Prism Tower, Lumiose City, April 1st, 2024
Red grunted as his back collided against metal railing, the various implants and drugs in his system working to numb the pain and fatigue his body felt compelled to drown him in.
No matter, it wouldn’t stop him even if he felt it, broken bones and all. As long as Red could breath - with the rasp of a singular mechanical lung - he would remain standing.
He didn’t do anything else at this point.
The Storm raged around him, flashes of white lightning and fire licking against his skin.
Red didn’t care - he could always add a new layer of synthetic skin - instead rolling out of the way of another barrage of fire.
In the corner of his vision, darting between pillars on rusted metal, Pikachu spiralled in a mad arch of blinding lightning and trailing blood.
The sight managed to pierce the cold, dead remains of Red’s heart, but in his mind, he knew with a cold, calculating assuredness that Pikachu could live with the bloodloss.
Pikachu had survived much worse, after all.
It was what made him the last one left.
Red could almost laugh - Madly, Madly - mirroring the jubilant - decaying - rasps of his most-hated enemy.
The Chariot - nothing more than the shell of a man - stood before him, lumbering across the other end of the tower on legs of creaking metal. The only parts of the man that was left were his head and torso, and even those were blackened and charred.
The Chariot - eyes a dead grey, having lost their blazing darkness, their shadowed crimson trails years ago - laughed once more, which seemed to be the only thing the man could do anymore. Red hadn’t heard the man speak in over a decade, despite their constant battles, and part of him - a small, festering part of him - almost missed the man’s voice.
It was lonely being alone in his thoughts.
The years had not been kind to either of them, stripping them down to their cores before shattering them, and rebuilding them only to shatter them once more.
After twenty years of existing within the Storm, Red no longer considered himself as living . After so many years of loss, of destruction, of death… Red no longer felt anything at all.
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The Storm shifted.
And suddenly, he and Pikachu were being pushed back, and the Chariot was marching forward, trailed by a bleeding Typhlosion, who had looked ready to keel over five years ago.
But none of them did.
They were the last ones left, after all.
There was a slice of white fire, and Red recoiled over the edge of the railing, watching as his right hand was severed and fall into the abyss below.
Red did not scream, for he no longer felt pain.
The Chariot stood before Red, grey eyes looking down past his respirator.
Seconds passed, and then a rasped voice - faint with disuse - reaches Red’s ears.
“there is no escape. don’t make Me destroy You,” There was an odd, faraway quality to the man’s voice, “join Me, and We will fight together as equals,” The Chariot raised his metal hand into a fist, the Storm behind him beginning to grow, “with Our combined strength, We can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the world.”
Red blinked, and he saw the Storm grow further behind the Chariot, and the Conduit (where had it come from?) began to float down with baleful eyes.
Red snarled at his enemy, “I’ll never join you!”
“if only You knew the power of the dark side of aura,” The Chariot lamented, almost as if Red was a child - he had lived within the Storm for over half his lifetime - “Samuel Oak never told you what happened to your father…”
Red gaped, clutching Pikachu’s bloodied form to his side with his left arm, “What does that have to do with anything?! I never knew my father!”
“no, ” The Chariot’s gaze fixed upon Red’s, “I am your father.”
Red’s eyes widened, and his grip upon the railing began to slip, “No…” His hand slackened, “No… That’s impossible!”
And Red’s hand slipped, and he and Pikachu began to fall down and down and down and down and down and down and down and-
…
Athlete’s Village Inn, Silver Town, December 14th, 1997
Red jolted awake, sitting up on his bed in a sweat.
Pichu - not Pikachu - growled at the sudden movement, lazily opening an eye to glare at Red before falling back asleep.
Vee, meanwhile, was entirely dead to the world, curled up haphazardly against Red in a little ball of fuzz, laying on her back with her paws tucked into her chest.
Red breathed slowly, closing his eyes as he leaned slowly back onto the bed.
This. This was why he didn’t like sleep.
Arceus must’ve found his misery to be the height of comedy, having sent that dream - nightmare - to Red’s mind.
Nevermind Cressalia or Darkrai, this was too vile to be anything other than the Creator itself.
Red huffed silently as he stared at the ceiling, knowing that any hope of going back to sleep was dashed.
Red would manage, in the end. Even if the last day of the semi-finals were coming up, Red had gone days without sleep back in the Storm, so he could manage a single sleepless night.
Besides, it wasn’t as if any of the competitors had given him a challenge as of yet.
Extending a hand to pet Vee’s belly - which caused her to coo in her sleep - Red stared at the ceiling, thinking of training and tactics to purge the dream from his memory.
Go Forth, My Chariot.
Go Forth, And Conquer.