"For the record, I stand by the opinion that this plan is insane."
"We are about to commit a spot of high treason and unauthorised Deicide. I would argue that insanity is the starting point of this plan, and not an accidental design flaw that we somehow picked up along the way."
"You see, it's that kind of idiot logic that will get us killed before we can die of natural causes by twenty-six."
"I doubt 'death by super-cancer' counts among natural causes. Besides, why would we want to live to twenty-six when we can die killing a god at eighteen?"
Prologue: The Ambitions of Narcissistic Idiots, Neurotic Thrillseekers, and Nascent Godkillers
"Four thousand and eight hundred metres."
All around me, I heard the voices of the dead and dying.
[Overlord-1, this is Rhino-5! The swarms have taken everything north of the river boulevard! Our sector is going to fall apart in the next minute unless we get some help–]
[Overlord-1, this is Hunter-1! I have six wounded and fourteen dead at LZ Delta. Most of our flyers are downed, and the storm is preventing the rest from take-off! Where is our goddamn fire support–]
[This is the evac site at Sector A-3! Calling all available forces, please assist! Our position is being overrun, we are suffering major casualties, both trainers and civilians! We cannot take much more–]
[–cannot shoot in this fucking storm! The winds are throwing our artillery shells off and our precision rail rounds keep getting intercepted by the electric field! What the hell is ACE ops doing, they are supposed to get the countermeasures running–]
"Four thousand and one hundred metres."
A hundred voices shouted into the void, their desperate screams blocked out by the malevolent whirlwinds of an approaching tempest. Before me was a sea of churning blackness, a roiling ocean of howling malice that blocked out the very stars themselves with its torrential sheets of inky rain and frothing maelstroms of sleet-filled gales.
Its advance was a seething, writhing thing. The cracking of a hundred ephemeral lightning bolts flashed across that oily firmament, each burst briefly illuminating the form of its malefic transgressor within that unholy storm.
A God approaches. An ancient hawk of impossible size and sentience, promising ruin and death upon the two million souls trapped within the domain of its storm.
The radio in my hand crackled. All around me, I heard the futile, final defiance of the city's defenders.
[Reindeer-4, this is Overlord-1. Sitrep?]
[Overlord-1, this—zzz—s Reindeer-4! Situation critical! AA-guns are still offline, we can't—zzz— JAM THAT DOOR! HOLD FOR—zzz—wirings torn to shit, we can't repair this in time before—]
[Reindeer-4, you are breaking up. Say again: ETA to repair.]
[Overlord, we aren't repairing shit! Guns are fried, the POLY-2 targeting systems were killed off in that screaming fucker's second sweep earlier, and we lost half of our techs just getting to this bloody relay station! We have to abandon the second wall, otherwise that damn bird's going to kill us all!]
"Three thousand and six hundred metres."
There was no crime committed that warranted such madness, save for the sin of merely existing in the same world as that god. The arrogance of the Legendaries was such that they could not tolerate living on a planet that was co-inhabited by what they viewed as a hideous, lesser, and utterly foreign life form.
It mattered not that we did not ask to come to their world. Whatever cosmic architect of fate that went mad and wove our universes together had not cared for our insignificant pleas or lives. We were paying the price for it all the same.
To the native Divine rulers of this alien land, the race of Man was an outside infestation that necessitated a cleansing. Their acts of mass slaughter were not genocide, but mere pest control.
Or so they told themselves.
[Copy. Set charges and get yourselves out of there. Re-group with Hunter-2 at evac site I-4. Werewolf-3 will cover your retreat. You have five minutes.]
[Negative! Combat effectiveness is at 30%—zzz— Pull Carlson back, get a tourniquet on that stump! — fuck that, we are combat-ineffective! We have too many wounded to move, get Hunter-2 to pick us up at our location!]
[Negative. Reindeer-4, your location is too hot. Gather any remaining mobile personnel and assets to move to evac site I-4. Werewolf-3 is already on-route to provide fire support.]
[You can't be serious, I have fifteen wounded here!]
'Two thousand and five hundred metres."
Even the most irksome of pests could not bring out a tenth of the hate that poured out of that storm. No, the emotions that ran in those wuthering heights ran deeper than any mere irritation. That God could have simply sat away on its tower in heaven and waited for its endless armies to destroy the race of Man. Instead, it had come in person, bearing the full regalia of its storm, so that it may revel in the pleasure of its killings; the sheering of a man's flesh from his bones as its sleet-filled winds claimed him, the drowning of women and children as it flooded evac bunkers with its endless torrents of icy-cold water, the smell of burnt ashes from a defiant defender after they were incinerated with a flurry of blinding-white lightning bolts.
The need for complete and utter eradication that exudates from every pore of that god's being could only come from a place of heartfelt, irrational, and utterly mad hate.
[Reindeer-4, evac at your location is not possible. Swarms 3 through 6 are moving to the relay station, you need to move now before they overrun you!]
[FUCK! Mack, gather everyone who can still move! We need to set the charges and– Yes, I KNOW we are leaving the rest to die but we– shit, watch the window–!]
"One thousand and four hundred metres."
And that God was not alone in its passionate rage. Behind me, a bastion of unassailable steel stood before the infinite wrath of nature. The product of half a millennium of human ingenuity, tested against the endless march of an army born of ceaseless, bloody evolution.
The hordes of untamed wilderness swarmed the walls of the city; a thousand different creatures bearing impossible morphological adaptations and nightmarish alien appendages. They were met with a rampart of concrete, gunfire, and the defiant will of human courage. Humanity fought its right to exist, as it always had ever since it was exiled to this twisted world.
But no matter what heights of technological mastery or tenacious bravery mankind may achieve, it will never hold back the tides of wild savagery forever.
[Overlord-1, this is Werewolf-3. Our unit has arrived at the site, but the station is overrun. We still see pockets of resistance. Should we try to save the survivors?]
[… Negative. Warp back to Grid 6-2, the civilian militia there is getting overwhelmed. Move in to strafe Sector A-3 to relieve pressure, then get to Grid 3-4 to rejoin Goliath Leader.]
[Are we not assisting with the evacuation, sir?]
[Unless we can stop the storm's advance, none of the civilians in this city will live to see the hour's end. Those AA guns were our last hope for a non-confrontational countermeasure. We are gathering a force to push against the Thunderhawk before it can initiate its final sweep and kill us all.]
"One thousand and fifty metres."
The war is and always will be a losing battle. With each year, thousands died to the Gods' twisted games. With each year, the territory of Man dwindled, lost to the intolerant denizens that prowled in the dark edges of the known world. Even the valiant edge of Humanity's Godslayers, our Champions, have dulled and rusted; the blades of hope turned against each other in worthless intercontinental resource wars that saw only the death of more soldiers that were already in desperately low supply.
[Overlord-1, this is Hunter-2! Our flyers are on the edge of the hurricane, we can see the Thunderhawk! It's moving in early for its third sweep! ETA, three minutes!]
[Can you intercept?]
[Negative! The winds are too heavy! Our birds are barely maintaining altitude as it is. We cannot get close!]
[Understood. Have half your cohort fall back and assist in evacuating the VIPs, while the rest continue their observation. Sending you the coordinates now.]
"Five hundred metres."
The radio in my hand crackled again and again. I heard the voices of battlers desperately begging for help as the storm and its monsters closed in. I heard the final screams of women and children as the steel doors to their bunkers cracked open, and the swarms rushed in to devour them. I heard the professional, unaffected tones of ACE operatives and commanders, stoically giving and receiving orders even as hundreds suffered vicious deaths all around them.
But all of that faded away into the background, as the violent call of the tempest closed in. I saw beyond my barrier an inky blackness that was almost material, occasionally marred by the incandescent white flash of lightning that lingered just a second too long. All I could hear was the downpour of rain smashing against my shield, and the howling of gales too horrifying and shrill to be natural.
[Goliath Leader, this is Overlord-1. The Thunderhawk is closing in for its third and final sweep. AA guns are offline and our heavy ordnance cannot hit the eye of the storm. The reinforcements from League Command are not going to get here on time, you need to move in now and slow down the–]
[Overlord-1, this is Werewolf-3. Brock has already moved forward to engage the Thunderhawk, but the bulk of the swarms have intercepted his path and are slowing him down. We are moving in to assist and clear the swarms.]
[The third and final sweep is already on its way. His ETA to the target?]
[... Fifteen minutes, at best.]
[Then we are out of time. The city is lost. Tell him to retreat immediately to the VIP Teleporter point. Gather any remaining defenders of Elite priority or above, we are pulling out with whatever manpower we can save.]
"One hundred metres. Eyes up, our electric screaming chicken is here."
I looked up. This close to the eye of the storm, the hurricane was a tortured existence; a creature brought to life by unnatural means and sustained by powers beyond mortal understanding. The vast swell of oil-touched clouds folded and creased upon each other like sheets of blackened flesh. Within the throat of the maelstrom, wind speeds exceeding two hundred miles per hour gurgled debris the size of houses like they were mere leaves or twigs in a breeze. The skies above churned and bubbled like the innards of a rotting corpse; a frothing soup of boiling tar, hissing and tearing itself apart in a vortex of collapsing black.
None of that mattered, because at the heart of the living tempest, I saw the face of the God I had come to kill.
A creature more apparition than substance. An entity more phenomena than flesh or blood. I could barely see the shape of where its avian body began and where the maelstrom ended. Perhaps they were one and the same. Perhaps to kill it, I would have to kill the entire storm.
"Good thing we came prepared to do that, then. Go ahead and spring him our welcome gift. That narcissistic, oversized rooster is right beneath the snare."
Within that sea of murky sable storm clouds and past the inundation of rain that poured from it, where every aspect of it screamed in unnatural hate and intelligence, the God readied its final sweep that would see the city behind me razed by its heinous hurricane.
I stood at the edge of the settlement's outermost district, within a wide central plaza that gave me a full view of the storm above me; once a thriving ward filled with charming neighbourhoods and local shophouses, now turned into a hellhole by the tempest's rage. The winds — in defiance of all natural law — grew stronger still, tearing off loose concrete from the nearby building and turning them into deadly projectiles. The less sturdy structures were torn clean off their foundations, the hurricane-whipped air mulching them into boulders of brick and steel to add to its ammunition.
Concrete smashed against concrete, exploding into pockets of shards and brick dust everywhere. The rain pounded with ever-increasing force, until the mere touch of it would have bruised flesh. The streets became filled with rushing rapids. Any stark elevation was turned into the plunge of a waterfall, and the entire district transformed into a sight of frothing rivers and debris-choked waterways. There was no light, save for what the storm gave; scant lightning flashes that seemed to almost be immediately strangled to death by the hateful, hungry storm.
[Third sweep inbound!]
[Overlord to all high-priority callsigns, the Thunderhawk is initiating its final sweep. ETA: one minute. We do not have the necessary countermeasures in place to hinder its advance. You are to immediately abandon your stations and fall back to central command. Teleporters are ready for evac. This is non-negotiable. The city is lost.]
The storm reached its Crescendo, its winds twisting to turn its collected rubble into a grinder that would obliterate any surviving obstacle. The surrounding temperature plummeted, causing the icy rain to morph into a razor-filled hailstone haze that would flay the skin of any living creature that still resisted the maelstrom's path.
And the lightning… the lightning was the chosen weapon of the God's hand. The favoured instrument of the living storm, from which it may drum the heartbeat of promised horrors and ancient grudges brought to bear.
The heavens trudged forward, or perhaps it stumbled, but it advanced all the same. Thunder crashed against the earth with ground-shaking booms, each reverberation shaking the very foundations of the world as it announced the footsteps of the storm's king. The air itself seemed to vibrate with each application of the tempest's unbridled power, as the Thunderhawk raved with mad and unrestraint delight. Who dared stand before such lunacy, a god-storm that sought to end all human life? Who dared stand before its righteous hate, the Legendary who commanded the hurricane that could devour civilisations?
"Shrouded in the tempest's heart,
Where nature's fury lies unrestraint,
We greet the symphony of chaos and might."
I stood before it. Small and insignificant as I was before its majesty, the Legendary did not even notice me when I raised a shadow-garbed hand.
[What about the civilians and the rookie battlers?]
[They will buy us time. Their sacrifice will be remembered, but we can't afford to lose any more of our elites, especially after the Cerulean Gym Leader's death. We need to preserve as much of our available manpower as we can, it's the only thing left we can salvage from this–]
[Sir! Unknown energy spike detected!]
"Here we go."
I exerted my will, and above the primordial tempest, a black sun was born.
Madness met madness. A colossal midnight orb of ancient darkness filled the skies, eclipsing even the immensity of the divine storm. The hollow abyss swallowed up all light and sound from the heavens. The radiance of the King's lightning faded to shadows; the monstrous howl of the storm silenced. For a single, ephemeral second, the world belonged to the Void.
Then, from that abysm of terrible stillness, came a moment of shrieking and unspeakable lunacy. The sun pulsed with a sound akin to a heartbeat, an array of ethereal, purple tentacles burst forth from its onyx surface, and the pull of the earth coalesced upon the Thunderhawk who rested atop his throne of raging squalls and electric talons.
The storm broke, the skies cracked, and luminous Zapdos, God-king of the Empyrean Storm, crashed down onto the earth like a rock plummeting in free fall.
[Damnation balls! What is– An enormous psychic reading just exploded over the storm!]
[Fucking shit, what in the sweet hells was that– holy god! This is Hunter-2 to all call signs, the bird is grounded! I repeat, ZAPDOS HAS BEEN GROUNDED!]
[What the hell just happened?! Hunter-2, did ACE just detonate a Distortion bomb on us?!]
[Negative! Overlord-1, this is Werewolf Command, that wasn't us!]
[Then who was it?!]
[Overlord, this is Hunter-2, the storm has stopped advancing, the third sweep is halted! We are moving in to get a closer look! There's… we see them! It's just one guy! They are standing right in front of the Thunderhawk!]
[How are they not affected by the storm?]
[There's a… some kind of psychic barrier? I've never seen anything like it, and, and… dear god, you need to see this! We are sending you visual data right now, there's a second sun in the sky!]
[Who the hell did this? Get me their ID now! Is that Sabrina?]
[Negative! League tracking says she's still on her way from Saffron! Whoever that is, they aren't with us! I'm reading no tag on them, we don't have an ID!]
The cratered earth shook violently as the storm screamed against the unholy chains that held it to the earth. With a burst of electric might, the avian deity rose painfully from the land's heavy embrace. A pair of hate-filled eyes materialised from the storm clouds that made up the body of the living tempest, locking their malevolent gaze on me. Words that weren't words roared in my mind.
"Arrogant, worthless, INSECT! YOU DARE!"
My hair stood on end as a halo of iridescent light surrounded my barrier. The heavens split apart, and the fury of a hundred lightning bolts rained upon me within a single split-second, with all the hate-filled vengeance of a humiliated god.
The first dozen bounced off my shield like pebbles against a windscreen. The next dozen adjusted their focus and aimed for the crown of my dome barrier, producing the most minuscule of cracks within the psychic screens. The next five dozen rushed upon that weakness like blood-frenzied sharks, widening the fissure in a torrent of pulsating light. Another ten struck the weakened point with more force than any before it, breaking the barrier in two like an egg.
"To have my feet touched the very ground where you worthless mongrels tread, when my Divine self belongs solely to the heavens?! Impudent human, for this insult, I shall flay the skin off your bones, BOIL YOUR VERY EYES WITHIN THEIR SOCKETS!"
There was no time to flee or prepare. In a catastrophic instant, the last six bolts fell upon me with unerring accuracy. Uncounted millions of volts sliced their way through my body, incinerating all in their path and turning my bones into sludge. My blood boiled, my skin was set alight, and – as promised – I felt my very eyes melt in their sockets.
[Hunter-2, we detected an energy strike near the Thunderhawk's location, what happened?]
[-zzz-zzz-s-shit, half our flyers were knocked off course by that blast! Whoever was down there just got hit with the hundred-strikes…]
[Are they dead?]
[What? I just told you–]
[Hunter-2, confirm with visual, what is their status?]
[W-well, their shields are down, and there's a crater where the lightning bolts hit– But I see movement! I can't believe this, they're still standing!]
I raised my convulsing arms — which were already shedding off a thickened moult of charred skin and blackened flesh — before reaching for and grasping upon the newly-liquefied lumps of cooked matter that now resided within my optical sockets. With a scream, I tore my damaged eyes free from their ocular cavities in a spray of ashened blood. Mere seconds later, I felt the beginning of something tingling within those hollow pits. I blinked once, twice, and my vision returned in full again as a new pair of freshly regenerated visual organs adjusted to their surroundings.
Something shifted in my peripheral vision; A dark, shadowy thing that took its place beside me. I heard a chuckle.
"Oh, good. You are still alive. It would have been beyond embarrassing if you had gotten yourself killed in the opening act, especially after all the bluster you were putting on earlier."
I looked back upon the fallen god, and saw a curious sight. The mad-filled hate of the oil-slicked storm was still present, but a part of it had been replaced by something else. Caution.
"I know you."
I turned my head away and spat out a lump of sticky, blood-filled gob; some misbegotten, fused matrimony of my old set of teeth and tongue. My mouth tasted of blood and ash, and I grinned at the God that knelt before the black sun.
"Wretched, void-spawned abomination from beyond the Veil. You will be a horror unto all who cross your path. Killing you would be a mercy on the world."
I heard a snort. "Yeah, we get that a lot."
[Overlord-1 broadcasting on all frequencies: Unknown trainer, this is Lorelei, Lord Fourth of Kanto's Elite Four speaking. If you can hear me, keep up whatever it is that you are doing. Gym Leader Takeshi is on his way to assist. ETA: five minutes. Hold the Thunderhawk down, or all of Cerulean will fall.]
"Heard that? We just got direct orders from League Command. Now the old man can't complain about our intervention."
I laughed, and once I started, I couldn't stop. My quiet chuckles soon turned into open cackles, before transforming into maddening howls of insanity.
The hurricane still existed above. Lightning blazed across the ink-black storm, lingering unnaturally long after their initial ear-splintering crack. The night felt impossibly dark, even with the repeated flashes of iridescent white streaks that tore across the firmament above. The raindrops felt indescribably heavy, every drop a hammer sapping more strength from my frame. The winds threatened to rip me asunder with their wailing screams, and would have if not for the psychic barriers that re-appeared around me. But beyond the darkness, the rain, and the wind, the God of the Storm loomed over me. The Wielder of the Empyreal Hurricane, First of the Sky Beast, and Bane of Central Kanto. Zapdos, the Thunderhawk, raged with incandescent fury as I stood before it.
I was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, standing before a God. Again. And so all I could do was laugh madly and wildly at the great gift of Divine hate directed towards me. Once more, I stood opposed against impossible odds.
Once more, I was blessed with a tribulation worthy of my death.
"Glad to see you're in a good mood. C'mon, let's dust this thing. Time to put our theories of Legendary Deicide to the test."
Our war against the gods has begun. After countless years languishing within my prison, I was free to wage vengeance upon the world beyond the Void once more.
Step One after my unearned exoneration: Meet the new neighbours, and kill them.
" To all remaining survivors still hearing this message:
By now, most of you should grasp the gravity of our situation. Through unknown means, our nation has been transmigrated to an alien planet. We are currently under attack on all sides and are rapidly losing ground to the hostile inhabitants of this strange ecosphere that operates on natural principles we ill-understand. The world as we knew has crumbled, and we are facing the dire possibility of extinction against this new, unimaginable threat.
As of now, we are still maintaining contact with the other nations that appear to have transmigrated with us to this new world, but they are similarly perched on the brink of collapse, and are in no condition to render us aid. We are on our own.
As your Prime Minister, I ask that you heed my words. Here are your final orders: survive, adapt, and thrive. Even if it shall cost us the very last drop of our blood, we shall carve a place for ourselves out of this twisted planet. A nation where the children of Man may live in peace, built from the bodies of these godless demons that wage war on our hapless species.
Do not be driven to despair. If this is to be the closing act of Humanity, let our final song be one of rage and defiance. We shall show these monsters that we will go meekly into the night.
Survive, adapt, and thrive. Those are your final orders."
– An excavated EAS broadcast recording, dated 3 weeks after the Collision of Spheres. It is currently held in the museum of Pewter City, originally displayed to commemorate the 660th year of Mankind's continued survival since it was transmigrated to Novus Mundus, the 'New World'.
AN:
Thanks for reading. Updates are currently planned to be weekly.
This fic is also posted on Spacebattles and Ao3, for those who prefer using those sites. I upload some of my other works there as well.
The next chapter will be uploaded next Friday.