Chapter 25
Ｏ Ｍ Ｎ Ｉ Ｓ Ｕ Ｒ Ｆ / Down in darkness we found what sustains us / SkullGreymon
—Aug. 26th, 128 CR
Moriko awoke during the night to a pale radiance in the tent. Celeste was there, dozing, the moon and stars shining out of her glassy flanks. Outside it had grown cold, the wind swelling the polyfiber walls and the trees rustling, sharing secrets.
Moriko watched her a long time, thinking of the foal she'd watched hatch from an egg, whose first words had been "how dull". Duller than an egg?
She is what we call an old-soul.
Duller than dying?
"What are you, Celeste? …Stella?"
Celeste stirred, and she laughed. She flicked her tail, the long hairs glittering like starlight.
"Why couldn't you save him?"
Celeste looked at her, her eyes twin pearls on a skin of stars. "Oh, I did, eventually."
"You can stop the demons any time. Why don't you?"
"Not any time, and not for long. It's enough that they run. They might not if they knew how long I need to rest after using my power." Celeste regarded her a long moment. "Like most elder pokémon, I spend more time resting than battling," she added.
There it was. Moriko sighed, thinking of Vleridin's secrets. "Who did you kill, Celeste?"
"Surprisingly few for one who has seen eightscore and ten summers," she said lightly. "They were ronin in their first shedding, and I killed and ate them. They came for my herd. Turnabout. And there were a few that I killed that were not safe to eat." She pulled back her lips, unhorselike, and exposed pointed canine teeth. One of her parents had been a grimass, after all. "The rest of my strength I earned in the light of the sun and the dark of the moon and under starlight, and when death came for me I did what I had to do."
After a silence, Celeste said, "I remember when the third crossing came. I was far away, but I felt it. Nothing changed; no shift in the light or in birds' flight or in the sound of the waves, but I felt it. Like a wind, like a candle flickering in the draft from an opened door. I did not see a person of that crossing until much later, but I heard the rumors sooner, and I knew."
Moriko hugged her knees, listening, feeling history spool far away behind the celestiule. Some people liked to say that the second crossing and their kingdoms had been a more honest society, more real.
"Was it better? Was it better before we came?"
"There was more smoke then. More hardship. Famine. Too cold, too hot, too rainy, too dry. Not anymore. The third crossing is rich, and with your wealth comes arrogance. But you share your wealth. No one starves." She looked thoughtful, staring across decades. "I saw thousands starve, long ago.
"You should know that there is a price, Moriko, for living again. Never could I birth a child, and never will I. The line of my mothers ends with me. And I will join them at the heart of the world, one day."
"A woman of the second crossing we met"—gods, was that yesterday?—"said that ancient pokémon were caused by… death. Bad energy from the earth. How does that happen?"
"It is not known by any who now live. But this I will tell you: dead souls travel to the heart of the world, and they rejoin with those who were and those who will one day be. But some cannot make the journey, and they fester." She was silent. "Humans are not innocent, but… you do a great service, to destroy them."
"What did you do in the old days?"
"We ran, or we fought. And often we died."
x.x.x.x.x
The Wandering Fire and the Gray Prince fought the Black Queen all night. For all their disdain, the rangers and soldiers had watched her in shifts, white-knuckled and gasping as the camera drones picked up some dreadful blow that sent one of the demons or the mystic spinning into the air. Undocumented attacks were traded as energy spiked the aura monitors off-scale, and their field of vision narrowed as they lost drones to feedback and stray attacks.
As the sun rose, the woman in black was flagging, her ensouled pokémon pulled back to just the charizard. The Fire was resting simian-like on the wishcash, and the Prince's clothes were shredded, energy following him like afterimages. The rangers had data on their previous appearances spread over other computer monitors. Normally the gray demon would fight a little and then run, as he had in the desert, but he seemed to have enough energy at last to stand against her.
The ancient whiscash proceeded onward, oblivious, but it too was slowing. Great chunks of scale and blubber sloughed off as it calved like an iceberg under their stray attacks, exposing rotten bone and liquefied organs. An oily slick dotted with chum spread out behind it, and the sea was boiling with fish and seabirds eating the mess or each other, and even some water pokémon seemed to be trailing the fight for scraps of stray energy.
It swam on, but it was dying.
"Huge decline in aura on the ancient pokémon," one of the techs said. "Twelve milliiveys per second."
"This might be useful, to be honest," Ranger-Captain Lark said, gulping coffee. His staraptor was being outfitted for the day's flights. "That bastard is killing it. We should do this more often. Does anyone know any other mystics? Legendaries? Is Lightning Zulia around, Atlitzin?"
"Get bent, Lark," the suicune said.
"It'll be dead before it makes it to shore at this rate. Someone phone up Porphyry and tell them to chill out."
"And then we worry about our other guests," Dragut murmured.
"I was hoping we'd just mop up, but it looks like the old BQ is actually losing." Lark sighed. "Lord have mercy, I'm going to have to go out there and save her, aren't I?"
"If the Prince kills her and gets her energy we're absolutely fucked, Lark," Belladonna said sharply. "Saffron Town II no lineup no waiting. This is not the time to fuck around."
"Just banter. It dispels tension and makes me popular. We'll be out there in a few minutes."
"Imagine if he did. It would force us to take that weirdo seriously," Atlitzin said, pointed. "He's been a low priority for way too long."
"He didn't do anything for so long," Lark said, a trifle defensively.
"The dead and energy-drained kids I've been mopping up say different," the suicune replied.
Ranger-Captain Petrel: "Are the mewtwo in position?"
"Ranger-Pokémon Gauche and Droit are standing by," a monitor confirmed.
"Droit, the Black Queen's aura will reach critical coalescence in twenty minutes, please relieve her for recovery," Petrel said into a headset.
Droit's camera flicked to life on one of the screens, and drones swooped in to watch the mewtwo. The two of them used disable fields to make the Gray Prince and Black Queen disengage, and then Gauche flew in, aiming a punch at the demon.
The aura monitor spiked as he warped around her fist. Ghost-type. He struck back with shadow punch, the purple energy bursting as he hit her just under her pectoral plate, and they all winced. A flamethrower burst from her hand, the blue and purple fire licking over his body. Shields flared around both of them, multi-layered high-level battlers' screens, the hits pulverizing even with them on.
Droit was trying to persuade the Black Queen to leave, presumably psychically as well as with a knobbly hand on her shoulder. Despite her wounds she kept turning toward the Prince, mechanical, compulsive, wings flapping as she hovered. Droit pointed toward mounted rangers far out of range, who had brought a healing net for the woman and her pokéball-less pokémon.
The Prince sent Gauche flying in the wake of a huge shadow ball, and the charizard jumped in again, blue fire streaming. The gray man summoned huge pointed stones out of nothing, and dodged her flamethrowers and ferocious flare blitz attacks. The shock waves were enormous, and the Prince's attacks left jagged purple rents in the air that closed up slowly and hurt the eyes, wounds on reality.
The two mewtwo worked together, finding the rhythm to jump in and attack where the woman was on the rebound. With two legendaries and the mystic against him the tide seemed to be turning; the Prince was slowing now, aura signal declining. He fell back to the ancient pokémon, landing beside the Fire, who covered his retreat with fire blasts.
Gauche and Droit were pulling at her, but the Queen followed him, diving in to charge the two demons.
The whiscash halted, groaning a basso note that the speakers could barely express.
Aura monitors screamed. Several bugged out with integer overflows.
The whiscash was sinking—
No—
The sea was sinking.
The whiscash plunged into shadow as the sea dropped out from beneath it, and it fell surrounded by walls of water as high as mountains. The drones moved above the appalling sinkhole to maintain the feed, but they saw nothing but the absolute darkness that lurked under the ocean, and the Queen, a blue flame, a star that sped down and down.
The water collapsed.
The parted sea exploded, its pressure released, the deceptively smooth surfaces collapsing like bombed buildings.
The shock wave sent the drones flying, video feeds cutting out or transformed into whirling, sick-making blurs of color. The monitors switched to drones farther out; the splashback was a kilometer high, the spray blotting out the sun.
Deathly silent, those in the ranger tent stared at the feed for a long time. Gauche and Droit levitated helplessly above where the ancient pokémon had gone down, the ocean turned into a churning vortex as water and air equalized.
"Tsunami," Matt said, leaping up. "That will make a tsunami!"
"They know," Belladonna said, tired.
She pulled Matt down by a belt loop on his trousers and pointed toward the screen where angry colors were being projected on a map of the Lacuna Sea. Activity resumed in the tent, the captains and rangers speaking fast and urgent to one another and into headsets.
The shock wave passed over the camp, distant gunfire and a rush of wind.
Messages sent, the tent erupted with harassed phone calls as Porphyry City demanded confirmation, and the captains all replied "Yes, fucking yes," in slightly politer terms. The whole Lacuna coast was in danger. Moriko thought of the people they'd seen out on the beaches during their journey, where pokédex reception was spotty, and icy fingers clamped around her heart. Someone needs to tell them! Outside, psychics were materializing from pokéballs and teleporting away, bearers of a terrible message.
Gauche and Droit were hovering over the ocean as the vortex dissipated. On Belladonna's computer the recording of the sea opening up and crashing was playing on loop at double speed, the same instant of terrible force happening and happening.
Atlitzin touched it with one of her streamer-tails. "Every time somebody tries to cut our funding we show them one of these videos," the suicune commented. "It's quite convincing."
"People forget Saffron Town," Belladonna said. "They try to say it was terrorists or a false flag." She tried to drink from her empty mug and set it down after a clear moment of contemplation of throwing it. "It could have ended us, second and third both. Back on Terra it's a slow decline, but every year we have to fight for our lives." She looked down at her pokéball belt and laughed. "Not sure if I can recommend it."
Saffron Town had been the old Saffron City townsite that an ancient ho-oh had completely destroyed during the early days of the third crossing. The second and the third crossings had gotten along well at first, but... Saffron Town had been the main settlement. Losing it made them desperate, and everything else followed. Moriko looked at the monitor with Droit and Gauche on it: mewtwo, war-pokémon.
"Is Porphyry gonna be okay?" Linden was asking.
"The projections show a glancing hit there due to the bay, and the pokémon volunteers have been mobilized for several days because of the unusual tidal activity, but it's going to be bad. Just a ton of people there," a ranger said, his face illuminated by the computer screen. "And whoever gets hit along the Lacuna Sea. Lots of cabins and fishing spots in the fjords."
Peeping from the aura monitors.
"Incoming!" Crane said sharply into her headset.
They all looked at the body-cam monitors; the one for Gauche and Droit fuzzed and reappeared as they teleported away from the vortex.
The feeds from the drones showed the ocean boiling, deepsea silt and rocks and tar bubbling up, flung to the surface. A gyarados breached the waves, its head bent as it fired off a hyper beam at an underwater target.
The whiscash reappeared, finally, displacing water like a submarine. It was nearly broken in half, its spinal column exposed through its shredded tissue; naked ribs glistened in the sun where the rotten blubber had been stripped away.
It couldn't faint. No ancient pokémon could. No ancient pokémon could stop. You hit them until they couldn't move anymore, and when they died you burned them or covered them over with earth and concrete and tried to forget about them.
The Prince surfaced, supporting the Fire, and he threw the limp demon onto the whiscash's dorsal surface. The Wandering Fire stirred, and the two of them stared at the Black Queen, whose gyarados was glowing, struggling to take another form. Finally it receded and left the woman behind.
"Shit, she's done," Lark groaned.
"Droit, relieve the Black Queen if safe to do so," Ranger-Captain Petrel said into her headset.
"Acknowledged."
"Good news is, those two might be, too," Captain Lark said. "I thought I'd never see a yellow aura bar again—"
The ancient whiscash began to faint.
It dissolved under the demons' feet, falling upward in glittering motes. The glow spread outward, slowly and agonizingly, eating away at the daikaiju's vast bulk. But it didn't coalesce; the energy floated higher and higher and disappeared.
"What the fuck," Captain Crane breathed.
"Are you getting this?" Petrel said sharply to the ranger sitting at the aura radar.
One last transformation: the woman shifted into the charizard, not the mega form, and flapped toward the two demons. She aimed an air slash at them, the pale air-type energy scything down, and the Fire blocked it, feebly.
"Get her outta there, Droit, I've seen better battles outside elementary schools," Lark said into his headset. "Wing Alpha, Wing Delta, prepare to engage with maximum caution."
Again they heard the aura monitors spike, alarm frequencies increasing until they were shrill and continuous.
"Fucking—what now?"
The Prince was haloed in dark light; it dimmed and confused the drones' video feed, but it seemed that the whiscash's energy was redirected, coalescing after all—on him.
A pillar of shadow shot high into the sky, and when the feed cleared, the Prince—fell. He fell into the ocean, limbs writhing. The drones followed him down as he tumbled down what was left of the ancient pokémon's flank and disappeared into the sea.
Someone swore.
Lark: "Is he dead?"
The drones flew in closer. Nothing; the Black Queen was hovering, the Fire nearly collapsed. It struggled to its feet and turned slowly, turned away from the Queen to look behind it.
Something gray and hulking and armored leapt off the whiscash's back into the air. It clamped its steel jaws on the black charizard, dragging it down into the water.
The gray thing jumped out again. The Black Queen didn't.
The rangers were shouting. Gauche and Droit teleported in, Droit to the water's surface and Gauche underneath, and then they were both out again and fleeing away east.
Ranger-Captain Lark took off his headset and laid it on the table in front of him. "Holy fuck," he said quietly.
"All wings disengage, repeat, disengage, return to base," Petrel was ordering, rapid-fire.
Belladonna blew out her breath. "You got your wish, boss."
"What the hell is going on on that monitor?"
Technical talk followed this; Moriko couldn't read the swirling false colors or maps, but she could read a graph, and the way the aura plot had gone very nearly vertical couldn't be good.
"Looks like he just became our problem," Atlitzin said.
Moriko's pokédex buzzed with new PRED warnings until she gave up and turned it off.
"We've never seen the Prince's pokémon form before," Belladonna said softly, replaying the drone feed and staring at the gray and violet shape while it leapt over and over. "He could resist the Queen without it. Fuck. Fuck."
She turned, her eyes sweeping the room until she found the three of them.
"You need to go," Belladonna told them, a far cry from her manic and careless affect as a gym leader. "This isn't a joke. You are in so much danger."
"Let us help," Moriko pleaded.
Belladonna shook her head. "You could maybe have helped against the whiscash, if we'd had time to teach you a basic bombardment drill. Against the Prince you will die." She looked around at the ranger-captains giving rapid orders. "We are going to die with these spread-out teams."
"The scope of this op is fucked," Atlitzin added, joining them. "Ancient pokémon are like fighting drunk giants, they're slow as shit, and you can get out if you're not dumb. The Gray Prince is just going to AOE and fucking kill us. We need reinforcements and the champions. Come on."
The three of them left the tent, following the suicine. As they approached the jumpcraft landing, the two mewtwo flew in and touched down at a medical tent. Gauche laid the woman in black on a stretcher and removed the healing cage. A light budded off of the woman's body and formed into a gallade, who promptly began to heal her.
"M…Moriko. I hope you are well," the woman said tightly. She was covered in blood, chunks of hair ripped out of her scalp, and her clothes ragged and hanging off her thin body. A big wound in her stomach pulsed, the blood seeping out over her rigid, clawlike hand. Her goggles were gone, and her red eyes were wide and staring. Her eight extra pairs were too, migrating over her body and linked by dark, bruise-colored energy.
The human could be hurt, it seemed. Moriko felt Vleridin watching.
A ranger med team rushed up to Gauche and Droit, but they both pointed toward the Black Queen. The team almost grudgingly started to work on her, several more pokémon joining on heal pulse duty. She started to look better, a little less ashen and skeletal.
"Well well," Captain Lark said, approaching. "He got the better of you this time. Never seen him become a pokémon."
The woman ignored him. "Moriko," she said instead.
She flinched as all of the woman's eyes turned to her, speared her.
"Where is Russell?" the woman asked.
"I…" She looked at the med tent. "I think he's in there, resting."
She nodded. "He needs to be moved. He has the darkwater in him, the god's blood. My enemy will come for him. It calls to him."
"…Say again?" Lark asked slowly, his subordinates all flinching at the tone.
The woman didn't notice. "He's coming."
Lark whirled and began speaking urgently into his pokédex; several of the med techs took off into the camp at a full run. Jumpcraft engines started powerup cycles somewhere in the landing clearings beyond the trees.
"Evac is over there," the suicune said, nodding toward the noise. "Come on, 'twos, I bet we're on the annoyer team." She trotted off, Gauche and Droit leaping into the air and away.
"Let's go, or we're not gonna get a good seat," Linden piped.
Matt looked at Moriko, who shrugged. "Give me a minute. I'll meet you there."
Moriko sat and watched the woman, the pokémon glowing with sunset colors as they healed her, the cuts shrinking and drawing closed. One by one they were finishing up and leaving to look for their trainers.
"He had Russ for hours," Moriko said to her, when it was just the gallade left, tall and severe with arms like ceramic swords. "Why didn't he drain him then?"
The Black Queen grunted as a bruise faded, her extra eyes starting to thread back to her face. "He did. He didn't finish. He likes to savor the moment."
Moriko closed her eyes. I'm sorry, Russ. I'm sorry. "Russ was bait," she said to the woman.
Rangers were grabbing equipment, leaving the tents behind.
The woman looked at her.
"You left the darkwater in him. You did it to draw out the Prince."
The woman watched her like she was some kind of bug, with mild interest and total disregard.
"How can you do this? And don't give me that needs of the many shit."
"I will do anything to stop him," the woman said, with an air of prophecy, of deadly finality. "The rangers have been careless of him for too long."
Moriko swept her arm out at the sea. "Did you do this? Did you summon the whiscash to trap them?"
The Black Queen laughed, and for an instant she sounded like a girl, like someone Moriko's age. "No one has that power. It was luck—the gods were with me at last." Her face shifted, her expression turning stricken. "Though... perhaps not. He... he took the giant's energy."
Gauche and Droit flew in, their bodies glowing with psychic power.
"Come with us, Moriko," Droit said. "He's on his way."
Gauche helped the woman stand, and she swayed. The gallade jumped back into her body. She wasn't completely healed; Moriko saw blood trickle down her torso through her ripped clothes.
"Moriko," the woman said. "I have a gift for you."
"Fuck off," she said reflexively.
Something glittered between the woman's fingers, and she flicked her hand.
Moriko caught it. Iridescence swirled in the polished stone. It was a keystone, a mega focus.
You should see what you're capable of, sometime, Belladonna had told her.
Droit lifted her gently, and she felt giddy for a moment, forgetting everything, as she arced into the air and over the trees with the two mewtwo and the Black Queen. It ended too soon. Gauche helped the woman onto a jumpcraft, and Droit left to perform some other errand.
Moriko watched the rangers, well-trained, well-disciplined, all on the edge of panic. Had Russ been loaded onto the medevac already?
The rangers had power and teamwork, expertise, discipline. And they were scared of the Prince. They were rushing to leave. Weaker pokémon could work together to fight the ancient pokémon, they'd said, but the Prince would just sweep them all out of the way like the tide.
Were they going to make it?
She saw fear on the young rangers' faces, people not many years older than her. The Prince was coming for Russ, coming for them, coming for all of Gaiien.
What could she do, against all this?
I will give them everything. Let their bones be my bones. Let their breath be my breath.
What will you do, surrounded by monsters?
Anything.
What had Gaiien given her? A pain in the ass, blisters, traveler's diarrhea, dead kids, sick and violent gym leaders; it had held her hopelessly behind until she had fewer badges than eighth-graders from other regions.
And yet. The wide open sky. Mountains like giants' bones. The darkness under the earth. A prayer, passed down the centuries to her. Rufus and Tarahn, Liona and Vleridin and Thana. Russ and Matt and Linden Jr.
So.
They needed to be protected. Everyone said the Gray Prince liked to toy with his prey. He had toyed with Russ. He wanted to see her. She could give them time.
She found Matt and Linden preparing to board another craft. She looked at Linden and mimed taking something out of an inner pocket. Linden stared back for a moment and then patted her coat and nodded.
Matt looked between them. "What are you thinking?"
"About misbehaving," Moriko said.
x.x.x.x.x
"Belladonna! I need a favor."
"I love when people owe me," Belladonna said, strapping into her seat. "Right now we're in the middle of what might be the second biggest supernatural crisis of third crossing history, so—"
"Do you have an unlinked mega stone?"
"'Hey Bella, I'm a grade schooler, can you spot me a two hundred thousand yen favor—'"
"The Prince is coming. I could slow him down."
"The senior rangers are going to slow him down, they have the coordination and training—"
"Bella—"
"Cousin. No games." Belladonna looked her in the eye. "No persona. Listen to me. We are going to fly to safety. If you engage him alone you will die."
"I have a secret weapon."
"Moriko, I'm an adept. There are adepts in the ranger corps and more with PRED. You're not special—"
"I have a demon master."
Belladonna stared at her for a long, long time.
She toggled the release on her seatbelt.
"…I'm listening," she said.
x.x.x.x.x
"You are going to your death," Droit told her, the psychic words gentle. "I can't protect you."
Moriko held the mewtwo's hand. Humans had made mewtwo, made them for war. And they'd protected us from ourselves, though we didn't deserve it.
"I know," she said. "But I might make it. I might make it for a little while. And that's more time for them."
"You're too young for this," Droit said.
They were flying over the waves, iron-gray under the overcast sky. Moriko let the wind blow through her hair, thought of a day under gray skies at the house by the brook.
"I expected to die, suddenly, just like my family," Moriko said distantly. "I have always expected it. Maybe it will at least be useful."
Droit set her down on a spit of land, and she felt a faint tingling as her body was wreathed in barriers.
"Fight defensively," the mewtwo said. "Hold out and weaken it, and we'll join you when we can." Droit flew away, a pale purple blur, and then nothing.
Moriko stood alone. The wind was screaming out of the north, the bushes on the tiny island all bent to its wrath, and she waited.
Not everyone could perform mega evolution. Pokémon and trainer each needed a stone, a shard of a strange mineral that could create a conduit for energy to flow between the two, the human being's vast energy flooding in and triggering the temporary form.
If you did it right. The energy could flow the wrong direction or not at all; your pokémon could go wild, uncontrolled. The stones were expensive, the human's keystone many times over. It was a thing for elite trainers, financed by leagues and tournament sponsors; who knew where the Black Queen had got hers? Top trainers were given a slow introduction to the process over multiple days by masters in a controlled environment.
Well, this was anything but that.
But she was an adept; she had shared energy with her pokémon before. And an adept ensouling a mega-evolved pokémon?
That was power, Belladonna had said.
Are you ready, Rufus?
Yeah.
She could see the smudge of the whiscash's carcass, far in the distance. She saw movement; something flew toward her, growing. Wreathed in flame.
"The Fire is coming after me," she said into her pokédex.
"We'll engage the Prince," said Droit, his spoken voice strange with the vowels too round and buzzing with a bird's grating pharynx. "Good luck."
Moriko put her pokédex away, and she threw down Rufus's pokéball. He glanced at her, trusting, and he looked out at the Fire, his own flames flaring. She held the mega focus in one hand and the mega stone in the other.
"Let my bones be his bones. Let my breath be his breath," she whispered, watching the Fire.
She thought of the Spirit of Wrath and the thread of blood that had stabbed through all her years. The devil told the truth, now and then, to sweeten the lies. "Let my rage be his rage," she said, and the mega stone shone like a star.
And Rufus cringed away.
Moriko—
There's no time! she thought, grabbing for his energy, flinging wide the path between them, her soul-fingers stabbing into him like knives.
It wasn't as easy as it was with Vleridin: she was too tall, too heavy, her bones cracking, her throat filled with ash. Steel stabbed up through her skin and screeched as it changed shape. The fire seared and tickled and she spat it out in a burning rush.
The pipes shifted on her back, and her armor grew flanged and aerodynamic. Sometimes mega evolution changed you a little. Sometimes it changed you a lot.
Stronger, lighter, finer-boned, Moriko-Rufus roared, baring her fangs, and she charged at the Wandering Fire. She lifted off, green fire streaming behind her as she flew.
She hit it like a meteor, and it fell into the water, leaving a slick of oily black blood on the surface; the water boiled, and it shot out again. She dodged the scald and let the flame build up in her chest, expelling a fire blast that exploded over the aricaust.
Flying was everything; flame streamed out behind her and out of her hands as she hovered and strafed and wove around its attacks.
"Slow!" she taunted it. "Gods, is this the Wandering Fire of legend? I could eat you, but my doctor said to avoid spicy food."
It bared its pointed teeth, fire and ash streaming off its body and its glowing curling horns, but it said nothing. Not a chatterer like the Prince.
Moriko-Rufus charged again, armored fists cracking the black spikes on the aricaust's forearms as it raised them uselessly. She pummeled it, merciless, its horns and spikes breaking and spinning off into the air and dissolving in dark light. It breathed fire and belched magma onto her, but she slapped it away or dodged or returned with flame of her own, burning as green as leaves.
It tried strategy at last, twisting her energy in a torment technique, but it didn't bother her: she had a dozen attacks, generations of certainty spilling out behind her. The Fire struck her with fists shimmering with darkness: foul play, to turn her strength against her, but it was obvious it had almost never used the technique.
"Never not been the strongest pokémon in the room, huh? Surprise!" She linked her fists and hit it hard in the head, driving it into the water again.
It was even slower as it hauled itself out of the ocean onto the little island. The spit of land had been ruined by the battle, covered in smoking glass where magma had touched the sand, and the cinders of burned vegetation.
Moriko-Rufus landed and cuffed the aricaust. She aimed a casual double kick at it, her hoof catching it hard in the belly.
"You thought you were facing the scared trainers from the desert, didn't you?" she said, driving her fist into the Fire's back as it shuffled away. "Demons! I'm ten times the pokémon you are."
It spat blood, glowering at her.
"Say something!" she snapped, her mood changing like a switch. "You followed us—kidnapped Russ—Well! Look who's laughing now!" She punctuated each thought with a blow.
The Wandering Fire watched her through its slotted goat eyes, and all at once it stood, flexing its arms, and a wave of force pushed her backward a few paces.
"You aren't ready. You are afraid," it said, in a voice like the heart of a volcano.
"Aren't ready for what? To kill you?" Moriko-Rufus licked one of her thumbs and tasted the aricaust's acrid, smoky blood. "We're a long way from there, buddy, but we'll see how you're feeling when I close the distance some."
The Wandering Fire put out its clawed hand as she charged, and it twisted.
Her vision tore. Rufus stumbled, falling, disoriented. Moriko hit the ground, yelling, twisting away from the hot rock and burning ash. She scrabbled to her feet, nauseous.
The aricaust towered over her.
"Fool child. You should have stayed away." It raised its fist, and fire surged out of the rock spikes on its arm.
Moriko jerked away at the shock of heat from the hellfire. Shit. Shit.
She ran for the ocean. Vleridin surged up and summoned water to soak her. It had boiled the sea. She didn't stand a chance.
"You will die."
Rufus lurched forward, his body twisting and shrinking around him as the mega evolution dissipated, and he swiped at the Fire. It ignored the blows; it hit Rufus in the chest with one arm and crushed him, the armor stoving in and his flames gushing out haphazardly.
"Rufus! Vleridin, we—"
Moriko—
Rufus' fist shot out, glowing with fighting-type energy. Counter.
He hit the demon in the jaw, snapping back its head with a crack of bone.
"Don't touch my trainer," Rufus gasped.
The Wandering Fire collapsed in a heap, limbs twitching and its head at an unnatural angle. Magma oozed from its mouth; dark-type energy crackled in random bursts.
It dissolved into energy. A sphere was left, roiling black and red, and it darted from side to side, fearful.
Moriko panted, watching the ball until it was obvious it wasn't going to reform.
"Rufus! Rufus, holy shit—"
The oxhaust limped toward her and nodded. He was wheezing from pain and the hits to his chest; she cracked a new bottle of potion and started spraying him down. It closed up the cuts, but he needed a real healing. He looked like he'd been in a car accident, as the car.
Moriko looked toward the horizon for the whiscash or the mewtwo and their battle, but she couldn't tell which direction was which. She was dizzy, color bleeding and receding as she looked around, and she tried to concentrate, to just breathe normally.
Mega evolution had made the whole thing weird. Why had she said all those things, why didn't she just—
Remembering the Fire, she turned toward the fainted pokémon again. There was nowhere it could hide out here. She drew out an ultra ball from her pocket. Another demon for the professors?
The energy sphere shot away with new purpose, and it met the Gray Prince rising out of his shadow.
Ｏ Ｍ Ｎ Ｉ Ｓ Ｕ Ｒ Ｆ / Down in darkness we found what sustains us / SkullGreymon
—Aug. 26th, 128 CR
Moriko awoke during the night to a pale radiance in the tent. Celeste was there, dozing, the moon and stars shining out of her glassy flanks. Outside it had grown cold, the wind swelling the polyfiber walls and the trees rustling, sharing secrets.
Moriko watched her a long time, thinking of the foal she'd watched hatch from an egg, whose first words had been "how dull". Duller than an egg?
She is what we call an old-soul.
Duller than dying?
"What are you, Celeste? …Stella?"
Celeste stirred, and she laughed. She flicked her tail, the long hairs glittering like starlight.
"Why couldn't you save him?"
Celeste looked at her, her eyes twin pearls on a skin of stars. "Oh, I did, eventually."
"You can stop the demons any time. Why don't you?"
"Not any time, and not for long. It's enough that they run. They might not if they knew how long I need to rest after using my power." Celeste regarded her a long moment. "Like most elder pokémon, I spend more time resting than battling," she added.
There it was. Moriko sighed, thinking of Vleridin's secrets. "Who did you kill, Celeste?"
"Surprisingly few for one who has seen eightscore and ten summers," she said lightly. "They were ronin in their first shedding, and I killed and ate them. They came for my herd. Turnabout. And there were a few that I killed that were not safe to eat." She pulled back her lips, unhorselike, and exposed pointed canine teeth. One of her parents had been a grimass, after all. "The rest of my strength I earned in the light of the sun and the dark of the moon and under starlight, and when death came for me I did what I had to do."
After a silence, Celeste said, "I remember when the third crossing came. I was far away, but I felt it. Nothing changed; no shift in the light or in birds' flight or in the sound of the waves, but I felt it. Like a wind, like a candle flickering in the draft from an opened door. I did not see a person of that crossing until much later, but I heard the rumors sooner, and I knew."
Moriko hugged her knees, listening, feeling history spool far away behind the celestiule. Some people liked to say that the second crossing and their kingdoms had been a more honest society, more real.
"Was it better? Was it better before we came?"
"There was more smoke then. More hardship. Famine. Too cold, too hot, too rainy, too dry. Not anymore. The third crossing is rich, and with your wealth comes arrogance. But you share your wealth. No one starves." She looked thoughtful, staring across decades. "I saw thousands starve, long ago.
"You should know that there is a price, Moriko, for living again. Never could I birth a child, and never will I. The line of my mothers ends with me. And I will join them at the heart of the world, one day."
"A woman of the second crossing we met"—gods, was that yesterday?—"said that ancient pokémon were caused by… death. Bad energy from the earth. How does that happen?"
"It is not known by any who now live. But this I will tell you: dead souls travel to the heart of the world, and they rejoin with those who were and those who will one day be. But some cannot make the journey, and they fester." She was silent. "Humans are not innocent, but… you do a great service, to destroy them."
"What did you do in the old days?"
"We ran, or we fought. And often we died."
x.x.x.x.x
The Wandering Fire and the Gray Prince fought the Black Queen all night. For all their disdain, the rangers and soldiers had watched her in shifts, white-knuckled and gasping as the camera drones picked up some dreadful blow that sent one of the demons or the mystic spinning into the air. Undocumented attacks were traded as energy spiked the aura monitors off-scale, and their field of vision narrowed as they lost drones to feedback and stray attacks.
As the sun rose, the woman in black was flagging, her ensouled pokémon pulled back to just the charizard. The Fire was resting simian-like on the wishcash, and the Prince's clothes were shredded, energy following him like afterimages. The rangers had data on their previous appearances spread over other computer monitors. Normally the gray demon would fight a little and then run, as he had in the desert, but he seemed to have enough energy at last to stand against her.
The ancient whiscash proceeded onward, oblivious, but it too was slowing. Great chunks of scale and blubber sloughed off as it calved like an iceberg under their stray attacks, exposing rotten bone and liquefied organs. An oily slick dotted with chum spread out behind it, and the sea was boiling with fish and seabirds eating the mess or each other, and even some water pokémon seemed to be trailing the fight for scraps of stray energy.
It swam on, but it was dying.
"Huge decline in aura on the ancient pokémon," one of the techs said. "Twelve milliiveys per second."
"This might be useful, to be honest," Ranger-Captain Lark said, gulping coffee. His staraptor was being outfitted for the day's flights. "That bastard is killing it. We should do this more often. Does anyone know any other mystics? Legendaries? Is Lightning Zulia around, Atlitzin?"
"Get bent, Lark," the suicune said.
"It'll be dead before it makes it to shore at this rate. Someone phone up Porphyry and tell them to chill out."
"And then we worry about our other guests," Dragut murmured.
"I was hoping we'd just mop up, but it looks like the old BQ is actually losing." Lark sighed. "Lord have mercy, I'm going to have to go out there and save her, aren't I?"
"If the Prince kills her and gets her energy we're absolutely fucked, Lark," Belladonna said sharply. "Saffron Town II no lineup no waiting. This is not the time to fuck around."
"Just banter. It dispels tension and makes me popular. We'll be out there in a few minutes."
"Imagine if he did. It would force us to take that weirdo seriously," Atlitzin said, pointed. "He's been a low priority for way too long."
"He didn't do anything for so long," Lark said, a trifle defensively.
"The dead and energy-drained kids I've been mopping up say different," the suicune replied.
Ranger-Captain Petrel: "Are the mewtwo in position?"
"Ranger-Pokémon Gauche and Droit are standing by," a monitor confirmed.
"Droit, the Black Queen's aura will reach critical coalescence in twenty minutes, please relieve her for recovery," Petrel said into a headset.
Droit's camera flicked to life on one of the screens, and drones swooped in to watch the mewtwo. The two of them used disable fields to make the Gray Prince and Black Queen disengage, and then Gauche flew in, aiming a punch at the demon.
The aura monitor spiked as he warped around her fist. Ghost-type. He struck back with shadow punch, the purple energy bursting as he hit her just under her pectoral plate, and they all winced. A flamethrower burst from her hand, the blue and purple fire licking over his body. Shields flared around both of them, multi-layered high-level battlers' screens, the hits pulverizing even with them on.
Droit was trying to persuade the Black Queen to leave, presumably psychically as well as with a knobbly hand on her shoulder. Despite her wounds she kept turning toward the Prince, mechanical, compulsive, wings flapping as she hovered. Droit pointed toward mounted rangers far out of range, who had brought a healing net for the woman and her pokéball-less pokémon.
The Prince sent Gauche flying in the wake of a huge shadow ball, and the charizard jumped in again, blue fire streaming. The gray man summoned huge pointed stones out of nothing, and dodged her flamethrowers and ferocious flare blitz attacks. The shock waves were enormous, and the Prince's attacks left jagged purple rents in the air that closed up slowly and hurt the eyes, wounds on reality.
The two mewtwo worked together, finding the rhythm to jump in and attack where the woman was on the rebound. With two legendaries and the mystic against him the tide seemed to be turning; the Prince was slowing now, aura signal declining. He fell back to the ancient pokémon, landing beside the Fire, who covered his retreat with fire blasts.
Gauche and Droit were pulling at her, but the Queen followed him, diving in to charge the two demons.
The whiscash halted, groaning a basso note that the speakers could barely express.
Aura monitors screamed. Several bugged out with integer overflows.
The whiscash was sinking—
No—
The sea was sinking.
The whiscash plunged into shadow as the sea dropped out from beneath it, and it fell surrounded by walls of water as high as mountains. The drones moved above the appalling sinkhole to maintain the feed, but they saw nothing but the absolute darkness that lurked under the ocean, and the Queen, a blue flame, a star that sped down and down.
The water collapsed.
The parted sea exploded, its pressure released, the deceptively smooth surfaces collapsing like bombed buildings.
The shock wave sent the drones flying, video feeds cutting out or transformed into whirling, sick-making blurs of color. The monitors switched to drones farther out; the splashback was a kilometer high, the spray blotting out the sun.
Deathly silent, those in the ranger tent stared at the feed for a long time. Gauche and Droit levitated helplessly above where the ancient pokémon had gone down, the ocean turned into a churning vortex as water and air equalized.
"Tsunami," Matt said, leaping up. "That will make a tsunami!"
"They know," Belladonna said, tired.
She pulled Matt down by a belt loop on his trousers and pointed toward the screen where angry colors were being projected on a map of the Lacuna Sea. Activity resumed in the tent, the captains and rangers speaking fast and urgent to one another and into headsets.
The shock wave passed over the camp, distant gunfire and a rush of wind.
Messages sent, the tent erupted with harassed phone calls as Porphyry City demanded confirmation, and the captains all replied "Yes, fucking yes," in slightly politer terms. The whole Lacuna coast was in danger. Moriko thought of the people they'd seen out on the beaches during their journey, where pokédex reception was spotty, and icy fingers clamped around her heart. Someone needs to tell them! Outside, psychics were materializing from pokéballs and teleporting away, bearers of a terrible message.
Gauche and Droit were hovering over the ocean as the vortex dissipated. On Belladonna's computer the recording of the sea opening up and crashing was playing on loop at double speed, the same instant of terrible force happening and happening.
Atlitzin touched it with one of her streamer-tails. "Every time somebody tries to cut our funding we show them one of these videos," the suicune commented. "It's quite convincing."
"People forget Saffron Town," Belladonna said. "They try to say it was terrorists or a false flag." She tried to drink from her empty mug and set it down after a clear moment of contemplation of throwing it. "It could have ended us, second and third both. Back on Terra it's a slow decline, but every year we have to fight for our lives." She looked down at her pokéball belt and laughed. "Not sure if I can recommend it."
Saffron Town had been the old Saffron City townsite that an ancient ho-oh had completely destroyed during the early days of the third crossing. The second and the third crossings had gotten along well at first, but... Saffron Town had been the main settlement. Losing it made them desperate, and everything else followed. Moriko looked at the monitor with Droit and Gauche on it: mewtwo, war-pokémon.
"Is Porphyry gonna be okay?" Linden was asking.
"The projections show a glancing hit there due to the bay, and the pokémon volunteers have been mobilized for several days because of the unusual tidal activity, but it's going to be bad. Just a ton of people there," a ranger said, his face illuminated by the computer screen. "And whoever gets hit along the Lacuna Sea. Lots of cabins and fishing spots in the fjords."
Peeping from the aura monitors.
"Incoming!" Crane said sharply into her headset.
They all looked at the body-cam monitors; the one for Gauche and Droit fuzzed and reappeared as they teleported away from the vortex.
The feeds from the drones showed the ocean boiling, deepsea silt and rocks and tar bubbling up, flung to the surface. A gyarados breached the waves, its head bent as it fired off a hyper beam at an underwater target.
The whiscash reappeared, finally, displacing water like a submarine. It was nearly broken in half, its spinal column exposed through its shredded tissue; naked ribs glistened in the sun where the rotten blubber had been stripped away.
It couldn't faint. No ancient pokémon could. No ancient pokémon could stop. You hit them until they couldn't move anymore, and when they died you burned them or covered them over with earth and concrete and tried to forget about them.
The Prince surfaced, supporting the Fire, and he threw the limp demon onto the whiscash's dorsal surface. The Wandering Fire stirred, and the two of them stared at the Black Queen, whose gyarados was glowing, struggling to take another form. Finally it receded and left the woman behind.
"Shit, she's done," Lark groaned.
"Droit, relieve the Black Queen if safe to do so," Ranger-Captain Petrel said into her headset.
"Acknowledged."
"Good news is, those two might be, too," Captain Lark said. "I thought I'd never see a yellow aura bar again—"
The ancient whiscash began to faint.
It dissolved under the demons' feet, falling upward in glittering motes. The glow spread outward, slowly and agonizingly, eating away at the daikaiju's vast bulk. But it didn't coalesce; the energy floated higher and higher and disappeared.
"What the fuck," Captain Crane breathed.
"Are you getting this?" Petrel said sharply to the ranger sitting at the aura radar.
One last transformation: the woman shifted into the charizard, not the mega form, and flapped toward the two demons. She aimed an air slash at them, the pale air-type energy scything down, and the Fire blocked it, feebly.
"Get her outta there, Droit, I've seen better battles outside elementary schools," Lark said into his headset. "Wing Alpha, Wing Delta, prepare to engage with maximum caution."
Again they heard the aura monitors spike, alarm frequencies increasing until they were shrill and continuous.
"Fucking—what now?"
The Prince was haloed in dark light; it dimmed and confused the drones' video feed, but it seemed that the whiscash's energy was redirected, coalescing after all—on him.
A pillar of shadow shot high into the sky, and when the feed cleared, the Prince—fell. He fell into the ocean, limbs writhing. The drones followed him down as he tumbled down what was left of the ancient pokémon's flank and disappeared into the sea.
Someone swore.
Lark: "Is he dead?"
The drones flew in closer. Nothing; the Black Queen was hovering, the Fire nearly collapsed. It struggled to its feet and turned slowly, turned away from the Queen to look behind it.
Something gray and hulking and armored leapt off the whiscash's back into the air. It clamped its steel jaws on the black charizard, dragging it down into the water.
The gray thing jumped out again. The Black Queen didn't.
The rangers were shouting. Gauche and Droit teleported in, Droit to the water's surface and Gauche underneath, and then they were both out again and fleeing away east.
Ranger-Captain Lark took off his headset and laid it on the table in front of him. "Holy fuck," he said quietly.
"All wings disengage, repeat, disengage, return to base," Petrel was ordering, rapid-fire.
Belladonna blew out her breath. "You got your wish, boss."
"What the hell is going on on that monitor?"
Technical talk followed this; Moriko couldn't read the swirling false colors or maps, but she could read a graph, and the way the aura plot had gone very nearly vertical couldn't be good.
"Looks like he just became our problem," Atlitzin said.
Moriko's pokédex buzzed with new PRED warnings until she gave up and turned it off.
"We've never seen the Prince's pokémon form before," Belladonna said softly, replaying the drone feed and staring at the gray and violet shape while it leapt over and over. "He could resist the Queen without it. Fuck. Fuck."
She turned, her eyes sweeping the room until she found the three of them.
"You need to go," Belladonna told them, a far cry from her manic and careless affect as a gym leader. "This isn't a joke. You are in so much danger."
"Let us help," Moriko pleaded.
Belladonna shook her head. "You could maybe have helped against the whiscash, if we'd had time to teach you a basic bombardment drill. Against the Prince you will die." She looked around at the ranger-captains giving rapid orders. "We are going to die with these spread-out teams."
"The scope of this op is fucked," Atlitzin added, joining them. "Ancient pokémon are like fighting drunk giants, they're slow as shit, and you can get out if you're not dumb. The Gray Prince is just going to AOE and fucking kill us. We need reinforcements and the champions. Come on."
The three of them left the tent, following the suicine. As they approached the jumpcraft landing, the two mewtwo flew in and touched down at a medical tent. Gauche laid the woman in black on a stretcher and removed the healing cage. A light budded off of the woman's body and formed into a gallade, who promptly began to heal her.
"M…Moriko. I hope you are well," the woman said tightly. She was covered in blood, chunks of hair ripped out of her scalp, and her clothes ragged and hanging off her thin body. A big wound in her stomach pulsed, the blood seeping out over her rigid, clawlike hand. Her goggles were gone, and her red eyes were wide and staring. Her eight extra pairs were too, migrating over her body and linked by dark, bruise-colored energy.
The human could be hurt, it seemed. Moriko felt Vleridin watching.
A ranger med team rushed up to Gauche and Droit, but they both pointed toward the Black Queen. The team almost grudgingly started to work on her, several more pokémon joining on heal pulse duty. She started to look better, a little less ashen and skeletal.
"Well well," Captain Lark said, approaching. "He got the better of you this time. Never seen him become a pokémon."
The woman ignored him. "Moriko," she said instead.
She flinched as all of the woman's eyes turned to her, speared her.
"Where is Russell?" the woman asked.
"I…" She looked at the med tent. "I think he's in there, resting."
She nodded. "He needs to be moved. He has the darkwater in him, the god's blood. My enemy will come for him. It calls to him."
"…Say again?" Lark asked slowly, his subordinates all flinching at the tone.
The woman didn't notice. "He's coming."
Lark whirled and began speaking urgently into his pokédex; several of the med techs took off into the camp at a full run. Jumpcraft engines started powerup cycles somewhere in the landing clearings beyond the trees.
"Evac is over there," the suicune said, nodding toward the noise. "Come on, 'twos, I bet we're on the annoyer team." She trotted off, Gauche and Droit leaping into the air and away.
"Let's go, or we're not gonna get a good seat," Linden piped.
Matt looked at Moriko, who shrugged. "Give me a minute. I'll meet you there."
Moriko sat and watched the woman, the pokémon glowing with sunset colors as they healed her, the cuts shrinking and drawing closed. One by one they were finishing up and leaving to look for their trainers.
"He had Russ for hours," Moriko said to her, when it was just the gallade left, tall and severe with arms like ceramic swords. "Why didn't he drain him then?"
The Black Queen grunted as a bruise faded, her extra eyes starting to thread back to her face. "He did. He didn't finish. He likes to savor the moment."
Moriko closed her eyes. I'm sorry, Russ. I'm sorry. "Russ was bait," she said to the woman.
Rangers were grabbing equipment, leaving the tents behind.
The woman looked at her.
"You left the darkwater in him. You did it to draw out the Prince."
The woman watched her like she was some kind of bug, with mild interest and total disregard.
"How can you do this? And don't give me that needs of the many shit."
"I will do anything to stop him," the woman said, with an air of prophecy, of deadly finality. "The rangers have been careless of him for too long."
Moriko swept her arm out at the sea. "Did you do this? Did you summon the whiscash to trap them?"
The Black Queen laughed, and for an instant she sounded like a girl, like someone Moriko's age. "No one has that power. It was luck—the gods were with me at last." Her face shifted, her expression turning stricken. "Though... perhaps not. He... he took the giant's energy."
Gauche and Droit flew in, their bodies glowing with psychic power.
"Come with us, Moriko," Droit said. "He's on his way."
Gauche helped the woman stand, and she swayed. The gallade jumped back into her body. She wasn't completely healed; Moriko saw blood trickle down her torso through her ripped clothes.
"Moriko," the woman said. "I have a gift for you."
"Fuck off," she said reflexively.
Something glittered between the woman's fingers, and she flicked her hand.
Moriko caught it. Iridescence swirled in the polished stone. It was a keystone, a mega focus.
You should see what you're capable of, sometime, Belladonna had told her.
Droit lifted her gently, and she felt giddy for a moment, forgetting everything, as she arced into the air and over the trees with the two mewtwo and the Black Queen. It ended too soon. Gauche helped the woman onto a jumpcraft, and Droit left to perform some other errand.
Moriko watched the rangers, well-trained, well-disciplined, all on the edge of panic. Had Russ been loaded onto the medevac already?
The rangers had power and teamwork, expertise, discipline. And they were scared of the Prince. They were rushing to leave. Weaker pokémon could work together to fight the ancient pokémon, they'd said, but the Prince would just sweep them all out of the way like the tide.
Were they going to make it?
She saw fear on the young rangers' faces, people not many years older than her. The Prince was coming for Russ, coming for them, coming for all of Gaiien.
What could she do, against all this?
I will give them everything. Let their bones be my bones. Let their breath be my breath.
What will you do, surrounded by monsters?
Anything.
What had Gaiien given her? A pain in the ass, blisters, traveler's diarrhea, dead kids, sick and violent gym leaders; it had held her hopelessly behind until she had fewer badges than eighth-graders from other regions.
And yet. The wide open sky. Mountains like giants' bones. The darkness under the earth. A prayer, passed down the centuries to her. Rufus and Tarahn, Liona and Vleridin and Thana. Russ and Matt and Linden Jr.
So.
They needed to be protected. Everyone said the Gray Prince liked to toy with his prey. He had toyed with Russ. He wanted to see her. She could give them time.
She found Matt and Linden preparing to board another craft. She looked at Linden and mimed taking something out of an inner pocket. Linden stared back for a moment and then patted her coat and nodded.
Matt looked between them. "What are you thinking?"
"About misbehaving," Moriko said.
x.x.x.x.x
"Belladonna! I need a favor."
"I love when people owe me," Belladonna said, strapping into her seat. "Right now we're in the middle of what might be the second biggest supernatural crisis of third crossing history, so—"
"Do you have an unlinked mega stone?"
"'Hey Bella, I'm a grade schooler, can you spot me a two hundred thousand yen favor—'"
"The Prince is coming. I could slow him down."
"The senior rangers are going to slow him down, they have the coordination and training—"
"Bella—"
"Cousin. No games." Belladonna looked her in the eye. "No persona. Listen to me. We are going to fly to safety. If you engage him alone you will die."
"I have a secret weapon."
"Moriko, I'm an adept. There are adepts in the ranger corps and more with PRED. You're not special—"
"I have a demon master."
Belladonna stared at her for a long, long time.
She toggled the release on her seatbelt.
"…I'm listening," she said.
x.x.x.x.x
"You are going to your death," Droit told her, the psychic words gentle. "I can't protect you."
Moriko held the mewtwo's hand. Humans had made mewtwo, made them for war. And they'd protected us from ourselves, though we didn't deserve it.
"I know," she said. "But I might make it. I might make it for a little while. And that's more time for them."
"You're too young for this," Droit said.
They were flying over the waves, iron-gray under the overcast sky. Moriko let the wind blow through her hair, thought of a day under gray skies at the house by the brook.
"I expected to die, suddenly, just like my family," Moriko said distantly. "I have always expected it. Maybe it will at least be useful."
Droit set her down on a spit of land, and she felt a faint tingling as her body was wreathed in barriers.
"Fight defensively," the mewtwo said. "Hold out and weaken it, and we'll join you when we can." Droit flew away, a pale purple blur, and then nothing.
Moriko stood alone. The wind was screaming out of the north, the bushes on the tiny island all bent to its wrath, and she waited.
Not everyone could perform mega evolution. Pokémon and trainer each needed a stone, a shard of a strange mineral that could create a conduit for energy to flow between the two, the human being's vast energy flooding in and triggering the temporary form.
If you did it right. The energy could flow the wrong direction or not at all; your pokémon could go wild, uncontrolled. The stones were expensive, the human's keystone many times over. It was a thing for elite trainers, financed by leagues and tournament sponsors; who knew where the Black Queen had got hers? Top trainers were given a slow introduction to the process over multiple days by masters in a controlled environment.
Well, this was anything but that.
But she was an adept; she had shared energy with her pokémon before. And an adept ensouling a mega-evolved pokémon?
That was power, Belladonna had said.
Are you ready, Rufus?
Yeah.
She could see the smudge of the whiscash's carcass, far in the distance. She saw movement; something flew toward her, growing. Wreathed in flame.
"The Fire is coming after me," she said into her pokédex.
"We'll engage the Prince," said Droit, his spoken voice strange with the vowels too round and buzzing with a bird's grating pharynx. "Good luck."
Moriko put her pokédex away, and she threw down Rufus's pokéball. He glanced at her, trusting, and he looked out at the Fire, his own flames flaring. She held the mega focus in one hand and the mega stone in the other.
"Let my bones be his bones. Let my breath be his breath," she whispered, watching the Fire.
She thought of the Spirit of Wrath and the thread of blood that had stabbed through all her years. The devil told the truth, now and then, to sweeten the lies. "Let my rage be his rage," she said, and the mega stone shone like a star.
And Rufus cringed away.
Moriko—
There's no time! she thought, grabbing for his energy, flinging wide the path between them, her soul-fingers stabbing into him like knives.
It wasn't as easy as it was with Vleridin: she was too tall, too heavy, her bones cracking, her throat filled with ash. Steel stabbed up through her skin and screeched as it changed shape. The fire seared and tickled and she spat it out in a burning rush.
The pipes shifted on her back, and her armor grew flanged and aerodynamic. Sometimes mega evolution changed you a little. Sometimes it changed you a lot.
Stronger, lighter, finer-boned, Moriko-Rufus roared, baring her fangs, and she charged at the Wandering Fire. She lifted off, green fire streaming behind her as she flew.
She hit it like a meteor, and it fell into the water, leaving a slick of oily black blood on the surface; the water boiled, and it shot out again. She dodged the scald and let the flame build up in her chest, expelling a fire blast that exploded over the aricaust.
Flying was everything; flame streamed out behind her and out of her hands as she hovered and strafed and wove around its attacks.
"Slow!" she taunted it. "Gods, is this the Wandering Fire of legend? I could eat you, but my doctor said to avoid spicy food."
It bared its pointed teeth, fire and ash streaming off its body and its glowing curling horns, but it said nothing. Not a chatterer like the Prince.
Moriko-Rufus charged again, armored fists cracking the black spikes on the aricaust's forearms as it raised them uselessly. She pummeled it, merciless, its horns and spikes breaking and spinning off into the air and dissolving in dark light. It breathed fire and belched magma onto her, but she slapped it away or dodged or returned with flame of her own, burning as green as leaves.
It tried strategy at last, twisting her energy in a torment technique, but it didn't bother her: she had a dozen attacks, generations of certainty spilling out behind her. The Fire struck her with fists shimmering with darkness: foul play, to turn her strength against her, but it was obvious it had almost never used the technique.
"Never not been the strongest pokémon in the room, huh? Surprise!" She linked her fists and hit it hard in the head, driving it into the water again.
It was even slower as it hauled itself out of the ocean onto the little island. The spit of land had been ruined by the battle, covered in smoking glass where magma had touched the sand, and the cinders of burned vegetation.
Moriko-Rufus landed and cuffed the aricaust. She aimed a casual double kick at it, her hoof catching it hard in the belly.
"You thought you were facing the scared trainers from the desert, didn't you?" she said, driving her fist into the Fire's back as it shuffled away. "Demons! I'm ten times the pokémon you are."
It spat blood, glowering at her.
"Say something!" she snapped, her mood changing like a switch. "You followed us—kidnapped Russ—Well! Look who's laughing now!" She punctuated each thought with a blow.
The Wandering Fire watched her through its slotted goat eyes, and all at once it stood, flexing its arms, and a wave of force pushed her backward a few paces.
"You aren't ready. You are afraid," it said, in a voice like the heart of a volcano.
"Aren't ready for what? To kill you?" Moriko-Rufus licked one of her thumbs and tasted the aricaust's acrid, smoky blood. "We're a long way from there, buddy, but we'll see how you're feeling when I close the distance some."
The Wandering Fire put out its clawed hand as she charged, and it twisted.
Her vision tore. Rufus stumbled, falling, disoriented. Moriko hit the ground, yelling, twisting away from the hot rock and burning ash. She scrabbled to her feet, nauseous.
The aricaust towered over her.
"Fool child. You should have stayed away." It raised its fist, and fire surged out of the rock spikes on its arm.
Moriko jerked away at the shock of heat from the hellfire. Shit. Shit.
She ran for the ocean. Vleridin surged up and summoned water to soak her. It had boiled the sea. She didn't stand a chance.
"You will die."
Rufus lurched forward, his body twisting and shrinking around him as the mega evolution dissipated, and he swiped at the Fire. It ignored the blows; it hit Rufus in the chest with one arm and crushed him, the armor stoving in and his flames gushing out haphazardly.
"Rufus! Vleridin, we—"
Moriko—
Rufus' fist shot out, glowing with fighting-type energy. Counter.
He hit the demon in the jaw, snapping back its head with a crack of bone.
"Don't touch my trainer," Rufus gasped.
The Wandering Fire collapsed in a heap, limbs twitching and its head at an unnatural angle. Magma oozed from its mouth; dark-type energy crackled in random bursts.
It dissolved into energy. A sphere was left, roiling black and red, and it darted from side to side, fearful.
Moriko panted, watching the ball until it was obvious it wasn't going to reform.
"Rufus! Rufus, holy shit—"
The oxhaust limped toward her and nodded. He was wheezing from pain and the hits to his chest; she cracked a new bottle of potion and started spraying him down. It closed up the cuts, but he needed a real healing. He looked like he'd been in a car accident, as the car.
Moriko looked toward the horizon for the whiscash or the mewtwo and their battle, but she couldn't tell which direction was which. She was dizzy, color bleeding and receding as she looked around, and she tried to concentrate, to just breathe normally.
Mega evolution had made the whole thing weird. Why had she said all those things, why didn't she just—
Remembering the Fire, she turned toward the fainted pokémon again. There was nowhere it could hide out here. She drew out an ultra ball from her pocket. Another demon for the professors?
The energy sphere shot away with new purpose, and it met the Gray Prince rising out of his shadow.