“Ooooh… my head…” Ash moaned.
“Ash?!” came a booming voice from somewhere. “Are you alright?”
“Come on, speak to us please!” came another, equally unrecognizable voice.
Ash cracked open an eye with great effort, only to immediately slam it shut again against the blinding light of the sun. As awareness slowly returned to his brain and voices continued, he summoned up more energy to try again. This time he squinted, flinched, and quickly brought up a hand to block out the cruel glare overhead. His eyes began to adjust, and soon the vague shapes around him resolved into several familiar faces.
“Ash!” Serena smiled and clasped her hands together. “Are you alright? Does anything hurt?”
“You took quite a shock there,” Clemont explained. “All three of us did.”
“Pikachu,” the little yellow Pokémon said, scratching the back of his head.
“I’m – nrgh – fine,” Ash managed as he forced himself to sit up, ignoring the ache in his muscles. “How’s everybody else doing? How’s…” his eyes widened as memories came flooding back. “How’s Twilight? And what happened with-” he caught sight of something beyond the friends clustered about him and sat bolt upright. “Team Rocket?!” The young trainer immediately screwed up his eyes and clenched his teeth as the muscles in his back and chest screamed like they were on fire.
“Easy there,” Serena cautioned, putting a hand on his shoulder. “We all took a really nasty shock back there and it takes a few minutes for you to start feeling normal again.”
“Never mind me,” Ash insisted. “Is everybody else alright?”
“We’re fine,” Clemont assured him. “This isn’t the first time any of us have taken Pokémon attacks, the Thunderbolt wasn’t nearly enough to do serious or permanent damage.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Ash said in a lower tone. “But what happened to Twilight? When we got zapped didn’t that leave her alone out here? And can someone tell me why we’re camping right next to Team Rocket?”
“You didn’t leave her alone, you left me here too!” Bonnie said from behind him. When Ash turned, she had hands on her hips and a pout on her face. But after a moment, it softened. “I was really worried for you all, you know?”
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” He looked back at Serena, Clemont, and Pikachu. “Or to get you guys hurt.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Serena said quickly. “It was Team Rocket that sent the attack back at us, and they’ve almost never done something like that before, much less so well. How could you have expected it?”
“Maybe…” Ash bit his lip. “But can someone please tell me what’s going on here?”
“Do you want me to tell him?” Clemont asked softly. “Or-”
“I’ll tell him,” Bonnie declared. “I saw it all.”
“Are you sure?” Clemont said. “I know it must have been hard for you to watch, and I don’t-”
“I’ll tell him!” Bonnie insisted emphatically.
“Alright,” Ash held up his hands. “What happened? Why are we next to Team Rocket?” He looked past the others again. “And why are there so many Pokémon laid out on the ground?”
It was true, there were a number of blankets and mats spread out on the forest floor, and Pokémon of all kinds laid out on them. Ash recognized Twilight, Celestia, Inkay, Pumpkaboo, and Wobbuffet, but there were others he was sure that he hadn’t met before. He also saw what looked to be several empty bottles of Potion and Super Potion scattered about rather carelessly.
Bonnie sighed and looked down a bit. “Well, after you all got zapped, Team Rocket was trying to convince Twilight to go with them.”
“They didn’t just try to steal her and Pikachu?” Ash blinked.
“Don’t interrupt me!” the little girl said, before regaining poise and continuing. “Anyway, they didn’t seem to get anyway before these horrible people in tacky clothes called Team Flare came out from the woods. They had these weird black Poke Balls and the Pokémon that came out of them… something wasn’t right.”
Weird black Poke Balls? Ash wondered, a faint memory niggling at him.
“They said they were here for Team Rocket, then this blue-haired lady told her Pokemon to… to…” Bonnie hesitated for a moment, then swallowed. “To kill you guys.”
Ash’s eyes widened. Bonnie fell into silence, looking down at her feet.
“I understand this is hard for you,” Clemont put a hand on his sister’s shoulder. “If you want to let me finish it and you take a break, that’s just fine.”
“No…” she said, taking a deep breath. “I’ll finish it.”
“If you’re sure,” he nodded, but his expression remained worried.
“A-Anyway… there was a big fight with lots of Pokémon, and it seemed like they wanted to get rid of us and Team Rocket together. I didn’t see everything, but it was looking real bad until one of the weird Poke Balls got blown up. That made one of the bad Pokémon just fall over and faint. Then they kept doing that, and Pikachu zapped the evil lady really hard, and when she fainted too everything was over.” She looked up. “All of Team Rocket’s Pokémon were really hurt, so they started taking care of them and haven’t done anything to bother us. The other Pokemon are here too, but I don’t know what’s happening with them.”
“So those,” Ash looked at the strange, unconscious Pokémon, “are the ones from the weird Poke Balls?”
“Yeah,” Bonnie looked sadly at them. “I think those things must have done something really bad to them, because they haven’t woken up at all and it’s been hours.”
Ash’s frown deepened.
“Are you feeling any better?” Twilight asked Celestia from the blanket where she lay.
Her mentor was covered in bandages, enveloping her chest, wings, and perhaps half of her face in linen. She’d been lying there for hours, but the purple alicorn absolutely refused to let the elder white one out of her sight while she was this injured. She’d watched James like a hawk when he’d applied medicine, but so far as she could tell it was ordinary Super Potion. She’d tried it herself to be sure.
Celestia creaked one eye open and gave a faint smile. “Since the last time you asked me that? Yes, I believe I am.”
“That’s a relief,” Twilight said. “Rock Wrecker is a high-powered Rock-type move, super effective against Fire-types and further boosted by the same type attack bonus, so it would really have done a number on you.”
“I had realized as much, yes,” her mentor said a little drily.
“Heh heh, I… shouldtotallyhaverealizedthat…” Twilight trailed off awkwardly.
“I appreciate your vigilance over my health,” the white alicorn said, “but I was not the only one injured in this clash. You ought to get some rest as well, while you can. I believe that you will need it.”
“At least we’re together again,” Twilight gave a slight smile. “So whatever comes next can’t be so bad.”
“Oh, my little pony,” now Celestia just looked exhausted, “I fear the worst is yet to come.”
Meanwhile, far to the north of where the two princesses recuperated, another clash rocked the earth. Deep in the twisting maze of cavern systems beneath Kalos’ many mountains, a titanic blue and black deerlike Pokémon, long antlers gleaming like gemstones, faced a veritable army of Pokémon led by a far larger blue serpent amidst a wide cavern filled with shining green gemstones.
“Swalot!” cried a man in a red-orange suit, “Use Sludge Bomb on Xerneas!”
“Golbat, use Sludge Bomb as well!” a similarly-dressed woman shouted.
As orders were shouted, dozens more Pokemon scattered throughout the massive cave opened up with a barrage of mostly Poison-type attacks. All save for Gyarados, who curled protectively around it trainer with fangs showing. Lysandre stood there, arms behind his back, and observed the action with a neutral expression on his face.
Xerneas leaped as the mass of projectiles converged on it, a deceptively graceful movement that appeared entirely unhurried. It soared hundreds of feet, bound loosely by gravity if at all, and came down easily atop a massive shining gemstone. The spot it had just left was already coated in countless varieties of poisonous slime, light fading from the crystals as toxins ate away at the fruits of millions of years of geological processes.
The majestic Legendary simply looked down at the startled humans and Pokémon for a moment, cocking its head slightly as though considering something. It looked back at darkened spot of the cavern, now hissing and smoking as rock melted, and then back at them. Its crystalline antlers blazed into life like a blinding noonday sun.
“Use Protect,” Lysandre ordered calmly.
Gyarados lowered its head in front of its trainer, a turquoise bubble enveloping both not a moment too soon. Dozens of rays of rainbow-colored light swept through Team Flare’s ranks, interspersed with sparkles so bright and perfect they looked like nothing so much as floating diamonds. The next moment, the beams seemed to join together into one all-consuming wave of blistering fey energies. Many of Team Flare’s Pokémon were Poison-type, the better to resist such an attack. That proved not to matter at all.
Red-suited humans and their Pokémon all cried out as they were first blinded, then blasted from their feet by the sheer overwhelming power of the attack. They were caught like so much debris by a tornado, tossed about as though they weighed nothing. Pokémon that should have resisted the attack were knocked out in a single hit. In seconds, what had seemed a force to be reckoned with was reduced to just one man and his Pokémon, huddled underneath their protective barrier.
“So, this is the power of a Legendary’s Dazzling Gleam,” Lysandre mused. “Impressive.”
Xerneas leapt down from its perch, staring as if curious about the monstrous blue serpent that now stood alone against it. Light slowly faded away from its horns, and in response the protective barrier dissolved away as well. Gyarados, undaunted by this display of raw power, reared up to its full height and roared a challenge. The cavern’s crystals visibly vibrated from the deafening call, small bits of dust and rock fell from the ceiling. Perhaps in answer, the smaller Pokémon raked one hoof across the rocky ground.
Lysandre pointed at it. “Hyper Beam.”
Immediately, a sphere of yellow and orange energy appeared in the midst of Gyarados’s open maw, and then was fired as a titanic beam of annihilation. It tore a visible rut into the cavern’s solid rock floor, zeroing in on Xerneas. But the Legendary was no longer there. It had already made another leap, not away from Gyarados but directly towards it.
Xerneas flew well over the Hyper Beam and landed straight in front of the great serpent. Temporarily paralyzed by the output of its own move, Gyarados could do nothing for a crucial second as the Legendary’s horns lit up in angry red and yellow. It leapt straight for Gyarados’ neck, and with a thunderous impact the frail-looking deer drove itself so hard into the monstrous muscled water dragon that the latter’s head was driven to smash straight through a crystal and take a notable chunk of the rock behind.
“Giga Impact!” Lysandre’s eyes briefly widened, then quickly returned to their customary scowl. “Gyarados, don’t give up! Use Aqua Tail, quickly!”
Despite the many crushed scales and the damaged crest atop its head, Lysandre’s most loyal Pokémon brought its blue tail around quickly, crashing into Xerneas’ side while it was itself temporarily paralyzed. It was flung a short ways and cracked a rock itself with the impact, but nonetheless landed on its feet and shook its head briefly. Gyarados rose back up as well, but Lysandre could hear his friend’s heavy breathing and see bits of broken scale and rock raining from atop its head.
“Finish this, quickly!” he called out. “Iron Head!”
Without hesitation, Gyarados roared and hurled itself at its foe, head quickly becoming enveloped in silver light. Xerneas answered the charge with one of its own, horns again flaring red and yellow. Iron Head and Giga Impact slammed into one another with an earthshaking explosion, hurling both combatants back. Gyarados flew through the air, collided with a stalactite, and then crashed back to the ground and lay still. Lysandre’s heart was, for just a moment, caught in his throat.
Then a second heavy thud alerted him to where Xerneas had landed. The deerlike Pokemon was at the end of a short trench gouged into the rock by its fall. It was obviously injured, but already struggling to rise again. It was now or never.
Team Flare’s leader grabbed a grey and black ball from his belt, doubled its size with the push of a button, and then hurled it at the Legendary Pokémon with all the strength he possessed. The Dark Ball struck Xerneas in the face, opened wide, and swallowed up the startled creature in a vortex of black energy. It snapped shut behind its victim and fell neatly to the cave’s floor, crackling with more energy. But Lysandre’s mind was no longer there.
“Gyarados,” he said, extending an ordinary red and white ball, “you’ve earned a long rest, old friend. Return now.”
The injured and sprawled out blue serpent vanished back into its ball in red light. Lysandre stared at it for a moment, hand shaking just a little. Then the pang was gone, and he put it away with another frown. He returned his gaze to the Dark Ball, still twitching and sparking with its sinister energy.
“It will all be worth it in the end,” he promised in a low voice. “It will all have been worth it.”
Only silence was there to answer.
Well that's not going to end well....
Yay Bonnie! No one speaks with more truth than a child.
...Well, FACK.
What are the odds that he's also going for Yveltal?
They better make a truce and fight Team Flare together, because the situation is getting worse.
9022443
98.8% probability that he will, if only for the extra Destruction power.
9022471
Ash is many things, but a fool is not one of them. here, the Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend
Now will Ash finally realise that his dumb ass was being played?
Wow. And the plot thickens. I'm definitely going to bed to take some lessons from you in writing Pokemon battles for my own fic.
However, you may need to keep an eye on those homophones:
hurtling
Good to see Celestia and Twilight back together again, now if only Luna would join them. Twilight knowing the ins and outs of type and moveset effectiveness was a nice touch, by the way. Meanwhile, Xerneas appearing as a curiously detached BAMF was pretty cool. Sad to see he was defeated by Lysandre. If Mr. Ganondorf knockoff also has Yveltal, then this shitstorm just became a category 5 shit hurricane. Excellent chapter.
9022520
You mean "Hurling" (throwing). Hurtling means going fast, which is the wrong part of speech for this context.
This is not good. Xerneas under Lysandre's command is catastrophic and no doubt he'll then go to Yveltal.
Team Rocket, Ash and Co, now they understand they'd been played, better quickly found Luna and her coalition to augment their forces and they might go found Zygarde as well.
it takes a few minutes for you to start feeling normal again.”
So when's Luna gonna join the party with her imperial army? Or will that be a 'final showdown reinforcements' type of deal?
9022684
Or maybe... after everything concludes...
"What did I miss?"
But wait, according to the anime, isn't Lysandre's Gyarados a shiny?
9022764
It already appeared blue in this story before that episode aired. So it remains as it was in the games.
carelessly.
And Gyrados is commonly spelled that way, not Gyarados. At least in my area.
Still find it odd Ash doesn't know what a Dark Ball is.
Or was this when he would have learned about them in canon? I only vaguely remember having watched that one.
9022834
Ash does know what a Dark Ball is, it's just that the Celebi incident was years ago way back in Johto and culminated with their only previous user being taken into custody so he doesn't immediately get to that conclusion.
And "Gyarados" is the official spelling.
Well then... that's not good.
who curled protectively around it trainer with fangs showing
1. Its.
Oh deer, this is going to be legendarily bad quickly.
9022614
You have a point in that "hurl" may well be the word he needs. However, though "hurtle" is usually intransitive (the car hurtled down the road), it can also be used transitively, as would be the case here. The transitive use is rare, but not unheard of.
9022839
I was wondering if you'd involve that movie. That's one of the movies that only ended well, BECAUSE Team Rocket made a Sacrifice.
It won't be worth it.
9022684
One of her Fearows was there, but still comatose unfortunately.
9022471
I confess that it has been awhile since I’ve watched the anime, but didn’t they do this against team galaxy and later team plasma?
I can easily see them doing it again.
9023695
I don't know. I didn't watch the anime past the third generation (Ruby / Sapphire).
9022397
Be careful--no one tells more lies either...
The villains in this really rankle me, which I suppose is the point of villains, so good job. I'm sure I'm not the only person reading who wishes I could be there with my team from Black/Diamond/Soul SIlver/Leaf Green/Red/etc. to give some extra licks from the good guys.
It still mystifies me how Lysander gets anything done with a Gyarados as his main. Has nobody ever used electric moves on him? He must have astonishingly good luck to always fight people with no concept of type match-ups, or one thundershock from a pichu would have ruined his whole evil plan.
Glad to see so many rapid updates in a row! Loving this story, looking forward to more ^^
9026242
You underestimate Gyarados way too much. What I'm worried about is why Lysandre uses Hyper Beam on it, when it has terrible Special Attack...
9026242
Mega-Gyarados trades Flying-type for Dark-type. Electric moves go from 4x effective to 2x effective.
9027748
Same reason any anime Pokemon uses it when it's objectively pretty terrible: because it's an iconic move. I'm pretty sure it's extra-iconic on Gyarados too. The Gyarados in Pokemon: The First Movie used Hyper Beam.
9026242
How does Ash get anywhere with Pikachu when a simple Ground-type Pokemon will nullify almost all of his attacks? For one, Lysandre's Gyarados is powerful enough to simply shake off the majority of Electric-type attacks with sheer toughness and knock out the opposition with its powerful and diverse moveset before it can be worn down. Don't forget so far only two Giga Impacts (physical equivalents to Hyper Beam) delivered by a full-fledged Legendary have proven strong enough to knock it out and even then it got good hits in itself. Secondly, it knows Protect. Thirdly, if the matchup is bad Lysandre can call in another Pokemon (Mienshao and Pyroar have shown up so far) and have it battle the Electric-type instead of Gyarados.
9027591
The fundamental position of both is that "you're being manipulated by evil and don't know it". Twilight because she knows about Team Rocket and drastically overestimates their potency and Celestia because she's seen Ash battling alongside Lysandre and assumed he was consciously helping Team Flare with the Dark Balls. And Twilight doesn't even know Team Flare is a thing at all, much less that they're evil, until they storm in and start shooting. She thinks Celestia is being deceived, which she reluctantly admits is possible. See: Wedding, Canterlot.
9027808
Pikachu gets away with being a glass cannon because Ash isn't trying to take over the world.
And no matter what her line of reasoning is, Twilight is not so proud she can never admit to being wrong. Admitting she's wrong takes up a significant portion of her time in the show, so her dogmatic defense of the "Team Rocket is smart and Celesita's brainwashed" theory in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is very out of character.
9027846
Lysandre isn't trying to take over the world by personally battling everyone in it with his Gyarados and nothing else. He has a whole organization and other Pokemon to do the fighting where his personal ace won't suffice. Not to mention the whole genius inventor/benevolent philanthropist public face he has going on means that most people don't want to fight him at all.
Their conversation lasts a handful of minutes and Twilight never gets "overwhelming evidence" that Team Rocket isn't evil or smart. Wobbuffet taking out all three twerps in one Mirror Coat tends to support the idea that they are, at least in her mind.
9027808
And please don't take the previous comment as an attack. I love this story, and I think you nailed both Celestia and Luna's personalities, and your portrayal of Team Rocket is generous, but plausible. Lysander is a slimy wretch, so also spot on. Ash is a sincere and big-hearted half-wit, and Pikachu is selflessly loyal and helpful. Twilight is really the only character that's problematic.
9027846
And digging in her heels on being wrong until the wrong is beaten out of her by events takes up the rest. I don't think she's ever once just been right.
9027870
Twilight gets all of a few minutes to talk to Celestia, who is convinced that she's working with a pawn of Lysandre. Twilight has all of no reason to assume Lysandre is evil when he brushed an eject-able offense under the rug and helped them when no one else could. Pikachu assured her Team Rocket were incompetent dolts, while she just watched them one-shot Ash, Serena, and Clemont. She's wrong but was not presented with any evidence of the fact beyond the word of someone she's already convinced is being manipulated by evil. Again, that exact scenario (Celestia is convinced everything is just peachy with "Cadence" while Twilight thinks she's evil) has happened before.
9027931
The problem with Twilight basing her current actions on A Canterlot Wedding is that she was being unreasonable there, and just happened to be right against all reason. But she thinks she's being reasonable here.
9027947
Fact: Celestia can be deceived by a villain.
Fact: Team Rocket are villains.
Fact: Celestia would not knowingly work for villains.
Conclusion: They have tricked or brainwashed her.
Fact: Pikachu claims Team Rocket are incompetent idiots easily defeated hundreds of times.
Fact: Jessie's Wobbuffet defeats Pikachu's Thunderbolt and KO's the whole group with one Mirror Coat.
Conclusion: They were holding back before.
It isn't a hard line of logic to follow.
9027965
Ah, but there is no logic in it. Post-hoc justification for what Twilight has already decided must be the case, perhaps. But it's clear enough that here, as in A Canterlot Wedding, she isn't actually acting rationally.
9027970
Yes, there is. Her principle error is massively overestimating the competence of Team Rocket simply because anything less getting Celestia on their side seems impossible to her. If you accept her premises the conclusion flows quite readily. It receives little to no counter evidence before the engagement with Team Flare and Team Rocket comes off as far more competent against Ash than Pikachu asserted.
9027987
Her premises, however, are baseless. Or rather, founded in her emotionally-distorted view of reality as opposed to what reality is.
9027992
It seems to me that Twilight's main problem is not that her hypothesis itself is irrational but that she's privileging the hypothesis. Most egregiously, in the face of strong evidence that her friends are easily fooled, she continues to operate under the assumption that Lysander is not fooling them, despite Celestia's testimony.
However, Celestia should not have pointed this out, and also that Team Rocket did not turn her against Lysander, but rather it was Celestia who turned Team Rocket against him!