The Walrein
Vicinal Dragging for the Truth
- Partners
-
Brief mild violence.
Hey, Kyogre!
Waves crashed against a rocky, desolate shoreline. There was no living creature to be seen except for a large, red, armored beast slowly approaching the water. Groudon stopped just before the point where the waves encroached furthest inland, and stared out at the ocean with a look of disgusted contempt. Finally, he cupped his hands over his mouth and yelled, “Hey, Kyogre!”
There was no response. “Kyogre, HEY! Heyyyyyyy Kyogre! Come on up here, Kyogre! HEY, KYOGRE!”
After a long delay, Kyogre’s rounded head broke the surface of the water a few meters out to sea. “What do you want?” they asked, observing their counterpart with a weary eye.
“You’re going to let me make two more continents, Kyogre! The days of ‘too much water’ are over!” Groudon announced, slapping the ground with his tail.
“And just what makes you think I’ll let you do that?” Kyogre responded, unimpressed.
In response, Groudon looked up to the sky and yelled, “Hey, Landorus!” Within moments, Landorus descended from the clouds to hover beside Groudon. “You’re outnumbered, Kyogre! There are two legendaries on Team Land now, so you have to give into our demands!”
“Outnumbered? I think not. Hey, Manaphy!” Kyogre bellowed. To their left, Manaphy emerged from the ocean in a spray of foam.
Groudon scowled at the sight of the little legendary, then interleaved his claws and cracked his knuckles. “Ha! I’m just getting started!” He stomped on the earth. “Get up here, Heatran!” The ground trembled, then split apart as Heatran burst forth, rivulets of magma dripping off their body.
Kyogre’s eyes narrowed. “Hey, Lugia! Time to warm up that old ‘Guardian of the Seas’ title!” Once more, the surface of the ocean parted to make way for Lugia swimming out from the depths.
“All right, playtime’s over.” Groudon pulled a hitherto-unmentioned backpack off his shoulders, from which he extracted a portable Reassembly Unit and a Zygarde Cube. He proceeded to insert the cube into the unit and press a button, which caused it to glow and rattle around before finally releasing Zygarde’s Complete Forme in a burst of light.
“Oh come on! Zygarde is the protector of the ecosystem in general, not the land in particular!” Kyogre protested.
“Well, he’s ground-type, isn’t he? That’s more than can be said about that oversized psychic-flying Swanna of yours!”
“Fine, if that’s how you want to play it...” Kyogre bent his head in a direction that was neither up, down, left, right, forwards, or backwards. “Hey, Palkia!”
Out of seemingly nowhere, Palkia slid sideways into Groudon and Kyogre’s reality, displacing air and water into some hidden dimension as they did so.
Groudon took a moment to gawk at the Spatial Dragon before shouting, “Now that’s just cheating! Palkia doesn’t have anything to do with seas or oceans! You send them right back!”
“Well, they’re water-type, aren’t they? So naturally, they’re on my side,” Kyogre said smugly.
“You leave me with no choice, Kyogre! HEY, ARCEUS!” Groudon roared.
A golden portal opened in midair, and the supreme deity strode forth onto the land, emanating an almost-palpable aura of grace and power. Immediately, Groudon whipped out an Earth Plate from his bag and poked Arceus with it, turning them ground-type. “Beat that, Kyogre!”
“Oh no you don’t!” Kyogre lunged onto the shore bearing a Splash plate in their flipper, and slapped it against Arceus’ ankle, who promptly shifted to water-type.
“Ground-type!” Groudon yelled, prodding Arceus with the Earth Plate to change them back.
“Water-type!” Kyogre countered, jabbing Arceus even more forcefully with the Splash Plate.
“Ground-type!” Poke.
“Water-type!” Prod.
“Ground-type!” Jab!
“Water-type!” Jostle!
“GROUND-TY-”
“ENOUGH OF THIS!” Arceus bellowed, blowing back Groudon and Kyogre with a shockwave of pure force. “You two are behaving like squabbling children! The balance between land and water should be determined by what’s best for the greater good of the planet, not by whoever’s side has more questionably-aligned legendaries! And for the rest of you!” Arceus turned their attention to the various scattered legendaries around the shore and sea. “You should be ashamed at helping to enable this petty behavior! Especially you, Palkia! Some of you are thousands of years old, so please try to act like it!”
The gathered legendaries mumbled various apologies. Placated, Arceus opened another portal and left, taking Palkia along with them. Groudon and Kyogre watched them leave, then turned towards each other.
“So...” Kyogre started.
“So,” Groudon echoed.
“I guess it was silly of us to be fighting like that,” Kyogre said, then gave a meaningful glance towards the sky. “At least, not while we have a common enemy. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Groudon pounded his fists together. “Yeah! With all these allies of ours, we don’t have to listen to Rayquaza telling us what to do any more!”
“Exactly! Hey, Rayquaza!” Kyogre yelled.
“Rayquaza, hey! Heyyyyyyyy, Rayquaza!” Groudon joined in. “Get down here, Rayquaza! Get down here so we can beat you up!”
“We’re through with taking your guff, Rayquaza! You’re outnumbered now!”
“We’re all gonna beat you up, Rayquaza! Get down here!”
The clouds parted, and down from the heavens descended Rayquaza, light scintillating off their brilliant jade scales. Alongside them flew Tornadus, Thundurus, Zapdos, Articuno, Moltres, Ho-oh, Latias, Latios, Reshiram, Zekrom, Kyurem, Yveltal, Eternatus, and a host of other minor flying or dragon-type legendaries.
“Looking for a fight, hmmmmm?” Rayquaza asked. “Good thing you’re not opposed to fights with uneven numbers, or else some of us would’ve had to miss out on all the fun.” Sparks and draconic fires crackled ominously from the mouths of the Pokemon around them.
Groudon took a step backwards as he craned his neck to take in all the different forms flying above him, then snarled.“Ha! We don’t care about your numbers! With us land and water legendaries working together, we’re unbeatable! Right, guys?”
Landorus coughed loudly. “Er, normally I’d be right with you, Groudon, but you can’t expect me to fight against my brothers, can you? I think I’ll have to sit this one out.” He promptly hovered to a far distance away from the brewing conflict.
“Uh, I guess that’s fair...” Groudon said, then glanced towards Heatran and Zygarde.
The latter returned his gaze awkwardly. “Sorry Groudon, but Kyogre had a good point about me being the protector of the whole ecosystem, which includes the air as much as it does the land or sea. Don’t think I can really take sides in this one.” Zygarde slowly backed away from the gathering, hands raised palms-out.
Meanwhile, Heatran was already beginning to burrow back underground. “You know, I may hang out around caves and volcanoes a lot, but my true home is in the mantle. All this business going on outside the crust doesn’t really concern me. Bye!”
“Wha-! Get back here, you cowards!” Groudon dived to the ground and shoved a hand into Heatran’s tunnel, but narrowly missed catching their back leg.
“Bah. I should’ve known Groudon wouldn’t have reliable allies,” Kyogre grumbled. “But Lugia, Manaphy and I will never surrender!”
Lugia swallowed nervously. “Um, you know that whole ‘Guardian of the Seas’ bit is really just something the humans came up with, right? Really, I feel much more aligned with my flying-type,” she said, then flew up to join Rayquaza’s army.
“Wait, you were calling for Manaphy? I’m actually Phione!” Manaphy said. “Ha-ha, silly mistake, people get us confused all the time, guess-I’ll-be-going-now.” They plunged below the waves without another word.
Rayquaza laughed. “Looks like you two are all out of allies. My, my, I don’t think there’s ever been a confrontation between us before that’s been quite this lopsided, wouldn’t you say? Seems like a good time for me to tell you about some new ideas I have regarding the balance of land, sea, and sky...”
“Uh, if Kyogre’s ‘never surrendering’ but I do, would that mean I’d get a better deal?” Groudon asked.
“So this is what I get for graciously setting aside my many, many grievances and trying to work with you. Eat salt, you traitor!” Kyogre yelled, then blasted Groudon’s face with a Hydro Pump attack.
“Aack! Pthh- I was only asking!” Groudon said, spitting out saltwater. “You attacked first, so that makes you the traitor!” He summoned a sharpened boulder from the ground with Stone Edge, then hurled it at Kyogre.
A short while later, Groudon was lying on his back in a small pool of water, moaning and staring up at the sky. Kyogre, beached upon jagged rocks, was pathetically trying to wriggle their way back into the ocean.
“Finally ready to hear about my plans, now?” Rayquaza asked. “For starters, I was thinking about drilling some huge holes in the centers of mountains to give birds a path to fly through. What do you say to that, huh?”
“You- you monster!” Groudon spat.
“Ha-ha, glad you like it! And for you, Kyogre, know what I think would improve those oceans of yours? If I added in some big ol’ air bubbles down there! A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
“You’ll never get away with this!” Kyogre growled. “As soon as I- errrgggh! As soon as I get off this rock, you’ll- you’ll see...”
***
A blue hedgehog and a two-tailed fox made their way across the floor of a flooded grotto, occasionally stopping to breathe at convenient air bubbles that seemed to spring from the ground in endless quantities. When they finally made their way to solid land, the fox breathed a sigh of relief. “That was a close one! Good thing there were so many air pockets down there! ...how do those even form, anyways? I can’t think of any natural process that would cause that...”
“Don’t worry about it, Tails,” Sonic said, emptying water from his shoes.
“Gosh, there’s just so many things science still has to figure out! Like where all those loop-de-loops in the sides of hills and mountains you like running on come from,” Tails said.
Sonic chuckled. “I suppose there’s just some things that hedgehogs – or foxes – were never meant to know. Now, how about you check down that tunnel over there for any more of Eggman’s robots?”
“Okay Sonic!” The fox obediently headed to complete this task. When Sonic was sure he wasn’t looking, he furtively pulled a little medallion displaying a winding emerald dragon out of his ring pouch.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
THE END