cw: graphic violence, blood, character death
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“And Saffir's Protect shatters under the devastating force! We'll need confirmation but—yes, that was quite a spectacular knockout; Alder's recalling his accelgor now. What a comeback from Harmonia! Alder’s down five pokémon, though we’ve seen him come back from worse before—it’s anyone’s game still, but this is certainly a close one!”
[“Wave! Get closer. I need a better angle when the volcarona comes out.”]
You swivel obediently, carefully coordinating your fans so that you pitch forward smoothly without catching any of the settling cloud of dust in your rotors.
“Ladies and gentlemen, for those of you tuning in just now, you’re certainly in for a treat tonight! Champion Alder is facing off against Challenger Harmonia. Alder’s down to his last, while Harmonia’s team is still three strong!”
Pause, for dramatic effect. Sometimes you think that broadcasting the announcement directly into the closed room of the championship battle is a bit
too flashy—the color commentary certainly isn’t for the trainers’ benefit. Alder certainly leans into the manufactured suspense a bit harder than you think is respectful—it’s your job to make it dramatic; it’s his job to fight. He waits three seconds, one eye ticked up to the announcer box, and then tosses an ultra ball high into the air above the scarred battlefield with a grin.
“And, here it is, folks! Alder’s anchor, the volcarona from ancient history. It’s … Ghibli!”
Alder always throws a little high, but you know that, so—you’re spot-on with setting the shot composition. When the familiar flash of red clears and coalesces into the curled wings of a volcarona, you’ve got him centered in your camera, no hasty pans necessary. Good. Orange horns twine upward, glinting in an arena that’s deceptively calm—but your camera can pick up the way that the air roils now, burned by the heat that skitters off of the volcarona’s wings, which extend out of the frame like an enormous star.
You adjust the focus a little softer, give Markus enough time to cue up the applause track on the broadcast, let the suspense grow. You’re only a rotom, and a mere camera drone at that, but you understand by now how to draw out the drama.
You tilt your mics forward to pick up the sound. This new challenger has been particularly difficult; he hasn’t shouted once, so it’s hard to pick up his commands.
“Dark Pulse. Close range.”
The challenger’s pokémon twists into action, lurching into a blur that’s barely more than flashes teeth. If the dark-type understands that he was at a disadvantage against the volcarona, he certainly doesn’t show it. His tail lashes on the ground, and then he’s racing across the battlefield, halving the fifty-foot gap in a second. The enormous wave of rippling black energy that fires from his arms closes the remaining gap, twisting the shadows of the room into one concentrated wave.
“Quiver Dance!”
Markus sounds ravenous as he says, “Harmonia’s pokémon have pushed a strong offensive all match, but Alder’s no stranger to force! This looks like the maneuver he pulled against Shauntal’s chandelure in the semifinals two years ago; if Harmonia doesn’t think of something soon, he’s about to have a very hot situation on his hands!”
Elegantly, the volcarona twists into the air, six wings tucked close to his body as he spirals up and into position, narrowly dodging a concussive wave of shadow as he does so. The wall behind him crumbles.
Alder pushes the offensive. “Flamethrower, Ghibli!”
“You as well.”
You get a close-up of the black maw for just a second, focus back on Ghibli’s white-dappled incisors, and then they each erupt into twin bursts of flame, colliding in the middle of the battlefield. You immediately pump power into your fans and lift back. The air suddenly feels dry, and the wave of heat washes over you. Your onboard temp sensors throw up an incessant alarm. You’re a good rotom but you’ll melt just like the rest if you stay in too long.
“And what a spectacular collision! Things are certainly about to heat up!”
He’s cheerful, but aside to you, he’s terse:
[“Wave, I need that shot! At least get a top-down view if you can’t get in close.”]
You shoot to the top of the arena so you can get a wide-angle shot of the two pokémon, who from this height are just a pair of opposing blurs of black and orange in a sea of flame.
Alder’s unfortunate like this. His battling style leaves … a lot of collateral damage. You remember Markus’s glee when they finally banned live audiences from his matches for safety reasons—
“they need us more than ever, Wave!”—and they finally got better protections for Alder and his challengers, but it’s dangerous to have anyone, even the camera rotom, in the same room when Alder starts calling out massive field-clearing attacks like this.
But when the fire clears and the room’s brightness recedes to normal—you quickly have to fiddle with the aperture to compensate for the overhead lights—the challenger’s pokémon is nowhere to be seen. There’s just a cloud of smoke. Tricky things, dark types. Always hiding, always with the illusions. And the dark bits don’t show up well without careful attention to the exposure.
“This is the end, Alder. Acknowledge me as champion,” the challenger says calmly, quietly. It barely picks up on your microphones, so you tilt in closer. His voice reminds you of the way a liepard walks through gravel without disturbing a single rock. “Acknowledge that I have won, that pokémon battling is archaic and outdated, and that humans can no longer be permitted to sacrifice their companions to this bloodsport.” You can’t see both eyes from this angle, but there’s a steely glint in one of them, enough to give you pause.
Ever the optimist, even with his back against the wall, Alder speaks loudly and clearly. Which is good; panning back and forth across a scene like this would be unprofessional, and you’d probably get told off for giving viewers vertigo. “Bloodsport? Stop being so dramatic. Pokémon like battling. It helps them become strong. You’ll never change that.”
For a moment all you can pick up is the popping of coals, a handful of sparks skittering from the torn earth. And then: “Do you really think this is strength?”
Markus clears his throat, and the sound echoes uncomfortably in the room. “Folks, it looks like we’ve got a battle of both brains and brawn here tonight! Both Champion Alder and Challenger Harmonia seem to be giving us a bit of a breather. Meanwhile, a word from our sponsors!”
Maybe announcers don’t get it, maybe they’ll cut away from this to a jingle for casteliacones, but you understand perfectly why either side would be stalling for time. Alder’s looking around the battlefield alongside his volcarona, trying to get a good lead for where their opponent has managed to hide an entire pokémon.
And on the other side of the field—when a challenger’s up three pokémon to one, the clock’s in their favor. Every sentence Alder spends talking inches him closer to a forfeit by timer.
You search the shadows, trying to get a jump on them. Dark-types are tricky. This one likes to hide, and the roiling cloud of soot from the most recent collision of attacks gives him plenty of space to do it in.
Alder’s scarred forearms emerge from beneath his poncho, fold across his chest. He’s mimicking his volcarona now: perfectly still, coiled up like a spring. “Even if I fall, the League will not listen.” For the first time in their entire fight, Alder’s voice drops until it’s low, deadly, quiet. “You think centuries of tradition will be uprooted over the results of one battle? Defeat me here and you prove nothing except that you raised stronger pokémon.”
“So if I lose, it’s because I didn’t train my pokémon well enough, and that your superior ideals allowed you to vanquish me. And if I win, I prove true that training pokémon makes them stronger, and me as well.”
“You really are a dramatic one, aren’t you?” Alder’s smile is wan. You sense the cracks in his persona; you zoom out a little so they don’t show. “I believe you’ll come around eventually, yes. You won’t get Unova’s support talking like this, and besides. Pokémon battling is safe, and it makes people happy, so who are we to take it from them?”
He hones in on a single word in Alder’s sentence, closes around it like a beartic’s jaws around a basculin. You see his brow furrow. “Safe?” His hand twitches. A signal? Alder doesn’t seem to notice it, but you grab a shot just in case it’ll be useful for the post-match. “You think what we’re doing is safe?” He gestures to the field of fire around them, where patches of flames still burn impotently amongst the rubble.
“I knew the risk, and so did you. Our pokémon weren’t going to get hurt.”
“If they did?”
“They
didn’t. I’m not here for imagining,” Alder growls. “Now stop stalling and fight me.”
“If they did.” His voice is hard as steel. “If you vanquished my team, injured them to defend your title while Unova cheered. Would you call it a bloodsport then?”
“I would heal them. Or hopefully, you would.”
“You would heal your friends after you let them get hurt to defend your belief that they should have the freedom to suffer?” Venom drips from his words. “How kind. Don’t sacrifice
too much for our lifelong partners, Alder.”
“Are you done prattling?”
“Are you done deciding?”
You count three seconds.
“Win or lose, the League will not follow you today,” Alder says. “I understand your frustration, but change takes
time.”
There’s a long silence. Perhaps everyone here wants to draw things out. You aren’t sure. You wouldn’t know. The champs are the ones calling the shots, after all.
No. You take it back as soon as you see the stormy look in the challenger’s eye. This is the instant before thunder strikes. Lightning comes from one cloud, not two. Ozone gathers, a final connection is made, and then—
“Very well. When you look back on this day, remember your choice, and remember it well, Unova.”
The shadows beneath the volcarona erupt into a seething mass of heads and teeth, and the black dragon remerges, sinking its fangs deep into fiery wings and pinning the moth to the ground.
He turns so he’s not just a side profile of green hair, but so he’s looking you straight in the lens, and suddenly he’s seeing straight through those layers of mirrors and glass and straight into your core. One side of his mouth twists into a smile, and when he speaks, his words are for his hydreigon, for you, for everyone watching.
“Take off its wings.”
The hydreigon obeys immediately. One mouth on each wing, and the dragon
pulls, and
you can’t watch—
“Ghetsis, what the hellare you
doing—!”
[“Wave! Focus! I need—”]
[“Oh my god! Get someone in there!”]
—
but you have to watch—
Markus is cutting in and out of communication with you, because he’s also screaming into the microphone—
“Harmonia, what are you doing?!”—while punching into the phone and sending radio waves across the world, spearing those horrible messages straight through you, needling away as if you had wings that were also being ripped apart but—
you have to watch.
You keep the camera on the hydreigon, no fancy tricks, no processing or understanding, just a stationary shot that lets you lose focus while the camera does not.
Half a dozen radio waves are shooting through the air right now, and because of who and what you are, you pick up all of them. That’s what rotom are good for, after all.
[“What’s going on in there?”]
[“I don’t care that it’s against precedent. Let me in there! Open the damn door!”]
[“The doors aren’t opening. What’s happening?”]
[“Sicily and I are almost in position. Cover me while I get to the box.”]
In front of you, not on the radio signals lancing around you, someone is bellowing in rage. They have to be close, since the feedback loop is transforming into a high-pitched squeal on your end, and when you swivel around and focus, there’s Alder staring at the volcarona limp on the ground, his face twisted open into a wordless scream.
[“Get Marshall, or anyone else who still has a conscious team. We need containment. Challenger has a hydreigon and possibly—”]
[“I think it’s his cofagrigus. Looks like a Trick Room around the entryway, and a strong one. I can’t break through. Call Shauntal!”]
[“Wave!”]
You snap back to reality. The hydreigon isn’t perfectly centered in your sights any more; he’s thrown the volcarona to the ground and—
“—I do believe that it’s not going to get up,” Markus is finishing on the broadcast for you. His voice is still in its performative cadence, but sends volumes in the spaces between his sentences.
[“What do you mean you can’t cut the damn feed? Kill it! This is an emergency!”]
“Oops,” Ghetsis says calmly.
Across from him, Alder is anything but. When he finally gathers his senses and rips his gaze from Ghibli, he manages to raise a shaking pokéball.
The recall beam bounces off of a wall of black scales as the hydreigon snarls over his prey.
“Harmonia, what the
hell—”
“Very bad. Bad, Zahhak,” Ghetsis admonishes. He points his cane lazily towards the hydreigon. “Very naughty. Bad pokémon. You know better.” He looks back at Alder and shrugs. “That’s a yellow card, right?” he asks politely.
“A … yellow card? Is this some kind of sick joke?”
“For excessive force. How was I to know that that was going to hurt your pokémon?”
“You
told your hydreigon to—”
“Forgive an old man in his age, Alder. I didn’t think that my pokémon was capable of understanding such a complex command.” There’s an unmistakable vicious edge dripping down his voice now, poisoning all of his words. “Well. I suppose I should wait until I get my card. Heal your pokémon in the meantime, Alder,” he says calmly. “Or acknowledge me as Champion.”
It’s not stopping. You can feel it. There’s something in the waters now; the beartic’s gone beneath the ice, and it will drag this out until the bitter end. You don’t mean to, but you lock eyes with Ghetsis. Or eye, really. All you’ve got is the one drone camera, and all he’s got is the one human eye and the glint beneath his hair. He’s like you, in a sense. A soul that’s learned to inhabit a machine.
There’s another flash of light, the familiar sound of a pokéball. You swivel away from the hydreigon and his prey—which is a blessed relief in itself—and Alder’s bouffalant emerges.
“Did you ever consider,” Ghetsis asks casually, fingers tapping on his cane as he studies the weary bouffalant in front of him, “that the yellow card system might not be fair? It lets you punish things after the fact, certainly. But the best way to stop a blaze is to smother it when it’s still a spark.”
[“Wave, shut the broadcast.”]
Markus’s voice, blaring directly to your onboard comms, is a relief. It’s something you can latch on to. You scramble through the channels to find the shutoff, but—
“We will not be silenced. You will keep broadcasting.”
That’s not Markus speaking over the microphone—over, not directly into. You look into the referee’s box, where the mirrored glint and protective barriers mask almost everything about him except his silhouette, but—there are three figures there now. You don’t recognize the other two at all.
“Oh dear,” Ghetsis says calmly, casting his asymmetrical gaze up to the box. “It looks like the referee is having some difficulties reaching the pitch.” He grins wolfishly up at Markus. “Don’t worry, my friend. They won’t hurt you. Keep narrating.”
“What?!”
“This is a match. You are a commentator. You will not be harmed. Plasma fights for justice, and our voices will not be silenced. Do your duty.”
There’s a long pause. You hover up and down nervously, take stock of the surroundings in the meantime. The bouffalant is weakened; his normal tangle of thick fur has already been frizzled and worn away from when he successfully managed to tank a few hits from Ghetsis’s eelektross in the previous rounds. He’s already been knocked unconscious, and the sudden surge in adrenaline won’t change that he can’t fight.
You access your logs: Alder already used the legal number of healing items this battle. He carries one extra Full Restore for emergencies, but otherwise—his team isn’t getting up any time soon.
Ghetsis is looking expectantly at the announcer box.
Markus continues in a shaking voice: “I don’t know what’s happening, but Alder’s sent out his bouffalant now, and—”
“I get three yellow cards and a red card before I’m ejected from the match, right?” Ghetsis asks, mockingly. He makes a show of counting on his hands. “And you have
how many pokémon who can still stand?”
Alder doesn’t respond. The bouffalant scrapes one hoof across the ground, prepares to charge.
“Him as well.” Ghetsis motions with his hand, almost lazily, and the hydreigon lurches forward on six tattered wings that leave bloody trails in the sky, black streaks across your frames.
Emotion doesn’t get picked up on the radio. Instead what you get is the sharp intake of breath, the unintentional curse that’s ripped out of his mouth. But you don’t get to look away, even though Markus has surely averted his eyes.
So you have to watch as the hydreigon slams into the bouffalant with bone-crushing force, flinging them into the wall. Cracks spiderweb out from the impact point, and it’s
unnecessary and even from here you can hear the
whoof as the breath leaves the bouffalant’s chest, and there’s a belated crunch as the hydreigon withdraws and lets his opponent fall limply to the ground.
“Zahhak, again? We’ll have to talk. Two cards in one match? That’s only happened fifteen times in League history.” Ghetsis doesn’t smile. He makes a show of looking at his empty hands instead. “But no one’s even given me my first card yet! How could I possibly know that this match is too violent if no one tells me? How could anyone else in those fifteen matches have known either?”
Alder’s face is pale. “Ghetsis,” he says, and it sounds like the words are being wrung out of him like water from a wet washcloth. “
Please.”
“Fifteen. Fifteen times in this hall, the pinnacle of this profession, the League has given a slap on the wrist for someone nearly murdering twice in under an hour. Three times, they carded
you. Send out your next pokémon, Alder.”
“They were investigated. We were all investigated!”
“Send out your next pokémon,” Ghetsis repeats calmly. “Or denounce this sport as cruel and acknowledge me as Champion.”
There are glints of tears in Alder’s eyes, his face as pale as the knuckles that curl around the next ultra ball. He snarls, and the bouffalant is recalled in the same breath that an escavalier takes its place.
Ghetsis doesn’t even point this time. All three of the hydreigon’s heads laser on the newcomer at the same time, and you catch a glimpse of the same orange glow for half a second before everything is washed out in fire.
When the fire clears, there’s a steely husk that glows cherry-red.
“I will discipline you the same way we would any unruly pokémon.” Ghetsis sweeps one arm out from beneath the cloak, points it at Alder with accusatory finality. “I will train you and the rest of Unova until you understand. Obey me and acknowledge me as your Champion, or continue with this farce, Alder.”
[“Get the damn door open. Someone
has to get in there before someone gets hurt!”]
There’s a sound like a tiny puff of wind at the wall at Ghetsis’s back, who doesn’t even look before sending out a pokéball that explodes into a hulking blue seismitoad. “Phaedrus. Behind.”
You almost don’t catch it. There’s a hiss, and then a steady, concentrated jet of fire arcs towards the hydreigon from one of the walls. The seismitoad pounds his fists together, liquidating the earth beneath his webbed feet, and a wall of mud twenty feet high erupts in front of him and the hydreigon. You watch as the mud darkens in color, hardening from the heat, and just before it begins to crack and crumble away, the fire dies down.
Ghetsis looks up at the announcer box expectantly.
“T-that’s a hell of a Fire Blast; I can’t even recognize where that would be coming from, and—oh! It looks like Shauntal’s chandelure has found a way through the barrier?” Markus, to his credit, almost makes it sound like this is just a regular match. It’s a good act. So good you can’t tell if he’s acting at all.
[“Hilda? Hilda, please. Pick up. Something’s going on at the League, and I know you were planning on being in the area … call me back as soon as you can, okay?“]
The seismitoad pulls down his wall, and half a second later the scales of the hydreigon rush past it in a black waterfall. You pan across as Shauntal’s chandelure chimes in alarm and begins charging up a ring of fire around herself, tiny wisps of blue flame sparking from the edges of her arms, but the hydreigon is a force of nature, and cannot be stopped by mere heat. One set of jaws grabs the closest arm and twists; you pick up the creak of metal wrenching out of shape, and then the main head goes for the center, snapping through the wispy exterior to reach the purple flame on the inside.
“Tell me, Alder,” Ghetsis says conversationally over Markus’s commentary, over the brutality behind him. “Does this count as the same match? If Zahhak accidentally hurts Shauntal’s pokémon do I get a third yellow card or do I get one that’s separate? I truly do not know; I studied the rules carefully before I came here and there are no stipulations for how many incidents can be accumulated in a lifetime. You’ve got, what, forty-six? Forty-seven? The one where your volcarona gave that poor unfezant third degree burns in the semis last year was
ever so hard to call.”
“But despite the element of surprise, it doesn’t look like Chandelure can match up against Harmonia’s type advantage here. Yes, now Harmonia’s hydreigon is throwing Chandelure into the air and—”
A steady barrage of water washes down and slams the chandelure into the ground.
“—a tag team attack from the seismitoad is all it takes,” Markus finishes. You can almost picture him leaning forward. “Impressive teamwork from the two of those; Harmonia didn’t even give a proper command.”
He’s clinical. You can barely keep steady as you try to look anywhere but the collection of pokémon scattered across the field, not even recalled.
“Unova! Hear me and understand!” Ghetsis shouts, as the chandelure collapses. You catch one more shot of Alder slumped to the ground in shock and then whip your lens back over to Ghetsis. His cane is planted into the ground like a tree. Behind him, the seismitoad is systematically pummeling Alder’s downed escavalier, chipping off chunks of steel and sending them flying. Ghetsis doesn’t even look as a shard of armor whizzes past him. He smiles calmly to your camera. “You may tell yourself that this is not what battling is, that this is not what the League stands for. Ask yourself who you know who has battled like this. Maybe it was just once. Maybe they even felt it was necessary. Then imagine that you are their pokémon, and ask yourself if it is fair to be asked this.
“Nothing that I have done today is illegal under the League rules. Nothing that I have done today is even uncommon under League practices—a gym leader battles up to eight times per day; excessive force is bound to happen in the pursuit of glory. This happened under a League that calls pain a mere mistake, under a League that assumes that the burden falls on pokémon both to inform us of their pain and moderate how they inflict it.” He strolls over to Alder, who is kneeling on the ground, murmuring something inaudible. “Make no mistake. Pokémon do not care if the League thinks it legal or not when they are suffering. They do not care if I meant to cause this. They are suffering.”
[“Hilda? It’s me, Cheren. Bianca said you weren’t answering your phone, and I just wanted to check. You aren’t trying anything stupid, are you?”]
“Two thousand years ago Unova was shaped by a battle of legends, and its destiny was dictated by a legendary trainer who tamed that dragon. Fifteen years ago Alder defeated Maevis and received in return the crown of Champion. With the new Champion came a whole new wave of reforms—incident-neutral laws for gym leadership, relaxation of pokémon ownership license statutes, blanket defunding of conservation efforts for endangered species. And where was your outrage? Was the Champion’s throne not a position of power not two decades ago, when the man who wielded it only had quiet ideas that didn’t conflict with your own? Why didn’t you fear the regime change then?”
Ghetsis stamps his cane on the ground, narrowly avoiding crushing Alder’s hand. You can’t help but zoom in on that for a moment, hold it in sharp focus. It’s an image of dusty hands on shattered ground. In one frame you can see desperation, poignance, the white knuckles of someone who’s too determined to fall here. And in the next frame you see dirt beneath the fingernails, cracks in the skin.
Something has to give.
“I stand accused of pushing too hard for the change I want, and perhaps Alder is correct. I find it far more accurate to say that I push too loudly, that I remind you what the price of your comforts and your entertainments truly are.” He points with a thin but muscled arm towards the limp form of Alder’s volcarona, who still hasn’t gotten up. “Accidents like this happen all the time. Zoom out for a moment, and pretend you are the League. If enough of them accumulate you stop seeing bodies and you start seeing numbers. By the end of the day, a team of specialists will have helped that pokémon regrow his wings; by tomorrow, he will physically be able to fight just as well as he could today. The volcarona is lucky; his trainer is wealthy and high-profile, and as such can bypass the normal waiting times that such an intensive operation would require. Is that what you want to hear? Is that the truth you would rather know? Forgive me if I fail to stay quiet, Unova. For you it is just another match; for pokémon, who must live in the gaps between your bursts of glory, the violence is all they know.”
[“Hey, it’s me, I can’t answer the phone right now, so leave a message after the beep!”]
[“Hilda, honey, are you okay? Please call me. I’m watching the news right now.”]
“Accidents like this happen, but systems were not built on accident. You claim that the actions of a few abusive trainers do not stain the glory of all of the good ones. But
all of you have watched something like this happen. All of you know a trainer who went just a little too far, or didn’t exercise enough restraint, or pushed just a bit too much. But did you stop them, or did you remain quiet? And if you closed your eyes to a pokémon’s pain, what does that make you?” His hydreigon rises up behind him, eyes glittering, blood dripping down his chins. “Justice may be blind, but you do not have to be. Legends spoke of the day that a new hero would tame the black dragon and change Unova. Open your eyes, and I will be that hero for you.”
It’s a good camera angle, you can’t help but note distantly. You tilt up a little so that Ghetsis looks a little more intimidating.
“Hear me, Unova! I am Ghetsis, your new Champion! What I could not take with words I will take with force. Release your pokémon, and join me in a new era where pokémon are liberated from humans!”
[“Hilda, please—”]
There’s a crumbling from the corner, and one of the walls finally gives way. Roots tear open the ground, knocking out columns and sending sections of the wall tumbling to the floor.
“Hyper Beam, Vaselva,” says a child’s voice, and the emerging serperior opens her mouth wide before unleashing a scorching ray of purplish-black energy that clips the hydreigon in four of his six wings and sends him spiraling chaotically toward the ground.
“Hang on folks, I’m getting information from downstairs right now, it looks like someone has broken through the cofagrigus’s trick room and is fighting Ghetsis! Wow, and she’s certainly putting her serperior through its paces tonight; it just narrowly dodged another Fire Blast from Ghetsis’s hydreigon here.”
He’s so
casual how can he be so
casual there are pokémon here that are going to
die—
The girl’s serperior is like a green ribbon, there one instant and then whipping through the air and unfurling to impact the hydreigon with her tail, every inch of her body crackling with green light. She uncoils and springs backward, wrapping protectively around her trainer as the seismitoad smashes the ground and the floor erupts into fractures.
You realize, then, what Ghetsis is trying to say. Markus can treat this like just another match because, to him, it is. It doesn’t matter if Ghetsis is purposefully trying to maim his opponent’s pokémon or not; the outcome is still the same. For you, at least. For the humans? The intent mattered to them. As if the pain was somehow less if it was inflicted on accident.
“It looks like … it looks like this newcomer might stand a chance? Ghetsis’s team is starting to show some cracks. And I’m getting word that this is none other than
Hilda Verdandi, one of Juniper’s sponsored trainers for this season! Well, that’s certainly one way to make a League entrance!”
And yet even as Markus slips, perhaps unthinkingly, back into his element as two evenly-matched challengers clash, the calm demeanor is gone from the battlefield. Hilda’s face is a pale smudge behind a flurry of Leaf Blades.
Ghetsis’s mouth twists into tight snarl as he barks, “Damocles!” Another ultra ball arcs into the air, and a red-armored figure emerges alongside his two companions, brandishing blades. Ghetsis points—no orders, just a target—and the bisharp runs forward, the steel of his boots pounding heavily into the ground.
“Flame Charge, Amara!” Hilda frantically raises a pokéball in front of herself like a shield. There’s a flash of red light, and her zebstrika canters forward, hooves already wreathed in smoke. As the zebstrika careens closer, her hooves spark into flame, and that’s all the time she has before the bisharp is upon her. The zebstrika brays in alarm as steel sinks into flesh, and she sparks self-defensively. Hilda calls for a counter, and this time the electricity coalesces and erupt from the zebstrika tail in a controlled beam, forcing the bisharp back—
“A well-positioned Discharge commanded by Verdandi gives Zebstrika some time to breathe,” Markus chimes in. You can’t help but focus on how her flanks are heaving, blood mixing in with the black and white stripes that run down her sides. Whatever time she has to breathe isn’t enough.
“I’ll take my third yellow card now. Zahhak. The girl.”
The hydreigon has arced high above in the chaos, and all three heads now release a coordinated torrent of flame. “Jericho, Protect!” Hilda screams, and a reuniclus emerges just in time, cloaking them both in a scintillating shield of blue and green light. The jet of fire splays harmlessly off of it, but even from here you can see the heat—the walls where it’s been redirected start to glow like the sun.
[“The doors aren’t opening. What’s happening?”]
“I don’t believe it! It would seem that Harmonia is attacking her directly!” Whatever brief burst of energy Markus got back from Hilda’s arrival has dissipated immediately; the tense, terse air is back.
[“Medics! I need medics in that room! Immediately!”]
Ghetsis doesn’t even look up at the announcer’s box, but you can
feel that this next statement is meant for the two of you, for the thousands watching. “I will ask you again. Imagine that you are their pokémon, and ask yourself if it is fair to be asked this.”
[“Get a strike squad; that man is going to kill her!”]
[“Somebody, cut the damn feed! We can’t have her die on national television!”]
Her reuniclus’s shield is starting to splinter and crack. But Ghetsis isn’t done yet, and evidently neither is the hydreigon—while the dragon spews fire, he spews words with an equal, raging intensity. “Which one of you will run into this room and card me for excessive force?” The one eye he has left is furious and wide, and yet—you can see it perfectly—there’s no madness in there. This isn’t a madman. This is someone who knows exactly what he’s doing. “Minutes before, Unova, you rejoiced when this very same thing happened to Alder’s accelgor. If she burns, will you cheer her on to fight through it? If she falls will you beg her to fight through the pain so that you can watch it happen, safe and comfortable from the sidelines? If she faints, will you shout to her, ‘Come on! Get up!’? Will you do the same now? Don’t worry, she’ll only pass out. I will be lenient. My hydreigon is well-trained; there is only a minimal risk of death. With a bit of healing she should be as good as new. I’ll even be generous and pay for the cost of her treatment myself.”
The reuniclus’s arms are buckling. You can see him trying, but the simple fact is that his body simply isn’t equipped to handle this much strain. The hydreigon is all the raw power of a freight train, times three. He’s not going to hold.
“If you think this is too barbaric for a child, that a non-zero risk of death is too high, that healing pain does not indemnify the inflictor, consider your simple hypocrisy and understand that you do not view pokémon as your equals.”
The zebstrika is struggling to her feet, but the bisharp has perforated her so thoroughly with holes that her legs barely hold up. Quivering, she fires a tiny pulse of electricity towards the hydreigon, just enough to barely color the air, but then the seismitoad crashes back down in the way, his face impassive as the charge fizzles harmlessly over his body. He picks up the zebstrika, who brays frantically to Hilda, but there’s no response, and—
thud—the electric-type hits the wall and doesn’t get back up.
Over in the corner, the serperior is struggling mightily against Ghetsis’s eelektross—you didn’t even notice when he joined the fray. The two serpentine pokémon have twisted themselves into one enormous knot; the eelektross has his mouth clamped over the grass-type’s head and is periodically pulsing her with static shocks to keep her from moving, but she’s still flailing limply across the ground, desperately reaching towards her trainer.
The fire rages, swirling around the sphere like a river.
“Ghetsis, please!” Alder begs over the sound of the flames. “You’ve made your point!”
But you notice that he hasn’t gotten up, he’s done nothing to put himself between the child and the flames, he hasn’t even given Ghetsis the one thing he wanted and relinquished the throne. No. He’s still prone on the ground, too weak from his own injuries, which seem so paltry compared to the abuse heaped on Hilda’s pokémon, but
they still have to keep fighting—
[“Wave! I need that shot! Get close to her!”]
And Markus isn’t doing anything either; you’re the one who has to get close while he stays safe behind the protection of the box and its layers and layers of deflective shields, and that hardly seems
fair; you can’t help but notice that he’s only nervous when the humans are in danger, a discrepancy that he’s surely unaware of and surely doesn’t
mean—
You don’t look at Hilda. Instead you look at the volcarona, six bloody crescents lining the scaly down on his back; you look at the zebstrika slumped in a pile in the wall, her legs so mangled she’ll probably never walk again; you look at how Shauntal’s chandelure is twisted into an almost unrecognizable wreck of wrought iron with purple fire barely flickering at the core—
[“Wave! Stop looking at them! I need you to point at the girl! Now!”]
But if he needed it that badly, surely he’d take the risk and hold the camera himself, right?
[“Wave!”]
And with the name he sends a burst of raw, unfiltered high-pitched noise, large enough in magnitude that it washes out your other thoughts; it’s not really enough to
hurt a creature like you, but definitely enough to startle, and instinctively you turn to where he’s directing, which is a blessing and a curse both, because your unfortunate timing is about to broadcast—
The shield drops.
In its place is a glistening dark sphere, curled tight. Flames arc harmlessly off of it, and before your lens it unfurls like black sails on a ship, forming sturdy wings, muscled arms, glinting crimson eyes, a mouth full of teeth. A screeching sound fills the air, almost like a jet turbine, and then the creature opens its mouth and the screech is twined with an enormous roar as a dragon spreads itself wide, as a god is born.
You almost drop out of the sky. The hydreigon halts his assault despite himself. Over in the corner, the eelektross and the serperior stop their fighting immediately, looking like a pair of guilty purrloin caught mid-theft.
“I don’t believe it! Is that … Zekrom?”
The humans don’t understand it. But in that roar, in a language that transcends any sort of words you could pin to it, there is a single command.
CEASE.
“Ladies and gentleman, I do believe that’s none other than the pokémon of legend, Zekrom! That’s
incredible—”
You tune Markus out. A god is here, and that is all that matters now. He can shock you a million times but it’ll be pitiful compared to the fury of what stands now.
Zekrom turns to the hydreigon, whose three heads are snapping in different directions. {Explain,} says the god simply, in the dialect of dragons.
For the first time in this whole ordeal, the hydreigon speaks. {I fight so my brethren will not be in chains. While you slept, our people suffered. I sought to right this wrong.} There is an appropriate amount of reverence in his voice, but it’s laced with fury. {Forgive me, dear sibling. This is all I know how to give.}
There is a long, heavy silence after he invokes those words. Every pokémon in the room feels it.
Zekrom snarls in response, and then casts a bloody gaze around the room. Takes it all in. You see the skin above the fangs curl back instinctively at the sight of the downed pokémon scattered around the field, and then finally, the gaze settles back upon Hilda. {You called to me, Hero of Ideals. I heard in your call the purest future I have ever felt dreamed in thousands of years. You have been tested. I find you worthy. But explain to me. Why does the future you envision require this?}
All the pokémon in the room have frozen, waiting with baited breath for her response.
There is ash streaked in her hair and her face is stained with sweat. “Fusion Bolt,” she says in a shaking voice, pointing towards hydreigon with a shaking finger.
{She means no harm!} cries the serperior, straining. {Please, do not take offense! She can’t understand you. But she’s a good human—}
Zekrom fixes the serperior with a long stare, and then looks away. {Where is Reshiram?}
{Slumbering, still,} replies the hydreigon when no one else answers. You can’t place it, but it almost sounds like he’s bitter.
{I will not harm my own mortals without provocation,} Zekrom grates. You can feel a vibration in every piece of sheet metal on this body you’ve chosen to inhabit; it rumbles like a great seismic wave. One claw points forward. {My fight is with the Hero of Truth alone. This is your only warning.}
The hydreigon growls, but makes no movement forward to attack.
For a single, delusional moment, everything is going to be okay, everyone is going to stand down, and words will prevail.
The floor beneath the hydreigon erupts. An enormous, red-scaled creature that you recognize as Grimsley’s krookodile appears, bearing the unconscious body of a cofagrigus in her jaws; behind the krookodile, the slender form of a mienshao sprouts forward and plants her foot in the hydreigon’s head. The hydreigon reels backward, already weakened from the previous fights, and he struggles in midair to regain his bearings.
“Night Slash!” Ghetsis commands, gesturing wildly at his bisharp—but there’s no single target, and even if there were, the steel-type is staring reverently at Zekrom through the slots in her red-lidded helmet.
Marshall’s conkeldurr crawls from the hole to stand alongside his teammate, and there’s a flash of light signifying a teleport: Caitlin arrives, flanked by her gothitelle. “You’re outnumbered,” she intones. You’ve filmed her matches a dozen times and this is the most emotion you’ve ever seen from her. “Surrender.”
Ghetsis tilts his chin up. “Caitlin. You’re an empath. You could read your parents’ minds when you were six, they say. Haven’t you ever felt your pokémon’s pain?”
“You’re a madman, Ghetsis. I will waste no more time with you.”
But he’s got a point, hasn’t he? Has she felt it, and ignored it? Or did she never think to reach out in the first place?
In the corner, the serperior slowly gets up. Maybe she can’t see it, but from your angle across the field, you can—her tail, which still isn’t fully in control and flickers with the last offshoots of the eelektross’s paralysis, strays too close to a support column, and then spasms.
The beams were already weakened from when the krookodile burst in. The champion’s room is reinforced to take all sorts of abuse, but an elite-tier krookodile tunneling
in directly through the floor was probably out of scope. You understand that. You’re not an analysis rotom so you couldn’t do a proper report, but half a second later it’s clear that you wouldn’t have been fast enough regardless. The stone crumbles away, and a section of the roof collapses in an instant, directly above the hydreigon.
The humans shy back. That’s when you decide for sure that Ghetsis isn’t a human. Maybe he’s a machine like you, maybe not—but when instinctively all of the other humans crouch away from the incoming disaster, Ghetsis is the only one to reach forwards, along with you, and his bisharp, and even Hilda’s serperior.
But you’re too slow. All of you are. The ceiling plummets. There isn’t time to move, to speak. You watch one set of eyes look upward, widen in alarm, and then the hydreigon vanishes from your view, replaced with a pile of concrete and rebar.
The sound from Ghetsis’s mouth is inhuman, too.
And then, there is silence. Ghetsis hangs his head low. Raises his hands high.
You watch it all.
Ghetsis is escorted out of the building in handcuffs. A medical team arrives for Alder. Hilda limps away with the god of Unova clipped to her belt. The smoke clears. Markus is still babbling on, almost like it’s the post-commentary of any other match, and you file him out as background noise. You linger on the pile of rubble.
The announcement comes on the evening news. Both Hilda and Alder are set to make speedy recoveries. Alder’s volcarona will never battle again. Neither will his bouffalant or escavalier, or Hilda’s zebstrika, all three of whom passed away due to the injuries they sustained.
You weren’t allowed to focus on it during the match, so you do it long after the broadcast goes down and Markus quits his commentary to let Unova whisper amongst itself. Alder and Hilda almost died. The League was compromised.
Zekrom walks the earth again. That’s what everyone else is talking about, anyway, in the radio waves that pierce through you, that you no longer have the energy to transmit or translate.
Your mind is pulled in to this one treacherous thought like a planet on the event horizon of a black hole, and there’s no escaping it:
It isn’t right. It isn’t right that Ghetsis, who called the shots, gets to walk off to trial, while the blood of his hydreigon slowly goes cold and seeps into the dirt.
