Chapter Twelve: The Enemy of My Enemy

"N, even if we don't understand each other, that's not a reason to reject each other. There are two sides to any argument. Is there one point of view that has all the answers? Give it some thought." - Alder, Pokémon Black and White

(Dei POV)

We were headed the same way, I realised. We were practically marching side-by-side. We'd been silent for the past couple of hours, except when we had to warn each other about wild Pokémon. Khan could see the bigger ones coming, but for the sneakier ones, he needed me to sniff them out.

"Careful," he said, and I felt his arm suddenly underneath my foot, "the rocks here are really loose."

I let him help me down. It felt cooler all of a sudden.

"Are we under something?" I asked.

"A shelf of rock, it stretches for about twenty feet or so. It's a little out of our way but I thought it would shield us from sight."

I knew he wasn't just talking about the wild Pokémon.

"Are you hungry yet?" he asked.

"Not really."

My stomach felt funny and I really wanted to eat, but at that point I knew the difference between hunger and hunger.

"All right," Khan said, and I heard the clip in his bag snap, "just let me know."

I was about to say "thank you", but I stopped myself. I had to remind myself this guy was the enemy. Gods, I'd hated this person for more than half my life. I used to fantasise about ripping into all three of them, and I mean that in two ways. Obviously Alex was my main target, but the two of them were guilty as well. We'd been walking together for hours, I could have told him everything I'd been thinking all this time, and he'd just have to shut up and listen. But for some reason the anger I'd been living with for so long just wasn't there anymore. I think I just wanted to understand.

"Why did you do it?"

He stopped.

"Come again?"

"Why did you help him?" I asked. "You're not a Skarsgard. You barely knew this Pokémon. You risked your life to fight for him - you did terrible things. I just want to know why."

"I did it to protect my students, Dei. Alex may have been new, but he was still under my protection, and I've cared for Tobias over many years. How could I not try to help them?"

He took another step forward but I interrupted him.

"None of us ever had a choice, did we?"

"What do you mean?" he sounds surprised.

"It's like you said. How could you not do what you did? It's the same for all of us. We're pawns. We can't help what side of the battlefield we're on. None of us got to choose."

I hear him turn around.

"In life you always have a choice. I know it was different for you, you were raised in a time of war. But if you're going to think like an adult, you need to start by realising that everyone made their choice. There have been families torn about by this war. Marriages broken, children ripped from parents, friendships closer than blood watered down to nothing but hate. People made those choices."

"Even Alex?"

"What about him?"

"Alex ended up a Varia because Dreigo got to him first. Then he became a Treasure Hunter because Tobias found him after he'd been wiped clean. Then the Skarsgards got to him before we could. And me, what could I be other than my brothers' brother? How could there be any choice?"

Khan was quiet for a moment. Then he dropped his bag sat down near me, so I took a seat next to him. We could hear the molten lava dripping down the mountainside.

"In my life I've chosen to be many Pokémon. Before being a teacher, I was a student. I was a treasure hunter, and I travelled every region in Itori with my two mentors, hanging on their every word. Then I was a lost Pokémon, with no home or fiends or family to speak of. The three of us had a home base and used basic tools, but we were not in the traditional sense "civilised Pokémon". And from what we'd seen, the wild places were becoming smaller and smaller by the day. The only place that seemed safe from this creeping existential threat was - ironic to you I'm sure - Ruby Forest.

"There I was a renegade, devoting my life to protecting Pokémon in need. But I was forced to leave that life as well. I fled to the closest safe place I could find. Finally in Emerald Town I found my true calling: I became a teacher. I decided to dedicate my heart and soul to raising Pokémon who were just like me, outcasts with no family or liege or heritage to call their own. That's how the Treasure Hunters began.

"My point is that we have a lot of choices in life. I chose to leave Mount. Chronicle to travel with Atlanta and Paige. I chose to flee civilisation and I chose to return to it. No one forced me into any of it."

Somewhere up above us gravel moved down the mountain. I sniffed for any wild Pokémon, but all I smelt was sulphur.

"Maybe not everyone gets to," I said. "You got to be your own leader, I don't know if I'll ever get to do that."

"Hmm." He shifted in his seat. "I saw you leading your Pokémon back on Mount. Mire."

"Didn't you see what happened?" I snapped. "I got them all killed."

"Hey. Don't say that. We saved Alex and we can save those soldiers. They're not dead, Dei."

I kicked a pebble.

"I still regret it."

"Sometimes we think we don't have a choice because we don't know any better. Alex didn't just choose to be a Skarsgard because he found them first. He realised what he tried to do in Ruby Forest was wrong, and repented. That means he-"

"I know what it means."

He chuckles.

"Good lad. The point is Alex changed. He didn't there crying for days that he'd done something terrible, he got to his feet and he did things differently going forward. That's all you can do. Forgive yourself for the past, but not the future."

I heard wings flapping. Khan jumped to his feet, but I didn't think it was the Charizard. It sounded like—

"Dei? Is that you?"

"Dreigoooooooo!" I ran to my brother and jump into his arms.

"Are you okay?" he said. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm okay, we had to fight off a lot of wild Pokémon but none of them got me!"

"Oh thank Tornadus you're all right."

I heard Khan pick his bag off the ground. I wondered if they were going to fight, but Dreigo put me down on the ground and bent his back.

"All right, hop on."

I climbed on and clung to his neck. Dreigo turned around and spread his wings.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"The base of Mount. Spring," he said, "our Pokémon are waiting there. Hold on tight."

"Be careful you're not seen," said Khan.

"I will. Thank you."

Dreigo flapped his wings and we fly up into the sky.

"You okay up there?" he asked for like the millionth time.

"I'm okay!" I said, ignoring my achy legs and sniffly nose.

It was cold and windy up in the sky, but it was also eerily quiet. I thought I would hear soldiers marching, voices yelling, attacks firing. But it didn't sound like there was a single living Pokémon for miles and miles.

We rejoined our soldiers. Olivia and Posy were nowhere to be found. Neither were Oakley or Gaia or Prometheus or Casper. Maybe they'd escaped another way…

I had to stay strong.

Mr. Finley was letting us use the tunnels so we could move quickly under cover. The Swampert was already gone, so a Vulcan Diglett led us inside. I caught a familiar scent.

"Zweeeeeeeil!"

I ran to my brother and jumped up onto his back.

"Dei!" he exclaimed. "Thundurus, you had me scared."

"Any updates?" said Dreigo.

"300 of ours left, 360 of the Earthspringers, at an estimate. The Skarsgards managed to escape but it seems they've roughly lost half their numbers."

"So we can assume Fitzroy isn't working with any of them."

"If he is, he's a worse ally than Mr. Finley."

"Hah. Guess we've got no choice but to rely on him now, do we?"

"I think that goes for all of us," his voice turns grave, "that's a Legendary Pokémon up there, Dreigo. Fused with a megalomaniac. I think we're all in this fight now."

"A unified front," Dreigo said dryly, "just like I'd always hoped for…"

"We should make it to Grande City by the Espeon's hour, my guess is Octavia will be home, so you can take it from there."

"And the Oran Berry?"

Code-word for the Sapphire Fang.

"It's in here. And you know what the best part is? "Lord Ayers" had the seal all along, slippery bastard. He handed it over pretty quick though."

"Are you really going to do it?"

"What choice do I have?"

(Asa POV)

The winds howled. Swirling grey and white all around, the cold air numbing my skin yet pricking at my flesh and bones. Tracks of even the most hardened flying-types trailed away as snow crystallised around our legs.

We were approaching to the peak of Mount. Cyclone. There was no path, only sheer drops on either side, and in the dimness I feared one of us would tread on a patch of white and find the edge and simply fall away. I doubted either Caesar or Tom would be fast enough to stop it.

A torn flag flapped in the wind; a red-brown with black fangs jutting from a chiselled jaw. Gaia's sigil.

Every breath I took was laborious. I looked back to see how the others were doing. Caesar and Tom remained stoic, though their body language betrayed their suffering. Alex and Tobias trudged on with sunken eyes, clutching themselves, unresponsive to their surroundings. I suppose you need to be when your surroundings are so terrible.

"Have you met the Guardian of this mountain?" I yelled over the din of the snowstorm.

"We've… communicated," Tom called back.

"Are you cold?" Alex asked Caesar, meekly.

Caesar smiled at him. "I've travelled through cold climates, I know I can handle this."

Nevertheless Alex stepped closer to him and held his flame to his face. I could see the relief in the loosening of the Salamence's shoulders. Then the atmosphere changed. Stilled. The peak flattened onto a plateau: Here there were no footprints, no flags, no sign of life at all, but for the incomprehensible living form standing at the edge, facing away from us.

The cold gripping my heart, I took a step forward. The Guardian span around and spread her wings wide. Her squawk echoed off the six peaks, chimed through the banks of snow.

"A Xatu," Caesar said breathlessly. It seemed they'd never met face-to-face.

"It's Nirvana, right?" Tom said. "One of your Pokémon told us, that was your name?"

Nirvana stared at us with inscrutable eyes. I took another step forward. Her eyes focused on me and I felt a sudden stab of fear.

"We've come to ask for your help!" I called of the howling of the wind. "We require access to the Omega Chasm!"

Nirvana gave another echoing cry.

"Soldiers have already marched through here," her voice cut clear through the din, "they have trampled my snows, they have sullied my air, they have planted their flag into my ground. Why should the Mountain burden itself so one soldier may break another against its stone?"

"Lives are on the line! You can't just abandon the Pokémon down there when you have the chance to save people!"

"I see a thousand possible futures in my right eye. I see ten thousand dead who could have been saved through my left. Your words do not move me."

"Can't you see what's happening right now?!"

"I am not omnipotent."

"Then listen to me!"

Dismissive silence. I felt anger boiling up in me, melting through the ice. I lifted a heavy foot out of the snow and pointed to the south.

"Right now a Legendary Pokémon is being controlled by a megalomaniac! He's killing soldiers, he's killing citizens, and he's probably going to come up here and kill you too!"

"My life is but a speck upon a snowdrift, it is not for myself that I refuse you. I am a Guardian, I oversee the cycle of birth, being, and death on my Mountain at every moment. Intervention of divine powers would make a mockery of the circle of life."

"That circle is already broken! This is our only chance to heal it before it crumbles into nothing!"

She remained unmoved. "Settled Pokémon have come to the Guardians before, at war with one another, with claims of the entire World being at stake. But that is your world. Not ours."

"Fitzroy is not a settled Pokémon," I told her, "and neither is his friend."

The Gem embedded into my navel glowed. Nirvana's eyes widened, as suddenly the grey and white fell to pitch black. Red fire burning a ring around us, as blazing meteors rained from the sky. Voices screaming, bodies falling. Bronze soldiers marching across purple mountain paths, firing silver at every Pokémon they saw. Then finally we had a clear view of the being responsible; a Charizard's outline, but with hard black scales, pink-red flames, and blue dots for eyes.

"Regidrago…"

"I'm sorry I had to show you this," I said, "but I needed to make you see."

Nirvana spread her wings and squawked. The vision cut away; somehow she had broken herself free. I'd never seen a Pokémon do that before.

The Xatu folded in her wings and stepped forward. Her demeanour was still rigid, but no longer opaque. Ice, instead of steel.

"The only way in is through Mount. Herald, home of the Origin Element. I cannot convince the other Guardians to let you through, but I can give you the key in the inner caverns."

I bowed to her. "Thank you! Thank you so much!"

"It is a word. Arranged in the tiles of the old language, it will open the Omega Chasm to you."

She looked down at me.

"It is for your ears only, Bulbasaur."

"Right, right. Sorry."

Catch up with you later, scroll.

I touched a claw to the Eon Gem.