"The Master Ball?" Harry asked.

Jonas nodded. "Yeah."

Harry licked his lips. They were in the Ghost of Olivine, which had become their home ever since the fall of Hogwarts. Many of the survivors of the exile had decided to remain on the Ghost; Tonks, Guzma and a bunch of his Team Skull buddies, a mess of parents and their kids. For some it was because it offered security, as there was a paranoia that Voldemort, who had managed to attack Hogwarts itself, could get them anyplace else and thus the Ghost was their last chance to be able to sleep. For others… they didn't have any place else to go. One 7th year Ravenclaw, though now technically out of school, had quietly admitted to Jonas that his parents were Nocturne… but he wasn't. If he returned home he'd be lucky to be locked away. More likely he'd be seen as a traitor and killed. He was allowed to stay. And for others it was a different kind of paranoia: the worry that if they left the Ghost they'd never be able to get back on again and would have to fend for themselves.

As such the Ghost of Olivine was quite crowded and at that moment Harry was meeting with an Inner Council made up of a rather eclectic group. Jonas Kenway, now the leader of the Sons of Johto with Jack dead and Clair needing to focus on her unborn child. Shacklebolt, having joined up with them upon realizing that things had taken a turn that made his one-man war no longer viable. Prof. Slate, who told them that he was representing some interested parties. Cynthia and Diantha, who had a month ago officially announced that Kalos was prepared to enter into an alliance with Johto to take down Nocturne and, if need be, Avalon itself. There was an Unovian official, Butterwell or something like that, who hadn't committed quite yet but was close to it; Prof Dryden was enraged that his protégée had died and Iris had begun rallying support of the Unova Gym Leaders. All were gathered because Jonas had declared that he had news that would help them win the war.

Jasmine raised her hand. "Anyone mind cluing me into what some BSDM toy has to do with defeating Voldemort?"

Harry shot her a look, not quite sure if she were joking or not but when Jasmine continued to stare at him blankly he realized that yes… Jasmine was serious. "You've never heard of the Master Ball?"

"Saying it with that snide little attitude isn't going to make me suddenly understand what you're getting at," Jasmine complained.

"I don't mean it like that," Harry said quickly. "I'm just surprised I never told you about it. That was the first time I encountered Voldemort." Jasmine merely looked at him again before giving a slight nod of her head; Harry had found he needed to be careful around her as, even after the last few months, the death of Jack weighed heavily on her and caused her emotions to go all over the place. Sometimes she would laugh at the worst possible time. Sometimes she would be reduced to a crying wreck because something reminded her of her father. More than once she had lashed out in anger. And, of course, there were the times when she the only way she could deal with it all was the release one got through sex.

'Though I doubt Jonas would be happy if I resorted to that right now,' Harry thought to himself before focusing on his girlfriend once again. "The Master Ball was created by Nicholas Silph. It is supposed to allow someone to instantly capture any Pokemon." He paused, looking over at Jonas. "Does that include ones already held by trainers?"

"Not according to the research I was able to dig up."

"Huh," Harry said lightly before looking back at Jasmine once again. "So after the Johto/Kanto War and Team Rocket's attack on Silph Co Nicholas Silph sent the Master Ball to his old friend and student, Dumbledore, for safe keeping. Voldemort tried to get it and Dumbledore, naturally, decided the best way to protect it was to have it placed in a school with a bunch of easily broken children." He shook his head in annoyance. "I swear, that man was cracked even before Voldemort got his claws into him."

"Harry, the point?" Jasmine said, rolling her hand in the air in the universe sign of 'hurry it up'.

"Right," he said with a blush. "Anyway, I ended up confronting Voldemort in front of the Mirror of Jirachi-"

"The what's it now?" Jasmine asked.

"A mirror that shows you a vision of how to achieve what you desire." He paused. "Hmm… I haven't thought about that in a while…" His wish, to have a family, had shown him not his parents but his friends… and now he realized Sirius, Remus, Jasmine, and Jack. That… was a small bit of sunshine on an otherwise dark day.

"So basically," Jasmine said, "you've had a fucked up life even before you met me."

"Pretty much."

She huffed. "Alright, so Voldemort and the Master Ball?"

"Right," Harry said, getting back on track with the story. "So he took over Quirrell but must have messed up possessing him or something because… ugh." He gave a full body shudder. "Imagine someone's flesh being torn and pulled in order to make a face on their stomach."

Jasmine grimaced. "That you so much for that lovely mental image."

"Sorry but that's what happened," Harry said. "Voldemort and Quirrell attacked but Ron killed Quirrell with his Cubchoo and Voldemort fled. Dumbledore took the Master Ball and… honestly that was around the time that Remus came into my life so I kind of forget what happened after that." He looked up at Jonas. "Though I am assuming you know what happened to the Master Ball?"

"I do. And I know why Voldemort wanted it… and still does."

"What do you mean?" Sirius asked, speaking up for the first time since the meeting had begun. "It's the Master Ball."

"And?" Jonas asked.

Sirius looked at him before giving a helpless shrug. "It's the Master Ball?" he repeated. "Lets you capture any wild Pokemon, no matter what. Can't fail. Find the most powerful Legendary or Mythical Pokemon you can and its yours. That's a pretty big deal." He looked at Lance. "You guys thought Jack was going after it, right?"

"I didn't… other people did. Because they were stupid and they didn't understand how Jack operated."

"The point is that the Master Ball itself doesn't matter," Jonas said.

Tonks frowned. "How can you say that?"

Guzma though let out a huff. "Come on, use those heads of yours! It lets you capture a single Pokemon. Unless people have figured out how to get into Arceus' temple and nab him it ain't that special. Hell, didn't that one dumbass, Simon Says or whatever his name was in Sinnoh, take the God of Time with an Ultra Ball?"

"Cyrus," Barty Crouch Jr. stated. "And it wasn't quite like that…"

"Guzma is right though," Lance stated. "The Master Ball only lets you go after a single wild Pokemon. How does that help Voldemort? He had a Moltres thanks to Dumbledore."

"And with his power alone he is rival for some of the most powerful legendaries out there," Cynthia stated.

Jasmine frowned, tapping on the conference room table they were all sitting at. "Then why did he want the Master Ball if it wasn't that important? Make more of them?"

"He couldn't," Jonas said. "Silph Co couldn't make more of them themselves."

"They couldn't?" Diantha asked, surprised by that.

"No. And think about the fact that they had the ultimate Pokéball design and not a single person in Silph Co attempted to make another one." He shook his head. "All those people… not a single one of them argued when ol' Nicky shut up shop on the Master Ball Project. The Capture Ball Project was shut down after a few months but you still hear about people making those damn things." Harry squirmed as he remembered that he only had Sid because of a Capture Ball. "But the Master Ball? Never attempted again. All those eager little eggheads and not a single one of them ever tried to make another go at it? And those that did… they always fail. Horribly so."

"Then what's missing?" Lance asked. "What's the key?"

Harry blinked at that. "Fuck me," he whispered as he realized Lance had accidently hit the nail on the head. "Key… the Master Ball… it was built using Voldemort's Keystone."

Everyone at the table stared at him. He didn't blame them… it felt like he'd gotten goosebumps all along his body when he'd finally realized what Jonas was getting at.

"Yeah," Jonas said, his voice low and a bit hoarse, as if that information startled even him long after he'd learned the truth.

Harry's mind raced. "Dumbledore… okay, Voldemort in reality… he took me down to Hogwart's base and showed me the pillar Merlin made, the one that he put Voldemort's Keystone in so he could power the ley lines and create a protection… I guess spell… around Hogwarts. He said that the keystone could infect rock but if that were the case Voldemort should have been going nuts in there. He hates the keystone but he loves it."

"It probably has been losing power over the last few decades," Barty reasoned.

"So the actual keystone," Diantha asked, "what happened to it that it ended up in the hands of Nicholas Silph."

Harry spoke up. "Voldemort said that he held it when he was pretending to be Tom Riddle and that a piece of it broke and he put that in his diary like the little bitch girl he is." The adults all rolled their eyes at his comment even if it were 100% true. "He said that the Keystone is his weakness but it's… I think its like an addiction to him. He knows that it locks him down and can seal him away but he can't stand it not being around." He frowned. "And he's connected to it too… when Neville destroyed the fragment of the Keystone that was enough to drive Voldemort from Cho's body."

"How did the rest of the Keystone end up at Silph Co though?" Lance asked.

Barty let out a sigh. "Things were… my father told me that all of Avalon was engulfed in madness when Lily defeated Voldemort. I doubt any of us can say for sure but if I had to make a hypothesis when she was battling him she managed to break the Keystone and destroyed most of it… Voldemort wasn't able to possess anyone for over a decade. He was weakened by the loss of it. As for the other piece that remained… who would have known what it was when they tagged it and bagged it for evidence."

Cynthia frowned. "Why do I have a bad feeling you're about to tell us a bunch of evidence disappeared?"

Barty smirked at that, though there was a soft bitterness to his smile regret that she'd gotten it right.

Jonas spoke up at that moment. "So someone decides to sell The Woman Who Won souvenirs and somehow Nicholas Silph gets a hold of the keystone. Maybe he knows what it was, maybe he doesn't. If I had to guess I'd say he knew exactly what he had at some point… not at first but eventually. Dumbledore might have even told him about it. Whatever happened the keystone was used as the core for the Master Ball and Silph figured out how to make it work for any Pokemon just like it does for Voldemort, locking the Pokemon inside. He realizes that he can't ever replicate that and probably also realizes just how dangerous it is to have that thing around and contacts Dumblefore… assuming that Dumbledore didn't let him know what was in the Master Ball when he first saw it."

"He panicked," Lance said. "After the War Johto began pushing for records, wanting investigations into Kanto Government Contracts to prove that the War was justified. Silph is funded by the government. There was a chance all the info would have gotten out." He rubbed his temples. "Why did I think it was a good idea to take a government job?"

"Dumbledore gets the ball and then has to get rid of it," Jasmine stated. "So what happened?"

"He mailed it off," Shacklebolt stated. "We found records in Little Haggleton that it passed through that post office. That's why Voldemort attacked it… he was looking for information on where the Master Ball had gone so he could reclaim the Keystone."

"So he has the lead on us," Guzma groused. "Fuckin' great."

Jonas though gave a sly shrug. "He MIGHT have had the lead on us… if not for some minor issues that came about."

"What do you mean?"

"According to my research at the post office Dumbledore was attempting to send the ball to a Professor Albert Pine, a Pokemon Researcher currently doing research in the Aradact Region."

"I've never heard of that region," Harry admitted.

Jonas shook his head. "I'm not surprised. It's not very populated… only on the coast, really." He pressed a few buttons and a projection shined up from the conference table, showing the image of the world. Harry saw all the regions and the steep mountains that tended to block them off from their neighbors and the seas that had become the major pathways of travel. Jonas expanded the globe till they could see the very top of it, showing off a region that was just south of a massive white section of land. "The package was making its way through the Aradact Region long the Andas Path and should have arrived at Prof. Pine's research station within three days when a massive snowstorm hit. The blizzard was very bad… so bad that the truck driver was forced to teleport out with his pokemon rather than attempt to turn around. The truck was put on lockdown and the plan was that they would return and claim it later."

"I'm assuming that wasn't the case?" Harry asked.

Jonas shook his head and tapped some buttons on the keyboard again, this time switching from the globe to a picture of the mail truck… which had been ripped completely apart. Seams split open, metal curled outwards like the petals of a flower, security devices utterly destroyed.

"Those are not easy to break into," Cynthia stated, leaning forward to inspect the photo. "They are designed to handle a raging Machamp."

"Look at how clean the tears are," Tonks stated. "No signs of the metal denting from fingers tearing at it. No scorch makes either so it wasn't a fire type. And there would be ice shards if a water type was used… maybe a Steel type?" She frowned as she looked closer at the image. "No… there would be signs if something cut into that."

Barty cleared his throat. "I can shed some light. The International Police were asked to investigate that case. We didn't know the Master Ball was in there… we should have but Dumbledore is sneaky. But we did investigate it and…" He paused. "We have a theory on just who attacked the truck."

"We're not going to like this, are we?" Harry asked.

Barty just shook his head. "The International Police have been aware that the Aradact Region has suddenly seen an influx of sightings of Pokemon not native to it. Furthermore, these Pokemon do not resemble their normal brethren… and I don't mean in a regional variation sense. May I?" Jonas nodded and Barty began to type away, accessing some files from his personal dex that were marked TOP SECRET. The first image showed a Blastiose but at once Harry could see there was something… wrong with it. No… not wrong. That wasn't the right word. It was… different. It seemed bulkier, more heavily built. The cannons were longer on its back, its body thicker. And then there was its face. Dark thick stripes were running along its skull and there were more of them on its arms and legs.

Another picture came up of a Charizard in flight. It too was different. Longer wings. Arms far more muscular. And patches of discolored scales on its body. Some were rather uniform, like those on its tail and on its limbs. But its face… it was like a wine stain birthmark. It covered its face and gave it a more sinister quality.

"These Pokemon have been spotted before. They were found by accident by Prof. Samuel Oak during a data upload of a trainer's Poke Dex." Barty paused. "Per the date stamps this was also around the time that the trainer in question registered the Pokemon Mew in their dex. And… something close to it."

"…you aren't suggestion that old wives tale, are you?" Shacklebolt asked.

"I am." Barty brought up the picture of the mail truck again. "The damage done here… nothing was scattered when the truck was ripped into. No packages found on the ground. No signs of someone moving through the vehicle itself. It was like things were just… lifted right up and out of it. And even more interesting is that nearly every package that was in that truck arrived at its destination weeks later. Clearly opened and gone through but otherwise intact. ONLY Prof. Pine's package and he hadn't been told by Dumbledore what it was. And when the police examined the packages they found no DNA at all on them. So either someone was insanely careful when they opened them up… or it was a psychic type that did it. A very powerful one."

Tonk held up a hand. "I want to make sure we're all clear here… we aren't seriously suggesting that the thief was fucking Mewtwo, are we? Because next you'll be claiming it was Pikablu or Nidogod or some fairy tale like that."

"Pikablu was a misidentified Marril who had been adopted by a Pikachu tribe," Jonas said with a shake of his head. "Fucking stupid Kantoians…" He got a hold of himself; he'd been a bit more emotional and surly since the death of his brother. "Mewtwo is different though. There are…" he trailed off before looking at, of all people, Prof. Slate.

The younger man lowered his head, trailing his finger along the surface of the table. "That dex? It belonged to my best friend. After Prof. Oak discovered it we realized… him, me, and our friend Misty… that we had lost a day. We had no memory of it. Still don't. I had Sabrina, the Kanto Gym Leader and one of the world's most powerful psychics, look in my head. She said there is clear work of someone wiping memories from me."

Lance spoke up. "Your friend Gary… he has stated on record that when he had his gym battle at Viridian City's Gym he fought a Pokemon in black armor that utterly destroyed his team. It is the only known record of that Pokemon appearing. That Gym… was under the control of Giovanni, who has always been linked to Team Rocket though that has never been proven. After his death three years ago from a brain tumor more information began to leak out to the press and the government. One of the last files I got before I was basically exiled out of Kanto was that Giovanni was linked to a cloning projecting run by Doctor Fuji."

"He has been linked to the creation of Dittos," Cynthia said. "But he always refused to take credit."

"And Dittos," Barty stated, "are one of only two Pokemon that can naturally learn the move Transform. Through genetic tracing we've learned the other was Mew."

Harry looked about the room. "You think… Team Rocket actually created a Mew Clone? Mew…two?"

"They created MissingNo," Diantha reminded him and Harry winced at that, remembering how the failed clone of Celebi had tried to attack him. He still had nightmares from time to time of its staticy laugh.

"So Mewtwo is real," Jasmine said. "Why take the Master Ball though?"

"A threat," Jonas said.

"More personal than that," Barty said. "Giovanni, in his public persona, used to fund Silph Co research until Nicholas Silph suddenly stopped doing business with him. It was a major deal in the tech world but quickly forgotten about. And the Master Ball was finished just around the time Gary Oak reported dueling that mysterious Pokemon."

"The Master Ball was created to hold Mewtwo," Harry finally said. "Using Voldemort's keystone."

"That is our belief," Jonas said.

"So what exactly are you suggesting then, Uncle Jonas?" Jasmine asked. "Because you wouldn't have brought this up if you didn't have a plan."

"I do," Jonas said before looking at Harry. "I don't like it but it's our best option."

"And that is?"

Jonas sighed. "An interesting phenomenon has occurred in Aradact. Adults who try to push towards the northern pole are driven back. Violently so at times. But trainers who are underage, or just turned 17 or 18? They are able to push through. They aren't able to get to the North Pole but they are able to get farther. And a couple who have shown latent Arts skills? They get the farthest. And all of them show signs of lost time."

"So Jasmine, Luna, and I are probably the best ones to go traipsing through the frozen wasteland?" Harry asked. When Jonas nodded he shrugged. "Sounds about right."

"But what do you want us to do?" Jasmine asked again.

"I want you to politely ask Mewtwo for the Master Ball," Jonas said.

"…fuck."