“C’mon, get up there and finish off Team Galactic!”
The wind howled off the pillars of the tallest place in the region.
“Dom! You have to calm Dialga down!” My hand swiped at the Master Ball on my belt.
The Team Galactic commanders had been dispatched by Barry as Cynthia dashed up the stairs, touching Dom’s shoulder. “I’ll handle Dialga. The easiest way to calm it is to capture it in that ball Cyrus gave you!”
Cynthia ran up the final set of stairs to confront the Time Lord himself. “Alright, Spiritomb, use Confuse Ray! And Lucario, use Close Combat!” She sent out her Pokémon as Dialga struggled against the last of the chains holding him. The monstrous roar made memories flash before his eyes...
His mother gifting him a new pair of shoes before his journey, him choosing his starter—Turtwig—to fight off a flock of Starly. But it all suddenly came crashing down. The blank look on his face shifted back to his objective.
As soon as Dialga was hit with a Confuse Ray and further stunned by Close Combat, he decided enough was enough. Everyone could die in an instant.
“GO!”
He pitched the Pokéball, and the wind itself seemed to stop as Lucario’s movements slowed.
Time froze.
“SHIT!” I shouted as Dialga perfectly stopped the only weapon capable of stopping him. He had waited until the ball was just inches from his face. Of course, he foresaw it—he was the god of time!
“You never had a chance. Not one. Give up now.”
Dialga pushed the ball aside with his powerful aura alone, cracking the floor beneath him.
“Lord Arceus specifically requested you remain alive. Hear me?” he said, stomping as time unfroze. Everyone fell unconscious, but Team Galactic didn’t get the same treatment… they were gone. The Master Ball lay shattered into pieces beside him.
Wait—what? You can do all that?
“Lord Arceus forces me to suppress my power and act more feral than I really am. But it seems I just got special orders.” Dialga scoffed, turned his tail to Dom, and strutted to the edge of the ruins. The black, blue, and magenta sky faded like the aftermath of a bad storm.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Before I could get my words out, an ominous whistle solo played—the exact one I had heard almost every morning since this adventure began.
“So…” I gently scooted over Lucario with my foot to get to Cynthia, kneeling over her. “She’s okay… thank you, Dialga?”
“Move back.” His voice called out, the presence alone almost making my legs walk backward by themselves.
The flute finished, and a grandiose set of white stairs formed all the way to space, as far as I could see. “How do I know you’re not tricking me? I feel like I should at least be trying to put up a fight…”
“Up them, human. I have business to attend to, so don’t keep HIM waiting.” Dialga surrounded himself with blue energy and gracefully floated down the mountain, leaving me to climb the stairs by myself.
“Okay, great! Let’s go die then! Who needs air?” In a burst of motivation, I sprinted up the stairs, but miraculously, I never grew tired or dizzy from the towering heights. Soon enough, I found him.
Arceus faced the evening sky, splotched in yellow and pink. “You have arrived, Palkia… have you scouted the Ethan boy? He’s taking the Indigo League by storm, I’ve heard.” Arceus turned around with an oddly out-of-character smile in his eyes.
“Ah, you’re not him… but speaking of gold… Welcome, human!” A weak clapping sound played from some invisible audience, sounding like an MP3 file from my Pokétch, making the situation even more awkward.
“What the hell? You’re not God,” Dom replied bluntly.
Arceus ignored the idea of legs and floated a few inches closer to me.
“This is some cruel trick… are you not just some Ditto or Zorua in disguise?” I reached for the Pokéball of my ace Pokémon, Torterra, but the ball refused to release the Pokémon no matter how much I squeezed it.
“No, I am not. You’d best listen to me…” Arceus finally seemed to grow serious but just as quickly blurted out,
“Hmm… I would send you to observe Pokémon behavior in urban environments, but Dialga slipped up and brought a human from a different timeline. He even tried to disguise him as a Pokémon, hmph. But it works out in my favor at least...”
“What? Is that why Dialga broke character? To send me here?” I asked in a quizzical tone.
“Yes. You see, the gods—like me, Dialga, and Palkia—have been quitting, handing over their immortality.” Arceus spoke solemnly, his tone heavy. “We’ve recently lost our soul god, responsible for guiding souls to their respective afterlife.”
“Wait, so religi—”
“The recent removal of that specific god has left an imbalance of truth and ideals. Humans and Pokémon will become lazy, idiotic, and your world WILL crumble.”
“Then where do I come in?” I asked, hands in my pockets, at least trying to seem like I wasn’t panicking.
Arceus tilted his head in an almost cutesy way. If he had a mouth to smile, he most definitely would have been smiling.
“Well, you’ll be inheriting some of the powers of that soul god I mentioned earlier—the power to enlighten those who fall ill with what I call…
'Laxity!'”
Arceus yelled beyond the heavens as if hyping himself up. “I’ll let you down now, but before you go…”
A rumble from my Pokétch played. “New app installed!” blared from my watch as I turned it on to see Arceus’s symbol as a new app.
“So, um… thank you and—woah!”
“Bye, Dom!”
Arceus spawned a circle of light below me, which, surprise, shot out a beam of energy that felt like needles pricking me as I lost consciousness, falling deeper and deeper into the endless night...