Chapter 24: After The End

A wave washed over everything. Wiped it away: the grand stage and the players. Only the platforms remained above the flood.

The water ebbed. Settled. White froth patterns. Then, a slow subsiding. The streaked, dripping sides of the platforms emerged, seeming ancient despite their state-of-the-art technology. Lips of crags and craters appeared next, rising out of spots of white like teeth. Once all water drained, the sopping sheet of the arena floor shone under the floodlights. One Pokémon stood and one was wiped out.

"Jinjiao Zhang is out of usable Pokémon. IPL 75 is over!"

All the cheering, crowds, confetti, fireworks. Planes shot overhead. A grand celebration. Jinjiao returned his fainted Pokémon and stood on his platform with subtle shellshock. Losing never became easier, no matter how many times you lost, no matter how many times you won.

Pre-finals commentary: "Jinjiao's one of the most decorated battlers in IPL history. Three championships in ten years, looking for a fourth today. But he's never been able to live up to the goal he set for himself—unseating Red Akahata as the consensus best battler of all time."

"If anything, Jinjiao has only proven how special Red was. We'll never see anyone like him ever again. A man for the history books."

Red was gone now. Nobody knew where. Some jungle, some mountain somewhere they said. Sightings every so often, hoaxes and impersonators. Whispers online, at first memes, becoming something else: that one day he would return, and bring with him a Pokémon even greater than the one he used in his final tournament, a Pokémon that was God itself. Someone else claimed he died of pneumonia, miles from civilization.

Jinjiao, twenty-four years old, heard the whispers of retirement. He thought: another year next year. Another team, another family. As long as he never burned out, he can go forever.

He was forgotten, out of frame. The camera centered on the arena, which shifted open for a cylindrical stage to rise, lined by a spiral staircase. The host, an Iono who still passed for fourteen, already stood there with a microphone. The tournament's victor climbed up under a mass prayer of applause.

"Congratulations Liechi! You're the first girl to EVER win the IPL grand championship. How does it feel?"

The teenage girl reached the top breathless, cherubim red in the cheeks. She seized the microphone awkwardly and peaked it with her first sputtered word. "I—feel like the end of a long, long journey? It's actually—the first thing I remember."

"The first thing you remember?"

"IPL—IPL 64," Liechi said. "Seeing Cely Sosa on this stage. I wanted to be her. Wanting to be here, on this—wow? Surrounded by all these people."

"Is there anyone else you wanna thank?"

"Right. Yes. My dad, of course. Hi dad. You always believed in me. And—Cynthia, my mentor. But really—I'd like to thank my Pokémon. They should be on this stage too. My Pokémon—are the ones..."

"Next."

That gruff, aggravated voice pulled Aracely's attention from the screen tucked in the corner of the waiting room. The door to the visitor center was open, an officer holding it as the previous two visitors exited.

It was the first time Aracely saw Gladion Mohn since their battle a decade prior. Without context she wouldn't have recognized him. He put on weight, wore a homely button-up shirt with suspenders. He looked like a photo of his father she once saw, and the girl beside him, Lillie, looked exactly how her mother once did, like a supermodel. Except Lillie didn't seem to know it. Lillie was crying. Gladion held an arm around her shoulder and glared.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Aracely rose, smoothed out her business suit and skirt, and nodded to him like to an acquaintance you pass. They passed. Lillie, hands on her face, never noticed Aracely was there.

The policeman led her down a series of bare hallways: faded yellow linoleum, humming utilitarian lighting. She rounded a corner and saw it at a distant dead end long before the slow, steady gait of the policeman brought her there. A sheet of reinforced plexiglass, everything beyond bright white, and a figure with twitching antennae waiting.

"Ten minutes," the officer said as he indicated her seat in front of the glass. He did not leave after she sat, and made sure she knew it by coughing occasionally.

Aracely crossed her legs at the ankles and picked up the phone that connected her to the other side.

"You've come," said her voice, hers, unchanged, exactly as Aracely remembered it. "After the last time, I said: I will never see her again."

She really was an insect. Aracely had seen photos, but nothing prepared her for it in person. She made no effort to hide herself from Aracely, as if she felt no shame at all. As if she felt pride. And maybe, Aracely thought, she was right. In some way, this creature remained beautiful.

"This is the first time they let me visit," Aracely said. "They thought I was involved. They never had any evidence, and I had people who helped me out, but they were against me any way they could be."

MOTHER, Lusamine, nodded. Her insect hands thatched under her chin.

She was slated for death. But the execution kept being pushed back. They didn't know how to kill her. Lethal injection wouldn't work, nor hanging, nor even—they suspected—decapitation. Her body post-metamorphosis was too resilient. Bill's machine broke in the explosion and he couldn't build another. It'd been so long since the first time, he never kept notes, and after so many failed attempts admitted publicly: he didn't remember. So now she was a permanent inconvenience to the system, a secret tucked away, contained within specialized cages in this remote mountain facility.

"Tell me," Lusamine said, "how are you, Cely."

"I'm... good." Aracely tried to settle herself with a deep breath. "Dad's healthier than ever. Brittany keeps him in shape, though she needs cataract surgery soon. He tutors young trainers, runs these cute little classes, the kids are adorable. Mom—well, maybe you haven't heard, but the Old Man's finally on his deathbed. Lung cancer. Mom's jockeying for his position, she's going full shock and awe on the politburo, you know how she's so vigorous. The explosion scarred her face and blinded her in one eye, it took her off the air for good, so this has been her mission since. Her new story. I have no idea what she'd do if she actually makes it. Her main competition for the job is Iono of all people."

"Mm." An entomic trill. "But what about you, Cely? How are you?"

Why was that question so much harder to answer? "I work in Saffron City. As a—personal assistant, of sorts, for—

"For their pet psychic."

Aracely didn't bother asking how she guessed. "It pays well."

"Are you married? Children?"

"I've been busy."

The insect's gaze was multifaceted. Something, some mandible or chitinous part, made a sound: click-click-click.

"Tick-tick-tick," Lusamine said. "As my father used to tell me. I was twenty-two then. Some say the only purpose is to make more. Propagate. A bigger number—is that progress?"

Aracely said nothing.

"Tell me. How are you, really?"

Aracely didn't know the answer she wanted. She didn't know if she wanted her to be great, or terrible, or conflicted, or anything. She didn't know if she wanted an honest answer or dishonest.

"I'm... okay. I'm okay."

"Good," Lusamine said. "It's important. It's necessary for all those who can't change a thing to be okay. How else would they live?"

This woman, or insect, Aracely realized, was impossible to kill. It was impossible for her to age or get cancer. She would outlast the IPL, outlast regions, outlast everything. These walls would crumble to dust around her.

The policeman coughed. Aracely stood up. "I'm glad I got to see you, Lusamine."

"Before you go. I need to understand. Was it your plan, Cely? Your design? Beating Toril, keeping your hands clean, making every little part slot into place the way it did?"

"I'm leaving now."

"Tell me! Cely. Was fate your instrument, or were you fate's?"

Aracely left.

The parking lot outside the facility's electrified gate was a sea of rock. Clouds swam too quickly across the sky, streaking the sun with shadow. Gladion and Lillie stood by the only other car, whispering to each other. Lillie clutched a white Vulpix to her chest.

In Aracely's convertible, passenger door open, legs spread out over the pavement, Toril stared at Lillie and her Vulpix. With her one hand, she stroked Ingmar's fur while he dozed in her lap. Her empty sleeve fluttered in the breeze.

"Finished?" Toril rasped.

"Close enough," Aracely said. She snapped her fingers at Heidi and Ziggy roughhousing in the back seat and glared at Toril for letting them do it. Toril returned a wry smile.

Night sank as they drove down the mountain, the Pokémon asleep to the stereo's nostalgic melody. Toril and Aracely didn't speak. In the end, it was okay. Something came of it. An old man somewhere shivered, coughed, and died. The moon intersected the mountaintop and life from another world tumbled down to renew this one.