Everyone called her a battle junkie and she took pride in it. What's wrong with enjoying the thrill of battles, the adrenaline rush that floods your head for the contest of victory? She saw no wrong with that.
"Wild Charge!"
Iron Thorns' Wild Charge hit Kyurem with merciless lightning before it quickly followed up with Stone Edge. This gave Iron Treads the opportunity to hit Kyurem with an Iron Head before it charged up a powerful glow of steel type energy at the tip of its trunk. It's a combination move that they had practised many times before.
"Steel Beam! Endeavour!"
The powerful blast of steel type energy was fired, one that is powerful enough to inflict harm upon the user but that is fine. It only made Endeavour's effects much more effective in swiftly levelling the playing field to reach an equilibrium.
Fool said that she is to demonstrate the power of the Paldea-Galar Union to the world. She has no idea why Fool believed that now is the best time to reveal the existence of Paldea and Galar to the world when they had been purposefully hiding their presence from the PWL for over two centuries but that is not her concern. She will leave the migraine-inducing politicking to the politicians and the Pillars, she's here to do her one and only job.
Defeat Kyurem in an overwhelming display of strength.
"It will use Glaciate! Iron Bundle, Aurora Veil! Iron Moth, Fiery Dance!"
Her prediction proved to be spot on as Kyurem unleashed a Glaciate right after she foresaw it. She smirked, Kyurem might be a legendary pokemon but it's clearly lacking in the strategy department. Miraidon called down more blasts of Thunder from the storm clouds overhead and Kyurem roared in pain. Kyurem is stuck in an awkward spot, unable to overpower them but also unable to escape thanks to Regieleki's constant use of Thunder Cage.
Aurora Veil mitigated the worst of Glaciate while Iron Moth's Fiery Dance easily overpowered what wasn't filtered by Iron Bundle's efforts. The Moon of Tarot palmed one more pokeball in her hand, the one which contained her strongest paradox pokemon discounting Miraidon, the pokemon that is the best counter to Kyurem.
"Go! Spirit Break!"
Iron Valiant was released and vanished in a blur, striking Kyurem with a powerful impact and cutting deep into its thick frozen hide via its blades. This was the pokemon that protected her from the armageddon Miraidon unleashed in her homeland in a futuristic period far away from now. It was her parents' best creation through the application of science, the product borne from their efforts to create the most powerful psychic pokemon of all.
It's ironic that Iron Valiant ended up not having the Psychic typing but it didn't matter to her. Iron Valiant had always been her strongest bodyguard and protector, it was a pokemon created to be powerful, powerful enough to protect her from Miraidon when she was nothing but a powerless child. Now? After so many years had passed?
It's on the cusp of being able to stand up against mythicals and legendaries on its own power.
No sheets of ice were thick enough to block Iron Valiant's Psycho Cut, any tricks Kyurem might think up of were easily predicted or bypassed with Future Sight. Dragon type moves were close to useless against Iron Valiant for it possessed a Fairy typing and its mastery over Fighting type moves allowed it to continuously bombard Aura Spheres mercilessly while multitasking with other things at the same time.
"Hit it! Miraidon!"
Another Electro Drift was discharged, scoring an aggravating blow on Kyurem. Kyurem is hard to take down, the fact that it's still standing and capable of duking it out with them is proof of that, but it's not impossible to defeat.
"It's about to use Dragon Pulse! Iron Hands, Protect!"
Iron Hands stood at the forefront as everyone else hid behind it. A large shield of Protect was thrown up and guarded them from the devastating Dragon Pulse that was being unleashed. Iron Valiant sneakily forbade that move from being used temporarily through Disable while Iron Jugulis returned fire in kind with its own use of Dragon Pulse.
She continued to watch and analyse the battle intensely, her technologically enhanced mind quickly picking out the useful bits of information she gleaned from Kyurem in real time. Her ability to instantly analyse the flow of the battle and remember data with photographic memory is a trait that was boringly common among her people in the far future, but far back in the past where she's stuck now? This became a unique ability that can allow her to go toe to toe with the greatest threats as long as she has the skills and power to utilise her ability to its fullest extent.
"Dragonbreath incoming! Miraidon, Dragon Pulse! Iron Valiant, get closer!"
Miraidon easily matched Kyurem's attack with its own while the rest of her team assisted Iron Valiant to close the gap between them and the legendary dragon. Another Moonblast exploded at Kyurem's side, making it screech in pain and telling her that Iron Valiant had succeeded. Kyurem's eyes were blank but there was no mistaking the glare of anger it was sending her way. It opened its jaws once again and she immediately knew that a big one was coming.
She had seen Draco Meteor being used before, but none of which she had seen could compare to the ones being thrown at her by Kyurem. Kyurem's attack really fit the definition of the word "meteor" with how large the individual sizes of its draconic energy balls of doom are.
Can she and her team fully defend themselves from this attack? Not too sure, all-out attack is more of her schtick, not defence, but she will die if nothing is done.
Regieleki, who had been dutifully locking Kyurem in place with Thunder Cage the entire time, had decided to take action. Powerful surges of lightning were gathered in its electric arms before it unleashed them in a powerful burst with Zap Cannon, its attack finding true thanks to Lock-On. Miraidon assisted Regieleki with accurate shots of Shock Wave with a defiant roar and the number of meteors falling down on them was reduced by at least half of its original number.
But it's still not enough.
Powerful flashes of psychic energy cut through the meteors like a sharp blade. Iron Valiant's combination of Future Sight and Psycho Cut allowed it to predict the meteors' trajectory while ensuring that they were destroyed. There were still too many meteors to be cut down on its own so the rest of the team immediately picked up the slack to finish the job, firing their most powerful attacks in a bid to fully stop Kyurem's strongest attack.
"Defend!"
Kyurem's attack found its mark with cold vindictive rage, the result of it producing a dense fog of smoke and cold air which clouded everyone's vision in the vicinity of the battle. The fog was dispersed with a powerful blast of wind just when Kyurem believed that its foe was dead, but the legendary pokemon that had been slumbering for centuries and only just woke up was unable to comprehend the sight of the state of the human trainer that it witnessed with its eyes when she finally emerged.
"You did a good number on me, you truly live up to your title as a legendary pokemon," the Moon of Tarot, Afie, panted heavily in exhaustion from where she was riding on Miraidon's back. The futuristic pokemon was also sporting grievous wounds all over its body, but still capable of doing battle. Portions of Afie's clothes were in tatters, the skin on the left side of her face and arm had burnt and peeled off to reveal the metal cybernetics that lay just underneath. Such artificial enhancements that her parents did to her was what granted her the unparalleled computing prowess that could theoretically put her as an equal to the strongest champions and legends, and also giving her a strong body that allowed her to survive the unforgiving apocalyptic world long enough until she accidentally made a trip back to the distant past.
Such is the power of science in the far future until human greed turned science against them and reduced their world to ash.
"What? Meowth got your tongue? I'm still human, if you were wondering," Afie couldn't help but remark when she spotted Kyurem's visible confusion, raising her heavily injured left arm to show how blood was slowly oozing out of her cybernetic enhancements. Some of her cybernetic components were already starting to fall apart from the damage inflicted by Kyurem. "Know how I got this? Cos this planet was so fucked up by the time I was born that no natural being can survive with how polluted everywhere is. Humans or pokemon, it doesn't matter. Any being without some form of cybernetic implant or had evolved to be able to survive the deadly pollution had or are going extinct. See my pokemon? Do they look familiar to you? Obviously closely related to the known species of pokemon today, eh? Wonder how they came about?"
Afie gestured to the paradox pokemon surrounding her at her last question. Miraidon's engine whirred loudly once more. Thunder clouds gathered and became darker and darker. The electric terrain that manifested through its power crackled and roared to life in greater intensity than before.
"Disgusting experiments. Mating pokemon with robots, creating new robotic pokemon from countless inhumane experiments; you name it humans had done it. What turned out from that was mass extinction of almost every known species of pokemon until these were the only ones left. Humans went extinct too, Miraidon made sure of it. Have you ever seen the end of the world? Because I saw it, you can never forget the sight of that, the sight of despair."
Miraidon roared as Afie took out a black orb that looked similar to a pokeball, but not quite a pokeball. She wasn't engaging Kyurem in a conversation for the fun of it, she was trying to distract Kyurem when she realised that her strange appearance had caught its attention and curiosity. She needed to buy time for Miraidon and Regieleki to recover, however short it may be. Death should have also reached Ghetsis to destroy Kyurem's pokeball by now, making it a wild pokemon once again if all had gone according to their original plan.
Say what you want about them, but the crazy old folks are all insanely reliable when the going gets tough.
"This power is a one-time use per item outside of Paldea, but it should be able to finally defeat you. Terastallize is a power that shouldn't be used carelessly but who cares? I certainly don't."
The orb in her hand glowed and she dropped it on Miraidon. Miraidon glowed in a blinding light, bright enough to turn night into day and turned the darkness of despair into a ray of hope.
"Haven't introduced myself to you, have I?" The excitement within her chest bubbled as the battle finally reached its climax. "I come from a far future that has gone extinct, from a faraway region called Paldea. My name is Afie, the cyborg girl that has to deal with rampaging Paradox pokemon on a daily basis and also putting up with the crap of stupidly powerful immortal old folks from time to time. I am the Moon of Tarot, the person who will be defeating and capturing you. I love this world too much for you to freeze it over so I'm gonna make you submit to me so we can rewrite that mistake."
A terastallized Miraidon emerged from the glow with a roar that made the skies quake. Afie's eyes narrowed in determination and she gave her team the signal to launch their final attack.
"You are mine, Kyurem."
Ice met lightning in a final clash, the power behind the attack producing a condensed energy bubble that rapidly grew in size until it was unable to contain the accumulated power and finally exploded outwards in a violent ripple. When everything finally subsided both Kyurem and Afie and her pokemon were no more. It's like they were never there.
The remaining frost covering the edge of Castelia's harbour reflected a story that said otherwise.
Deep within a narrow and abandoned alley of Castelia a slender girl with short messy dark brown hair cut into a bob appeared from thin air and fell forward, coughing uncontrollably with blood being coughed out from time to time. A small little humanoid pokemon popped out from a tear in space thereafter, looking at the human girl in concern.
"H-Heh… We did it. Thanks, for back there," Afie managed to flash hoopa a weak grin and proudly showed the Master Ball in her hand before slumping on the floor, too exhausted to even move and barely staying conscious. She did it, she defeated and captured Kyurem, but she would have died back there too if it wasn't for hoopa using its unique power to create portals and warping away the attacks that might have obliterated her into dust before transporting her over here to a safe location.
Heck, even her pokemon might have died if it wasn't for hoopa intervening in the nick of time. Thankfully, they are safe in their pokeballs now.
She knew Kyurem had to be powerful, but she wasn't expecting its final attack to be able to leave her knocking on death's door. Had she underestimated Kyurem? No, she doesn't think so, she's fully aware of its capabilities thanks to the information of her world's history that her parents downloaded into her brain before she travelled through time due to a lucky coincidence. No, the reason for her pathetic state now was much simpler than that.
She's still not strong enough, and that realisation stung.
Hoopa vanished through another of its portals before returning with somebody else in tow. The doctor took one look at the fallen figure, sighed, before carefully picking her up.
"Ugh… Not you again…"
"You said it as if I'm happy to see you too," Dr Kolten Lott snarked back and walked through hoopa's portal, arriving at his secret and private operating room in a matter of seconds. He put his new patient on the operating table, swiftly sterilised himself and wore his surgeon garb, prepared and sterilised his tools, administered anaesthesia to the girl that immediately made her fall into deep sleep and began on the operating procedure.
His scissors cut through her clothes so that he could remove them to quickly assess the injuries that lay underneath. The cyborg girl is arguably his most unique patient with her weird and futuristic biology. Fool had placed him in charge of checking in on her health ever since the girl came through a time machine as a child and was taken in by Tarot. She never liked the doctor since she was a kid and he never liked the girl because she never listened to the doctor's orders.
Yet, he always found himself highly concerned about the girl for reasons that eluded him. He must be getting on in his years, it's rare for a cold hearted scoundrel like him to care for somebody else. Maybe it's because her presence just seemed to remind him of the one person who he had to leave behind in Hoenn all alone four decades ago because of his ineptitude.
What he had done back then was one of his biggest regrets although if he were given the chance to reconsider his options, he would still make the same choice. There simply wasn't a better way out at that time, he wasn't yet the fearsome doctor of the underworld with enough clout and strength to protect who he wanted to protect, he wasn't yet the doctor with the skills that could create miracles.
He couldn't save his lover nor could he be there for his daughter. His presence brings about danger to everyone around him because he has made too many enemies. He had made his resolve to never keep in touch with his daughter ever again because it's the only way he knew to keep her safe then. It's true that things are different now that he had become the fearsome Dr Lott but he saw no reason to change the arrangements he had put in place four decades ago, not when her life had been so blissfully peaceful without him around.
That was the resolve he made but it had started to waver recently due to an unexpected encounter with the very person he least expected to meet here, far away in the region of Unova. Knowing that he had grandchildren all along was one thing, to meet his granddaughter personally in the flesh suddenly made that realisation struck too close to his heart.
Everything that happened in Unova recently just seemed to be one big painful reminder of his past failures.
He shook his head and quickly refocused his attention to the urgent matter at hand. Afie lost blood, but not to a level where it would be critical. He had knowledge of her blood type and his blissey quickly arrived with fresh blood bags and began assisting him in the blood transfusion while he worked on closing and fixing the worst of her injuries. He did what he could to fix her damaged cybernetic parts that had amazingly meshed into her biological body as if they were a part of her all along, a feat only made possible using technology far beyond his time. He fixed enough such that she could go get an expert to really fix the high-tech stuff when she gets back to Paldea. His job here is to ensure that she stays alive long enough to make the trip back.
Her other wounds that were inflicted on her natural body, that he could easily fix. Medical technology has advanced enough to swiftly heal and close wounds if the doctor is certain that no other complications would arise from that medical procedure.
It took a few hours to stabilise her condition and he finally heaved a sigh of relief at the successful completion of this operation. His patient sleeps quietly on the operating table, a peaceful and docile look on her face that is a far cry from her usual voluble personality. He cleaned what's left of her wounds that he decided not to fully close just yet for various medical reasons before covering her naked body with a blanket to protect her modesty, and then turned on his heels to leave the operating room. He was already mentally preparing himself for her to wake up in a few hours to chat his ears off with her incessant talking and never ending energy. He could never deal with that girl.
"Thank you, and sorry for the trouble."
"I'm a doctor," Kolten shook his head to assure Death that he's just doing his job. A soft sigh escaped his lips as he took off his soiled garb and disposed of them into a specialised bin to avoid any biohazard. He's not at all surprised that Death was patiently waiting for him outside of the operating room. Death was appointed as the girl's caretaker in her youth and he cared greatly for that girl.
"Her pokemon?"
"Had blissey transferred them to hoopa for safekeeping. They should be back in Paldea by now."
"Ah, that's nice," Death agreed with a nod of his head as the two sat side by side quietly on the bench outside the small little cottage where the doctor hid his private operating room in Unova to do unlawful stuff behind everyone's backs. Kolten reached for his pockets out of habit only to recall once again that he had sworn to quit smoking many years ago. Smoking was a bad habit that he had kicked but the habitual act of searching for cigarettes in his pockets when he's idle never disappeared.
"Don't smoke in front of our baby. Shouldn't you know that since you are a doctor?"
His lover's words resounded in his mind as though he had just heard them yesterday. He sighed at the memory and aborted the impulse.
"She'll be up again in about two or three hours. Get her a change of clothes before then," Kolten helpfully informed Death. "But what's Fool doing, authorising her to use Miraidon and Regieleki like that? She's just a child!"
"And a child that's more capable than both of us old timers. We should not judge one's value by their age, but by their worth. You should know that, doctor."
"I can never understand Fool sometimes. Sometimes she's like a benevolent saint but other times what she did contradicts that image," Kolten cannot help but complain about the leader he had never met before, only knowing enough that she is a woman who had walked this world for centuries and that she has a hoopa.
"Ghetsis had forced her to reveal Paldea and Galar's existence earlier than planned. This crisis can never be properly resolved otherwise, even with Strength and Justice around. White Kyurem is powerful beyond our wildest imaginations. We do not have any legendaries on hand that are powerful enough to stand against it in a direct confrontation. Hence, why Miraidon and Afie's paradox pokemon are needed."
"Don't we have Emperor?"
"He's our very last resort."
"Ugh, whatever. Why do I care anyway? I'm just a doctor. Fool better know what she's doing, the world is going to flip once they learn of Paldea and Galar."
"That was her intention. Since we are on this topic, will you be staying here or head to Paldea to lay low for a while until everything blows over?"
"I will consider, it's indeed been a while since I've been there," Kolten replied, "but if I do decide to head there it will only be after I finish everything that I have to finish in Unova. There are still some loose ends to tie up and some patients I have to visit before I can take a long leave of absence with peace of mind."
"Understandable, but take this just in case your actions in this operation had attracted attention of the wrong kind. If this is still not enough, call on my help, I will always be on standby," Death slipped an Ultra Ball into the doctor's hand which the doctor looked at with some doubt.
"Not that I don't appreciate the thought, but what's this?"
"A cute little bug."
"The last time you said that the bodyguard you gave me ended up being a crazy pinsir. It's not little nor was it cute."
What the doctor omitted was that the pinsir also tried to eat him for reasons unknown.
"This one's very furry. And it loves cuddles."
The doctor hit the release switch of the pokeball with some scepticism. The look on his face turned into one that screamed I knew it when he identified the pokemon being released. It's a species of pokemon unique to the Paldea region.
"This is a Slither Wing."
And it being an absolutely terrifying dangerous creature went unsaid.
"Furry," Death fondly ruffled the white fuzz covering most of the pokemon's body which made the bug type release a content buzz at the touch, standing up on its hind legs to give Death a hug with its pudgy front legs in a show of affection and Death returned the gesture. "Cuddle," Death pointed it out as though fearing that his point may not be obvious enough to the doctor and tightening his own hug on the bug a little more. "Furry, cuddle, so it's cute."
The doctor took another look at the bipedal bug that stood at least three metres in height.
"But definitely not little."
"Compared to most gigantic pokemon it is rather small in size. It's a cute little bug," Death insisted.
The Sun of Tarot who is only a few years short of finally earning his elder title facepalmed and sighed. Well, it could be worse. At least it wasn't anything as hostile as the pinsir Death loaned him for his safety that other time which forced him to activate his ability and wrestle it into submission.
Death gave him another look, and even with that skull-painted mask covering his face Kolten could actually imagine the puppy eyes Death was giving him. The ancient paradox pokemon was also looking at him with an eager look of anticipation and the doctor's heart softened.
Screw his bleeding heart.
"Yes yes yes, it's a cute little bug."
Slither Wing perked up in joy and enveloped the doctor with a hug, smothering him with its soft furry fuzz and buzzing with happiness the entire time.
Huh, Death's right on one thing.
It's really furry.
Character and pokemon list:
Velda Vera, Age: 14, Female, Pokemon Trainer, Member of the International Police
Pokemon on hand:
1) Rapidash (Flamel), male
2) Swampert (Bigblue), male
3) Banette (Dolly), female
4) Flygon (Snap), male
5) Absol (Kelsa), female
6) Charizard (Toothless), male
7) Cradily (Lily), female
8) Espeon (Rena), female
9) Pachirisu (Fuzzy), male
10) Tyranitar (Kratos), male
11) Clefairy (Joy), female
12) Nidoqueen (Ness), female
13) Pangoro (Hulk), male
14) Porygon-Z (Jarvis), genderless
15) Scizor (Archer), male
16) Lapras (Chill), female
17) Gengar (Wacky), male