Mission Three: Fighting

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else- that means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”

-e. e. cummings

Fighting 3.1: Blacklight

Selene

[-00:00:21]

“Hello?” you sleepily mutter into the phone, still mostly enthralled by your afternoon nap.

“It’s here almast. Just a few minuteses out.”

The accent and wording are unmistakable. As is the meaning. You hop out of bed and throw on your belt and the first pair of shoes you can find (slippers with little vulpix ears on the side, as it turns out). “Thought we had months!” you half-shout half-whisper into the phone as you rush past Mom and out the door.

“As did me. It found a worm’s hole.”

You open Nebby’s pokéball and hastily slip onto her back, trusting her telepathy to fill her in on what’s going on and where you need to go. As soon as you’re gripping her shoulders, she takes off fast enough that your arms would be ripped off without her telekinesis holding you down. Melemele slips by in a blur as Poni grows closer and closer.

{You’re scared,} Nebby messages, an aura of comfort around the words.

{You’re not?}

She doesn’t answer until you’re nearly on Poni.

{How does it help?} she asks.

{Hmm?}

{Fear.}

You groan but don’t give a proper answer. Fine. It doesn’t help. But things weren’t supposed to be like this. You were supposed to have other trainers, other legendary pokémon, the best science in this world and others. Instead it’s just you and Nebby. That will have to be enough.

Nebby casts you off and your ankles let out a flare of pain as you unexpectedly hit rock. A quick glance confirms that you’re on top of the Altar where she’d evolved for the second time. Vast Poni Canyon stretches out for miles behind you. No time to admire the view.

“Alright, Nebby, start by keeping your distance. I’ll keep an eye on things. See if it has patterns, openings…”

You wish there was more you could do, but you’re at a big disadvantage here. There’s no archival footage to watch of the thing battling. Nothing more than a few drawings and the scattered tales of survivors. It has claws, supposedly. Nebby doesn’t. Best to keep things to a distance. And if she’s faster she can dodge attacks and wear it down at range.

{Can do.}

She’s still too damn calm. You’re drowning in unknowns and it’s almost like she doesn’t care. The plan only works if the necrozma isn’t even stronger than her at a distance. You don’t even know if a light eater is harmed by by moongeist beams. That leaves shadow balls, psyshocks, hyper beams… her Z-move if you must. The feedback is brutal for you but Nebby will be taking worse. It’s the least you can do.

Nebby descends lower and wraps a wing around you. {I am scared. For you. For Lillie.} You flinch at your ex’s name but she carries on without mentioning it. {I am not scared for me. I am strong.}

Fine. Fine. She should be terrified but if it hasn’t got through her giant, adorable skull maybe it never will.

You unleash Incineroar without a word. He looks between you, Nebby, and the Altar with a questioning gaze. “Don’t engage the thing unless I tell you to. Just keep me shielded with protects. Don’t get hit yourself, either. We don’t know how strong it is.”

That’s a partial lie. The Ultra Recon Squad had lots of numbers on how strong a necrozma can be if it’s given time to drain light. Strong enough that you’d have to pray to every creator god on Earth and hope they’re as strong as their believers say. Without time to charge it’s probably closer to Nebby’s power.

That’s not at all reassuring.

[00:00:00]

A blinding light shines high above you.

Years fighting Ultra Beasts have given Incineroar the instincts to immediately throw up a shield at the first sign of trouble. For the best. The wormhole opens with a sonic boom and a strong pulse of air. If you hadn’t been protected you would’ve been violently thrown to the hard ground.

Incineroar drops the shield and you look up at the slowly descending figure. “Black” doesn’t do it justice. The creature absorbs all the light that touches it. You can only really make it out as the absence of any color at all.

“Nebby, begin—”

It screams directly into your brain. Your hands fly uselessly to your ears. Darkness overtakes you before you hit the ground.

[???]

Incineroar is purring nervously above you, crouched down on all fours and guarding your body with his. You try to ignore the headache and gently push his side to get him to move. He complies and gives you a better view of the ongoing fight. As you slowly get to your feet you realize that one of your slippers fell off and is nowhere to be found. Whatever. You awkwardly stand with one foot on the smooth, dusty stone and one in your slipper as you take stock of the situation.

Nebby fires off a moongeist beam and the necrozma stands still and takes it. A moment later the same beam is shot back out and strikes Nebby directly on the forehead. The bat cries in shock and floats herself back instinctively.

“Dodge it!”

She startles and looks down towards you. What she doesn’t see is the necrozma racing forward faster than anything that looks so un-aerodynamic has the right to move. Before Nebby can react one of the Ultra Beast’s spiked hands grabs Nebby’s head and they both plummet down. Incineroar’s shield protects you from the shockwave but blocks your view. When the protect fades a second later you’re treated to the sight of Nebby held down by both of the monster’s hands as a strange… black… light? overtakes them both.

Another shield goes up. When it fades Nebby’s gone.

No, not gone.

Nebby has been consumed.

The necrozma floats in front of the Altar. The long wings of a luanla extend from either side of its body, radiating blue light. Nebby’s head is mostly the same pure black as the necrozma’s body, but now a mix of strange Z-crystal-like eyes adorn it. The dark claws of the necrozma stretch out from the pokémon’s midsection, flexing open and closed in the air.

You steadily get to your feet and stare at it. The creature, in turn, stares back at you.

A challenge, perhaps. You remember that Nebby looked much the same after you first got back from Ultra Space. When she wanted to see if you were a worthy trainer.

Is it really that simple?

You can’t take the chance. You send out all of your pokémon and start giving commands.

“Darkest Lariat, now.”

Incineroar doesn’t hesitate to charge forward, cloaked in shadows. It buys you time. “Tox, guard me. Kommo-o, stay back. All others attack.” The necrozma almost casually bats Incineroar aside with one of its hands just before all hell breaks loose. Vikavolt starts launching thunderbolts above you with Lycanroc joining in on the ground with accelrocks. Incineroar gets back up to breathe out more fire. Necrozma simply takes the flames and rocks with one wing and moves the other to block the thunderbolts.

“Flare Blitz.” The flames are useless. A full tackle might not be. You don’t bother watching, turning instead to kommo-o as you slot the proper Z-crystal into your ring. “Clangorous Soulblaze.”

The necrozma lifts into the air with a few flaps of its glowing wings, narrowly dodging the flare blitz while continuing to tank accelrocks and thunderbolts. (Ground type? Dragon type? Maybe it doesn’t obey type rules at all.) You manage to put your hands over your ears (should’ve grabbed earplugs at home, dammit) right before Kommo-o gets loud.

The Soulblaze upsets necrozma for the first time in the battle. Bad news is that the creature screams like Nebby. Almost like Nebby. There’s a terrible noise like a record scratch just below the surface. It distracts you and you almost don’t catch the streams of light trailing towards the necrozma’s head—Moongeist Beam. “Shields up!”

You see most of your team start to follow the order as you close your eyes to block the worst of the light. Even through your eyelids and Toxapex’s protect you can still see the light flare. Hear the sound of a barrier shattering and a Kommo-o’s cries of pains. The light dims and you hesitantly open your eyes. Kommo-o is breathing heavily, but a dim red aura has surrounded her. The Soulblaze worked. Now you can fight the monster on more equal footing.

You give the specific snap for her orders. “Outrage.” All across the field attacks resume as Kommo-o starts running faster and faster, preparing to jump. The necrozma screeches and the air distorts as a psionic attack flies at the dragon in midair. It doesn’t break her momentum. They collide and the necrozma is driven back, but your pokémon gracelessly falls to the ground and crumples in a heap. The pokéball withdraws her. Still alive.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

Refocus on Incineroar. Necrozma’s flown too high for ranged attacks to do much. Dark Pulse? It’s not something you’ve put a lot of training into. But if fire can’t do it, maybe darkness can. It might at least disrupt psychic attacks.

Before you can give the order necrozma spreads its wings into an almost perfect circle and they start to glow brightly. Another Moongeist Beam. No. Not Moongeist. There isn’t any light spiraling in. “All but Tox, shields up!” You’ve done a lot of training with Toxapex. You trust him to get the barrier up in time and you need a look. Cracks, no, lines and concentric circles, start forming on the wings. A wormhole. Summoning something? Another UB?

You get your answer very, very quickly as clumps of rock and ice start blasting out at blinding speeds. One scores a glancing blow on Lycanroc’s shield and shatters it. Another sends her sprawling back with visibly cracked ribs by the time Tox has finished using Protect. Too quick. The attack was far too quick. You remember reading somewhere that a paperclip moving at the speeds of space junk could puncture steel. None of your pokémon are armored well enough to take another barrage. You hear Incineroar let out a roar of pain before your body catches up with your mind and you withdraw everyone but Toxapex.

The sound of the projectiles stops.

“Shield down,” you mutter, reaching to your belt to grab the one last-ditch tool you’ve saved for years. As soon as you can see the alien, you reach back and throw it as hard as you can.

The master ball freezes in midair. That shouldn’t even be possible. The tech is too well safeguarded against attacks of all kinds. You’re still not entirely surprised when the master ball crumples inward in a flash of sparks before the metal drops uselessly to the ground beneath it. Another shimmer of air crosses the battlefield and knocks out toxapex.

You withdraw your last pokémon. It occurs to you that all of your pokémon—wait—you hit the withdraw button on Nebby’s pokéball—and nothing happens. Worth a try, at least.

It occurs to you that all of your pokémon but Nebby survived. That’s something. Maybe… no, there’s no healing your team under the necrozma’s watchful gaze. A shame. Its bleeding light in at least five places on its wings. Another round and maybe you could have won.

As if on cue light spirals in towards the alien and the sky around you grows ever darker. Once the streams of light are absorbed the damage is all healed. Never mind. It wouldn’t have mattered. You lost—Alola lost—the second Nebby did.

There’s almost relief there. Over four years of non-stop incursions and you went and blew it. Even if you lived to see another fight no one would plead with their words or tone or eyes for you to go out and save the world while the public sits back and watches.

If only you got a chance to say goodbye to Lillie. To Mom.

The necrozma floats ever closer. Even in the dim light you can see the pitch blackness of a claw lowering. You close your eyes and whimper just before it reaches you. Maybe it’s cowardly but no one else will ever know. Something cold and incredibly smooth touches your cheek and glides up to your hair, running through it before rising high enough that all of the strands fall back down.

You open your eyes again to see the tip of one claw lower back down towards you. The blinding blue light of a wormhole shines behind you before the alien gently pushes you backwards, through the hole and onto something soft.

It takes you almost a minute to process the fact that you’re still alive. It takes another twenty seconds to recognize the smell of your bedroom. Another ten to realize that your eyes are open and you still can’t see anything.

Another thirty to finally hear your phone ringing in your pocket. You answer it without checking who it is.

“You know why it’s dark all of a sudden?”

Nanu. He sounds bored, as usual. Like he’s discussing an inconvenient afternoon storm instead of a sudden, region-wide blackout.

“Yes.”

“It going away any time soon?”

“No.”

He sighs. You can imagine him shaking his head and pulling himself off the couch, maybe pushing a meowth aside in the process.

“Anything I can do?”

“You at home?”

“Yes.”

“Head out to Castleton. Make sure people are staying inside.”

“Anything else?”

“No.”

He hangs up.

The phone immediately rings again.

[00:01:38]

It takes an hour and a half for someone to set up a conference call with the Kahunas, the military, the governor, and INTERPOL. Maybe a few others. You’re struggling to care, still weighed down by the shock of the loss.

It suddenly occurs to you that you’ll have to call Lillie later. Tell her about Nebby.

You’d rather fight the necrozma again.

“Miss Perry, can you give us your account of what happened?”

You can do this. Just. One. Call. “Two hours ago, the Ultra Recon Squad contacted me. They said that the necrozma hit a wormhole and was only minutes away. I flew to the Altar of the Moone to meet it. There was a short battle. I got knocked out. The Ultra Beast merged with Lunala—”

“Merged?” Kukui asks beside you. He was generous enough to let you stay in his lab, under his protection while your team healed. Even helped get you there. It’s strange. Knowing and hearing that he’s three feet to your right but not being able to see him at all.

“There was bright light. Then Nebby was gone and the necrozma looked like a mix of itself and a lunala.”

Lunala, not Nebby. Bleh. Some of the kahunas don’t like it when you call their goddess by a pet name.

“How?” Olivia asks, like you would know that.

“Maybe Kukui knows?”

“I don’t.”

You don’t pick the topic back up. After a few seconds of silence, you continue. “I fought it with the rest of my team and lost.”

“It let you walk away?” The governor sounds strangely hopeful. “Maybe it can be reasoned with.”

You’d gone through that thought earlier once the shock faded a little and you stopped taking calls long enough to get your pokémon to the Center. “I think some of Nebby survived. All of my pokémon lived. Once they were all defeated, the necrozma opened a wormhole to my bed and knocked me through. I don’t know where it went after that.”

“The thing is still here?” Admiral Wilford asks. “Why the hell didn’t you lead with that?”

“The Ultra Recon Squad said that they usually sit in orbit or in another dimension entirely. But…” They never told you it could merge with lunala. Or that it might get some of her personality in the process. “It’s not acting like the Recon Squad told me. Anything’s possible.”

“I’ll go the canyon and check,” Hapu says. “If you don’t hear back from me, assume it’s still there.”

No one says anything. Because what is there to say?

“Necrozma brought dozens if not hundreds of Ultra Beasts with it.” Olivia. Pleading, but resigned. “Can we afford a kahuna taking time off to go on a potential suicide mission?”

The chat erupts in people talking over each other before Hapu breaks through with a few half-shouts of “It’s fine!” Once everyone’s quieted she continues. “The Captain’s planning to take everyone in the village to sea until things calm down here. The Battle Tree is full of people who can handle it, and the park rangers have dealt with UBs before.”

“I’m not worried about Poni,” you interject before anyone else can. Too quickly to be tactful. “No offense, Hapu.” She grunts in acknowledgement. “And Melemele is small. Hala, Hau, Kukui and the other trainers here can respond quickly enough when there’s an attack. Ula’Ula and Akala have small towns far apart. Worried more about them.”

“Thanks for the thought, kid,” Nanu grumbles.

“Good luck, Hapu,” you add after realizing that you hadn’t done it. “Thank you for volunteering.”

You aren’t going to try to talk her out of it. You need to know if the necrozma is still there and she’s one of the only people you trust to navigate the canyon in the dark. It’s still a brave thing. You’ll make sure to do something special for her if she survives and the necrozma is defeated and you survive as well.

“No problem,” she answers. Implying that walking straight towards an alien god that could almost certainly defeat her entire team and kill her is not something she sees as a problem. Your gift will need to be really special. A hippowdon? Rhydon? Or one of those giant Galarian sand snakes. Maybe you can find the money for a recently thawed mamoswine. Helps that picking up any of those is an excuse for a vacation when this passes over. If it passes over.

Kukui’s ninetales barks outside. The professor swears under his breath and starts awkwardly hobbling towards the door. The man gave you and Nebby a run for your money. He can handle whatever Ultra Beast showed up.

You put the call on mute once the moonblasts start. Then immediately take it off mute and speaker when something occurs to you. “What are we doing with fallers? Lila and I can take care of ourselves. Others can’t.”

“I plan on going into the middle of nowhere to get the UBs away from cities,” Lila says. “We could move the others to Hau’oli or Malie. Stick a few powerful trainers near the city limits to deal with hostiles.”

“I can put a lot of battle-tested sailors into Hau’oli if given the okay,” Admiral Wilford adds.

“Do it,” the governor orders. “I’ve already activated the guard.”

You purse your lips in the dark. “Tell them to be careful.” As the cliffs of Rune City collapsed and Hoenn was under siege, your father chose to help the people of Japan until the very end. How many brave soldiers will die as he did before the necrozma is driven back?

Your sentiments are echoed by almost everyone in the chat. As they trail off, Gladion butts in. “I hate to be the one to bring it up, but if we do find Necrozma, how do we deal with it? Champ’s already lost. Lunala’s already lost. What else are we throwing at it? And what if it is in orbit or somewhere else entirely? How do we get to it? Does that even bring the light back?”

“It is an Ultra Beast. If you and Silvally can lend a hand…”

“Sure, fine, I’ll put my life on the line, I guess. You really think it’d do any good, though?”

“I’m not sure.” It eats light. The Ultra Recon Squad think that the more light a necrozma absorbs, the hotter it gets. At some point it will be like fighting the sun. Maybe macargo or rhyfernal or some legendaries could deal with it. Hard to imagine anything else getting close without vaporizing on the spot. “I’ll try calling other people in. Chris is...” Chris Foster is living on your ex-girlfriend’s childhood home when he can be bothered to be in the same country as his child labor abusing poaching business.

“And why didn’t you call for any help in the first place?” The governor asks.

“I had very limited time.”

“Couldn’t you have used some of that time to call for reinforcements? It seems irresponsible to…”

You stop listening as he drones on and on and on. He’s going to try and pin all this on you, isn’t he? What can he actually do? You’re pretty sure you didn’t break any laws. He might try and make you pay for everything that happens. The last governor did that with Lusamine. Difference is you’ve got next to nothing compared to what she had. And the damage is only going to be worse.

That and you didn’t intentionally open up a few dozen portals and permanently weaken the barrier between Earth and untold worlds of monsters. You just failed to stop someone else from doing that.

Just like last time.

The ninetales hisses in pain outside before the wind picks up. Even inside the house you can feel the cold, especially as it slips through the bottom of the door. Damn it. Nanu clears his throat. “I might be missing something, but I don’t think we ever established how we’re getting off the planet with Lunala gone.”

“Maybe the Ultra Recon Squad have some idea. Or Professor Burnet.” Or Lusamine, if you get desperate. She opened up a portal when you first visited Aether Paradise. She might have a way to do it without Nebby. Unless the tech got dismantled after the auction.

“The Ultra Recon people are fallers, right?” Lila asks.

Shit.

That’s why they haven’t called.

The door opens and Kukui’s footsteps sound off behind you.

“What’d I miss?”

[00:04:15]

“Rotom…” You sigh and cross your arms. Kukui’s outside with his pokémon. Giving you privacy. You’d better hurry up and make the damn call. “Call Lillie.”

She picks up on the second ring.

“Selene! I was so, so worried about you! Why haven’t you been picking up? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Just busy.” You take a moment to steel yourself. She immediately starts talking again but you ignore it. “Nebby’s gone.”

“What?”

“A really, really powerful Ultra Beast arrived. It fused with Nebby. I don’t know where it is now. I’m sorry.”

“I—are you alright?”

“What?”

“If it could… could do that—”

Damn it. You’d forgotten that Lillie was like this. Break her heart into pieces and stomp on them in front of her and she’ll still be there for you in the morning. It’s why you had to break up in the first place.

“It let me live.” You pause, carefully considering the accuracy of what you’re about to say. “I think some of Nebby’s mind might still in there.”

“Then you can’t kill it,” she says. “Just knock it out. Make it unfuse. Like Mother and the nihilego.”

Mother. She still calls Lusamine ‘Mother.’ You’d hoped that breaking up with her would get it through her skull that being with Lusamine was bad for her. Changed her. Guess she didn’t get the message.

But you already knew that.

“I’ll try. Really. I will.”

“Thank you.”

Neither of you talks for a long time. A few years ago, you would’ve been more than fine with that. You’d find somewhere quiet to sit and call her and sometimes you’d just stay on the line in silence for hours, both of you just glad the other was there in spirit. Now the silence is cutting.

“You don’t want to talk about how things are going, do you?”

“No.”

“Can I tell you about things on my end, then?”

“Sure.”

“Well, Mother’s recovery is—”

You hang up.