Journey

Death of Duty

Part 7: The Fall of the Pokemon League

Death

Pokemon… War… Try as we might to change it, Pokemon are the ultimate tools of war. — Indigo Champion Lance Wataru

Artemis' talons tore out of my midsection in a spray of blood. I tumbled out of her grip, rolling with the momentum. The world spun around me and I found myself suddenly facing the ground.

Janine hit me in the midsection and wrapped herself around me. I grunted in pain, hearing and feeling the audible crack of at least one of my ribs breaking on impact. The wind drove from my lungs and I couldn't help the gasping cry I let out.

The telltale sensation of telekinesis pulling on me told me that Shimmer was slowing our descent. I could hear Janine breathing hard against my neck, could feel her desperately holding onto me. Then we hit the net that Cherish had spun and Janine's weight slammed down onto me and broke several more of my ribs.

The net of webbing enveloped us completely. It bent and bowed, warping under the impact of our bodies, but it held fast.

"Marcus," Janine's voice was barely a whisper, but I heard the fear clearly over the carnage below. Her hands pressed into the wounds on my belly, trying and failing to do something helpful. I could feel the blood flowing out of the mangled mess that had been my stomach. "Oh my god, Marcus."

I coughed, blood splattering up out of my mouth. I couldn't see, couldn't even breathe. All I could feel was the searing pain in my gut.

"Nnngg" I groaned into Janine's neck.

I felt her body wrack with a sob, felt her shake as she tried to breathe herself. She let go of my belly and simply held me.

A gangly silhouette crawled over to us. Janine turned her head and I heard her mumble an order. I vaguely realized that the spindly shape had to be Janine's ariados, but I couldn't quite make out the details. Janine shifted and Cherish took me from her arms.

I hardly felt the massive bug lift me. I didn't register the spinning as she wrapped my midsection with a layer of silk. Janine hefted me over the ariados' back and tied a string of silk under my arms to hold me in place.

Consciousness slipped away from me, Cherish's rhythmic gait rocking me to sleep. I fought the urge to pass out, but my vision was clouded and the sounds of battle seemed so far away. I tried to focus, but even the act of thinking seemed to require a monumental effort.

Rough hands grabbed me off the pokemon's back. Panic was obvious in the voices around me, but I couldn't make out what they were saying. Someone laid me down and I felt her there.

Her hand touched mine and I instinctively grabbed hold. I knew it was Janine, even if my senses were failing me. I tried to talk, tried to tell her I was sorry. I tried to tell her that I loved her.

A gurgle of blood escaped my lips, and I felt a painful rattle in my chest as I tried to draw a breath. She touched my face softly and I tried to focus my eyes to look at her again.

I tried to speak, but no breath filled my lungs and only a bubble of blood came forth.

She touched the side of my face softly, her hand in mine. "I'm here, Ranger," she said quietly. "It's ok, I'm here."

I let go. Pain overwhelmed me, wracking every fibre of my being. My vision swam and I stopped being able to hear anything except the slowing chug of my heartbeat.

She moved suddenly, like something had torn her away. I felt a chill settle into my bones and could hear death's whisper as my heart slowed to a crawl.

Then my insides caught fire and pain became my whole existence.

I opened my eyes and recoiled in shock. Her neck was broken, head lolling back at an uncomfortable angle. Blood stained her previously bright hued pikachu shirt, trailing down her torso from a gaping hole in her shoulder. She made a strangled moaning sound and shuffled a step towards me.

I staggered backwards, tripping over a brick and landing on my ass. I sat stunned for a moment, then I registered how many of them there were. Dozens, no, hundreds of people, all of them mangled and bloodied just like her.

I rose, stumbling as the crowd surged against me. They pushed me forward, all of them walking with singleminded purpose. I scrambled backwards, looking around desperately. A stream of walking corpses were pouring out of the storefront further down the street, cutting off any chance of escape.

My eyes scanned the street desperately, looking for some refuge before the horde of people could swallow me whole and trample me. I moved as quickly as I could, dashing over to the side of the road and turning around to face the horde.

They were all shuffling blindly down the street. Not one turned to look at me. Not one cared. They marched slowly towards the blinding purple glow that illuminated the street.

Then it hit me. I had been falling from the Silph Tower. Janine had caught me. It hadn't mattered, Artemis had impaled me with her talons and I'd been bleeding so much. I remembered Janine's hand in mine and the struggle to draw a breath. I remembered how distant it all seemed and how scared Janine had been. I had died. I had died and now this was some sort of afterlife.

I glanced down at my belly and confirmed my fears. My stomach was torn open, blood and entrails hanging from the trio of gaping wounds. I gingerly poked at one of the wounds. It didn't hurt. It took me a moment, and then I realized that I felt no sensation at all. No pain, no touch, nothing. Nothing but a frigid chill that numbed everything.

The woman that had spooked me disappeared into the crowd and I regarded it with confusion. I was dead. So were they. And yet, I was seemingly aware of my situation and they were not. Something was off, but I didn't yet know what.

I nodded absently to myself. These corpses were all walking slowly in the same direction, towards the glowing light. They knew where they were going. They knew what they were doing. Odds are, I'd find answers wherever they were going.

I warily shuffled after the procession of the dead. The source of the light was indistinct, but it was the only clue I had to what was going on. I didn't know if I was truly dead, or if the battle had been won. All I knew was that I had to move. There was some urgency in me that pushed me into action.

Twice more, large groups joined up with the one I was following. They streamed out of alleys and cross-streets by the hundreds, swelling the horde to cover almost the entire road. I leapt up on top of a burned out car and glanced around when we encountered a third group. Pokemon were part of this third group, a veritable menagerie of beasts with similarly fatal wounds.

The road was going to get too crowded to move soon and the source of the glowing light had grown no closer. I scanned the storefronts and buildings on the side of the road closer to me. There had to be a way off the street, to get me a better look at what was happening.

I found it. An alleyway that had a stream of people pouring out of it. I shoved my way through the growing crowd of people and elbowed my way through the dozens of people attempting to leave the alley.

A particularly large man, obese and missing part of his leg, was hauling himself forward. The crowd cleared slightly as it parted around him and I seized the opportunity. I dashed the remaining few feet and launched myself up onto the fire escape's ladder.

The metal scaffolding shook and rattled, smashing repeatedly against the side of the building as I took the steps in threes. I didn't know if I could be injured if the supports failed and the fire escape fell, but I wasn't eager to test that idea. I didn't need to die as a ghost.

I reached the top and leapt onto the empty roof, leaving the rickety metal death trap behind. I felt as though my heart should have been pounding and my chest heaving for air, but my heart lay still and my lungs had no need for air. I was just cold.

I crossed the roof quickly, looking down at the street. There were easily hundreds of them. And they were all shuffling mindlessly in the same direction.

"Odd," she said. "I did not expect any of the living in this realm."

I jumped in my skin, startled by the gnarled, bony crone that was at the edge of the roof. She hadn't been there a moment before. The roof had been completely empty.

Her shadow grinned at me wickedly, sinister eyes and a glowing set of yellow teeth bared. It was a gengar, one of the more malevolent ghost pokemon. I saw two more pairs of eyes peeking from the folds of the crone's robes and I connected the dots.

"Elite Kikoku," I said quickly.

The old woman grinned, her gaze still transfixed to the shuffling horde. "Please, call me Agatha. All those titles… they're so stuffy and old fashioned."

She turned to look at me, raising an eyebrow as she puzzled at my presence. "It appears that it would be a stretch to describe you as living." The woman gestured to my mangled belly. "But perhaps that will yet change."

"What is this place?" I asked cautiously. "It… looks like Saffron."

She gestured around. "This is a place for lost souls, a reflection of our mortal plane. It is a world beyond our own, where decisions can be made," she replied cryptically. She turned away and looked down at the horde of corpses. "But today… I have done a terrible thing. I have made their decision for them today. They will return to Saffron to aid our plight."

She then turned to me and I clearly saw her face. She approached me, looking me up and down. "However, I cannot make your decision for you." She reached out with her cane, lifting the hem of a spectral cloak hanging from my shoulders. "Something has tethered you to the mortal plane and kept you from hearing my call." She smirked knowingly.

I glanced down. The cloak was damn near invisible. I could only see it thanks to the fact that she had moved it. I thought I could hear the faint archaic chanting of a thousand dead languages.

The cloak shifted again and the wounds seemed to heal slightly before my eyes. The translucent cloak tore in strips, shredding the spectral fabric as my stomach knitted itself back together.

"Ah," she said. "Misery shields you from deaths final embrace." Agatha lowered her cane. "She is a fickle friend, be wary for she will demand a price."

I regarded the cloak more closely, noting how it hung weightless off my shoulders and blew in the nonexistent wind. The front fringes of the cloak were tattered and ripped, as though they were taking on my wounds.

"I don't understand," I said plainly. "Did I die? What price am I going to pay?"

The crone shrugged. "Men have gone mad pondering those questions. I cannot tell you whether you have died or not, nor what recompense the dead will demand of you. Death is a fickle and untrustworthy friend."

"That's incredibly non-helpful."

The crone shrugged again. "Death tends not to be all that helpful." She turned back and walked over to the edge of the roof that overlooked the crowd. "Except for when the rules are broken."

She raised her cane and slammed it back down. A jagged shadow spread down from her cloak and rose from the ground beside her. It stared at me with malevolent yellow eyes, it's mouth a pit of razors with a long tongue lolling out. It would almost have been comical if I wasn't terrified of the shade.

"What do you think, Ranger Wright? You know what we are up against. Will the dead help turn the tide?"

I nodded, joining the Elite's side and trying to ignore her gengars malicious grin. "It's a psychic," I said calmly. "you're building an army of ghosts. Trying to give us an advantage over it."

She smiled. "One small correction," she began. "I am building just one part of our army. Lance called for us all to gather our strength, to create something that was greater than the sum of its parts." She nodded at me. "I believe you're part of another part of our forces. A member of those who have been honed against the most despicable and disposable humanity had to offer."

I blinked, trying to process that. "Are you implying that Rocket… Giovanni… was all just some sick kind of test?"

"Yes and no," she replied. "They were another part of humanity's army, but the part that did the unsavoury things that others would not. They were meant to bring us all together, and in that they have succeeded marvellously."

I shook my head slowly. "Why would… why…" I just couldn't wrap my mind around the idea that Rocket had been nothing more than a whetstone to hone the forces of good. "I don't…"

"You don't have to understand, Ranger." She turned back and looked up at the glowing purple light. "You just have to fight. From what I understand, you've become quite proficient at it."

That was all I'd been doing. That was all I had done since I left the farm. That was all I'd ever done. Fought with my Pa, fought against what he'd wanted for me, fought against what I had thought evil was.

"I'm used to it," I said. "There was a time when I was scared. Of everything. Of fighting, of dying… then I wasn't afraid at all, and that scared me even more. I wasn't afraid of the fighting anymore, but of what it might make me." I looked down at myself, noting that my stomach no longer was a gory mess. My hands were still stained by blood, but I was whole again. "I was scared of becoming something like the real monsters that I was fighting."

Agatha turned to look at me. "What changed?" she asked. From her knowing grin, I had a feeling she knew the answer.

"I learned who I was," I replied. I swallowed the lump in my throat and felt my heart give a valiant thump in my chest. "I learned that I was strong." My heart pounded again. I looked at Agatha and nodded. "I learned how to make the hard choice."

The Elite grinned wildly, turning back to look at the growing crowd. "Surge certainly knows how to pick 'em, doesn't he?" She pulled a pair of scuffed up balls from the folds of her shadowy cloak and passed them over to me. "He has such a knack for finding the ones with integrity. I have a feeling that this gift will not go to waste."

I looked down at the battered pair of pokeballs. There was something familiar about them, almost like I'd shaken an old friend's hand.

"Open them," she ordered. "they will fight with you once more."

An armoured figure, bristling with spines and indignant energy rose from the first spear of light. I turned, I saw the unmistakable silhouette and gasped. He towered over me and I swelled with pride.

Then I saw the pronged horn and buzzing wings and my heart roared to life in my cold, dead chest. My team was here. They had fallen but they'd never left my side.

"How?" I asked breathlessly. "Is this real?"

"When I tear open the veil, reality will become… distorted." She smiled innocently, as though the old crone hadn't just rocked the concept of death to its core. "The fallen can use that tear in the fabric of mortality to become corporeal once more. It will only last as long as I can hold open the door, but it may give us a small advantage. When the sky opens up with the dead, you may call them forth one more time."

She glanced up at the two pokemon behind me. "Consider this an apology of sorts, for being subject to our great deception." She smiled serenely and nodded. "Take them with you and they will aid you one last time."

I narrowed my gaze. She meant Rocket. She meant the fact that all of the pain I'd been through was nothing more than a ruse to forge powerful fighters. I tried to speak but I found that my voice had abandoned me.

"Now go, Ranger." She lifted her cane and brought it back down onto the roof. My heartbeat echoed along with it. "Go and play your part."

The reflection of Saffron crumbled into dust before my eyes. The buildings simply began to dissolve and fade away. Agatha's form began to dissipate, but her smile never faded.

"Death comes for us all," echoed the crone. "It will demand a price for the life saved today." She looked me up and down. "Be wary, Ranger. Death rarely demands that which we can bear to lose."

I swallowed the lump in my throat. "Is someone I love going to die because of this?" My mind went to Janine, or Gemma. Even Surge and the rest of Zapdos was here. "Is someone going to die because of me?"

The rest of the world crumbled away, leaving only Agatha and myself on a shrinking patch of rooftop.

"If we do not succeed, then everyone will die." She nodded ominously. She knew that I noticed she didn't answer my question. "Everyone and everything. Do not deign yourself to have importance beyond yourself."

I furrowed my brow. "I didn't ask for—"

"We do not ask for our destinies to seize us and yet it does all the same," she interrupted with a wry grin. She was enjoying this, toying "Live on, endure this apocalypse, and still you will have yet to have found yours, little Ranger."

"What do you know of my destiny?" I asked, indignant energy swelling in my chest. "I got where I did through hard work. Hard work and the sacrifice of the very friends you returned to me today." I shook my head. "Destiny is not written, it can't be. We make our own future. We make our own path."

"It is our destruction and our salvation. The instrument of universal vengeance." She grimaced. "The ending of our cycle of death and rebirth." The Elite glanced at me warily. "But perhaps the breaking of that cycle is too much a burden to place on one so young."

The rooftop dissolved until we were floating in open space. I could see vague shapes floating in the dark, malevolent shadows and twisted spectres. I opened my mouth to speak, but the strange darkness swallowed my voice. She knew something, some terrible truth about me and my future.

"The mortal plane calls you back, child." She crumbled away until only her crooked grin was visible. "Go now… go and play your part in the war to come."

Then she was gone and I felt my heart pound again in my chest. I sucked in a breath and felt a comforting warmth banish the chill of death. I was back on the roof in Saffron, laying in a puddle of my own blood.

"He's alive," said man's cold voice from nearby. "though I can't do any more for him."

Someone was there, taking my hand. I felt her press her ear to my chest and felt her shaky breath as she listened to my heart.

"Thank you," she said in a muted tone. She lifted her head off me and held tight to my hand. "Thank you," she repeated in a stronger voice.

"Janie?" I croaked. I forced the words out, forced my eyes open as if death might grab hold of me again if I were to close them. "You… you're here…"

She wrapped her arms around me in a crushing embrace. I felt her sob and knew that I would pay later for the use of the pet name. "You big, brave, reckless idiot," she said between sobs. "you're alive."

I nodded in confirmation. Whatever that had been, I was alive. I squeezed her back with all the meagre strength I had and tried to make sense of it all. "How?"

She pulled back and gestured over at The man on the roof behind her. "Him," she replied.

I looked over and felt a warm sense of relief come over me. "Elias?" I asked as the older trainer looked down at me. "You made it out."

Elias nodded back at me. "Thanks to your porygon," he replied. "Damn computer locked down half the building, started turning environmental systems on the Rockets. Most of us got out through the service tunnels and scattered into the city."

I slumped back against the roof as Janine let me down. "Good porygon," I said with an exhausted sigh.

Then my mind flashed to the reason I'd been falling from the forty-sixth floor of the tower. "We have to get back up there," I said. "Leaf and Gemma are alone…" I went silent and my heart pounded in my chest. They were alone against the thing that had dismantled me in seconds.

"What?" Janine asked. She knew. She knew something had me scared. "Marcus, what is it?"

"They have a cyborg," I said, my mind still having trouble processing the absurdity of everything I had just experienced. "something straight out of a shitty sci-fi flick."

Janine glanced over at Elias as if she was looking for assurance from him. He simply shrugged and looked up at the burning top of Silph Tower.

"Leaf and Gemma aren't a match for it," I continued breathlessly. I tried to brace and force myself up. There just wasn't time to sit around. "We have to—"

My knee buckled and I fell back, groaning in pain. I crashed down and lay helplessly on the blood soaked gravel.

"You aren't going anywhere," Janine said, crouching down to my level and softening her voice. "you're sitting this one out, Ranger."

I shook his head. I couldn't leave my pokemon, let alone my friends. "Luna… Curie…" I glanced up at the tower, trying and failing to catch my breath. "Up there."

She nodded softly. "I'll help them," she replied. "you need a medic."

I shook my head again. "Need to—"

She silenced me with a furious kiss. I melted into her and held my Janine as tightly as I could. It ended a moment later, even though the moment had felt like an eternity.

We separated and she gave me a hard stare. "You need a medic," she repeated. "I'll go, I'll stop them."

Elias was at her side, looking down at me with sympathy. "We'll stay with him, make sure he gets a medic." He hesitated and then nodded to her. "He'll be alright."

Janine nodded and looked down at me. I felt a pit grow in my stomach. I was practically useless. I'd lost and now Janine was going to fight a battle I couldn't.

"Don't die," I warned. I locked eyes with her. I knew she was a better fighter than me, but she had limits that the cyborg simply didn't. "this thing is stronger than most pokemon."

"So am I," she replied. She flashed me her most confident grin and I fought the flutter in my chest. "Cyborg or not, I'm a badass. I've got this."

She turned away, returning her ariados to her ball and fiddling with her gear. She didn't look back at me and pocketed her gear. Janine soared through the air with a telekinesis assisted leap, landing deftly atop her venomoth.

Janine stopped and looked down at the three of us. Her jaw was set and her stature poised. She looked every part the Leader she had always been destined to become. "Get him to a healer," she ordered.

I met her eyes for only a moment. She looked away before the tears could start. Then she was gone, rocketing towards the Tower faster than I'd fallen from it.

Elias grabbed me under my arm, hauling me up to my feet. "Let's go," he said.

"Hold on," I mumbled in reply. I intently watched her separate from Shimmer and sail through one of the broken windows.

I looked back at Elias as my girlfriend disappeared into the fight of her life. "Now we can go."

We burst out of the stairwell onto the street. Elias was at my back, the Kalosian woman lagging a few steps behind. Three soldiers turned from their positions in the alley before us, attempting to bring their weapons to bear.

Elias' scizor moved so quickly it was a bloody blur. I was horribly reminded of the abomination that had killed Vector, and the quick work he made of the soldiers did little to dispel that mental image.

"The courtyard," I began, averting my eyes. "Surge will be making for the tower."

"And we will be finding medical attention," replied Elias. "Preferably, in the opposite direction."

I shook my head as an explosion punctuated his sentence. "No. They need our help. This city, these people… they need us." He met my eyes and saw me pleading. "We need everyone to do everything they can. Or else we lose… all of us."

The older trainer looked at me carefully. "We promised that you'd be getting medical attention."

"And I will be. Surge will have better healers than anyone else in this city."

A beam of violet light erupted from somewhere to the east. It arced into the sky, splitting and sweeping down into a dome once it cleared the peaks of the towers.

Elias went as pale as his hair. "We've got to take cover," he said frantically. "That's Sabrina. She wouldn't have used the shield unless…"

"It's here," I said. "Giovanni's creation…" I knew by the pit forming in my stomach. It was fear, some unbidden instinct buried deep inside my psyche. "We're out of time."

Elias looked over at me. "Then—"

The world erupted into motion. I felt my stomach drop as the entire city plunged deep into a crater that hadn't been there moments before. I grabbed onto the building beside me and simply prayed that it would stop. I was vaguely aware of Elias and the woman pressing themselves into the building beside me.

A deafening crash at my side sparked movement from our little group. I ran for all I was worth as the building on the other side of the alley shook itself to pieces. I didn't have time to care about anything other than survival.

A final titanic heave of the earth catapulted me forwards and out of the alley. I rolled with the momentum, putting as much distance between the falling rubble and myself as possible.

Elias was somewhere to my left, coughing on the billowing clouds of dust. Movement somewhere behind me, accompanied by foreign cursing, told me that the Kalosian had survived as well.

The city seemed to be wracked by pain. Entire buildings came crashing down, completely blocking the few streets that hadn't been barricaded by the KNA. The sound of falling rubble simply took over the city, drowning out the fighting.

Then there was silence. It all stopped, all the fighting, all the violent noise. Only the distant rumbling of settling earth gave any proof that the world still went on. Dust and smoke rose into the sky, a giant plume that obscured the tops of the few buildings that remained standing. The sky was simply gone and the faint red glow of the fires burning reflected off the billowing black clouds.

I could see the sloping walls of the crater, smouldering trees and underbrush tumbling down the steep incline. It took me a moment to register what I was seeing. Then it hit me. Saffron wasn't at sea level anymore. Saffron City had been plunged into the earth's crust, only surviving thanks to Sabrina's shield.

The gunfire restarted as though the entire city hadn't just been spiked into the earth's crust, shocking me into motion. I slammed into cover beside Elias, surveying the battlefield.

The KNA still held the building itself. They were holed up in the first couple of floors, firing positions still manned by rifle squads. Heavier weaponry thudded out from gun emplacements that had been wheeled into the bombed out husk of Silph's ground floor.

There were several mortars clustered together in the centre of the courtyard, frantically defended by a few riflemen that were besieged from all directions. I watched one of them load a mortar and send it skyward.

The mortar shell's momentum died well short of where it should have. It stalled and slowed in the air before plummeting back down to its origin.

The shell exploded, igniting a cascade of fire and sound as explosions rippled through the mortar position. In moments, all three tubes were burning wrecks that flung chunks of burning slag and shrapnel in haphazard directions.

"Surge," I commented breathlessly. "It's the —"

Surge and his magnezone made their entrance a moment later. A wall of metal shrapnel that had been dragged into a dome exploded outwards. Surge's magnezone launched over the field, buzzing with an intense frequency that shook my eyes in my head.

"Now!" I roared. Surge was here, this was the final push. We had to fight.

I vaulted over the car, the adrenaline coursing through me all that was keeping me running. I fought the exhaustion in my limbs as my hand dropped to my belt.

Artemis tensed up and leapt into the sky. I watched several of Silph's defenders point their weapons skyward as my aerodactyl roared to announce herself.

A yellow blur dove into the Silph Tower, tearing even more attention away from our charge and sowing chaos in the ranks of soldiers. Blue-white lightning erupted from the little pikachu, dropping the surrounding soldiers into twitching piles.

I slammed into cover in the ruined mortar position. Then I heard it. Flare's deafening roar shook me to my bones. Then I felt the heat of a former Champion's presence.

A gout of flame smote the building, immolating those who hadn't yet taken cover. Even crouched behind cover and nearly fifty feet away, I felt as if the fire was burning inches away from me.

A deluge of water doused the fire before it could take hold, disorienting the already disorganized defenders. I saw white lightning erupt again within the building and saw the opening. We'd forced ourselves an opportunity and it was paying dividends.

Two charizard swooped down, landing right at the front doors of the Tower. Their riders leapt off, flashes of red light forming into Red and Oak's teams.

I ran for the building, ignoring the sparse return fire that was focused on Surge's magnezone. He'd drawn the attention so that the rest of us could close in and use our pokemon in close.

"Oak!" I shouted.

He turned and spotted me, ducking behind cover as his charizard bathed a gun emplacement in flame until it was a melted piece of slag.

"Marcus," he breathed. "you're alive."

"Barely," I replied. "things could definitely be going—"

"Where's Leaf?" Red interrupted.

"Top of the tower," I replied quickly. "Janine is with her."

Red whistled once, ignoring me. He leapt onto his charizard's back and launched skyward. I saw a pidgeot with two riders flap madly into the sky after him.

Oak produced a pair of balls from his coat, pressing them into my waiting hands. "I brought along Acolyte and Savage. Thought you'd need your team."

Acolyte was out immediately. The gunfire tensed his muscles, though I had the feeling he'd seen some action back at Pallet town.

"They hit the lab hard. Delia is…"

I nodded. "And Red?"

Oak's scowl said it all. "He's taking it hard. They never got to talk after he stormed out the other night."

I frowned. Red was important. Doubly so, if Oak's theory that he and Ash were multiversal counterparts had any weight to it. We needed him to play his part.

A bullet ricochet at my side brought me back to the situation at hand. My hand dropped to my belt, and I hesitated. Savage wasn't trained yet and I didn't know if Agatha had opened the gates of hell for Pride and Vector.

I didn't have the option of letting him out here. He'd only cause more trouble. So I moved alone with Acolyte, taking up the weapon of a fallen soldier as we entered the building.

One soldier scrambled to his feet as I entered the building, trying to ready his weapon. I peppered him with bullets, putting a stop to his attempt.

Acolyte brained another soldier struggling to his feet. I glanced at him and nodded. It was grim and grisly work but it needed to be done. Together, we combed through the building, dispatching the few KNA soldiers that remained.

I swept into an empty room, checking the corners as I cleared the piles of rubble. Movement drew my eye and I trained my rifle on the groaning soldier. He was trapped under a pile of rubble, trapped face down with the lower half of his body buried.

"Don't," I ordered as he scrambled to reach for a fallen pistol that was buried under the rubble with him. "You're hurt too badly. Just surrender."

He rolled and I saw the raw hatred on his face. Then it hit me that I recognized him. "Marcus," said John Kurtsson. "Figures that I'd find you here. You always were good at popping up amidst chaos on the wrong side."

"You're hurt," I said. John and I had never gotten along in Yucca. First, he'd resented me for my easy rapport with Sarah Walker, then it had turned to cold hatred when the secret of my training had come out. Despite that, he was injured and helpless and in no shape to fight. I lowered the barrel of my weapon and looked down at a man that could have been a mirror image of myself had I walked a different path. "Surrender so I can provide you first aid."

"No," he replied shortly. "You don't deserve that. You don't deserve my thanks or my praise for sparing me. Not after everything you did to Yucca. Not after what you did to your family."

He tried to reach for his weapon again. It was trapped against his leg, under the rubble.

I shook my head and sighed. "For more reasons than you could know, that's true." I set the rifle down and kneeled beside the young man. He wasn't much older than myself, but while I had the height and reach he had always been smaller and stockier. "I failed my family before, but I'm fighting now to protect them. All of them. Everyone back at Yucca, everyone I've met since I left…" I trailed off and my mind flashed with the faces of those I'd lost. Reyes and Wertz, Lori, Lady Anzu… Pa and Ma might have joined them if the visible destruction of the forests around Saffron extended far enough.

My heart stopped at the thought. Home could be gone. Hone could be gone and I never went back. I pushed away the tears. Yucca needed me to be strong, if Yucca even existed anymore.

Rocket had done this too. Giovanni had torn apart a community and pitted its prodigal sons against each other. We should have been standing side by side, not him laying prone at my feet. Instead, I'd left Yucca Village behind and joined the Rangers. Maybe if I had stayed and taught my family about pokemon, a kid like John wouldn't have been scooped up by the KNA, wouldn't have been scooped up by this godforsaken war. Shame washed over me as I realized that his fate mirrored mine.

"I'm sorry, John. I'm so sorry."

He looked up in confusion. "The fuck do you have to be sorry for?"

I looked around at the room. It had been a waiting room before, or an office. It wasn't exactly clear anymore, and the rubble made it hard to discern what the room had been used for. It sank in as I considered it. None of it mattered. Not this battle, not the two of us, not everyone that had died here. "Someone is pitting Kanto against itself. Someone orchestrated all of this just to create powerful trainers."

"Lucky you," John replied. "Is this one of the benefits of being one of those trainers, you get to gloat over me after the battle?" He looked away from me and continued to work at getting his weapon free.

I shook my head. "If you think this is gloating…"I trailed off and looked down at him. He was hurt. Badly enough that he wasn't going to make it unless he let me help him find a medic. "John… you need help. You need—"

"You already killed the other 4 men in my fireteam," he spat as he looked up at me. "I'll be paralyzed for life if I even survive this. Finish your work." He looked me up and down with a sneer. "Do your duty."

I stood there in silence for a long moment. I shook my head as his ragged breaths rang in my ears. "This isn't what I wanted…" I looked away, gazing out at the burning plaza outside the building. "This isn't duty."

I turned back to face him. "We both swore to protect Kanto," I said solemnly. "We swore to protect those we love. We should be on the same side."

His face hardened. "We were never going to be on the same side, Marcus. You fell in with a bunch of mon humpers and went off to play hero. The rest of us had to live in the mess you left behind." He scowled and looked me up and down with disdain. "Not all of us got to run away from our problems."

I scowled. He was trying to push my buttons. John had always been rather good at that. He'd revelled in my reactions when I finally blew my top. "I don't want this," I repeated. "I don't want to be a hero if this is the cost."

He looked me up and down. "Don't kid yourself, Marcus. You're right at home in the spotlight. You always were, even despite the humble act." He shook his head and coughed up a glob of blood. "Play your part, hero. Do your duty or at the very least, let me die playing mine."

He finally wrenched his pistol free of the rubble trapping his legs and tried to draw it on me. I reacted on instinct. The rifle barked three times, hitting John twice in the chest and a third time in the throat. I stood in silence, the gunshots ringing in my ears.

Acolyte touched my back a moment later. He was there at my side. His club was held at the ready just in case, offering me a source of strength in a moment of solemn weakness.

"Thanks, bud," I said blankly. "He just… he didn't give me a choice."

The rifle sagged in my hands and I let it fall to the floor. I didn't want it anymore. I didn't want to fight this battle, this endless war. My fists clenched tightly. We had to do better than blindly following Giovanni's path to destruction.

The gunfire died as the explosions outside slowed to a halt, and I slowly picked my way through the building. I passed rooms full of slain combatants, people and pokemon all felled by the pointless war we'd been fighting. My weapons were gone, no, purposely left behind. I didn't want them anymore.

I emerged to carnage. The square was a bombed out husk, with the wreckage of gun emplacements belching black smoke into the red and sullen sky.

The deafening roar of a chopper overhead drew the gaze of everyone. A heavy, oblong cube swung below the helicopter, descending towards the ground haphazardly. An oblong device that seemed oddly familiar.

I glanced around. People were taking notice of the chopper but nobody seemed urgent about it. No gunfire greeted it, nor did any of Surge's pokemon. Then the cube below it dropped suddenly to the ground. It whirred and buzzed for a small moment, before a flash of light from my belt drew my attention away.

Savage was out, growling furiously. He rounded on me, clacking his claws against the floor impatiently.

"Savage, no—"

The tone was shrill and harsh. It burrowed into my brain, forcing me to double over and cover my ears. My efforts did nothing to calm the pain the tone brought with it.

Then I looked up and horror washed over me. I'd seen the cube that the chopper had dropped before. I'd seen them in Fuchsia, when the half evolved dragon had attacked Wertz and I. It was an evolution machine, and we were all in some very very big trouble.

The light enveloped my tyrunt, and he tossed his head back with a deepening roar. He grew taller, taller than even Empress had been, and longer than I thought possible. He brushed up against the building and stumbled a few titanic steps backwards.

The light around him faded and my tyrantrum looked down at me hungrily. He tossed back his head and let out a prehistoric roar that shook the ground I stood upon.

I planted my feet, Acolyte readying his club at my side. I was a pokemon trainer. And I would tame this pokemon.

Intermediate Trainer KT#07996101

Indigo Ranger Corps, Special Task Group, "Zapdos" Squad,

Corporal SN# 109-512-6591, Marcus Wright, current team:

Luna, Ninetales

Artemis, Aerodactyl

Two, Porygon-2

Curie, Chansey

Savage, Tyrunt

INDIGO ALERT — LEGEND-CLASS THREAT IMMINENT. ALL INDIGO TRAINERS ARE ENLISTED IN CIVIL DEFENCE. ALL TRAINERS ARE TO REPORT TO THE NEAREST POKEMON CENTRE FOR IMMEDIATE TELEPORT.

Another mental health update. I'm still around. I was diagnosed with Bipolar Depression. I took my sweet time getting this update out. Love you all, you guys are the best readers ever.