Chapter 16: R4 | Thanatos
A shadow smeared Toril's straight face. It was straight, though.
In that face Cely felt love. True love. Love like she only ever felt those early days with MOTHER, when MOTHER and Cely both were so sick and so weak and so lonely. Desperate moments were the only times love truly existed. Happy people never loved, not really, not with any tenderness.
Toril loved Aracely. Loved her enough to prepare all these special tricks just for her. And you know what? Cely loved Tors, too. She loved her awkward little misanthrope. Her creature crawling out its depths still slopping slime. Look at her clothes. What was she doing? (Charlie must love it.) It overpowered Cely, clothes so absurd she could not tear them apart and remake an entity in her image. No wonder this was the final battle. Yes, she knew, there was a finals match, Red Akahata, sure, whatever, who cared, he didn't matter, last gasp bastion of a grand narrative gone twisted. Boring. Denouement, startling starred punctuation mark. Here was a climax, Cely was so happy when Toril beat Yui, it had to be this way, fate and all that. Her own little beast. Her monster. Was this why people loved Pokémon? Was this why they built this world to be this way, all along?
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Aracely Sosa was the luckiest bitch in the world. Toril regarded Slowking's Sludge Bomb counterattack in disbelief. Toril beat her, she fucking beat her at her own game, and Sosa had the gall to demand the laws of probability correct her own error. She didn't even look ashamed. She smiled as if to say: "Nice move Tors, but how'd you like my counter?"
Okay. Done?
Done.
The match continued. "Elias, you're up again."
Shedinja appeared. It remained one of Toril's strongest outs. She still had many outs, and Sosa had—what? Azumarill Belly Drum, maybe a Kommo-o or Swords Dance Gliscor for her final slot?
Sosa didn't play to her outs. Domino designed the team to have outs, but that wasn't Sosa's style. She played reactively. She relied on reacting to her opponent's move the same turn they made it, or before they made it. Toril, meanwhile, already planned several steps ahead. She beat Yui this way, manipulating her motions turn by turn until the final two Pokémon appeared and it was the exact matchup Toril wanted. She'd do the same here.
"Flamethrower," Sosa said.
Oh no! Sosa figured out how to beat Shedinja finally? Dumb bitch.
"Trick," Toril said.
Shedinja moved at a speed closer to Ninjask than Shedinja, which probably clued in everyone except Sosa. It snatched Slowking's item on flyby and replaced it with its own: a Choice Scarf. Sosa's most versatile offensive coverage Pokémon was now locked into one move per switch.
For its trouble, Shedinja got Slowking's Assault Vest, which increased its durability but forced it to only use offensive moves. On Shedinja, more brittle than paper, this item was awful.
On Zoroark, it was pretty good.
Thanks to the newly-acquired Assault Vest, Gustav took the belch of flames like a champ. Upon being hit, his illusion wore off, but he'd done his job. Slowking was hamstrung. Toril's outs increased.
Now that Slowking was locked to a move, Annihilape was the most obvious of those outs. If Toril swapped him into Flamethrower, she won the match.
"Slowking, return," said Sosa. "Go, Ziggy!"
Perfect. "Sludge Bomb," Toril said.
Rather than switch out, Gustav nailed the water rat the moment it appeared with a super effective strike.
Azumarill nearly dropped from just that. It noshed a berry to regain some health, but that left it barely at half. Setting up Belly Drum was impossible now, which meant its only value was as a revenge killer. Sosa lost another out.
"Wow Tors," Cely said. "I'm impressed. You're really showing your stuff."
Toril's mask broke as she shot Sosa what her gut told her was a glare but what the jumbotron revealed as a look of shock.
"You've come so far, Tors. This is growth, isn't it? I can barely read you at all. You're evolving before my eyes. Ziggy, Aqua Jet."
Toril wondered if the small talk was meant as a distraction. If so, it didn't work. "Sludge Bomb."
Ziggy whapped Gustav, which in conjunction with the Flamethrower from earlier left him wounded, panting, barely standing. A guaranteed knockout for anything remaining on Sosa's squad. In return, Gustav hit Ziggy again and put him down for the count. Sosa only had three Pokémon left to Toril's four.
Toril was strangling her. Loose pockets of luck like the High Horsepower miss, crushed one by one. Soon, only 100 percent would remain.
Over the arena, Sosa didn't seem scared at all. She—just—kept—smiling. Did she not understand how bad her position was becoming? Toril knew literally all of her Pokémon. Whether it was Kommo-o, Aegislash, Tangrowth, or Gliscor last, it increasingly did not matter. Did she realize that? Was she too fucking stupid?
"I'm glad I've made you change so much," Sosa said. "Go, Scizor."
Made her change? Made her change?!
Oh. Toril understood. The Cynthia angle. Sosa planned to take credit for Toril's win. (No, she's planning to get in your head. Force a blunder. Shut up—focus.)
Scizor came in for the revenge kill, but Toril had no need to sack Zoroark. "Gustav, return. Go, Heidi."
Mawile switched in, intimidated Scizor with her scary jaws, and Sosa must have predicted a swap because instead of Bullet Punch she opted for Swords Dance. Scizor Mega Evolved in a flash, steam poured off it, Toril didn't pay attention, she crunched the numbers. Mawile won the matchup, 100 percent. Full certainty.
Which meant Sosa would swap. Probably to her final Pokémon. If that was what Toril thought it was (Swords Dance Gliscor), it was a bad idea to keep Mawile in. She preempted the swap with one of her own.
"Elias."
Shedinja appeared.
"Knock Off," Sosa said.
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This stadium was a cup, into which the feelings of a whole world poured. Cely felt the emotions rise as a viscous layer past her head. She hoped Tors felt them too. She had to feel them. Which only made her stoicism so much more impressive.
Scizor, Mega Evolved and fueled by its own emotion, lunged the instant it heard Cely's command. Then something awful happened.
Red lights blared. A warning sound assaulted Cely's ears. Tors returned Shedinja to its Poké Ball before Scizor hit it.
"Hey!" Cely said. "That's not the rules."
She felt stupid, talking about something as trivial as rules, but it was a pretty egregious violation and also no fun.
"Shedinja is considered to have fainted," the robot in her headset intoned. Sure enough, on the holoscreen, the Poké Ball corresponding to Shedinja was crossed out.
"That's lame. Why not let Scizor hit it?"
No answer. On the arena floor, Scizor paced. Its shoulders slouched as it sent a death glare into the ground. Steam expelled from its spiracles.
"Tors, why didn't they let Scizor hit it?"
Tors tried so hard not to change her facial expression, it was adorable. Cely was going crazy, though, so she whined: "Tors! I know you hear me."
"Everyone can hear us!" Toril hissed.
"Then explain to them, too. I can't be the only one who doesn't know."
Instead, Toril sent out her next Pokémon. Mawile again.
"Tors!"
"Shedinja's too fragile to take a hit," Toril said, quickly. "It might literally fall apart. Okay?"
"Oh-h. So like, they simulated it." Cely played up the ditziness a teensy bit, because it made Toril more flustered. The crowd loved it too, especially after she shrugged and made a silly (but not too silly) face, as if to say "all these silly rules."
Because, surely, the audience felt cheated too, right? Like Scizor pacing in frustration. If they played it like that, why not simulate the whole battle? Play it in computers?
Immediately, though, she realized she took it too far. The crowd's laughter, inasmuch as any could be distinguished outside its all-consuming barrage of sound, died awkwardly. It got cold inside Cely's ribcage.
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Toril tried to drown out Sosa's chatter to figure out what possessed her to use Knock Off instead of any other move, but as the timer ticked down she decided it didn't matter. At this point, Sosa might be picking moves at random.
"Swords Dance," Sosa said—she sounded distracted, morose even—as if to confirm Toril's hypothesis.
"Heidi. Mega Evolve and use Fire Fang."
She looked to Sosa for reaction, since Sosa made a resounding blunder, but Sosa stared at the crowd. Most first-time tournament challengers learned in regionals to blot out the crowd. Toril a few years back created her own method, to imagine the crowd as wind atop a mountain. That wind was the loudest thing on the planet, yet somehow the brain learned to filter it to nothing, to the point it became possible to sleep, to the point that on the rare occasions it suddenly stopped, the silence sounded louder. Toril was experienced enough now she didn't need imagination: it was the wind.
The second snapping set of jaws emerged as Heidi changed form. When she came out of her flash of transformative light she turned both sets loose on her prey. Ignited by the heat of acid saliva, the mouths belched fire as they clamped onto Scizor.
Steel squelched as it grew superheated and glowed with inner pinkness. The struggle lasted only briefly. Scizor's determination alone could not keep it conscious.
In the end, Toril wasn't too upset about losing Shedinja, especially since Azumarill—the Pokémon it countered best—was already out. Most likely it wouldn't make a difference now that Aracely was down to two Pokémon. Mawile and Annihilape both beat Slowking, so everything hinged on Aracely's final Pokémon.
Aracely had to send that Pokémon out now. Or else her loss became 100 percent guaranteed. If she put in Slowking, Toril swapped to Annihilape, and even if Aracely swapped to her final Pokémon the same turn, Annihilape won every possible matchup from a neutral position. Since Zoroark tricked Choice Scarf onto Slowking, Toril no longer needed to worry about Calm Mind nonsense. Mawile had a few bad matchups, though, so if Aracely sent out her final Pokémon now and made some great predictions, a slim possibility remained.
That slim possibility was what Toril focused all her mental energy on destroying. She refused to let up, to expect victory, until it was guaranteed—mathematically, not practically. The world of statistics was her world of safety, the way psychology was Aracely's. Malaise remained that, other than against certainty, Aracely would somehow squirm into the narrowest crevice.
Amazingly, Aracely still seemed distracted, even as the timer ticked down. Was she coming to terms with her defeat? Only at the last second, with a careless and disinterested twinge of her lips, did she announce her next Pokémon.
"Gliscor."
In truth, Toril expected it far earlier. She gave both Volcarona and Shedinja items to deal with Gliscor's Stealth Rock setup. If it showed its face this late into the battle, though, Stealth Rock wasn't the worry.
Grim, ghoulish, Gliscor arose upon its segmented tail, bat wings blocking the omnidirectional stadium floodlights to cast shadows crosswise. The wind atop the mountain roared and Toril became cognizant, for the first time in a long time, of her missing fingers, a phantom pain returning across the continents to remind her of that self that no longer existed.
One leg buckled. She caught herself on the railing.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
If Mawile was running Ice Fang this match was over, but she'd run Sucker Punch for Slowking and Play Rough for Kommo-o—plus the essential Swords Dance, of course. That gave Aracely a window. Toril needed to play this smart.
Gliscor had two possible moves that didn't auto lose the match: Earthquake and Swords Dance. Swords Dance was better.
So. Swap to Zoroark. Gliscor uses Swords Dance. Zoroark is faster, Hyper Voice range 50.5 to 59.1 percent. Factor in Poison Heal (12.5 percent). At maximum it has 62 percent health remaining. It knocks out Zoroark, swap in Annihilape. Gliscor outspeeds, Earthquake leaves Annihilape with 30.7 percent health at worst. It does its damage, then Mawile with Sucker Punch—25.5 to 30.1 percent—way too tight. It depended on how hard her Pokémon hit, if they put their all into their strikes or simply went through the motions. At high and medium ranges she won, at low ranges she lost.
Her stomach churned. She wanted to vomit. This tournament wasn't friendly to odds. It didn't matter if you won 75 percent of the time, if the one match you actually played was the 25 percent.
Losing meant you were—unfit.
"Heidi, return." Toril heard her voice blasted over the speakers, though not in her head. "Go—Rasmus."
Gustav came out disguised as Annihilape, though at this point the disguise meant nothing.
Aracely snapped out of her distraction. She gave Toril a knowing smile and said, "Earthquake."
The ground split and a shear traveled across the arena. Gustav, already barely upright, fell from the shaking alone.
As Toril withdrew Gustav into his Poké Ball, she watched Aracely's face for any change. Did—did Aracely not realize? She looked so smug, as if to say "See that Tors, another great prediction." To the layman, Toril guessed, it looked like she made an awesome play. Zoroark downed the instant he appeared. Great, right?
The wind on the mountain whipped feverishly against her fingers.
Toril tugged at her uniform collar. The endgame was upon them. The number of moves constricted. Her mask broke, she let herself show the fear she felt—the heart throbbing inside.
If Gliscor used Swords Dance now—
Annihilape appeared.
If Gliscor used Swords Dance—
Aracely kept smiling. In her smile manifested the peaks of mountaintops over low-strung clouds, and the halo around her head the sun.
"Swords Dance," she said.
Of course. With Swords Dance, Gliscor boosted its attack faster than Annihilape boosted its defense, even with the Chesto Berry/Rest strategy. It was the only way Gliscor won the matchup.
Toril closed her eyes. Serenity, for the first time in her life—it seized her. Her heart ceased beating. She, too, was a goddess.
"Final Gambit," she said.
Cely didn't react. She didn't know what this move did.
Annihilape opened his mouth to swallow the world and screamed. All his fury, it poured out, sweeping across the clouds and mountaintops, blasting them to molecules, silencing the wind, silencing the sun.
Toril gripped the railing and screamed alongside him. His wispy gray body grew bright. A flame—building inside it—a life—the art of his soul. The rocks and pebbles strewn across the arena levitated. The air became pregnant—anticipation a crackle like electricity from particle to charged particle.
Annihilape's soul flared, blasting him apart from inside. The blast swept in a corporeally formed ring to consume Gliscor in chunks. Its eyes were the last piece visible before all cascaded to a bright blackness.
Like liquid, the black sank into the arena. The pebbles fell, color returned, the air cooled. The unconscious bodies of Annihilape and Gliscor lay beside one another, and once they were visible to all, the wind whipped up between the mountains once more.
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Tors looked ill. She bent over her platform and heaved for breath.
All game, Cely waited for the mask to crack. Here and there she caught it slip, but never enough to wrest control. Now, down to their final Pokémon, Slowking and Mawile, it no longer mattered. Mawile won, right? Cely was pretty sure Mawile won here.
Cely maintained her smile, though in the jumbotron it gave wan, gave very much resigned. It was so cold on the platform, like they pumped ice through a ventilation system. She wore her pastel multicolored jacket over her designer tee on the off chance Toril sent her snow team, and still. Chills.
She tried not to think the real reason and failed. Dark clouds. Dark clouds, dark clouds, dark clouds.
When Aracely was seventeen, the age Toril was now, she fell out of the world. At the time it was sudden, like she took a step and the floor was an illusion and she went tumbling tumbling tumbling down. Afterward obviously every inch of her life crawled toward that moment since birth.
The day started normal. The normalness was the whole terror. She woke up and Mom was already gone, the giant house silent and dark, the world outside even darker, as if nothing existed past the one lighted bathroom where she put herself together in the mirror. She already felt uneasy, surrounded by vials and powders, even before she noticed the droplet of blood on her white blouse. She remembered staring a long time, mascara brush in hand, wondering: Where did that come from? Wondering: Why is it there?
Later, as she left fifth period Environmental Science, Haydn and Charlie chattering about—something—she took that step and fell. In this world, people and Pokémon live together in harmony, the instructor said. Harmony echoed through the void. Evolve or die. Evolve and die. Cycles of life. Flowers wilting once a year. A world dark, a world light, a world dark. Everything in its perfect place and Aracely suddenly out of place, out of time, drowned in lipstick and moisturizer, in waves of cashmere and worsted, names on TV, brand names and Pokémon names, one thousand species discovered and counting, isn't technology wonderful?, her phone and her devices and an internet of interconnected innumerable voices conversing across the globe as one, one unified voice shouting HARMONY before the voices died and the next year's batch shouted HARMONY and the next year's batch and the batch after that and after that, the voices slowly twisting each moment as everything evolved into some other interchangeable form then another and another until the older forms were so thoroughly forgotten they were recreated as new forms and thought novel because the only way to learn anything new was to forget what was already learned.
Then out of the air she dropped and landed exactly where she'd been walking before, Haydn and Charlie chattering, and Aracely noticed for the first time the thing Charlie always whined about, that everyone looked exactly the same in their white blouses and pleated skirts—Cely had always replied, "Yeah, they look good?"—but nobody noticed Aracely.
That made her remember every night she spent crying into her pillow, usually days when Charlie made some mean remark, thinking to herself nobody liked her—even though everyone liked her—and wondering whether it was the mean remark that made her cry or the fact that, like a droplet on her white blouse, that mean remark reminded her of everything else that wasn't the mean remark, the whole white expanse.
In this world, being liked was cheap. Being happy was cheap. Nothing precious existed, and nobody mattered except as one flower in a field of 8 billion, blooming briefly to die for the next 8 billion to bloom.
That night, or maybe a week or month later, she waited patiently for Mom to get off the phone—"I don't care what they said. No. No. What? Budgetary constraints? We're the most-watched program in the world, what budgetary constraints—It's microphones, we need better microphones, every other word I say gets dropped. I'm not exaggerating—okay I'm exaggerating, but the fact any words get dropped is—it's unprofessional on a basic level. Amateurish. How do they not blush listening? Are they proud of this product? Are they proud of being incompetent? I'm not proud. I'm ashamed. 'Good enough.' Oh, my gosh. Good enough?! It's not—and don't you dare give me that cliché about perfect being the enemy of good. I'm already making unfathomable concessions with the cameramen you assign me. Am I the only one embarrassed?"—as Mom paced the living room past the award they gave her for falling into a coma. Finally the call ended.
"Is your homework done?"
Aracely nodded.
"Then study for Friday's pre-calc exam. You got a 94 last time. That's the danger zone."
"Mom, I think I'm depressed."
Mom's face twitched, and her eyes turned away as her mouth twisted. For a moment Cely thought Mom understood, and in retrospect maybe she did understand, that many others learned the fundamental truth of the world before Cely, but if they did, then they needed some way to protect themselves. Mom, obviously, found her way long ago, maybe during her coma.
"It's," Mom said tentatively, then with more confidence: "it's that Literature curriculum. They're always making you read those books about the war."
"Mom—"
"I'll speak to the headmaster. They need to modernize. Aspirational works, that's the key. In the meantime, study your pre-calc. There's nothing depressing about math."
Aracely thought about blurting the real reason aloud, but even then, what would Mom say? If you work hard, go to a good college, get a good job, live in a big house like this one with six rooms you never use, then your life will matter?
A few days, or weeks, or maybe months later, Aracely tried to kill herself.
For the first time ever, for a reason Cely still didn't know, Mom came home early that day, and so Cely didn't die. Which set off a chain reaction of events—RISE, MOTHER, Dad, the IPL—that led her here, face to face with Toril Lund.
A lot of improbable instances in a row, so many to make someone believe in fate, or as MOTHER might say a line of history traveling inexorably to its specified endpoint, an endpoint where Aracely for a brief moment stood above all, all 8 billion, and mattered, really and truly mattered to this world on the terms of the world's own narrative, even if she never really understood that narrative itself—all to end here, one week from her goal.
Tors deserved it, though. Really. Bittersweetness tinged the ice in Cely's body. Tors worked hard, struggled, changed herself in a way Cely did not. Maybe in the end there was some truth to Mom's substitution of hard work for meaning, because growth no matter how directed formed the illusion of substance, progress, purpose. Something growing grew somewhere.
And because Cely loved Toril, it all felt strangely okay. As if assisting someone else's growth was a way to leech their purpose for yourself. When people become adults and realize the secret Cely did, they've already had the child that can be that throbbing feeling of life for them. It worked that way for Mom and Dad. Toril could be Aracely's child, cradled in motherly embrace. The same embrace in which MOTHER once cradled Aracely.
Cely closed her eyes and sighed. She let her smile decay.
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Sucker Punch relied on the opponent's focus in preparing their own attack to land a quick strike before they reacted. It failed if the opponent did anything other than attack, because then it was too easy to see coming.
That was in concept. In reality, a potato like Slowking might get hit either way. Similar to the Shedinja fabrication, the IPL was willing to break the audience's suspension of disbelief to ensure its rules standardization held. Meaning if Slowking didn't attack, and Mawile used Sucker Punch, it would be "considered" to fail, and Toril was expected to keep her Pokémon from landing a hit it wasn't "supposed" to land.
Luckily, because Zoroark tricked a Choice Scarf onto Slowking what felt like hours ago, Toril didn't need to worry about that. Slowking had to attack. The attack it would use was Flamethrower.
Toril already ran the calcs when Mawile and Slowking faced off earlier, during that interlude when she and Cely swapped every turn. From this position, she calculated a 99 percent chance of victory. Sucker Punch had a 12.5 percent chance to knock out Slowking in one hit. If that failed, Slowking would attack with Flamethrower. It required a critical hit—a roughly 4.17 percent chance—and even a crit only had a 31.3 percent chance to knock out Mawile. Of course, you also had to factor in Sucker Punch's chance to crit. In the end, it turned out roughly 99 percent.
Predictions were not a factor. Both sides had one viable move. A flat 99 percent chance.
Why the fuck was Toril so nervous still. Why did she want to vomit.
Cely was there, in her brain, which was fine, because there was nothing left to think, but feeling her there, entangled, the barrier between them crumbling, and an ineffable sadness seeping through, a sense of loneliness Toril never truly felt before, made her wonder, which of them needed the other more, which needed to win more, which mattered more, these questions so intrinsically tied to either's ability to connect with anyone beyond themselves, that they were not in fact opposites in kind, but only aesthetic: the same wisps wrapped in different shrouds. Mimikyu and Pikachu on the face of the card even now in Toril's pocket, but which was which, or was that Pikachu a shiny Azumarill after all? In that moment, Toril felt Cely loved her, and Cely felt the same about Toril, and the only thing the violence of this battle could do was obliterate that precious dewdrop.
Toril reformed. "Sucker Punch," she croaked.
"Flamethrower."
Ten thousand repetitions to practice this move. Heidi knew it by heart. Toril knew it by heart, so even when she closed her eyes too ill to watch she saw white outlines motion through the blackness like in the depths of that cave when Toril first found her, weeping, hoping to play upon Toril's motherly instincts so as to lure her close and devour her whole. They said it was rare even wild Pokémon ate humans. Nothing liked the taste. Heidi was always a confused child.
Toril loved her. She loved all her Pokémon, though battling necessitated treating them like pawns, sacking them when necessary, allowing one piece to fall to take another—wasn't that the opposite of how the story went, the story of unbreakable bonds? Could these battles, this war destroy every sort of love? She was the goddess of war.
She opened her eyes as Heidi stepped back from her strike. Cely's Slowking wobbled.
The holoscreen displayed Slowking's biometric readout as its health declined toward the predetermined faint threshold. Slowking was the kind of idiot that could easily stay standing, eyes open like nothing happened, long after it was rendered unconscious, so the biometrics were especially important.
The bar depleted by percentage points: 50 percent, 16, 8, 4, 2.
1.
It stopped at 1.
Slowking kept standing. As Heidi danced to her side of the field, she kept her back and jaws to her opponent. Her eyes glanced apologetically at Toril. Toril nodded that it was okay, which made Heidi sharpen in determination to receive Slowking's attack.
It came after fifteen seconds of strangled silence. Toril forgot the wind. Slowking finally reacted, blinked once, noticed seemingly for the first time he stood in an arena and faced an opponent. His mouth slowly, slowly, excruciating like a knife you're trying to hold back overpowering you millimeter by millimeter as it glides into your heart, slowly opened.
The instant the jet of flame burst out Toril knew what that dagger tickling her heart already told her: CRITICAL HIT. Some said if your bond with your Pokémon was strong they would unleash these rare strikes, strikes that otherwise exceeded their physical capabilities, strikes that the best biologists between shrugs and hemhawing might mutter had something to do with the innate Pokémon characteristic of evolution. But it had nothing to do with a bond, Toril knew that, she conducted experiments herself, it simply happened sometimes, a random chance as if at that moment a space particle beamed from the sky to empower them.
Heidi clenched her jaws into a shield to protect her main body, though their iron makeup conducted the heat. Her eyes squeezed shut as her body tensed and her feet dug through the dirt and a sweat broke out on her brow as her mouth—her real mouth—snapped open and a cry of pain emerged.
Toril didn't watch the holoscreen this time. She watched Heidi, who would tell the outcome before the health bar. Even with a critical hit, the odds of a knockout were less than one third. Surely—
Surely.
Surely, the fire dissipated. Heidi, staggered, singed, sweating, hissing, slumping, pitched.
One small hand reached out and caught herself before she fell. The red-hot jaws slouched to either side. Their weight seemed almost too much for her tiny body to bear. Almost.
"You can do it," Toril heard herself say. She never spoke like this during battle, it severed the understanding she and her Pokémon shared. "You can do it, Heidi."
Heidi's brows sharpened. She grunted, then rose.
On the holoscreen, Heidi's health bar showed 4 percent.
The battle was over. No uncertainty remained. Slowking had Choice Scarf. It must use Flamethrower again. Heidi's Sucker Punch would hit before it attacked. No chance of a miss.
The battle was over. Toril won. She won. She won. She won. Everyone in the world loved her and she won. Everyone in the world recognized her. It was all worth it. Everything was worth it. She mattered. She mattered. She had a justification for her existence. The world was saved. She was saved. Love welled in her heart. Love for herself, for the world, for everyone in the world, the faceless masses once reviled. She loved them all. She loved Cely too. Love! God, what was this feeling? It was love!
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The look on Toril's face defied all tragedy.
Then the holoscreen dinged.
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The holoscreen dinged. Toril's eyes fell to it.
MAWILE HAS BEEN BURNED.
Heidi gave one last gasp and fell.
The winds swallowed the mountains in all-consuming oblivion and this was it, the end of the world.
Toril stood on the platform still basking in the warmth of her glow, still plastered with her smile. The platform broke apart around her, the arena already gone, Heidi's body gone in the tornado, Slowking gone, only the glowing golden goddess present within this blank abyss.
"Why?" she asked the goddess. "Why are they cheering?"
The goddess smiled.
"Cheated"—Toril herself was breaking apart—"they should feel cheated. It was luck. It was—just—luck."
The goddess broke apart.
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Toril remained standing atop the platform during Aracely's entire post-match interview. Mom asked the right questions, chipper and professional, and amazingly Aracely heard herself giving the right answers, chipper too, smiling, thanking her fans, asking them to follow her Instagram.
Mom sent the broadcast to a commercial break and walked with Aracely off the field. Only when they entered the elevator did she say, "Your father had a heart attack."