Chapter Twenty: The War of the World

"So open your eyes

It's easy to do

Just take the time

And look around you!

Never forget:

This is a beautiful world!" - This is a Beautiful World, Aaron Brotherton

(Alex POV)

Water.

Water everywhere. It's soaking me, bleeding into me, running through my veins. I'm gasping for breath but I'm not taking in air. My energy is leaking out. I'm—

I woke up gasping, pain stabbing through my heart like a sword. Fog clouded my mind. Brown walls, high ceilings, a stone slab beneath me. Where was I?

"Alex!"

Tobias came running over, face wet and eyes bloodshot. The top of the slab I was sitting on reached his forehead. He looked small for some reason.

"Oh thank the Gods," Asa said, eyes sparkling. Even Khan's were filled with tears.

I took a deep, slow breath. I was alive. Gods above, I was alive. I felt a wave of relief like nothing I could remember feeling before. I wanted to laugh and cheer and cry with joy.

And yet something still felt… off.

My mind was still so foggy. I could barely think straight. Tobias gazing up at me, his head craned up high. How had I survived my flame being extinguished? Why did everyone look so small? And why was I so cold? Moltres, I couldn't feel my tail!

I shifted to look behind me. That's when I got a proper look at my body. The fog cleared. I screamed.

I jumped so hard I almost fell right off the slab. I patted myself all over, then looked down at my hands. Long, gangly, pale-brown fingers, dull round claws. I put my hands to my head. Hair. I screamed again.

"It's okay!" Asa said.

"Just keep calm," Khan said.

"No!" I yelled. "No, I can't be this! This can't be real! This can't be real! I can't be a human!"

Tobias reached up and placed his hand on mine.

"Alex," he said softly, "we've all seen you as a human before. We know who you used to be, but we also know who you are now, and what kind of body you're in doesn't change that. It's the same when Pokémon evolve, you know? The outside changes, the inside doesn't."

I looked down at my partner, at his whole hand splayed out, barely covering the back of mine.

"We love you just the same," he said, "human or Pokémon."

I curled myself up into a ball, scrunching myself in as much as possible. Asa was smaller too. Khan looked almost the same size as me. I looked behind myself again. No tail, no fire.

Tobias put a hand on my knee. It felt strange. Normally it felt so comfortable, both of us scaled creatures. Not it felt foreign. Cold. We clashed with one another. But it still felt right. I relaxed my body a little, letting my legs drop. And that's when I remembered that humans, traditionally, always wore clothes. And I was dressed in nothing but a scarf.

"Good grief I'm naked!"

"Alex, let me assure you that's the last thing we're thinking of when you're lying dead on a stone slab," said Khan.

I hid myself behind my hands. "Oh, God, humans are gross."

"You could use your scarf?" Asa suggested.

"Absolutely not," Tobias, Khan, and I said as one.

"What about that chest in the corner?" Tobias suggested. "There could be something in there."

Khan reached his claw into the rusty lock, and it snapped in seconds. He pulled out a long beige toga with a large red semicircle taking up most of the front. Khan sniffed at and recoiled.

"I think this thing used to be white."

"Better than nothing," I said, "gimme."

He held it out to me. I shuffled away from them while I slipped it on over my body. Huge as that thing was, it fit me perfectly. I shuffled back around to three concerned faces.

"How do you feel?" Asa asked.

"How do I feel?! I'm… I'm confused! I'm scared! I'm huge! What's happened to me?"

They explained everything.

I looked up at the Unown. Empty carvings in the wall. Hollow, yet somehow taking up space.

"Can they… Can they make me a Pokémon again?"

Asa looked past me. I followed his eyes and saw he was staring at the mural of Dialga.

"The Unown manipulated time to bring you back to your "former" self. A self they may have seen themselves through the Time Flowers."

"So?"

"I'm worried that if we ask them to bring you back to your Charmander form…"

"They only Charmander they've seen in here is a dead one," Khan finished for him.

"So, what? I'm just stuck like this? How the hell am I going to change back?!"

They all exchanged looks, not speaking. I slapped my hand on the slab. Hard.

"Listen to me!"

Asa's eyes widened. His body moved into a defensive stance. Tobias and Khan stared at me, shocked. I looked down at my own hands.

"Oh God, I'm changing back."

"Alex—" Asa began.

"I'm human again, I'm turning back into my old self, I'm turning into him again! Oh God, oh God I don't want to change back, please, please make it stop, I can't be a human again, I can't. Make it stop!"

"Nothing's happening to you!" Tobias insisted. "You're still the same Alex, just in a different body!"

"You can stop this," Asa said, "you don't have to turn into the person you think you're becoming."

Khan marched past them and put both claws on my shoulder.

"Alex. What you are experiencing is a trauma trigger response. You're catastrophizing the situation by thinking one outburst— in an incredibly emotional situation— is suddenly going to turn you into the remorseless villain you saw yourself as when you opened the first Time Flower. But look around you. Look at where you are now. Look at the scarf around your neck. You are not the person who worked with the Varias, the one who attacked Ruby Forest. You are not the person who woke up in Oran Berry Cave. You are not the person who battled the Varias in Nova Hall. You are Alex, Treasure Hunter, 152 A.S. But ever other Alex is living inside of you right now, and it's your responsibility as the eldest to keep them calm. Close your eyes. Breath. Open them again."

"But does that mean…" I swallowed, "does that mean the bad Alex is in here too?"

I looked down at my human body. Tobias climbed up onto the slab. I crossed my legs to hide my shame.

"There is no bad Alex," my partner said. "There's a younger, more naïve Alex, and he's in there too. But hiding from him and kicking him into a corner isn't going to make him disappear. You need to accept him. Otherwise he'll always be in pain, and that means you will, too."

That's when, looking down at myself, I noticed the Chariz-fang. Most of the string had snapped from the expansion of my wrist, but a single thread remained, binding me to it.

"How did you get so smart?" I asked my partner.

He just shrugged and said: "I changed too."

(Asa POV)

They were all moving so fast.

Over ancient crumbling ruins. Across planes of frostbitten land. Through cold iron forges littered with rusted steel. Through villages, towns, cities. All headed to one place. The angry pink-red hole in the sky. And the last one I still couldn't see, buried beneath the earth, among the roots and the worms.

I can see through another's eyes, watch them from above. But they can never see me, they can never hear me. Those were the rules laid out to me when Latios and Latias gifted me my Gem. My abilities had limits, I could never share the powers of a God. But I had to try. The Golems were Gods, weren't they? If I could just call out to them…

The Electric God tore through Sandstone Town, and even the stone houses and sand floors were burned black by the ferocity of the thunderstorm they left in their wake. They moved at an unblinking pace, unaffected by anything around them, occasionally crashing into buildings and dizzily moving through the remains, as if in a dream.

I couldn't speak, I couldn't move, emotions welled up inside of me choking my words—

"Snap out of it!"

The Electric God carried on as before. Ground-type Pokémon ran screaming from tendrils of lightning.

"Listen to me!" I called to them. "Please! You're hurting people!"

The Ice God has reached the Crownlands. Glorious fields of grass and flowers turned crystalline as they travelled. None of the "Team Arctic" Fortis and Harriet had reported seemed to be with them. Instead they were trailed by a hoard of bronze soldiers.

No response. Two Greedent carried two shivering Skwovet on their backs as they ran from the encroaching world of ice.

"Can you see what you're doing?!" I cried.

The Steel God walked across an abandoned battlefield. Swords and pikes and halberds and spears run with rust, tipped with old blood. Steel hands reached out and hovered above a red blade, which melted upwards, hovering in the air. As they walked more and more metal began to melt into undulating balls of liquid, following them. Footsteps carried the Steel God along, head angled to the floor to shield their eyes from the view around them.

With their heavy footsteps shaking the earth, a suit of armour topples to the ground. Made for a Charizard. Steel feet grind it to pieces.

I was failing. The Golems were going to reach Fitzroy, and I couldn't stop them.

The Rock God appeared through a veil of dust. A cobblestone path led to a busy marketplace, now abandoned as mortal Pokémon ran for their lives. Stone limbs dragged heavily, knocking stalls over as they walked through streets far too narrow for them. Heedless footsteps left crushed wood and soiled food behind them. A Water Pulse hit the back of their head, and a brave yet foolish Buizel challenged to them from behind. They didn't even seem to notice he was there.

As his mother dragged him away, I call out to the Golem:

"You need to bring yourself out of this trance. Can't you see what this is doing to people?" Finally my frustration took over me. "For the love of God, can't you just listen for one second?!"

The Rock God took two mores steps. Stopped. Looks of their shoulder at me. For a moment, we locked eyes. They turned and carried on their way.

My brain was fuzzy. I couldn't decipher a thing from their expression. All I felt was a deep, deep emptiness…

"Asa?"

My eyes snapped open. Alex's face was close to mine. Brown eyes.

"You okay?" he asked.

I reached out a paw.

Alex stared at me for a moment, then wrapped his arm around me, and held me tight. He was warm. I finally slept.

(Tobias POV)

It was impossible to tell how much time had passed.

When we woke up the room looked exactly the same. Dark, lit only by the dim glow from Asa's Gems. We put down the last of our food. An apple each, three oran berries split between us, two plain seeds offered to Alex and I. The last of our water, a trickle from each skin.

"What now?" Alex asked. His voice was so deep, nothing like I was used to. But it was his. "I don't see a door anywhere."

"Well the most obvious thing in the room would have to be that giant mural," Khan said, nodding to the far wall.

We approached it, stepping around the stone slab that had held Alex's dead body. A glow came from Khan's bag,and from Asa's. Pink and blue.

"The plates," the mage said.

They took the Guardians' gifts from their bags. They started shaking, then flew from their grips, hovering high above our heads. Soon they were blazing orbs lighting up the room.

Pink and blue light shone in the eyes of the mural Gods. For just a moment, they looked alive. Then the orbs sunk into the wall, and disappeared. We waited.

Nothing happened.

"There go our bargaining chips," said Alex.

"Any ideas?" Asa said to Khan.

"I was about to ask you the same thing," the Professor replied.

I stared up at the mural, hoping to find some clue. I felt an electric current moving through my arm. My eyes were drawn to the white-and-gold God in the mural's centre. This had to be a clue. Maybe if I…

I reached out and placed my hand against the God's leg. My fingers sunk into the wall.

I yanked them away instinctively, shook my hand, even though it was dry as bone. Asa tentatively reached out a vine and placed it against the God's face. It went right through, as if there'd been no wall to begin with.

"I guess we just… keep walking," he said.

Khan held up a claw and walked towards the disappearing wall. "I'll go first, make sure the way is clear."

"No way, you're not going out there alone!" I was about to say, until Asa held his vine out in front of the Professor.

"If something happens to you in there these two are bound to run after you and get themselves hurt," he said with a wry smile. "Let me go."

He made his way towards the mural.

"I would fight for you," Alex called out, "if you were in danger. I would."

Asa's face softened. "Well. Let's just hope you don't have to."

He stepped through the wall.

For a few seconds, I was worried those would be his last words. Then his head poked out from between the God's legs, and said cheerfully:

"All clear!"

I breathed a sigh of relief and followed him to the other side. We turned a corner, and saw him staring up the walls, eyes wide with wonder.

Murals. Twenty-two of them in all. All of them titled by the Unown:

Five Pokémon, bipedal, dotted patterns where faces might have been, stand in a semi-circle around a sixth, taller Pokémon, whose arms are stretched out to them, wide and welcoming. They stand together in a temple, where the walls are lined with carvings of the Unown. Asa names them: Regirock, Regice, Registeel, Regieleki, Regidrago, Regigigas.

The title written vertically on the left side reads: WAREWARE

Wide open fields, lush forests, a flowing river, tall mountains peaked with snow. Humans and Pokémon tend to crops, a human farmer cutting wheat with a scythe, a Growlithe carrying stalks on their back. A stone-grey castle stands proud high up on a hill.

KYOURYOKU

Fissures in the earth, thunderclouds fill the sky, lighting strikes the mountains below, splitting them apart. The river boils, and the trees burn. The castle's walls crack and threaten to collapse.

TENSAI

The sky opens, and in a halo of light hovers a heavenly being, countless ethereal tendrils of reaching down to the earth below. It's the God, the one from the mural, the one all the others were gathered around.

TENTAI

Humans and Pokémon alike gaze up in awe as the God summons five plates, shaped like the ones Khan and Asa gave up. Something else hovers in the middle of them. It looks a lot like a wonder orb.

ATAE

The orb's light reaches down to the land. Black clouds part, gentle rain douses the flames, the river's waters calm. Humans and Pokémon turn their heads up to the light.

ZENCHI

Across the land, as the orb shines down, new buds buried in the ground begin to sprout. Wide eyes turn to the miracle happening below their feet.

TANEMAKI

A group of six humans offer a gift to the God, a bouquet of Gracidea flowers. They extend their arms, inviting the deity inside their castle, as fighting-type and rock-type Pokémon work to repair the damage done to the building. The God has not been able to heal the damage done to human creations.

KANGEI

The humans, smiles on their faces, lead the God through opulent corridors, as clothed Pokémon work at forges, in kitchens, as servants. Their leader wears a sun-shaped headband and a dagger at their waist.

MANCHYAKU

The God stares up from the bottom of a deep shaft, as silver water pours down from above.

URAGIRI

The earth splits yet again as the six titanic Gods face an army of Pokémon commanded by humans.

IKUSA

The six Gods gather around a wide stone plain, six mountains rising up behind them. Seeds are scattered across the flat surface.

HAKA

The six Pokémon walk separate paths to one another, fading into the distance.

TSUITOU

Regirock buries themselves into a mountain range. Hills rise up around them, shielding them from the world.

YOKUUTSU

Stony landscape becomes peaks and valleys of white. Snowflakes scatter and grass wilts as Regice inters themselves in ice.

HININ

Registeel walks across a former battlefield, prying arms and armour from dead bodies. Liquid metal dances in the air around them.

YUUZAI

Regieleki zig-zags wildly across the land, leaving ruined villages and shocked Pokémon in their wage.

SHOUGEKI

Regidrago flies to a land across the water, and in a fit of rage lets out a terrible beam of power, splitting the land, forming a river.

IKARI

Regigigas stands alone in bare open land, seeds in hand.

TORIHIKI

Regigigas travels far and wide, digging up the land, planting seeds inside.

MAISOU

A forest grows where barren land once stood. Below the earth rests one of the plates from "ATAE". A plate with a flame pattern across its surface.

AKAI

The last mural was the largest. It didn't depict the past; it couldn't have, because it had never happened. The Golems' God had risen again, and looked benevolently down at the land the six of them had created. Nineteen plates formed a circle around them, and light reached across the land, across Itori, across Tenrai, stretching far across the sea. The six Golems gathered beneath them, arms raised to the heavens. Pokémon came from far and wide to bow to their God in the sky. There wasn't a human in sight.

HENKAKU

Alex walked over to "TANEMAKI". He placed his hand on the orb that God created. His fingers moved to the seeds in the ground, then his head turned to the forest growing around Regigigas.

"They're bargaining," he said.

Asa blinked. "What did you say?"

"They're bargaining for their God. They're trying to bring them back, pay service to them, I don't know. They're trying to cope with their death."

"You can tell?" Khan asked.

"I did the same thing when I lost Bruiser," I said. "I tried to become just like her. I even named myself after her when we were on the run from the Guardians. Alex is right. This Pokémon's in mourning."

The word echoed down the tunnel.

"If Regigigas wants that orb," said Alex, "we'll give it to them."

"We'll probably need it by the time this war is over…" Asa said.

Alex turned to him, eyes afire. "It's here. I can feel it."

"So can I," I said, and meant it. "If Alex is sure of it then I am too."

"That's very touching, both of you," Khan asked, "but that how do we find it?"

"I wonder…" Asa said. He gazed up at the mural, at the orb, at the God. "I wonder if we're meant to bargain for it."

(Octavia POV)

Dreigo's Dragon Tail whipped through the sky. Regiroy blocked with his own tail, the twin streaks of fire bellowing, and they ricochetted off one another. Achilleus fired a Hyper Beam from the side. Regiroy turned and crossed his cannon-like hands across his chest. The beam pushed him back a few feet, but when he threw his arms aside, there wasn't a mark on him.

I snuck up behind him, Air Slash sliced through the clouds right at his back. But his wings were dragonfire, and when they flared up like a Typhlosion's neck and swallowed the attack like it was mere wind. He turned to me, murder in his eyes. Half of him was the Legendary, but I knew for a fact in that moment I was looking at Fitzroy.

His laser-accurate Inferno was coming before I had time to pull away. I raised my shield and the force when it struck was so powerful I was falling through the air faster than I had time to beat my wings. I felt hot liquid run down my arm. My shield was melting. I ripped the straps off before the red-hot metal could touch my skin. A shield designed to withstand the heat of a Charizard's flame, a flame hot enough to turn rocks into lava. And he'd melted it.

Dreigo came out of nowhere. He grabbed me around the waist and pulled my out of the way. I saw Regiroy's fire burning the ends of his already-worn wings. We went spinning through the air. Regiroy looked down at us and grinned. Both of us together in the same place. The pink-red flame at the end of his tail flared, and he sucked in hot ashy air.

Achilleus' fist glowed white. He approached with slow, careful beats of his wings. Regiroy threw back his head to fire, and the Dragonite's Focus Punch struck him in the back of the neck. Regiroy was knocked forward, coughing up smoke and pink flame. Achilleus flapped his wings to pull away. Before he'd gone five feet Regiroy had become a blazing-furred dragon and had driven straight into him. His sharp horns caught Achilleus' collarbone, and he twisted him around then tossed him to the ground.

The Dragonite's small wings eat hard enough to pull him out of a tailspin. A white feathery light spread from their tips across his body, and the pink-red welts on his shoulders began to heal over. While he recovered, Dreigo and I distracted our opponent.

Regiroy swerved left to dodge my Air Slash, right to dodge his Fire Blast. From the fang-patterns across his torso came a glowing sea serpent, snapping three rows of teeth. I swerved left, Dreigo swerved right, we turned and charged at him in perfect unison.

Regiroy's Laser Inferno clashed with Dreigo's Hyper Beam. Dreigo needed to recharge, so the explosion of fire that followed swallowed Varia whole. But in that split second his guard was down, my Breaking Swipe struck Regiroy in the right breast, pushing him back a few feet. He roared, placing a hand to his chest. He raised his other and I saw fire glowing inside, ready to burst. Dreigo slammed his body hard into Regiroy's side. He span and smacked the Hydreigon in the stomach with their tail, and I heard a heard a gasp as the wind was knocked out of him. But he flapped his wings hard, caught himself, and stared the Legendary down. I suddenly felt a wave of gratitude that he was here, fighting alongside me. (He must never know this.)

Achilleus appeared on the other side. Regiroy turned to take us all in. We were exhausted, bruised, bleeding. I saw only a single bead of sweat on our enemy's forehead. But this was a Legendary Pokémon, and he'd just broken a sweat.

This was probably my only chance to confront him, I realised. It would be dishonourable to kill a person without explaining why. And it would be such a shame to let the bastard die without knowing how much I hated him.

"Murderer!" I roared.

Fitzroy said nothing.

"I know what you did to her! I found in the solar, after you'd run like the coward you are!"

He stared, jets of fire keeping him hovering still in the air.

"You took her life in cold blood, your own mother!"

"Mother?" His voice was gravelly, with a high-pitched howl coming from the back of his throat. It had a kind of mechanical rhythm to it. "That is what you call the giver of life, yes?"

My stomach twisted in a knot. I tried to meet his eye, but a cluster of blue dots was staring back at me. This wasn't Fitzroy.

"Does not a mother give the same gift as God? Curious that you should place such importance on the life she gave Fitzroy, but not on the gift God gave to all of us."

The others and I exchanged looks.

"Is this not a god we are speaking to?" Achilleus called out.

Regiroy roared. I felt my ears pop, saw Achilleus' antennae and Dreigo's collar flutter.

"There is one true God, the creator of our World and of the Human World, the Spring from which all life flows, and humanity is the poison in its waters. You speak of Fitzroy murdering his mother, while you aid and abet humanity, who took our true mother from all of us!"

"Aid and abet humanity?" Dreigo half-laughed. "What the hell are you talking about?! None of us have anything to do with humans!"

"Liar!" Their voice cracked the ground below us. "I saw into your auras, every one of you, you have all been tainted by the soul of a human!"

The soul of a…

Oh.

"Their world you are building anew; your cities, your castles, your weaponry. It is evil, and you use it to do nothing but destroy!"

"I have nothing to do with that world," Achilleus called. "I have no love for technology, for settlements, for civilisation. But I cannot stand by and do nothing as you take life and leave nothing behind. You have done nothing but burn, kill, and maime, and you have the audacity to accuse us of the same?!"

"I am the healer who removes the poison from the wound," Regiroy called. Light burned in the palms of their cannon-like hands. "I am the bringer of the Old World, from a time before humanity, from a time when Pokémon knew peace. I will return the gift of life, and I will bargain every single soul who stands in my way."

The light was blinding, like two pink-red suns.

"You have betrayed your God, and I was awoken to avenge them."

He raised his hands to the sky.

"ALL SHALL BE BROUGHT TO JUSTICE!"

Two dragons streaked into the sky, clearing the black clouds. At the same time a furious wind picked up from below us; it took every last ounce of my strength not to get sucked in, and I saw the others were struggling just the same. The dragons split into a hundred meteors, sucked in by the hurricane, shooting towards us at blinding speed. One struck Achilleus in the stomach, and he went down. The other caught Dreigo in the wrists as he raised his arms to defend himself. Then finally I felt a sudden belly-emptying thud terrible burning in my chest, and I was falling.

The ground was coming up fast. We were a hundred feet in the air, but I knew I would hit it in seconds. I flapped my wings. Useless.

I look to my right and saw Dreigo, eyes closed, body limp. This was it then. After so many years of trying to kill one another, here we were dying side by side. How poetic. I knew I hated poetry for a reason.

From my left came a wave of soft white light. The ground came up to meet me, and as I closed my eyes and thought of Topaz, I felt something latched onto my ankle. My horns grazed the earth as I was lifted back into the air.

A grey-red Staravia was flapping his wings ferociously, clutching onto my foot his his talons. He fought hard to lower me gently to the ground. Two cherry-red Squawkabilly held Dreigo by the tail and collar a couple of feet in the air, before dropping him the rest of the way. Hah.

Dreigo wiped the sweat from his brow as he lay on his side. "You saved our lives," he panted.

"Don't thank us yet," the Forest Pokémon said, but with a smile.

Smoke rose from a hundred spots around us. Pokémon in orange armour, Pokémon in black, Pokémon with red fur and eyes and claws fought side-by-side against an army of bronze, blinding them, knocking them over, burying them in the ground. A thousand silver statues stood around us.

I felt eyes on me. All at once we looked up and saw Regiroy staring down at us with seething disappointment. Storm clouds swirled around him and were sucked up into the sky, into a (pinkish-red) black hole above his head.

Energy was gathering. Pokémon stopped and stared as the bronze soldiers craned their heads up. The sky turned a bleeding red, and a meteor appeared, the head of a dragon with six rows of teeth. Regiroy spread their wings and roared, and the meteor shot through the air. It soared over our heads, over the hoards of soldiers, over the line of Evron's Barrier. It kept flying, kept falling, until finally it landed, and a red shockwave came screaming from Ruby Forest, so powerful it knocked Pokémon off their feet for miles around.

At first, no one was sure what was happening.

Then we saw the impossible. A Ruby Liepard cried out, and suddenly they were all crying out. Achilleus got to his feet. He looked like he'd just been stabbed through the heart.

"Please no…" he gasped.

Through miles and miles of trees we saw that pinkish-red glow. So that was the answer. It'd been there all along. The Forest was resistant to fire, but not to dragon.

The Ruby Pokémon ran to the trees. Silver attacks chased after them, freezing their terrified expressions to their faces. Dreigo watched as the thing he'd been fighting for so long happened right in front of him, and he looked horrified. I stared up at the sky, at my nephew, at that thing, as the roar of the dragonfire drowned out everything else.

Ruby Forest burned.