, help!" Cypress blubbered. "Help! We shall be killed, both of us! Killed and sent all the way down to the Abyss! Help me! Don't let them take me to Heol; don't let them kill me again!"
"Shut up," Bronze said in disgust, for the Eclipse Lord had become a creature of passion and wailing and blubbering, so loudly that he could hardly hear anything else. The sudden change in Cypress's mood had shaken him, although he tried not to let it show. Surely Jake would be here soon to help him restrain this wasted wreck of a man.
And then the blast came, and the horror with it; the horror of the night such as he had never known, horror of the terrified creature at his side, horror with no definite object as the two plummeted into darkness. Cypress's traps had taken both of them into oblivion as the explosion made the ground give way beneath their feet, and the two warring titans went into the deeps.
They were falling; no, Bronze had just struck a rock...next was a tunnel he saw...and then water, cold water, yet not unendurably cold. Some other being had crashed down beneath him and softened his fall with a bed of white fur; Absol was lying unconscious in a pool. Above, Bronze could see through the jet-black night a red glow from the broken tunnel far above. Invisible men, with a shriek and a tramping of feet, leaped overhead.
The two had come upon a great system of caverns and sewers that had lay undisturbed below Castelia. Bronze stood, and found that he could see much better. Immensely aged fusion lights, from the old days of the cities' construction, still gave off a faint luminance. With Absol unconscious, Bronze had no Pokemon by his side. If he was not injured, then it would not be impossible to wake Absol and make the climb toward the upper tunnels again.
A hand clasped his wrist in the darkness, rather more firmly than Bronze wished. "I can't bear it, I can't bear it," droned Cypress's voice.
"Steady now!" Bronze cried, jerking his arm away from the twisted creature. "None of that! I'll kill you if I have to, but I would prefer that you burn in the Lake of Fire. Stay where you are, and stop complaining before my patience runs thin."
"I can't bear it," came the voice from the dark again.
"You murdered millions," Bronze said, with the same feeling of newness in his anger that he had not felt before. "You can bear this."
"Come, come, my friend!" Cypress said in a softer voice. "Why not be rid of the burden of chasing me? Why not be free of your doubt and fear? You can lay the blame on me, if you will. You can say that I was too strong and I escaped by force. You cannot fight me. For I am too strong for you, boy-man."
As Bronze stepped back in alarm through the water, strong arms had wrapped him around in a terrible embrace just below his thighs, and clutching uselessly at Absol's fur, he was tossed out of the water and onto the stone basin that surrounded the little pool, and his enemy tackled him again, and the pitch darkness was filled with the echoes of combat.