Chapter 21: MUSE \ MEWSEUM
Fate's favored stepped onto the stage. Fireworks skyrocketed one after another, scattering Pokémon faces against the sky. Soundless. On the platform, the world's last stand met her rise. Eyes invisible; face blank under the hat-brim. An aura of cracked soil. He neither judged nor sensed her.
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The tiny two-seater twin-rotored helicraft touched down atop the bleached and cracked swath of pavement behind the museum. Bill flew. Money as he had, it made sense to hire a chauffeur, but everyone he hired made him anxious; he learned to do it himself.
"If the issue's what I think," he mumbled as the blades ground to an abrupt halt, "we're looking at a loose screw."
"Uh," said Yanko, "right." Top 8 finisher at IPL 56, now reliable muscle-for-hire, Yanko nonetheless unfastened his straps too slow for Bill's taste. Bill urged him with rotational gestures.
"If it's not the screw—that button there, come on—if it's not the screw I'll open it up and peek inside. Only I can do that because only I have the tools."
"Right."
"If I can't trust these knuckleheads to check the screws I can't trust them poking around inside."
Yanko finally freed himself. The rotors were at rest now, and following the dim line of dying sunlight along the slope of the Plateau they glanced up and heard the crack of fireworks. Saw them. Pikachu faces, Charmander faces.
"If the issue's inside," Bill said, clicking Yanko out of the delusion of nostalgia, "then I know it's not sabotage. Again, because—Because?"
"Because only you have the tools."
"Great. Can't trust these researchers, Yanko. Ought to fire them all and do it myself. If they're not corporate spies, they're straight incompetent."
"God. It's a beautiful night," Yanko said.
Stars shone; the stadium matched in the size of its glow the moon. Twins.
"Every night is beautiful." Bill stopped beside the museum's backdoor entrance and fumbled under his shirt for his keycard. "Every day, too. It's a beautiful world."
The reader beeped, flashed green. The door retracted. On the other side stood a veiled woman with a parasol and one of her white-robed minions.
"Lusamine, what the fuck," Bill said.
Yanko reached for a Poké Ball. The minion turned a long object toward him and Bill realized what the object was.
"Wait—"
The "gun" erupted. Yanko lurched. Scraps of metal pierced his heart faster than god. He dropped and didn't move.
Bill held his hands over his ears but they still rang. He couldn't hear himself screaming but knew he must be. Lusamine and the woman with the gun didn't flinch—earplugs. He appreciated the lucidity of that thought, and followed it with another: I must keep my thoughts clear now more than ever.
The white-robed woman tossed the gun behind her. "Reload it," she said. Two museum employees he now recognized as cultists appeared, propped the gun against the ground, and packed material down its barrel with a rod.
Guns were contraband material. Prohibited by every region's government, barely even known by the populace at large. The jury-rigged contraption looked like it couldn't possibly be functional, but obviously it was. Did Lusamine get her hands on a blueprint from some vault? Did she invent a working prototype herself? The reload window was his chance. His eyes flitted to the Poké Balls on Yanko's belt.
"Don't," said the gunman. She drew a knife.
Bill held up his hands.
Something roared in the distance. Bill briefly expected another helicopter to touch down and save him, but it was the roar of the crowd on the Plateau.
"You're all nuts. What do you hope to accomplish?"
Under her umbrella, behind her veil, Lusamine was a blot of ink. Her black hair flowed among the folds of her deep purple dress.
She said, calmly and coldly, rationality Bill recognized in himself, analytical objectivity of a scientist: "Forward progress."
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Out of its own steam Scizor shot, striking its opponent with a Bullet Punch. Grimmsnarl lurched as the metal claw impacted faster than god. Its black fur, matted as thick as its body, absorbed as much of the blow as possible, barely enough to keep it upright.
It was not the opening turn Red hoped for. Assuming he hoped for anything. All throughout Cely's side of the bracket, trainers opted into unexpected openers, targeted movesets. Did Red learn from any of that? Of his Pokémon, Grimmsnarl was the obvious first play. He ran it every single time.
The guy was a ghost. Looking at him, Cely saw nothing, understood nothing. He wasn't there. Only by watching his tape again and again, like Toril, did she find faint traces of him. Any identity that existed, it existed in his Pokémon.
Scizor reluctantly obeyed the rules and backed off to its side of the stage. This allowed Grimmsnarl, though bruised and dripping sweat, to accomplish its task. Its fur unwound and, semi-sentient, drew lines through the air. Dashes of fairy magic sprinkled between the strands as Grimmsnarl attempted a pained but mischievous snicker. Where the dust fell, translucent walls sprouted. These were the walls of Reflect: psychic? magic? barriers that defended against physical attacks.
Reflect wasn't like most moves. It remained on field even after the Pokémon who used it switched out. Hence why Grimmsnarl was such an effective opener, hence why Red always did it. Hence why Cely trivially prepared a counter.
As expected, rather than drop to the next attack, Grimmsnarl returned to its Poké Ball. As expected, Red's most formidable threat came out in its stead.
Dragapult. A dragon capable of turning itself semipermeable to phase through walls, which made it ghost type even if it wasn't actually undead. It fought by firing, at Mach speed, unevolved members of its own species from notches in its horns. Ace parenting.
"Knock Off," Cely said.
Scizor moved before she finished the command. Though Grimmsnarl's Reflect slowed it, the attack nailed Dragapult hard the moment it appeared. Better than the damage, though, was Scizor slapping a pair of Choice Specs off and to the edge of the stage. Might as well have snipped Dragapult's balls.
Two of Red's Pokémon were now gimped without a single hit landed on Cely. Red didn't flinch. He didn't look like it mattered at all. Maybe it didn't. He was on this stage before Cely was born. He wiped Dad off the face of history. Simply a fixture.
The sky was beautiful today. The moon so large. MOTHER would be close by now. She never told Cely the plan, as Sabrina discovered, but Cely knew the truth of it anyway the way she knew Red's next move. Soon that sky would rip apart. All manner of color would shine through as the gash widened, and widened, and widened. Finally it would seem to mean something, to have some structure, the structure latent in the ending, because an ending necessitated a beginning, a middle, some division of content, and here was the climax, here Aracely Sosa stood, above waves of flowers flitting in the breeze, doomed to die and be reborn perennially, change with no progress, change with no purpose.
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MOTHER, Nilufer, and the two other RISE members led Bill through his museum. Other than field trip days, the place was never a hotspot, but concurrent to finals it was devoid of life. Most employees called in sick.
With the data on the flash drive Cely stole (Bill knew she stole it, knew it, but without evidence internal sabotage remained a plausible enough alternative to engender doubt), it was possible to access most staff areas, and threatening violence rendered it trivial to make a researcher call Bill with the malfunctioning machine tale.
Why did they need Bill? Simple. One door in this facility accepted no passcode or keycard; it opened only in response to a biometric scan of Bill himself. From that alone, he understood their entire scheme.
The careful guesswork of prehistoric Pokémon fossils bore sole witness to their passage, each skeleton awaiting its chance to become a monster of the imagination. Bill turned chatty, an attempt at distraction or delay.
"Your best option here's ransom. I'm insured for billions. Request safe haven in Orre, it's mostly outside IPL jurisdiction. You can end this very rich if you don't do anything more stupid than you've already done."
They passed a model spaceship, a talking Clefairy animatronic that explained lunar cycles on loop, the world's largest Moon Stone. An etched mural of the evolutionary tree adorned the wall: scientific names rising through history, branching apart into leaves with each leaf an engraving of a species.
Nilufer (so MOTHER called her) pressed a hand to her ear, then reported: "The two IPL agents that followed us to the museum are still posted outside the exits."
"Radio chatter?"
"Ordinary check-ins. They don't suspect a thing. No evidence they even heard the gunshot, let alone knew what it was."
Imagining an attack on the stadium, they became blind to all else.
"What you're doing is pointless," Bill said. "Lusamine. Come on. That machine in the basement isn't gonna turn back time. You'll still have nothing. No Foundation, no husband, no kids. Just cultists."
He hoped to rile her up, but MOTHER strode on, shrouded by her veil and parasol. They reached the elevator access door at the back of the lobby atrium. Nilufer produced a keycard, the reader beeped, and the door popped open.
"There. There!" a voice shouted.
Everyone turned. Nilufer aimed her reloaded gun. She didn't fire; her brow ruffled at what she saw. Shoving through the lobby doors, face marred by exertion, IPL broadcast mainstay Fiorella Fiorina appeared. Behind her, a cameraman.
"We're witnessing"—pant, heave—"the most brazen terrorist activity since Team Plasma's attack on IPL 51!" Fiorella gripped a nonexistent microphone and shouted to compensate. "Members of the RISE clinic, led by the—the—disgraced Dr. Lusamine Mohn, have kidnapped Bill Masaki at the Pewter Museum of Science. It remains unknown whether they intend to—"
"Fiorella you suicidal fucking idiot, look out," Bill screamed.
"Shoot the cameraman," said MOTHER. "Cut the reporter's throat."
Fiorella only stood there, smack in the middle of the lobby, like she was no more than a disembodied eye, a witnesser of events incapable of being harmed by them. Her voice grew more manic, more disorderly. The cameraman, realizing the situation, backed behind the receptionist counter for protection, but it wouldn't protect him from the bullet Nilufer aimed to send through his body. Bill thought, If I ram into her now. If I time it right and make her miss, then maybe—
"Shit," said Nilufer.
A third person passed through the museum doors. Bill thought it might be an IPL agent, drawn to investigate by Fiorella's inexplicable appearance. It wasn't.
It was Toril Lund.
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Three empty chairs. A table. Two columns crafted to look like beer bottles. Studio lighting. Everyone, cast and crew, stood outside this bonsai plant world. They gathered by the wall of monitors that displayed feeds from throughout the stadium.
In this control center, broadcast technicians swapped between feeds as necessary to create the at-home television viewing experience. Right now, that experience focused on the battle: Aracely withdrawing Scizor for Gliscor, Dragapult spurting Flamethrower.
The broadcast director said: "37. A next. 2, 2, 3, 4. 38 C next. 39 D next. 1, 2, 3, 4. 40A P next. 2, 2, 3, 4 looking at you. 40B C next. 3. 4, 2, 3. 41 B next. 2 of 6." His eyes flitted from feed to feed and he spoke uninterrupted. He noticed, but ignored, camera K, as did those executing his arcane orders.
Everyone else watched camera K. Iono, Cynthia, Leon, assistants, makeup, lighting, grips, gaffers. On camera K, Fiorella Fiorina confronted RISE in the Pewter Museum of Science.
Cynthia stepped away. Iono grabbed her sleeve once they were far enough from the director to whisper without breaking his musical cadence. "What're you doing?"
"Going there," said Cynthia. "Iono, stop the broadcast. Suspend the match."
"I'm the on-camera host! I don't have that authority."
The director did nothing but recite his numbers and letters.
Leon, last year's winner, still decked in the outrageous cape he adopted as part of his World Champion self-styling, approached. During the pre-battle segment, his game knowledge and affable showmanship made him a natural substitution for Bill. He and Cynthia argued smilingly over predictions—Cynthia for Cely, Leon for Red (beating Galar's best means he's the best)—but nothing of that remained now.
"You're not seriously talking about stopping the battle are you?"
"You too Leon?" Cynthia said. "It's not happening here, so it's not your problem?"
"No way. As the champ, it's my responsibility to make sure the next champ gets their time to shine, so I'll go down with you to sort things out. But people waited all year to see this match. The energy, the excitement, the feeling of togetherness—why shut that down because of a robbery a city away? This is what everything's about."
Storytellers never wanted to stop their story. Cynthia, an archaeologist, understood the impulse. How banal for history to be interrupted by the present, which seemed so comparatively insignificant. Cynthia turned and started walking.
"Isn't he right?" Iono struggled to keep up. Her outfit encumbered her, her legs were half as long as Cynthia's. "We'd only cause a panic! Especially since Cely—it being RISE and all..."
Cynthia pushed through the doors to an outer terrace and stopped. "Shoot. I forgot." She jabbed a finger at Leon. "You have to stay."
"Huh? But—"
"Aracely Sosa is possibly the best battler in the world. There's also a chance she's involved with RISE. If she beats Red and turns violent, we'll need a World Champion-level battler here to stop her."
Leon rubbed one side of his jaw. "I see."
"If you believe so strongly in this battle and what it represents, then keep it safe. Goodbye."
Cynthia sent out Togekiss and was on his back, flying away, before whatever Leon and Iono said next left their mouths.
She shouldn't think poorly of them. They were not people of a world prepared for violence, real violence. She too, older now, felt alike. Her knees hurt constantly; the analyst desk's appeal beckoned. Like switching the channel: another show to replace one you didn't enjoy.
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On the switch, Cely's Gliscor ate a Flamethrower. The fire burned it, and the crowded VIP booth groaned.
"Huh? What? Why?" said Haydn. "Is that bad? I don't get it. It didn't do much damage."
The booth was filled with Kalosian fashion kingpins, who muttered to themselves and certainly refused to interact with the upper middle class riffraff shunted into the booth's corner, even as Charlie stared at them rudely.
One person was willing to talk, though.
"Heh. It actually has to do with Gliscor's ability, Poison Heal." Jinjiao Zhang leaned confidently over Charlie to gain proximity. "You see, poison heals Gliscor instead of hurting it, so every competitive Gliscor holds a Toxic Orb to poison itself. By being burned immediately after switching in, the Toxic Orb can't take effect, meaning no poison. It completely negates Gliscor's effectiveness as a defensive wall."
"I see," Haydn said, while Dragapult dropped a meteor on Gliscor's head. "No wait, I don't see at all. Being burned stops you from being poisoned?"
Jinjiao pushed up his glasses and grinned. "That's right. A Pokémon can only have one status condition."
"But why? What stops you from being burned and poisoned at the same time?"
A moment of perplexity struck Jinjiao, swiftly squashed. "It's just how it works." On the stage, Gliscor barfed up spikes that scattered across the ground.
"Am I being dumb?" said Haydn. "Charlie, tell me if I'm being dumb for thinking you should be able to be both burned and poisoned."
Charlie's eyes unlatched from the Kalosians and riveted to Jinjiao, whose elbow drew dangerously close to grazing her knee.
Gliscor, having been torched, meteored, and not poisoned, expelled a rattling gasp as he forced the last few spikes out his esophagus. On his segmented tail he swayed, then flopped as the announcers shouted he was "down for the count."
"Oh, I don't understand this game at all." Haydn pouted. "Chaaarlie, help! Why did Cely keep Gligger in if he was gonna lose?"
"Guilty conscience."
"After the unlucky burn," Jinjiao said, "she likely decided it was worthwhile to sack Gliscor—not 'Gligger'—to get spikes on the field. Red's team has few options for hazard clear, so it'll pay off long-term."
"Oh! That's good?"
"Heh. Right, you don't know. Spikes remain on the field and damage Pokémon as they switch in. They're great if your opponent can't clear them."
Cely sent out Rotom and Haydn immediately clapped. "Oh, I love this guy! He's so funny!"
"Where's Momokins," said Charlie. "I only want Momokins."
"I doubt she'll use Meowscarada, he matches poorly against Red's team. And honestly, she should've sent out Rotom first instead of Gliscor. She gambled on dodging the burn and lost. Clumsy error. At least Dragapult has to switch now. Expect U-turn."
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
As soon as Jinjiao said it, Dragapult flew at its foe, ricocheted off the washing machine door, and retreated to its Poké Ball. Red then sent out the wounded Grimmsnarl, who—also as Jinjiao said—took damage from spikes. Compounding matters, Rotom immediately used Will-O-Wisp, burning it. Jinjiao explained this information to Haydn and Charlie despite the consternation that creased Haydn's face.
"So, burning is good right?"
"In this situation, it doesn't mean much. Cely most likely expected Dragapult to swap to one of Red's physical attackers. Being burned lowers your strength, obviously."
Haydn frowned. "Come on Cely... you can do it!"
"Not her choice," said Charlie.
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Bill rammed Nilufer. Instead of Toril's head, the potted plant on the ticket booth counter exploded. Toril felt pain anyway. Her gloved hand rose to her face. Blood. Ceramic shards. Embedded around her eye, in her cheek—shrapnel.
Time's whole haunted procession came apart. Her homeless week wraithlike through Pewter City's streets snapped into a memory that faded the moment of awakening. She'd seen Fiorella running and followed her, and here she was. Her hands went for her Poké Balls.
Nilufer tossed the weapon to the others—unable to use it more than once?—and drew her knife, but MOTHER stopped her. Out of her dress's puffy sleeve manifested a cluster of webbed Poké Balls. Toril recognized the design. Beast Balls. They held Ultra Beasts.
Though MOTHER wore a veil, Toril recognized her, too. Toril once met her. She shrank, stopped being herself and became the herself of five years prior, half the height, everything rising up to render her smaller, a pointless speck within the world, and one word echoing: Unfit.
One after another the balls broke against the ground. The emergent forms did not belong. Unearthly, eyeless bodies from some other understanding of biology.
Even in the wild, Pokémon rarely killed humans. They might roar, spread their bodies, try to scare a human off its turf, but violence was performative. Killing happened only if a Pokémon was sick or truly desperate, and even then most species would roll on their belly and beg a human for help rather than attack. Symbiosis wasn't learned behavior, but embedded in the DNA.
The Ultra Beasts didn't evolve on this world. They possessed no heritage, no biological compulsion like other Pokémon—if they were Pokémon at all, rather than extraterrestrial beings forced into this world's taxonomy. They could be trained via rote, but not easily. In the heyday of the Ultra Beast fad, only skilled trainers Lusamine personally approved were allowed to capture them. Still, accidents happened. The IPL and Aether Foundation swept these accidents under the rug, but even if the Alola catastrophe never occurred, eventually the story would have escaped.
Six of these creatures stared down Toril within the cavernous, multistory lobby atrium. Or didn't stare—none actually had eyes. Two Nihilego, phantasmic jellyfish that latched onto and injected neurotoxins into their hosts; Blacephalon, uncanny clown with an incomprehensible head; Buzzwole, a bulging mass of blood-swelled muscle; Celesteela, tripartite tower of steel whose pointed head scraped the high ceiling; and Guzzlord, all gaping mouth and twin tongues that slapped the tile seeking living matter to devour.
Lusamine vanished into the doorway to the basement elevator. Dragging Bill, Nilufer followed, as did the two other RISE members. They had no intention of giving the Ultra Beasts orders. In the absence of command, they would default to alien instinct: murderous, cruel, incompatible with humanity.
Fiorella's cameraman dropped the camera and ran for the exit.
Buzzwole braced its four legs against the tile, launched over Toril and Fiorella's heads, and dropped toward the cameraman. Its spiked proboscis prepared to skewer him and slurp up his insides.
"Nils!"
Toril flung out the Poké Ball. It snapped open and Baxcalibur emerged at the perfect angle to collide with Buzzwole in midair. Their bodies tangled and crashed through the atrium wall, into the western exhibit wing. Rubble and dust burst everywhere. The other Ultra Beasts moved. Toril tossed Poké Balls left and right. Order collapsed.
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"Rotom, Hydro Pump!"
The washing machine ceased its idle dance and aimed its hose. Unafraid, Grimmsnarl stuck out its tongue and taunted: Do it! Rotom obliged. A pressurized blast flung Grimmsnarl across the stage and into unconsciousness. The score evened, one to one.
It was clear why Red wasted Grimmsnarl's final turn with Taunt. It forced Rotom into attacking moves. Rotom might deal decent damage with Hydro Pump or Volt Switch, but burning opponents with Will-O-Wisp maximized its utility. Red's Lucario dropped out of its Poké Ball and landed, hindlegs bent and one forepaw to the ground, like a sprinter moments before a race. A physical attacker, it was an excellent burn target. Unable to burn, Rotom's only option was to switch out.
Which it did. Volt Switch dealt a decent chunk to Lucario as a parting gift, but Lucario accepted the strike with equanimity. A mystic creature, not properly comprehended until recently; naturalists struggled to understand how it wasn't psychic type. It empowered itself via manipulation of "aura," which to a naked eye observer looked like the telekinetic energy Alakazam or Gardevoir harnessed.
With advanced scientific instruments, however, aura became detectable. Something to do with atoms, molecular structure, microscopic particles present in all physical matter. Cely learned about it in Physics. The instructor, a hip salt-and-pepper guy with goatee and glasses, plugged a kung fu movie into the classroom projector one day when he didn't feel like teaching. "Physics in action," he remarked drily as Lucario karate chopped a bad guy into next week.
Once suspected of harnessing psychic powers herself, Cely felt kinship for this bipedal canine with his snout and stern eyes and weird spikes. Of course, it wasn't anyone else who suspected Cely of psychic powers, it was herself.
Mom, I think I can read auras. That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Dad, I think I can read minds. Psychics are frauds, every one.
Haydn believed her because Haydn was nice, and Charlie believed her because Charlie was insane. Sabrina, the only true authority, wasn't sure what she believed. Did Cely believe herself? To be psychic was to be special. If she believed it, why fall through the floor? Did it matter anyway, if they controlled her, like Sabrina?
A painful transformation overtook Lucario's body as he Mega Evolved, but he never broke his ironclad mental focus. The physical changes were minor compared to other Mega Evolutions, but the real change happened in his mind. He manipulated his brain chemistry to overwrite the instincts etched into his DNA.
[DNA is the imprint of our lives. It dictates what we do, who we are, what diseases will kill us. This world must have DNA, too—Logos—with its own fated death.]
Mega Lucario, in overwriting its DNA, now lacked the innate Pokémon compunction against murder. For that reason, only specially approved masters were allowed to train one. Red obviously fit the bill, but what did Red actually do to control him? He still had not spoken a word. He had not given an order. Under the brim of his hat he gripped his face like it might crumble apart otherwise.
As Rotom retreated to its Poké Ball, Lucario formed dual blades of translucent aura in its paws. The swords swished around its body in graceful motions, not one inch out of place. His focus hardened. His strength doubled.
Cely drew her own blade: Aegislash.
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Bones of a primordial being, 500,000,000 years old, became dust after Baxcalibur crashed through them. A blizzard whipped up within the museum, snow from no clouds, terrarium environment to make the forms alive and long dead silhouettes of mist on the fringes. Toril clung close to Ninetales, protected within his Aurora Veil from the pair of Nihilego trying to absorb her into them. Even as temperatures plummeted, grass grew. It cracked the tiles open, snaked in entwining vines to freeze and burst apart and be replaced by a new growing thing. Rillaboom drummed steadily despite frosted shoulders, frosted lips.
A screaming came across the sky. Celesteela careened like a missile. Before impact, a vortex of fire flared up and forced it back. Volcarona beat its wings and traced Celesteela's course to attack again.
A ball with no edges but a grid of dots to distinguish shape—Blacephalon's head—bounced against Volcarona and exploded. Only Ninetales' Aurora Veil saved Toril from instant immolation. Her collar caught flame and she patted it out.
The cameraman had escaped, but Fiorella wielded the dropped camera like a madwoman and howled inaudibly into the gale. A long black claw whipped out and seized her midsection. Amid the murk manifested Guzzlord's gaping mouth and Toril tried to scream for her Pokémon to do something but this was nothing like the structured and rules-governed battles of the stadium, this was—if anything except lunacy—the fights of her father, grimy underground fights where Pokémon bit and clawed until their throats bled, the bare intensity of logic's dissolution.
She dragged something back from the brink. "Heidi, Play Rough!"
Mawile, her sweet Mawile's small form shot from somewhere. Already Mega Evolved, her twin mouths slobbered but her face glimmered cutely as she came down on a creature fifty times her size like she intended to hug it. All force was directed into Guzzlord's upper lip, which crumpled, while the gaping mouth screamed a freakish, human scream. Its claw tongue relinquished Fiorella, she went flying, the giant body kept going, into the wall where the tree of life was etched. The tree blasted apart, evolution's history reduced to rubble, and Guzzlord lay dormant amid the ruins.
Toril's Pokémon were stronger, better trained. She was a trainer of the highest caliber.
Mawile turned on the rebound, smiled at Toril, and danced back to what she considered her side of the stage. By the time Toril realized Mawile was waiting thirty seconds before her next attack, it was too late.
Buzzwole blitzed out of nowhere, seized Heidi's mouths with a meaty palm each, and swung her body like a flail into a model space shuttle. Jagged strips of internal scaffolding pierced flesh. Buzzwole yanked the mouths opposite directions and Heidi screeched as her skull strained.
"No!" Toril said. "Gustav—fuck—do something!"
Baxcalibur charged Buzzwole and Buzzwole hurled Heidi at him. But Heidi passed through, as though Baxcalibur wasn't there at all, or as though it wasn't Baxcalibur but a ghost wearing his face. Zoroark reverted to normal and fired a ball of spectral power into Buzzwole's grotesque pectorals.
Heidi flopped on the ground bleeding and whimpering and Toril wanted to run to her, at least to put her safely in her Poké Ball, but the two Nihilego kept testing the bounds of the Aurora Veil and the swooping doppler cry of Celesteela rang overhead as it body checked Annihilape, who hadn't done anything the entire fight because it didn't do things unless Toril said so. Half her Pokémon milled about, awaiting orders.
Toril realized she, too, was thinking in thirty-second intervals.
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Aegislash raised its shield and adopted a defensive stance. This was King's Shield, its signature move. Lucario came down on it with a fistful of empowered steel, but despite incredible Swords Dance-boosted power, it failed to make a dent. In fact, upon contact, the ghostly energies that embodied Aegislash sapped Lucario's strength.
To the audience, it looked like an inconsequential turn. In actuality, it was a knife's edge of prediction. Against Aegislash, Lucario's options were either Swords Dance or attack. It depended on whether Red predicted King's Shield. Whatever thoughts ran through his head, in the end, Cely emerged on top.
"Go Cely go Cely go!" Haydn's peppy cheerleader chant earned disdainful looks from the Kalosians. She barely nodded her way through Jinjiao's explanation of how significant the prediction was, how a misstep might have cost Cely the entire match.
"Red will definitely swap out Lucario now," Jinjiao said. "But to what? Dragapult, I guess. If Cely predicts the swap, it's disaster."
"For her?"
"For him, obviously. Cely holds all the cards now. She's in his head." He grinned. "She's even in the head of the great Red Akahata."
"No sanctity of self remains," Charlie said. "Cely Sosa, devourer of spirit."
Who is this weirdo, Jinjiao thought.
Incomprehensibly, Red didn't swap. Jinjiao rose out of his seat and gestured. Was he stupid? Did he predict Cely predicting the swap? Lucario performed the same move again. Meteor Mash. As if on autopilot. Aegislash couldn't repeat King's Shield quickly, so the attack landed, and even sapped of strength, Mega Lucario hurt. Steel on steel pealed so loud Haydn and the Kalosians clapped their hands over their ears. The twangy reverberation made Jinjiao's skin undulate.
Not enough. Aegislash dragged its point through the ground to stabilize. Its defensive posture enabled it to resist the brunt of the attack. The cyclopean eye on the blade's guard rattled, refocused.
"Close Combat," Cely shouted.
"Holy shit," said Jinjiao.
"That's good?!" said Haydn.
Aegislash set aside its shield and entered Blade Forme. Its physical characteristics altered immediately. The thickness and weight of its body, which gave it the durability to withstand Lucario's strike, diminished as it honed itself with a few quick slashes against the ground. Leaner, sharper, it pounced on its opponent. True to the attack's name, it got close, then swiped once, twice, three times in rapid succession. Against Lucario's underlying steel skeleton these swipes shaved even more of Aegislash's bulk; a worthwhile sacrifice for such a powerful, super effective attack. Lucario went airborne. His snout parted in an agonized yelp that the stadium microphones pumped into the ears of every spectator. This sound entangled with the crowd's enthusiastic cries. When Lucario hit the ground, a beat passed, and after it made no move to rise, Haydn joined the collective excitement. Exceeded it. Jinjiao's fight-or-flight response flared briefly as she shot up, screeching, and reached over Charlie to squeeze him into a hug. He sank into her chest and struggled to escape, and once he did he quickly sat and leaned forward with his hands crossed over his lap.
Red, now firmly losing, betrayed nothing, even when the cameras zoomed so close creases and pores became visible on the jumbotron. Jinjiao couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy at the self-assurance of a man who won the championship six times. What, to him, could a seventh mean?
He sent out Greninja.
"Is this one strong?" Haydn asked with a hint of worry. She asked it about every Pokémon.
"In their minds, they're slaves," said Charlie.
Everyone ignored her.
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Buzzwole wrapped both arms around Zoroark and needled its proboscis over and over into neck, chest, face, any exposed point of contact.
Celesteela blasted the remains of the roof off the museum, then reoriented and rocketed down before the debris landed. A violent gale ripped crisscross into the lobby and sliced through Volcarona.
Toril was losing Pokémon fast. Part of the gale pierced the Aurora Veil and slashed the palms she extended to protect herself. Blood ran from a thousand places as she broke apart her mind in search of something more elemental within.
"Nils," she screamed. "Destroy that fucking bug!" Her finger jabbed at Buzzwole. "Bite it, slash it, stab it, crush it, anything! Just keep hitting it!"
"Rune. Rune!" She couldn't find Porygon-Z in the blizzard that now funneled up through the annihilated roof. She trusted he heard. "Shoot down that rocket. Use—fuck—use Thunderbolt, use it again and again until it stops moving."
"Get Heidi," she yelled at Rillaboom. "Get her into the grass." She should have said this first. This should have been her first priority, but she wasn't thinking fast enough. Her head whirred with numbers for optimal moves but in the time it took to calculate there was a second, third, fourth attack to weather.
"Get the clown," she told Annihilape. "Rage Fist. Hit it with Rage Fist!"
That left the Nihilego. "Ingmar—"
Before she finished Celesteela came down again. A vortex of pressurized air wracked Annihilape's body, then kept going into Toril. She lifted. Her stomach danced. At the same time a crackle sparked, then flared, and the white snow glowed, and snow blindness disoriented her. She forgot where she was. A mountaintop? Her fingers—she crashed down, rolled against the tile, into a display. A Kabutops skeleton wobbled, then toppled, and its scythe-shaped claw drove into the floor an inch from her face.
She turned over. Her head ached, she wondered if she was concussed. A bubble of vomit popped on her lips. She angled her eyes upward to watch Celesteela's spiraling form in turgid, suspended slowness peal overhead, enflamed by crawling bolts of lightning, wrenching apart pieces of the museum's structure with uncontrolled revolutions. It cried out, the cry of something larger than any known creature, the cry of something at the depths of the ocean, a sound traveling through an endless weight of water, as Porygon-Z loosed another bolt and Celesteela's arc declined into the museum's western wall and a fiery explosion.
Something long and barely there wrapped around Toril's leg. Another coiled around her arm. The two Nihilego pulled gently in opposite directions and her body extended to its full length. The nettles of their stinging limbs probed her clothes for ways to her skin. Seeking to inject her with neurotoxin, the same that got Dr. Mohn during the Alola disaster.
Her free arm reached for the broken claw-bone of the Kabutops fossil. The denuded fingers struggled to grip. Her leg kicked to buy time as her hand slipped away, then with a scream she lurched again and found purchase. One yank and the still-sharp blade came out of the tile.
She swung. The Nihilego on her arm made a pained, vibrating wobble of sound as the swipe severed two tentacles. Toril's upper half lost its support and crashed against the ground but wild, unfeeling, uncaring, she yowled and swung at the second. It danced just out of range while the gossamer cords of something not-quite-flesh caught her other ankle and it got both legs in its grasp.
"New moon," said a voice in a moment of silence. "Waxing crescent."
Her upper body lifted to swing but every swing missed by inches.
"First quarter, waxing gibbous, full moon, waning gibbous."
Something feral came out Toril's throat. "RREEYYAARRGGHHHH"—and her spine folded like a jackknife. Muscles in her back snapped, she heard them more than felt, and the Kabutops claw came down directly into the bulbous head. Knife through butter. Instead of blood, something purple and only semiliquid sprayed out. It turned to bubbles the moment it made contact with oxygen.
"Third quarter and waning crescent. These are the cycles of the moon. Now you know!"
Toril dropped back in agony. Her back was on fire and so were the million cuts across her skin. The places the Nihilego gripped were mercifully numb and the blizzard's chill was like the warm embrace of—of—she didn't know what. A mother, she might say, from cultural osmosis.
The first Nihilego, the one whose tentacles she severed, ebbed over her and descended toward her face.
"New moon, waxing crescent."
A beam of ice shot into it. Shards caked upon its surface as it flew into a wrecked display stand. Toril turned onto one elbow as Ninetales dropped beside her. She stroked his cold fur. "Good boy."
"First quarter, waxing gibbous, full moon, waning gibbous."
Under her body, the hard tile sprouted soft grass. Her aches dripped away. She held up her palms and watched cuts heal in real time.
"Third quarter and waning crescent. These are the cycles of the moon. Now you know!"
The voice came from a Clefairy. Toril blinked—it was an animatronic. It stood, unharmed, amid the museum's devastation. Porygon-Z watched it, his erratic glitchiness abated in wonder. In the distance, through the museum wall, a mournful cry resounded from the gigantic flaming lump of Celesteela.
One Nihilego lay buried in the ice. The one with the Kabutops claw bounced against a wall, spilling its brains or blood or both into the sky. Baxcalibur pinned Buzzwole in a broad puddle of neon red blood.
Rillaboom carried Heidi under one arm and Gustav under the other and set them down in the grass.
That left—
Blacephalon hurled its rematerialized head. The head was made of no known matter, organic or otherwise. Its propensity to explode made it difficult to even observe, scientifically. Theories ranged from a hypothetical quantum element—simultaneously stable and unstable—to a psychic emanation, something that didn't exist but that everyone believed existed enough for its illusion to impact the real world (by exploding).
The traveling head certainly did not look real as Toril watched it twirl toward her. She wondered, strangely, if she herself would only explode if all her Pokémon truly believed in the vision of her limbs flung apart, globs of bone and flesh bursting, a charred mark where she once stood.
That reality failed to pass. Annihilape came out of nowhere. He caught the head with one outstretched paw and swung it back toward its owner as it erupted in flame.
The blast briefly blinded Toril. She shielded her eyes, then let her hand fall. Annihilape remained standing despite the point-blank explosion, but not for long. He teetered, tilted back, and hit the ground, where Blacephalon's headless, muffled clown form already lay.
The snowstorm dwindled. The museum was a sea of wreckage, finally stilled. Toril returned Annihilape to his Poké Ball, then Volcarona, who'd been knocked out by Celesteela earlier. After a respite in Grassy Terrain, she returned Zoroark and Mawile too.
Before Toril could contemplate what had happened, Fiorella Fiorina popped out from a pile of broken plaster pieces, shouldered her camera, and ran to the elevator access door Dr. Mohn used.
"What the hell are you doing?" Toril yelled.
"The Pewter Museum of Science is in ruins," Fiorella said. It took a moment for Toril to realize she wasn't talking to her. She talked to the camera, like a reporter. "The destruction was caused by illegal Ultra Beasts used by Dr. Lusamine Mohn, and was stopped only by the heroic efforts of IPL semifinalist Toril Lund, who happened to be on the scene."
The pain abated but Toril still felt numbness in her leg and arm. She surveyed her remaining troops: Baxcalibur, Ninetales, Rillaboom, and Porygon-Z. (She didn't bother sending out Shedinja. What would he do besides die?)
She breathed in. Heroic efforts. The heroic efforts of—Toril Lund. Her heroic efforts. Her brain tingled. A story can only have one hero.
With a gesture at her Pokémon, she followed Fiorella into the elevator.
"These are the cycles of the moon. Now you know!"
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Greninja focused a pulse of dark energy at Aegislash, who blocked it with King's Shield. There wasn't additional value to keeping Aegislash in, though, because Greninja was faster and needed only a clean hit to knock it out.
Cely saw the strings. A plot unfolded moves in advance. Normally she didn't think so far forward, but Red made it easy. He didn't talk, his face was blank, but slowly she understood: He was honest.
Greninja used Dark Pulse again, while Cely swapped in Kommo-o, who trivially resisted the attack. The next turn, Greninja used Ice Beam, a move super effective against Kommo-o—and Cely swapped in Rotom.
It was so weird. Red seemed, like, kinda bad? Like actually, really bad at this game. He didn't predict Cely at all. He attacked what stood in front of him. No subterfuge. Toril, Jinjiao, even Gladion played at a higher level.
Cely never paid much attention to the other side of the bracket, but she understood Red was a surprise finalist. Sure, everyone recognized his historical excellence blah blah blah, but he was old now. He played against her freaking Dad. The age seeped out of him, he felt even older than Dad, older than dirt. He barely moved and his motions were like continental drift, elongated on a scale past human comprehension.
She commanded Rotom to use the obvious move, Volt Switch. Red had every opportunity to pull Greninja out but didn't. He used Dark Pulse again, it hurt Rotom badly, but who cared? Rotom spat a blip of electricity and Greninja was fried, having already gotten scuffed on entry thanks to Gliscor's spikes.
Three Pokémon down, three to go. The reality of encroaching victory seized her, the practical application of what her sleepwalking mind understood since the week's beginning: this match was formality. It almost made winning feel like—nothing. Like anyone could do it, if they were only lucky enough to get here.
Bill accused her of being lucky, but she wrote it off. Yeah 1 in 100 chance critical hit plus burn against Toril's Mawile, okay. She wasn't lucky against Jinjiao. Actually, she was unlucky. Slowking stayed asleep that entire game and it was Jinjiao's Lopunny who got the crit. She outright outplayed Gladion, even Bill couldn't deny that. This match, she lost Gliscor to an unlucky burn.
The whole point was—the whole point—to be the best. To stand above them. To be the final mark of punctuation in history. To exceed the flowers breeding, dying, sprouting anew.
What meaning did it have otherwise?
That was one part of her brain. The other part was suspicious. They said about Red what they said about her. His quarterfinals opponent choked, made a stupid mispredict, lost. For his semis opponent he did one good move early (against Raj, who opened Sticky Web Ribombee every single game) then played with solid fundamentals from a lead. Dad said Red was lucky. Every chance he got. Replaying that day twenty years ago again, again.
For Cely to believe being here proved her own skill, she needed to believe him being here meant the same.
After Rotom retreated to its Poké Ball, she sent out Aegislash. She expected this to bait the Dragapult, and she was right. Dragapult was faster than Aegislash and strong enough to KO even through Shield Forme. The obvious counter.
"Shadow Sneak," Cely said.
Aegislash's ghostly arm moved to Dragapult. Except it didn't actually move. Its arm became a shadow, which instantly reached Dragapult when Aegislash tilted its body to block the brightest source of light behind it. A weak attack, but since Dragapult took that huge hit from Scizor earlier, since it came in on spikes, since Shadow Sneak was super effective, it was enough.
Four down.
That was when something shifted. A trickle of life within this golem of baked clay. The embryo of a smile stretched Red's lips.
That smile erased all thoughts this match would be easy. Even from her massive advantage, a shocked, horrible fear hit her:
He let her take out the first four.
He let her.
Aracely misjudged him. From the start, she misjudged him. He wasn't honest. He wasn't outdated. Red Akahata, the man who beat everyone, gave himself a handicap. To him, this match started now.
The Poké Ball burst. A creature emerged. She had no idea what it was. She expected that; this would obviously be his ninth Pokémon, the one he kept hidden all tournament. Some kind of bird. Yellow, alight with electricity.
To Cely, it could've been a million things and she'd have the same reaction. She basically had the same reaction to Shedinja. The difference was the crowd. The crowd that cheered for anything, that did nothing but cheer, that could do nothing but cheer, as a massed and perfect harmony of all humankind.
The crowd wasn't cheering.
Something arose, like a suction tube slurping out their souls. The crowd was afraid. The crowd was terrified.
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"What is that?" Haydn said.
Jinjiao, face pressed to the glass, couldn't speak. His throat closed up.
"Her judgment begins," said Charlie.
"What is it? Jinjiao? What is it?"
"It's"—a croak, a hoarse gurgle, words he spoke to ensure what he saw was real—"it's a god. He caught a god."
"A god? What are you saying? Jinjiao? Charlie?"
"One of the three old gods of Kanto—"
"And lightning shall rain upon the unrighteous," said Charlie.
"—the thunderbird."
"What are you saying?"
"Zapdos."