Hi there, FFML peeps! Some of you may remember me, some not - I was with
the original list before the address change. But anyway, it was 4 years
ago that I released the very first part of this monster epic ... and
created a lot of controversy on whether it was proper releasing such a
serious work about a fluffy anime.

And only now is it finished!

This is the very last part of the very first 'Dark' Pokemon Fanfiction.
If you are new to this fanfiction, and I'd imagine a lot of you are, then
I must INSIST that you NOT READ this chapter until you've read the
earlier parts or you will be SPOILED beyond belief if you are interested
in enjoying the series.

The Pokemon Master webpage is located at:

http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/acey/pokemon.htm

What is the fanfic about?

It is eleven years into the dark future. Join the new adventures of Ash
and Pikachu and discover the changes that have left the world in
ruins ... And discover the power of the Pokemon Masters ...

And now, without further ado, is the final conclusion ...

Ganbatte FFML!

***

Warning: This is not standard Pokemon fanfiction. It contains scenes of
violence and some inappropriate language.

*************************************************************************

                           Pokemon Master

Fanfiction by Ace Sanchez.

All parts of this story may be found at the following address:
http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/acey/pokemon.htm

Note: Pokemon and its associated characters are copyright by Nintendo,
Game Freak, Creatures Inc, and 4Kids Productions.

*************************************************************************

Part 13 - Resolutions


Blinding white light. It had seemed to wash over the city in waves of hot
brightness. Though its most intense point was more toward Indigo
Plateau's western sector, it had still managed to provide enough
illumination to make the unnatural night seem as unnatural day. And even
when the disturbance had died down as suddenly as it had come, it was
still enough to shock the hordes of people who waited down below on the
streets into a terrified but silent panic.

But darkness had once again swiftly swallowed the sun and the only light
left now was that of the several burning and crackling buildings which,
not coincidentally, were coming from around the area that the breaching
had occurred.

After watching the blinding white glow slowly fade over the city horizon,
Gary closed his eyes slowly within the deep hood of his grey, long cloak.

Minutes passed in silence on the cold, uppermost balcony of the palace.
The wind that rippled his clothes had a contrasting warmness to it,
burned by the hot rays of the sudden sunlight.

When he opened his eyes, it was with sudden resolve that he abruptly
turned around to stride back into the palace. His eyes were burning,
though he wasn't sure with what emotion. The servants waiting at the
balcony entrance looked away from him. Fear? And rightly they should.

He felt both sad and joyous.


<><><>


For a time, the wind wailed a sound of hopelessness in the background,
blowing dried leaves about the high city rooftop. Leaves that had somehow
been blown up into the upper wind currents. The cold, gritty cement floor
was chilly beneath her fingers as she sat sprawled there ... beaten.

It was too late now. Though of course, that didn't matter. There was
nothing she could have done anyway. Facts were facts, and they couldn't
change no matter how much one wished for something to be. As much to wish
the sun cold and the trees to fly.

"Pathetic, aren't I, sister?" Valdera finally opened her eyes and looked
up slowly. "What was that they said about men and women? Show a woman a
man she likes, and prepared to be shown a fool. But then, you know now
that we aren't really sisters anyway."

Mistaria looked down at her, no expression except tiredness showing on
her identical face. "If you're a fool, then I guess I'm ... we're ... a
fool." She sat down again with an air of exhaustion, but without breaking
eye contact with her. Eyes that were also identical to hers.

They said that the eyes were the windows to the soul.

A pained smile curled Valdera's lips despite herself. "You know, I
thought it was all bullshit. What I found out about Professor Oak's real
business with us sixteen years ago when he visited. Though that was the
final thing that made me decide to leave Cerulean."

"What business? I don't remember Professor Oak visiting us. I didn't even
know him back then."

"That's because he didn't see you. He was more interested in me." She
paused, the familiar anger stirring itself within her chest. "I had an
idea about what he was so interested in, but didn't have any real
knowledge of what had been going on. No real knowledge until years and
years later when I had acquired more sources. But he'd been researching
us for quite some time. You know how long?"

She could feel Mistaria's confusion through the link as she could only
shake her head.

"Since even before our birth," Valdera spat. "Oh, we were very important
to him. Very important."

"Because of the ... prophecy."

"The prophecy," she affirmed, the hatred of fate thick on her tongue.
"Throughout his life, he worked unendingly to see it come true. Maybe he
wanted to save the world from its predicted miserable end. Maybe he just
wanted glory. But ultimately, and unknowingly it is his creation now that
threatens the world. Ironic isn't it?"

Mistaria closed her eyes. "And what about us? Just how do we fit into
this?"

"We are supposedly the other half of the whole." She reached behind her
back to the old dusty diary that was held in place by her robe's sash.
"Read this." She threw it over to Mistaria who caught it without looking.
"Start on the page with the corner ripped."

"A diary?" Mistaria paused as she looked down at the worn cover.
"Professor Oak's diary." She began to read out loud as she flipped
through to the page she had indicated. "The Return of Light and Shadow.
Misty and Vally Waterflower ... I have begun to confirm my suspicions
that these two children are indeed the other half of the whole. Though
there being two of them is a puzzle that has yet to be deciphered."

Valdera laughed tonelessly. "He deciphers it all right."

Mistaria ignored her and continued. "In particular, the sister named
Vally is quite interesting. I have tested the whole family secretly with
the EDS I invented and her output differs significantly than with the
other family members. Even the twin is different, but the output on her
is equally puzzling. Though Misty's readings have more in common with the
other family members, there is still a distinct difference. Both EDS
readings are unstable when taken apart but when the two are near, the
graphs interpose..." She suddenly looked up at her, eyes narrowed. "Where
did you get this?"

"Lord Garick has a whole shrine dedicated to his late grandfather.
Interesting really, when all he feels for that old man now is hatred. But
anyway this diary is one of the things I managed to steal from that place
... though I wished I had never read it afterward."

Mistaria covered her face with her hands. "You ... you said that ... Mom
... wasn't our real mother. If she wasn't then, just who was?"

Valdera saw that a paper was about to fall out of the diary that Mistaria
was holding. "That picture."

Mistaria gasped as she looked at it. Valdera knew what she was seeing. A
picture of their father holding hands with a striking-looking, tall woman
with gold hair and blue ethereal eyes.

Whose face looked almost exactly alike to theirs.

After a pregnant pause, Mistaria asked weakly, "Who's this?"

"I think you know."

She began shaking violently, the papers rattling in her hands. "B-But ...
what happened to her? Ever since I can remember, we were with Mom ... I
mean-" her voice cut off, obviously not knowing what word to say next.

Valdera answered anyway. "No one knows. Apparently not even Professor
Oak. All anyone knows is that she went away one day and never came back.
Father took it hard. Even though he shouldn't have even been with her
with him already being married and all ... the cheating asshole."

"B-But did Daisy and the others know?"

"They think we're adopted. But I'm sure they had suspicions ... after
all, we do share at least some resemblance through father's side," she
added with disgust.

Mistaria was taking another look at the photograph, her lower lip
trembling. "It just doesn't seem possible ... that this could be real.
And then I look at this woman and I see ... just who was she?"

"I think a more accurate question would be, 'what' was she. Oak believed
she wasn't entirely human."

A completely confused look was all that answered her.

"An ... elemental spirit of some kind, he believed," Valdera offered.
"The element of Light in its purest form." Then she paused, savouring the
reaction to what she would say next. "Just like the element of shadow in
its purest form ... fathered our dear Ashura. That bastard he remembers
wasn't his father at all."

Misty could only listen on in horrified silence as Valdera revealed to
her all she knew. Which was considerable.


<><><>


General Yas awoke. The smell of steaming water was what did it along with
the groaning of men and the faint screech of sirens just beginning to
wail over the city. He blinked his eyes open, his mind still hazy. He
seemed to be laying on his side in a steaming puddle of water upon
cement. Flickering flame from a few ignited patches of rubble that lay
scattered around him provided scant light in the night's darkness. Then
full awareness came crashing back into him.

He surged to one knee forcefully, still weak from the underhanded attack,
a contrast to his overwhelming anger. He looked around the wide rooftop
where most of his men still lay unconscious among smoking puddles and
slowly burning pieces of debris. Fainted pokemon lay scattered by the
dozen. Even the two Pokemon Masters he had brought with him had been
knocked down and remained unmoving. Spotting his fallen katana, he
reached down and grasped its long hilt to sheathe it back on his belt. It
took him two tries, his wrist shaking, but he did it.

Sirens continued to wail in the distance. General Kas should be here
soon. His face flushed. Kas would be on to him harder than a brick wall.
The worst of it was, is that he deserved it. He should have waited before
intercepting. He should have known. He had grown arrogant. As arrogant as
those days long ago in Dark City when he had competed to put his gym on
the map.

Maybe some things never change.

Something sparked by his boot and he saw that it was a piece of his chest
armour that he wore beneath his long coat. Little electric charges
still caused the metal to flash black and blue.

Though anger burned within him as hot as an inferno, he could not help
but feel a disquiet at the young man's power. If anything, it had grown
over the years.

And that girl that was with him ... a Change Master. Interesting.

A feminine voice spoke up from behind him. "General, are you okay?"

He turned his head to see the blue-haired chaneller with brown eyes he
had quickly recruited on his way down here. She stood there in front of
him, the upper-city winds rustling her long black robes and clinking the
silver charms that adorned her person. What was her name again?
Cassandra. Chaneller Cassandra. She had done well, masking their presence
on the building. A top student of Lady Agatha's. And someone else that
traitor Ashura knew. He had actually saved her from his friend's attack
which had surprised him. "I am fine," he replied gruffly as he pushed
himself to his feet and straightened his coat. He glared around at the
soldiers and trainers who were now mostly conscious and pushing
themselves upright with the sound of clinking armour and rustling of
clothes. "Form up!" he called out, his hard voice sweeping over the
building's roof. "Recall your pokemon and await instructions."

Red lights flashed as they followed orders.

He turned his head to find that the two Masters had regained their wits
and fell into step behind him. "Sorry, Sir ... I-I was taken by
surprise," one of them offered. "The water ... it allowed the electricity
to affect me and Sandslash."

Yas turned to stare into his eyes. The Ground Master was unhooded, his
dirt-coloured hair free to blow about the breeze. He noticed the smooth
cheeks, the angry eyes though without experience. Sometimes it was hard
to remember that so many of them were so young. After the wars and then
after that, the many battles with, not only the rebels but also other
miscellaneous raiders, the young were mostly all they had left. He looked
away. "No apologies. If anyone is to blame for this ... this debacle ...
it is I."

He looked up and was about to estimate from the stars how much time had
passed from when they had been paralysed, when he remembered that the sky
were still covered by the dome. And even if there were no dome, the
clouds of shadows would still render them invisible.

No matter. He knew that they had been headed west toward the slums
district of the city. He just had to gather more people before he could
pursue. They could defeat Ashura. Correction - they would defeat him. He
had a weakness. His so-called friends. He would put out a citywide search
on those other Rebel Masters.

"Are we going after them, Sir?" the Ground Master asked.

"This time we'll wait for General Kas. I want no mistakes this time and
more power than we'll need. We can't allow that traitor to ruin the
prophecy."

"There is something I don't understand," Cassandra suddenly put in, her
eyes staring, haunted, at the darkness above. "If what we are doing is
so important, why hasn't Master Lance become involved in this?"

That well of doubt again appeared in Yas' mind. They had received no
orders, no prior warning from the Elite Four. They should have known what
was happening, and if not, they would definitely know now. In fact, it
was Master Lance who should have been in charge of this operation. He
knew himself as a powerful man in his own right, but he knew Masters such
as this Ashura was not in his league. But Master Lance definitely was ...
as for Mistress Valdera, who knew what she thought. She was as insane as
Master Brock if not more so.

He was still thinking on a plan of action when abruptly he felt grim
foreboding.

A sudden gust of air blew out the faint fires on the roof that provided
most of the light.

Darkness. The sound of a damp twig snapping.

"AARGAHHHHHHHHHHH!"

"Light chase away the shadows!" he heard Cassandra shout and a globe of
brightness in her palm lit up the roof. It revealed crimson mists filling
the air as several trainers in front of him were slumping forward, gaping
ragged holes in their chests where there were none before.

"What?" General Yas yelled in disbelief as he instantly began looking
around for what caused it. "We're under attack!" His hand grasped the
hilt of his sheathed sword.

A shadow flitted in his peripheral vision and he dodged to the left just
in time as something breezed by his ear. Another soldier in front of him
vomited blood as something struck him in the belly and sent him flying
from the edge of the roof. His scream was hideous as it faded away down
the building.

"It's Forbidden Pokemon!" an anguished soldier yelled in shock.

More screams and yells as the rest of the gathered soldiers and trainers
panicked. They turned in a mad rush toward the fire escape on the
opposite side of the roof from where they had first come in their ambush
of Ashura. Something began tearing at their back in a frenzy of cracking
bones and bloody dismemberment.

As General Yas stepped forward, the two Pokemon Masters by his side freed
their arms and covered his flanks. Cassandra silently brought up the
rear. No ... not Forbidden Pokemon ...

The number of soldiers and trainers was lessening. Pokemon were thrown
out from balls to protect them, but even if they weren't still
unconscious from the earlier fight, they were ripped apart as easily as
their trainers. Elemental attacks thrown just seemed to be ignored as the
dark shapes attacking weren't even affected.

And then there was no more screaming. Besides the faint sirens and the
cold city breeze, silence.

The streams of water flowing on the building's roof had darkened to an
evil red.

General Yas closed his eyes, then opened them. "Whoever you are, you'll
pay dearly for such murder."

The two figures in black, hooded garb turned to him, unanswering, as they
kicked off various ruined bodies from the edge of the roof. Their faces
were hidden by the shadows of their hoods not unlike the cloak of a
Pokemon Master.

One of them stepped forward lifting one of its hands in a fighting
stance. Dimly, Yas noticed it was wearing the black fingerless fighting
gloves of the same type that Ashura had always worn.

"Rebel scum," the Fire Master shouted as he crossed his palms out in
front of him. "Die! Fire Blast!"

The massive cross-shaped beam of fire left his hands like a comet
directly at the two black-garbed figures.

Yas narrowed his eyes. That bad feeling of his was getting worse. "These
aren't rebels."

The black-garbed figure that was closest stepped into the blast and
lifted its hands. Shockingly it caught the fire attack within its palms,
wrestled briefly with it, then jerked its arms apart. Red and yellow
sparks that was all that was left of the elemental attack flared into the
air in a bright display of contempt.

"I-Impossible..."

The Ground Master stepped forward, his brown cloak drifting in the wind.
"My turn." He reached within his clothes and removed his poke-ball which
he enlarged within his hands. "Sandslash, Slash!" he ordered as he threw
it.

Terracotta energy flared out from the ball which formed into the large
spike-backed rodent pokemon with claws as long as a man's forearm. It
flew forward using the thrown ball's momentum in its lunge toward the two
figures, growling.

This time it was the other black-garbed figure that stepped forward. In
disbelief they watched as it reached out and caught the sandslash's
wrists in each of its hands and flipped over its head using the startled
pokemon's inertia against it. In a midair handstand above it, the figure
twisted once, violently crossing the sandslash's arms with a crack, then
came down on it's reverse side forcing the sharp claws into the back of
its own neck. There was a sickening tearing sound and a splash of blood.
The Sandslash's headless torso stood for several more seconds before
toppling over with a splash.

The black-garbed figure glanced at it briefly before tossing the
sandslash's head off the roof of the building carelessly. It giggled.

The Ground Master stared woodenly at the dead body of his pokemon. Then
he cried out in pain and loss as he collapsed to his knees.

General Yas took a step backward. He now had some idea of who these
people were, but he didn't want to believe it. He couldn't. To do so
would undermine his very beliefs and make his whole life that he had
lived past Dark City a mockery.

Someone stepped in front of him. Chaneller Cassandra.

"General ... We'll hold them off."

He looked past her at the two black-garbed figures once more. They had
lowered their stances as if ready to pounce. Obviously they were through
playing with them now. With the soft hiss of sliding steel, he withdrew
his katana from its sheathe in one smooth motion and slashed the air with
it once. His mouth tightened in determination. "We will all hold them
off." Though he knew that what he said was just a dream.

One thing was now different. Now he was looking forward to General Kas'
intervention. But where in Hell's shadows was he?


<><><>


The horses were snorting nervously, wisps of fog escaping from their
nostrils in the cold air.

General Kas eyed the pitch-black horizon of shadow with deadly vigilance,
his large gloved hands tight on the reins of his apprehensive mount.
He and a company of soldiers had received an alert from the guards that
indicated some trouble at the edge of the dome, so after leaving
General's Butch and Cassidy group behind, they had ridden hard to the
southern outskirts of the city to investigate. It had been somewhat
difficult to press through the large crowds of people, but with efficient
dispersing by the soldiers they were able to continue on their way in
undue time along backstreets and roads.

When they arrived, he had spotted nothing out of the ordinary. Lord
Garick's protective dome still held fast. Out here past the outer
residential areas, the urban development was more scarce, there being
more trees and plant life than man-made buildings or roads. The damp
longish grass they're mounts stood upon swayed in the chill breeze,
coloured dark-grey in the shadowed air, at least until it joined the dome
somewhere out there in the distance, where it was just black.

But they had just been about to turn back to the city to resume the
search for the rebel Masters when the spectacular elementary light storm
had stopped everything.

After that, there was nothing that was going to stop him from galloping
back to the city as soon as possible.

Except maybe, something that had suddenly caused the man in front of him
to fly off his horse and fly backward in the air screaming as he was
sucked into the black abyss of the dome wall. His scream had been
abruptly cut short as his body disappeared into the shadows.

General Kas stayed utterly still as he continued watching the horizon.
His men looked on in apprehension. Even though they and their horses were
still quite far away, and the protective dome had been completely black
and opaque when it had first been formed, he thought he could now see
slightly through it, as if it was gaining more and more transparency as
time passed.

A muffled girl's cry came from behind. General Kas turned around to glare
at the soldier who was holding the young girl they had captured earlier
captive atop his horse in front of him. "Tie the little bitch's gag
tighter," he growled as he shifted his black gaze to the girl herself.
She looked about fourteen or fifteen and had long brown-black hair and
brown eyes. What made her suspicious was the green forest cloak the girl
was wearing, the type of clothes that a Rebel Grass Trainer wore.

This time a muffled protest came from their other captive as the soldier
obediently tugged the girl's gag tighter forcing her to her expel a
breath in pain. General Kas just nodded and the black-haired boy, hands
tied together and attached to the same horse to be dragged along, was
punched in the stomach by one of the other soldiers. Blood dripped from
behind the boy's gag but he didn't cry out, only releasing a tight breath
at the powerful blow.

The two had been found just a little shy of the city outskirts as they
passed through. A quick search of the area revealed they had come from
the sewers. The sewers were at one point connected to the Victory Road
tunnels. Therefore these two must be part of the invading rebel group. He
would interrogate them on this later - painfully.

Just now though, he was more concerned with the state of the black
barrier that shielded Indigo City from harm. Outlines of terrifying dark
shapes flitted about in the horizon behind the barrier.

A slight beeping noise from his coat pocket almost startled him. Angry
from the surprise, he ripped out his handheld communicator and activated
it. "Kas speaking," he barked abruptly. "This had better be good."

For a moment, all he could hear was the scratchy sound of static... and
something else in the background ... high pitched. Screaming? Then a more
familiar voice spoke up, though what wasn't familiar was the exhausted
tone full of anxiety.

"Kas? Kas? Where the hell are you?" the voice shouted. "Are you back in
the city yet?"

"Yas?"

No response now, just static.

He yelled louder, "What the hell is going on over there?"

Static, then, "I-I've been betrayed! I think ... sentinel ..." More
screams filtered into the communicator. "You're not in the city yet? Get
here *now*-" The communicator went dead before he could say more.

Kas narrowed his eyes as he jammed the communicator back into his pocket.
"Men, prepare to move out!" he bellowed, as he checked the fit of his
mace attached to his belt. "Trouble back home!"

Thunder sounded as hundreds of hooves stormed away north back to the
city.

When all that was left in the city outskirts besides trees, grass and
dirt roads, was silence, a large muscular shape lifted itself up from
lying prone on the ground.

Angry mahogany eyes glowed bright in the dark. "General Kas," Bruno mused
as he cracked his large knuckles. "I believe that's one more favour I owe
you."

He took off in a run after the small army, maroon cloak billowing behind
him, the ground trembling beneath the heavy steps of his boots.


<><><>


Elsewhere, north-east toward the other outskirts of the city, in the
backyard of a house, Erika leaned against the wall of the half-collapsed
garden shed from where she and Giselle had run to for cover. The Grass
Master had just ripped off her deep green hood, spitting out green blades
of her namesake as she did so. "W-What was that?" she stammered out
rhetorically, looking up at the dark night sky. The clouds trapped within
the dome above were still slowly settling from the enormous crack in the
dome that had erupted when it seemed like the sky was breaking. It
ridiculously reminded her about that old nursery rhyme ... about some
foolish pokemon who believed the sky was falling.

Beside her Giselle was staring off into the distance toward the city
centre, a dishevelled hand cupped above her eyes. "Wow," was all she
could say. Swallowing nervously, she continued breathlessly, "I'm not too
familiar with recognising Mastery work when I see it, but that light ...
the fun must have started already."

Erika pushed herself upright from where she was leaning and dusted her
cloak off from the dirt and loose bits of foliage that had scattered over
them like a sandstorm when the storm had been at its peak. "That must
have been Misty's sister..."

"I didn't know Daisy, Violet and Lily were so powerful."

"Not them, lackwit. Her twin ... Valdera. You know her, she tried to kill
you once some time ago on one of your missions."

Giselle laughed. "I know. I was just having fun. And I wouldn't be
surprised if a woman didn't want to kill me - out of jealousy."

Erika coughed discreetly at that.

But a worry line suddenly marred Giselle's perfect forehead as she
reached into her lab coat pocket to lift out her EDS. She fiddled with it
a bit. "I've got to admit though ... that storm ... I haven't seen
readings its like since dear Ash blew up our home ... if I knew about
this back then when Val caught us that time near Fuchsia, maybe I should
have been more scared."

While Giselle was busy, Erika looked around if the coast was clear.
The night had calmed down again, and there was no one around on the
suburban road at the front of the house except for a rolling tumbleweed.
After pulling her hood back over her head and tucking a few stray wisps
of blue-black hair back into her cloak, she pushed on again this time in
a faster jog. "You can analyse that later, but like you said, the fun's
started," she declared, staring west toward the city where the light had
first originated. "We better hurry." Giselle gave her an irritated look,
dropped her device back into her coat, and followed.

For a time Erika led the way, being careful to keep to the shadows along
the foot path among leafy hedges and overhanging front gardens and trees.
The area seemed deserted, but she remembered the patrol that had passed
them earlier and made sure to keep alert. And for some reason she just
had the feeling that someone was watching them. Then again, ever since
they had started on this extraordinary quest with Misty and Ash, that
feeling was not an uncommon one. She should have grown used to it.

What was not common now, was the oppressive silence not including the
sounds of their steady breathing and the tapping of boots and the
clicking of high heels. It was as if they were the only two people left
in the world. Before there had at least been the faint sounds of many
people celebrating in the city, but now there was absolutely none, as if
the light storm had scared everyone into forced muteness. There was also
a slight texture to the air, she could feel, a denseness ... that told of
a coming storm ... what kind of storm, she wasn't exactly sure. Which
didn't make much sense when an actual storm had concluded just several
minutes before.

Thinking on those disquieting thoughts, Giselle's voice almost startled
her when she spoke up from behind with uncharacteristic nervousness.
Maybe the strange silence had been getting to her too. "I wonder if
everyone got inside safely. Well, we know that Misty must have made it in
judging from the light show - those two always did rub each other the
wrong way - but I wonder if the rest did ... that hottie Ash, Bruno, his
son ... my little sister."

Erika shook her head within her hood, but was glad for the distracting
conversation. "I can't believe you, Giselle," she said with some
exasperation. "Do you really like Ash, or is it just a point with you to
go after any male you see? He's already got enough problems with his
love life without adding *you* into it."

After a suspicious period of time, it was a throaty laugh that answered
her. Erika jerked her head back briefly to see Giselle's brown eyes
glowing, a wicked smile on her red lips. "You actually believed that I
could hold a tendre for dear Ash?" She laughed again with genuine
amusement. "Of course not! I knew from the first time I saw him, all
those years ago at Pokemon Tech, that there would be nothing but problems
with a boy like him. And even back then, dear Misty seemed to stake claim
to those problems."

"But why then with all the flirting?" Erika was a bit outraged.

"Oh, you know how I love to tease! Jealousy is such an amusing emotion.
Besides tweaking Misty's nose, it also helps dash my little sister's
hopes ... hero-worship is all good and fine, as long as it doesn't get
disgusting." She frowned then at a thought. "But then Ash was no fun.
He's too dense to even know what flirting is."

"Maybe he's just not interested." At the resultant indignant huff, Erika
smiled knowing Giselle couldn't see it from behind her. Though Erika had
found out a lot about Giselle's inner thoughts and now knew her not to be
such the shallow woman she at first came across, it was comforting to
know that at least there was some shred of normalcy returning in
the female doctor's arrogance.

They fell to silence again. At least until Giselle brought up the thing
that Erika had strongly hoped she'd forgotten. "Okay, you know a lot
about my life-story ... I think it's only fair for you to talk about
yourself now."

Erika stubbornly remained silent, not even letting out audible breaths of
air as she jogged now.

"You hate men, right?" Giselle stated knowingly.

"I ... do ... not ... hate ... men," she gritted out, using anger as a
shield over the hurt her sudden memories over the subject caused.

Giselle's voice suddenly turned serious. "Maybe you should talk about it.
If you let it stay inside you ... it would be like a splinter that wormed
its way inside your finger. It stays there ... and it hurts more and more
and more ... until it's finally removed. I didn't realise it was like
that, until I talked about my problems ... keeping the secret inside of
me."

Erika sighed.

Hearing it, Giselle grew encouraged. "Something about the problems with
my emerging gift nothing compared to yours?" she prompted.

Erika sighed again and slowed abruptly to a walk, removing her hood again
as she did so. Giselle just managed to stop from colliding into her and
stepped up to walk side by side with her instead. "I've never told anyone
this before ... not even Misty."

Giselle nodded attentively.

Dark melancholy thoughts welled up within her mind. The familiar feelings
of five years ago made their presence known. It felt like a vice was
crushing her lungs. "You know about the year of Return ..." Darkness
clouded her vision. "The year it all started ... when Giovanni - may his
soul never rest - upset the balance." She turned a sideways look at her.
"You must have been about fifteen or so then."

"Fifteen and a half," Giselle said, as if the half was vastly important.

"You know that after the Returning ... our potential as humans had been
released. Released when we had no right to. The Gods, or who knows what,
had stripped us of it long ago and I doubt we were ever meant to have it
back. We dubbed creatures of the elements as pokemon. What we didn't know
was that us humans were creatures of the elements as well ... just
forever sealed."

Giselle was thoughtful. "The reason for which we've discovered these past
several years unfortunately. We're just lucky that only those still
particularly strong with the trait managed to 'evolve'. If every human
had gotten command of some element, I doubt the world would still be here
by now." She let out a sad laugh.

"Anyway," Erika interjected, "you were fifteen and a half. When did you
start changing?"

"Around sixteen. Just like everyone else. We discovered it was like a
second puberty."

"Exactly. At least you had a little time. Guess how old I was at the time
of the Return."

Giselle didn't even blink. "Your file says you're twenty-six now, so you
must have been around twenty-one - my age." She bit her lower lip in
thought. "Your ... gifts ... must have begun to emerge immediately."

Erika closed her eyes. "Exactly. I had a fiance then ... he had just
asked to marry me."

"Really?" Giselle blurted in complete surprise. "How come I never heard
of him then? What happened to him?" Then a cloud crossed her features as
an obvious feeling of dark premonition seemed to sweep her. "On second
thought I don't think I want to know."

"You were the one who was so eager to know about me," Erika said
unmercifully, as much as to herself as to Giselle. She turned to look at
her again. Giselle's naturally pale skin seemed even paler, as if someone
had added water to her usually milky complexion. It was obvious even
underneath the smudges of dirt over her cheeks. "You've hidden it, but
you do have affinity for the earth ... with your Ground Mastery ... you
must be able to manipulate the terrain we walk on ... maybe even the
nature of yourself to more closely resemble your element. I've seen more
than one Ground Master to be able to protect themselves with the changing
of their skin to stone. Tell me, what do you think my gift allows to me
do?"

"Manipulate Grass ... flora, anything to do with plants, gardens ..."

"But what about my own nature?"

"Well for one thing, you wear those perfumes, when you don't need to."
Giselle smiled a small smile. "You naturally smell like the flowers you
work with."

The humour failed to pierce her dark melancholy. Her resentment over
herself could be submerged, if briefly, but never forgotten. "More than
three quarters of all Grass Pokemon possess a dual nature. It just about
is an actual trait of the Grass element. Tell me, what is this nature
that most of these pokemon have?"

Giselle blinked. Then gasped, her mouth moving, but no words coming out.

Erika stopped walking completely, the darkness seeming to rise up around
her due to her quiet anger. Anger at herself, anger at fate, anger at a
world that pushed its inhabitants to a life of love, then perversely
punished a person, refusing it that life. Her green eyes would be glowing
she knew, her elementary nature uncontrollably rising within her
dangerously - she could feel the sweet power within growing so that her
skin tingled with it. She didn't notice Giselle unconsciously step away
from her in apprehension. "That's right. I am poison. And I cannot
control myself as would a Poison Master can do. How can one control the
nature of oneself? As if a flower could suddenly decide that it was
possible to fly. As if the poisonous leaves of the plant hemlock could
suddenly decide itself to be edible." She closed her eyes briefly,
remembering the guilt, letting it wash over herself in painful waves. "I
killed my fiance. There is no nice words for it. Of course I didn't mean
to kill him, how could I kill the man I loved?" Her soft voice cracked.
"But I killed him."

She fell to silence. Shadows passed over them and the night from the
above moving clouds. The tall dim lamp posts that lined the street they
were following gave a haunted look to the houses and trees around them.

Giselle hesitated. "Erika ... I don't know what to say-"

She finally looked at the doctor. There was uncharacteristic compassion
in her eyes. She forced herself to smile. "You don't have to say
anything. I was resigned to myself long ago. What is suffering to a
woman?" She gathered her long green cloak about herself and prepared to
continue walking once more when she caught a dark shape at the corner of
her eye up above and behind them. She wouldn't have even noticed it if
she hadn't been so distressed she had been looking at everything and
nothing. It was crouching atop one of the many tall lamp posts that were
the street lights. A leaning back and a tenseness in those squatting legs
warned that it was about to leap down at them.

"Giselle, move!" she screamed, pushing a startled Giselle out of the way.
Though she couldn't see the dark figure above them clearly, in fact it
being just a shadow, she somehow knew it had hostile intent. In the same
way, she knew this thing was incredibly dangerous. It was fortunate that
her unhappiness in remembering unpleasant memories had left her with an
excess of elemental power bottled up within her. "Razor Leaf!" she
shouted, as she furiously backhanded the air in front of her with her
right arm, fingers outstretched. Her cloak arose up around her in a
powerful gust of wind as the green energies coalesced in a split-second
about her fingernails that then shot forth diagonally upward in a wide
spray of glowing, green, shrapnel-like foliage.

Darkness flashed. The top of the tall lamp post was suddenly shredded
apart into numerous jagged pieces as if it were made of paper and not
steel. Hot steaming metal fragments hissed as they began to fall about
the street.

"What the hell, Erika, what are you doing using elemental-" She was cut
off with a gasp as in her peripheral vision she now noticed the person
behind them when they had turned around. It was dressed in black
robe-like garb but with its head covered by a deep hood, face hidden
within its shadows, as if it were a Master.

Erika spun around, her cloak whirling. Just as she was launching
another attack, it immediately crouched and exploded directly at her, its
booted feet smoking in a slide, right arm bent backward, the left
stretched to the front, gloved palm outspread in her direction.

Reflexively, instead of releasing her attack, Erika forced her hands
together with a green thunderclap forming her ebony staff and moved
desperately to block. However the relieved thought that she had defended
in time was shattered in the same way the centre of her staff shattered
when the sliding palm bow incredibly broke through to strike her in the
stomach. She didn't even have time to feel the unbelievable pain before
she was stricken further in rapid succession by a right-handed palm blow
to the side of her face then a roundhouse spinning kick that lifted her
into the air.

But before the figure could finish her off with a final blow, Erika was
surprised to see Giselle suddenly behind it, locking its elbows with her
arms in a tight pincer hold. Instead, Erika arced downward, bounced once
upon the street, then slid several feet away on her back before momentum
ran out. The incredible damage she had taken almost forced her to black
out, but she struggled to remain conscious, the blue-black patterns of
the sky above her swirling around in her scattered vision.

The sound of Giselle struggling with the person came to her then, after
which the noise of someone landing next to her then sliding away. Erika
groaned and pushed herself to her side to see Giselle crouched behind
her, brown eyes blazing in confusion. "His ... fighting style," Giselle
gasped, a trickle of blood running down her lip, "did you see it?"

Pain lanced in her side and she let out a soft scream as she covered it
with her hand. A rib was definitely broken. "I-I think I felt it more,"
Erika offered weakly as she followed Giselle's gaze to their attacker.

The black-garbed figure again lowered itself into the stance that it held
just before it had attacked her, left palm forward, the right arm
trailing behind, elbow bent. Once again, it thrust forward, boots
sliding, small clouds of street dust flying in its wake.

This time it was attacking Giselle.

Ignoring the agony in her side, Erika gathered as much elemental energy
as she could in such short time, then sprang to her feet, backhanding the
air on front of her. "Razor Leaf!" she shouted again, this time sure she
would connect.

Unbelievably the person in black-garb ignored the attack, still sliding
forward directly at Giselle. Erika gasped as the extremely sharp leaves
just seemed to slide around the black-garbed figure as if there was some
slight repelling force to deflect them.

Giselle blinked in surprise at how ineffectual the blast was, then was
suddenly franticly defending as the man reached her and began complex
hand and arm strikes. She could only deflect every second or third attack
and panted as each blow that was on target broke through her defences.

Erika swiped a short lock of blue-back hair away from her face then was
sprinting forward to help when Giselle managed to land some counter with
her forearm slipping a palm thrust awry. A sudden twist of her body
allowed her a brief opening to the figure's centre which she took
advantage of with a sudden sideways kick with the toe of her high-heeled
shoe into its crotch.

However a dumbfounded look appeared on Giselle's face when the
black-garbed man barely paused before spinning in a high kick which
caught her on the jaw sending her flying away to collide into a tree by
the side of the street. She slid down its thick trunk, stunned. "That ...
that's impossible!" she stammered weakly.

Erika ceased moving forward. She frowned and studied the figure again. He
was slim - the hooded garb that the man was wearing was somewhat loose -
but at every movement that he made, it showed the lines of a slender
though muscular body. He was also somewhat taller than either she or
Giselle, probably standing at a few inches under six feet. Abruptly she
let out a surprised breath of air as she took a closer look. Was that
binding at the man's chest, visible through a gap in the garb?

A giggle escaped from underneath the dark hood.

What the hell?

The hood was ripped away with one gloved hand.

It revealed a woman's face, her shoulder-length red-brown hair
now free to glide about her neck. Though a childish smile shaped her
dark-red lips, there was an evil glow to her brown, almost black, eyes as
she stared at them with contemptuous amusement.

"Good grief ..." Erika let out a breath in recognition.

The sound of a stick snapping behind them reflexively made her turn
around.

Another black hooded and garbed figure stood there upon the street. The
hood was also thrown back to reveal another woman, this one with
light-blonde hair and creepy green eyes.

Giselle was looking at them both, her head twisting this way and that.
"I always wondered what became of Gary's Cheerleaders."

Erika just ripped out and threw one of her green poke-balls as fast as
she could. "Scyther, Fly now!"

"Saiii!" her green, mantis-like pokemon cried as it flapped its
wings to take off. Jumping up to grab its hind legs with both hands as it
passed over her head, they took off.

"Giselle! Grab my legs!" she shouted. "We're getting out of here!"

"You don't want to fight?"

"Their fighting style! You know whose it is! So we're getting the hell
out of here!"


<><><>


Two figures in long, grey, over-cloaks and light armour raced along the
city street, dodging various crowds of panicked civilians, most of whom
were running toward cover of buildings. One had a short bob of aqua hair,
the other with dark-blonde hair tied in a ponytail.

"That way!" Butch rasped, his voice even more hoarse than usual as he
pointed at a distant black-cloaked man dart into an alleyway between two
high-rise blocks about forty feet away.

Cassidy spotted him and smiled grimly. "That's got to be him!" She
checked her poke-balls attached to her belt and her sheathed broad sword,
then sprinted faster after their last glance of the fleeing figure.

Butch followed at her back as she roughly pushed past yet another
frightened-looking woman blocking the sidewalk, then barrelled through a
tight group of other men and women, knocking more than a few of them off
their feet. He took a brief glimpse back at the sprawled people. "Strange
isn't it, that despite these people all panicked and fleeing after that
Mastery storm, they're all more quiet than usual? I would have expected
ear-deafening screaming at the very least."

"You want ear-deafening screaming? Just tell a woman you like her,"
Cassidy quipped as they finally reached the mouth of the alley and
sprinted within, jumping over a few overturned garbage cans and
frightening away a pack of rattata feeding on the smelly rubbish.

"Why do I have to do that?" his scratchy voice replied behind her, " when
I can hear it from you by raping you harder than usual?"

"You only wish it was rape, you frog-mouthed fool," she growled as she
reached the end of the alley and quickly looked both ways. "There! He
went left past those ruined flats toward Fourth Street and the abandoned
construction zone!" She could just see the black-cloaked and hooded
figure dart around some fallen lamp posts and various road debris.

"How do you know that's even Ashura?" Butch asked as they resumed the
chase.

"I saw his eyes underneath that hood," she said, breathing hard now. They
had been chasing him for already quite some time. "Only one person has
glowing golden eyes like that."

"How about Mistress Sabrina?"

"Sorry, I didn't see a pair of tits on his chest," Cassidy replied dryly.

"What a shame."

They finally reached the abandoned construction zone and skidded to a
stop, dust flying from the old road, looking for any sign of him.
Everything was dreadfully silent except for the sounds of their tired
expelled breaths and the faint wail of sirens behind them toward the
city's centre. As Cassidy looked around, the cold wind raising goose
bumps on her face, she was slightly spooked by the forbidding nature of
the place. There were various wrecked hulks of old construction machines,
crumbled cement blocks all throughout, half-finished buildings, dark
empty places beneath crevices and grey, withered spider webs in just
about every corner. Her nostrils crinkled as the smell of old mould and
musty dirt wafted along in the breeze. She remembered that this area was
where the Pokemon League were building a new elemental stadium until work
stopped on it when the Dark Wars erupted. Now it was just a place where
murderers probably liked to hang out.

She liked it.

"There he is," Butch croaked and she looked where he was pointing to see
a shadow slip into the entrance of one of the only actually completed
buildings in the lot - a multi-levelled cement car-park structure.

"Let's go. We've wasted enough time," she spat out, then ran over to the
ground floor of the building, following the long, cracked
half-dirt-half-granite road that led to its entrance.

When they got there, there was a red and white boom-gate blocking their
way. It was attached to a small compartment that was probably supposed to
house a guard, but all it actually housed was sticky cobwebs and old
dirt. Rather than walk around it, Cassidy drew her sword and slashed it
once, then kicked it away with a powerful roundhouse before the detached
gate could fall to the ground.

As they walked toward the centre of the car-park's ground floor,
Cassidy's sword still drawn, the sounds of their footsteps echoing around
all the empty space around them, they could suddenly hear a soft tapping
on the floor above.

"There," Cassidy said, her eyes spotting the ramp to the next level on
the opposite end of the floor, half-hidden by various cement support
struts that were evenly spaced about the area.

They ran quickly across and up and around the ramp. But when they reached
the next level, there was still no one. Just another abandoned floor of
the car-park. Although now they could hear the tapping above their heads
once again.

"What the shadows," Butch rasped softly.

"Just shut up," she cut him off. "Over there." She indicated the ramp to
the next level again on the opposite side of the floor.

This continued yet again when they ran up that ramp too, no one there but
sounds above, and then yet again, and again. Cassidy was beginning to
feel incredibly frustrated when abruptly they were up the last ramp and
there was no more roof above them. They had actually ran up all the
floors of the car-park and reached the very top. Cassidy's shoulders
heaved as she breathed hard after all the running.

But they were finally rewarded. The black-cloaked and hooded figure
they had been chasing all this time stood there, his back toward them,
staring out toward the centre of the city. Staring where the tower of the
white-marbled Palace of the Elite Four stood among various dark
skyscrapers, in front of a horizon made up of dark-clouded skies of
shadow.

Cassidy reached within her over-cloak and retrieved the object that
Sabrina had given her earlier. She grasped the night-black ball in her
free hand, the other still holding her drawn sword. This was going to be
too easy ...

"Prepare for annihilation," the figure said, still with his back turned.

Cassidy immediately felt a sinking feeling.

Butch groaned.

A sinister female voice from behind them coming up the ramp said
sultrily, "And make that double."

A white panther-like persian uncurled itself from the shadows to their
left and growled at them, red jewel on its forehead gleaming in the
reflected lights from the city.

The black-cloaked figure spun around, ripping off the hood to reveal
bright blue hair over shining, green almond eyes. A pair of sai knives
appeared, spinning, in his fists. "I can't believe you guys actually fell
for it!" James laughed gleefully. "I mean, *we* would have actually fell
for it if someone did it to us." Laughingly, he flicked a switch on a
cord with a twist of his elbow and two small light-bulbs, like christmas
decorations, that were attached to his eyebrows lit on and off with
yellow light.

Hot fury was boiling up in Cassidy's face, and she could feel her cheeks
turning red. "YOU!" She threw the black poke-ball with disgust on the
ground and grasped the hilt of her sword in two hands.  "This was a
complete waste of our time!"

Butch also drew his matching sword from the sheathe at his belt
with a long echoing ring and slashed the air testingly a few times before
turning to face Jessie behind them. "I knew something was wrong, Cas, but
as always you were too eager," he rasped in annoyance, his maroon eyes
narrowed. "But this won't be a complete waste of time when we dispose
once and for all of these three fools."

Jessie let out a trilling laugh and tossed her red ponytail, her
dark-blue eyes flashing. "You two are so amusing. I think we might even
let you live before we find out if Fuchsia is still standing so we can
collect the money posted on you ... the notice did say 'dead or alive'
after all. I'm willing to be lenient."

"You don't even have a pokemon!" James added as he threw away the black
cloak behind him to be caught by the upper-city wind and fly away to
drift on the wind's current. Underneath he wore his usual black ninja
garb just like his partner. "I bet even Persian could have his way with
you!"

"Perr ... what do you mean, 'even'?" Persian hissed angrily.

"That's right," Jessie mused, a finger tapping her chin. "You don't have
any pokemon now? We killed your last one ... or maybe because of that
silly League rule that civilians and incompetents are not permitted to
handle them?"

Cassidy glanced at their white persian. He had lowered his centre of
gravity in preparation to pounce, black vertical-slitted eyes narrowed,
its long tongue licking its chops. She tossed her blonde ponytail
contemptuously and laughed loud in irony. She let one hand let go of her
sword and reached to the back of her belt. "Oh, we have a pokemon all
right," she said evilly, her eyes locked to Persian. "You might even know
it ... or should I say..." Quickly she detached the red and white ball
and enlarged it before throwing it to the side to cover their flank,
directly in front of Jessie and James' pokemon. "Or should I say, you
know her!"

There was a flash of bright white light as their pokemon emerged. Another
white persian, though slightly smaller and sleeker, but with longer claws
and fangs. Her vertical slitted eyes shone green in menace and a soft
frightening growl reverberated about her throat.

Jessie and James' Persian sprung to his normal height, completely
surprised, feline eyes as wide open as they could go. "M-M-Meowsy?"

Jessie and James were no less surprised as they stared at the pokemon.
"Persian? You mean ... that's the girl meowth all those years ago?" they
said simultaneously.

But that wasn't the only surprise. Cassidy smiled as Persia stopped
growling and stared at their rivals' male persian in disdain. Her sharp
fangs slashed as she hissed in a soft female tone, "Perrr ... dirty
street meowth ... surprised to see me?"

"Per ... Y-You can talk!"

Her vertical-slitted green eyes gleamed. "I can kill too." And with
that she let out a frightening, animalistic and female roar, pouncing to
the attack.


<><><>


"You've accessed Shadow," Valdera abruptly exclaimed, interrupting into
what she had originally been saying.

Misty felt more than a little confused at the sudden accusation, when
already she had been feeling bewildered over just what her ... twin ...
had been explaining. "What?"

As the upper-city wind blew her golden hair waveringly, Valdera's aqua
eyes glowed soft as she seemed to give her a once-over. "I can see its
traces upon your hands."

Misty looked down at her hands, still encased within the blue fingerless
half-gloves she favoured, turning them up palms-first. "Shadow?" She
laughed without humour. "I couldn't access shadow if my life depended on
it."

Valdera was still staring at her hands, a frown beginning to form on her
face. "That ... pain ... I felt hours ago," she said softly as if to
herself. "It was you using it." She let her eyes rise to meet her own.

A dim recollection surfaced within Misty's mind. Of yellow-cloaked men
charged with electricity, turning blackened and dead.

Valdera's eyes that were boring into hers narrowed. "Yes ..."

Misty took a step backward in shock. The ledge her boot stepped upon
abruptly crumbled and she looked back to see she had almost stepped off
the edge of the building. She turned her gaze back. "That's impossible."

"It should be impossible, yes. After all that I've told you, you know you
are Forbidden. I am Forbidden. And Ashura is Forbidden. But you and me -
we are different to Ashura." Her slender eyebrows rose. "But what does
'Forbidden' actually mean? It's just a word. A word that humans used to
describe the elements of Light and Shadow ... but the word that should
actually be used is 'Forgotten.' These elements were lost until the
advent of dear Ashura and yours truly. The world exists in a balance ...
the elements of nature a part of that balance ... and so in turn, every
living thing in this world are a balance of the elements. It was an
imbalance of the world's elements that created this stupid prophecy in
the first place."

As Misty listened, some of what Valdera saying already known to her,
while others new, it all made a startling sort of sense.

"Every living thing is of itself, a balance. But in some, certain
elements are stronger than in others. You know this to be true because of
all the different element types of pokemon there are." Valdera then
smiled weakly. "But there were never any Light and Shadow types until
recently were there?"

Misty shook her head.

"No... and that is the problem." She stared into her eyes, the identical
gaze disturbing. "And you using Shadow is a problem. I ... am Light. With
all the pretty speeches you gave me earlier, you do want to save the
world, don't you ..." Suddenly a fleeting look of frightened
determination crossed over her face that was all too familiar.

Valdera began to step closer, and Misty felt the stirrings of a terror
she had not felt of such magnitude in her life. She didn't know if it
originated from herself or Valdera, the joined feelings too close. She
looked back over her shoulder again, seeing the distant, black depths of
the street down below.

"Ever since I felt the first suspicions, I've been running away from this
my whole life," Valdera said softly as she continued walking closer, the
long folds of her shimmering white cloak swaying in time with her
footsteps. "But as Sabrina once told me, you cannot run away from
destiny." Her hands began to lift slowly, palms first, even as her aqua
eyes began to blaze with cold blue fire.

Astonishingly, before she even realised what was happening, Misty was
raising her own hands, palms first to match her. She felt her own eyes
begin to blaze light of equal colour. Inside, she could feel the power
mounting within her, as if she were calling her element to attack. And
yet it felt different this time, as if the power was unfamiliar to her,
though she had been mastering it ever since it had manifested within her
after the day of Returning, so long ago. And at the same time, it
contrastingly felt the same, as if something else was returning within
her, something she had lost before she had even been born.

"This was always meant to be no matter how I fought it," Valdera was
saying. One tear escaped from her eye, trailing a long wet trail down her
right cheek. Barely ten inches separated them now, their open palms in
front of them, almost touching. "You are me, and I am you ..." she
repeated her haunting words from before. "Exactly what does that mean you
ask? Though I'm sure you've known it inside for some time now, since the
end of our last fight."

Misty barely felt the words form within her mouth. As amazing as it
seemed, she knew it was the truth. "We are one person ... split into
two."

She nodded once. "The Forbidden elements, Light and Shadow, turned
out to be too powerful for but one person to hold within themself
... which should explain Ashura if you think about it." She took one more
small step. Only an inch separated their palms now. "And it explains us."

Both their eyes dropped to their barely touching hands.

"Eventually, all dualities will become one."

In Misty's mind, the world seemed split into two, the two halves of it
sliding around in her vision.

Suddenly Valdera turned away explosively, tears streaming from her
burning blue eyes, long blonde hair violently whipping away along with
the folds of her cloak and robe worn beneath. "I-I can't!" she cried,
almost incoherently, before jumping powerfully away off the edge of the
building.


<><><>


It was hours ago but it had all been so confusing. One moment he had been
desperately chasing after Duplica from rooftop to rooftop after their
disastrous meeting with one of the League Generals ... the next moment
the world had gone insane.

Time seemed to stop and he had just begun to feel an enormous build-up of
power to the north-west when the dark sky above seemed to shatter in
glorious brightness. The sudden white sunlight had momentarily blinded
him, and the resultant shockwave forced him to fall to his side in
mid-stride and slide uncontrollably.

The roof's ledge in front of him had not been enough to stop his
momentum, and he had shattered through in a tight cloud of cement and
rock. After that, it was a blur in his mind as he somehow broke his long
fall by rebounding off falling rubble and various building walls.

Currently, Ash had just opened his eyes, blinking, leaning against the
base of a shuddering apartment building. What he didn't know was exactly
how long he had been out and how long since the elemental disturbance had
ceased. His mind was still fuzzy from the effects as he retraced through
his memory on just what had happened.

Thinking back on what had caused such a powerful storm, he wasn't
so much as alarmed because of its obvious deadly power, but on how
familiar that power had been to him. It felt as if it had been calling
him, calling like a siren's call.

Gradually, he was broken out of his thoughts by the faint sounds of
people running everywhere. Smoke and dust in the air caused him to cough
as he wearily pushed himself to his feet, swiping a lock of black hair
from his eyes. He was almost knocked over again by a sudden earth tremor,
the sound of cracking and crumbling cement all around him, but he managed
to regain his balance as he looked around the dark street. It wasn't as
abandoned as it had looked from up above with various people running
about in fear.

"Pikachu," he whispered to the opening of his pack behind his cloaked
shoulders. "You okay in there?"

"Chu."

"Good to hear it. Just stay in there for the meantime. It's crazy out
here."

Just then a loud crack sounded up above them and he looked up to see as a
huge chunk of the building crumble off and begin to fall. Desperately he
looked about the street for who would be in danger and noticed a woman
running toward the direct point of impact. She seemed desperate and
unaware of what was falling above her.

Reflexively, he threw a loose fold of his cloak over one shoulder and
lunged forward in a sprint, after her, his boots pounding the ground. He
almost thought he wasn't going to make it in time before he frantically
dove forward in a long arc, caught her, then hugged the woman with him to
safety as tons of rubble and debris crushed down on the spot she had just
been underneath. They rolled for several more yards before stopping and
he continued to cover her with his body as bits of cement, rocks and dust
from the impact behind showered over them. He closed his eyes as dirt
clouds glided over their bodies.

"Still saving damsels in distress, Ash? Some things never change."

"Misty?" Ash exclaimed, shock and relief welling up in his heart as he
pushed himself up with both arms on either side of her and opened his
eyes.

But it was blonde hair instead of red that met his vision.

"Almost," Valdera said with bitter humour as she lifted herself up,
pushing him back lightly to sit on his lap.

Feeling profoundly uneasy, he could only watch as she stared at
him with eyes that were so ... hauntingly the same. "Valdera ... I ..."
Confused, he forgot what he was going to say. He thought fast, feeling
foolish. "I ... Long time no see, I guess."

"I make you feel uncomfortable, don't I? ... Ash."

He recoiled, jumping back out from underneath her, then slipped in the
dirt to land on his backside.

"Don't I remind you of a girl that you once knew ...?" Her blue eyes were
shining with knowledge as she crossed her legs in front of her and
arranged her white cloak more comfortably. "Tell me ... what is the real
reason you left me three years ago?"

A sudden spurt of defensive anger burned away his awkwardness. "You know
why!" He swallowed as the familiar argument came easily to his lips. "I
couldn't be a part of that anymore. ... the League ... I couldn't
take it anymore."

She laughed bitterly. "After all this time, you still lie to yourself.
Though I can't blame you. If ever there's a professional at
self-delusion, you're looking at her ... or at least half of her." She
combed a long tendril of her hair from her cheek in a gesture that was so
familiar it was painful. "You were so lethargic, you wouldn't have cared
about all the things the League were doing ... you couldn't take it
anymore, all right ..." She suddenly pushed forward and leaning in close,
her face inches from his. "You couldn't take me looking so much like the
girl who hurt you."

But instead of pushing her away, Ash could only stare into her eyes. As
he looked into their swirling blue depths, he could sense something about
her that he had never felt so strongly before. A warmth. A realisation
that ... what? What was it about her that was so different, yet so the
same? He was so confused.

Valdera's eyes widened, obviously not expecting such a reaction. And
neither had he. "I ..." she began, "I ... can't believe this."
Surprisingly a sheen of tears appeared in her eyes. Abruptly, she leaped
to her feet, twisting a fold of her white cloak violently around
her waist.

Then she was gone. The pattering of her boots faded into the distance to
be swallowed by the ongoing wail of sirens and buildings crumbling and
people shouting.

Unmoving, silent, Ash could only stare at the corner where she had just
slipped around. He felt he should be feeling something ... guilt?

But for some reason it felt right.

"Vally!" a sudden voice called, interrupting the jumble of his mind.
"Vally, where are you going?" A blue blur with long, red hair came
running from around the corner of the building next to him then abruptly
stopped in mid-slide, almost colliding with him.

And there she was.

"Misty ..."

"A-Ash," she stammered.

Everything around him seemed to fade. There was suddenly a million things
he wanted to say to her. And a million things he didn't want to say. He
wanted to apologise. He wanted to shout at her. He wanted to cry that she
was safe. But most of all, he wanted to tell her that - no, like he had
made up his mind before, he couldn't put her through that again. But
although he had pledged to himself that he would never be so selfish
as to want her again, suddenly it just didn't seem as important. Either
way, he couldn't say a thing because he had locked up, and his very soul
felt as if it were bare in front of her.

And for some reason, to his mind's eye, an image of Valdera kept
juxtaposing alongside his view of Misty. What was it that he felt about
her? About the both of them?

Minutes passed. He looked at her. She looked at him.

Then the sound of a pebble crunching underfoot interrupted their silence
and they both turned to see someone they had never expected to be there.

"So we're all together again," Brock whispered softly, standing so still
on the street before them, the only movement was the wavering of his
longer brown spiked hair and the long cloak of equal colour being blown
about by the wind. His slitted eyes were glowing softly upon features as
harsh as stone. "How fitting to end this, like at the time it all began."

"Brock," Misty said angrily. To Ash's complete surprise, she stepped
forward protectively, blocking him with her body. "For the sake of our
one-time friendship, please stop this."

But Ash couldn't stay quiet any longer. He stepped around Misty to face
his old friend. "What's wrong with you, Brock?" he asked forcefully.
"What happened to the friend I knew, who was more like a big brother to
me ... you were never like this before."

At the sight of him, Brock's lip tightened. "You're still so naive, Ash.
It seems everyone has changed, except for you." He shook his head slowly,
his spiked brown hair floating in the cold city breeze. "You ask what
has happened to me? Life is what happened to me, Ash. I had dreams too,
but unlike yours, they were all shattered. Pokemon Breeder you ask? Not
after that bitch, Ivy, made sure I knew I would never be acceptable. I
enjoyed coming back to her and making her suffer before she died. She
certainly deserved it after the evil things she's done. Reuniting with my
family some day? Not likely after the wars made sure all of my siblings
were dead. My father may as well be with the snivelling coward he's
become. And raise a big family with a girl I loved back in my hometown?"
He said this staring hard at Misty. "Not after seeming to like me, then
going off with my best friend leaving me behind to stare at a dust
cloud."

It was Misty's turn to shake her head. "I don't believe you were. You
were in love with the idea of being in love."

A powerful brown aura suddenly surrounded his large frame. "How could
you, a pitiful deceitful woman, know how I feel?" he growled, his eyes
flashing. "I once fancied I liked you, but now is a different story. I
feel nothing for you and other women but an overwhelming hatred and a
desire to use and discard. You are all nothing to me." He turned back to
Ash. "But for you ... let's continue this where I left it before at South
Lavender ... even if you turn insane like you did then, it will be of no
use... there will be no more surprises."

"You're wrong about one thing," a new voice interrupted from above them.

Ash recognised the voice and looked up. She was standing on the roof of a
nearby low-lying building, her blue hair flying in the wind. "Duplica!"

She jumped down and joined them, facing Brock, with he and Misty on
either side of her. "Now we're all together again." She had a troubled
but determined look on her face.

The corner of Brock's lip quirked. "You're right. This can't finish
without the girl that made it possible to split you and Misty up."

"What?" Ash blurted in surprise. He stared hard at Brock who was
beginning to smile unpleasantly. "Don't push Duplica into this. She's the
only one here who's innocent."

"Ash," Duplica said hesitantly, gaining back his attention. Her brown
eyes were sad. "I'm sorry."

"But-"

"Women are all the same," Brock interrupted. He stared hard at Misty and
pulled something from underneath his thick brown cloak. "Remember this?"

Ash looked at what he was holding. It was dusty and worn with age but he
could still immediately recognise it. Red and white and with the logo of
the League on it. It was once his most prized possession. He had lost it
in the confusion surrounding the days around when Misty had left him.

It was his hat.

"Where did you get-"

Misty gasped at the sight of it. Her blue eyes began to shine with the
sheen of tears and she fell back a step. Her long red hair fell over the
side of her face as she stumbled.

Brock laughed. "It makes me wonder how she can actually stand the sight
of you after what you did."

"What I did?" Ash ran forward to grasp the shoulders of Misty's cloak.
But she shook free of him furiously and retreated several more steps
backward, sobbing, her tearful eyes now fixed upon him with a remembrance
of pure betrayal. "Misty!"

But she only shook her head in silence and collapsed to her knees upon
the street. A faint aura began to surround her.

The air began to rapidly drop in temperature.

He turned back to Brock, anger beginning to fill his blood despite his
urge to remember that this was his friend. "What did you do to her?"

"Isn't it funny how the simplest of triggers can make people remember so
much?"

"Remember what?" His eyes swivelled back to Misty. She seemed catatonic
as she sat there, her eyes full of some past horror that only she could
see. Tears streamed down her cheeks now, her arms dangling by her sides
forgotten. The forceful city wind seemed to be getting colder by the
second and the dark lightning-filled sky above began to rumble with the
promise of yet another storm.

Brock smiled even more as he stared at them. Ash's hat disintegrated
within his hand, turning to black dust which blew away in the breeze.
"You."

"No! I don't believe you!" he replied furiously as he fell to his knees
in front of Misty. "I've never done anything to hurt you, Misty." He
grabbed her cold hands. "I would never-"

Blackness. Darkness. Shadows.

Abruptly he blinked and found himself standing within a sea of dark
emptiness. Feeling profoundly confused, he stared at his now empty hands,
then lifted his eyes. It seemed as if he had woken up in a place of pure
night - there was nothing all around him for as far as the eye could see.
Nothing besides an ethereal chill to the air that was slowly seeping
through his skin to the bone.

Where was she?

He paused as he looked around again.

Maybe a better question was, where was he?

A child's faint haunting laughter echoed behind him and he spun,
startled at the sound.

Nothing. Just dark horizon.

The laugh sounded again and he turned back to where he was originally
facing. This time he saw her. In the distance, a cute little girl with
red hair in a sideways ponytail and wearing a yellow dress was skipping
away into the nothingness. She looked about five.

And very familiar.

"Misty?" he exclaimed in surprised confusion. It looked like her ... or
at least a much younger version of her.

The little girl stopped and looked back at him with big blue eyes. Her
pupils widened upon seeing him. She quickly lifted up her skirts and ran
off.

"Misty, wait!" He didn't understand a thing, but he initiatively sensed
that he could finally get some answers. After securing his cloak and
pack, he began to run after her.

As he ran, he distantly wondered about the place he was in. It was
strange. Even though there were absolutely no features about in the dark,
barren surroundings of nothing, he could still run as if there was a
floor he was standing on. He pulled a half-smile at that. Unfortunately,
the girl could too.

However it seemed as if the emptiness they were in was beginning to
lighten ... and solidify. Without even fully realising it at first, all
at once he was in the middle of a forest. And not just any forest, he
noticed. Viridian Forest. A younger Viridian Forest. The Viridian Forest
of his childhood.

Dried leaves and grass now crunched underfoot as he continued running,
thin golden beams of sunlight filtering down to the underbrush from the
high canopies of trees. The sweet smell of moist greenery gradually made
itself known to his nose. But for all that his other senses made it seem
as if he really were running within the old forest, his hearing did not
as there was absolutely no sound of wildlife to indicate it as populated.
Like there was nothing living in the forest. Just the sounds of the
noises he himself had been making. Feeling distinctly uneasy at the
thought, he pushed springy branches away from his eyes with one arm while
the other held folds of his cloak back and the strap of his pack.

As the latest batch of prickly leaves brushed away from his eyes, the
little girl was suddenly right in front of him, standing there, waiting.
Desperately he locked his legs together and skidded sideways, his cloak
floating behind him. He managed to stop just in front of her with only
two feet to spare.

Big blue eyes stared up at him, unflinching now, despite the top of her
head only reaching up to the middle of his thigh. Her little hands were
resting on the hips of her yellow dress, a cute pout on her small pink
lips. "Mister, why are you fowowing me?" Her voice was childishly
annoyed.

All of a sudden flustered, Ash blinked and scratched his head. "Um ...
err. I just wanted to ... ask you ... some questions." Close up now, the
girl's resemblance to Misty was indeed uncanny. It had to be her ... as a
child. Except one thing was different. This girl's red hair was streaked
with one long tendril of golden blonde, on the bangs on the right side of
her face.

One of the girl's slim eyebrows rose at his scrutiny. "Qwestions?"

He thought fast. "I'm ... lost. Can you tell me where I am?"

The girl looked at him suspiciously. "My mom told me not to speak to
stwangers ... but you don't look so scawey close up." She looked side to
side quickly then back up at him. "We in my fwiend's mind," she said
softly in a conspiratorial tone.

"Your friend?"

"Yeah. She not vewy happy. Happy like I am. She sad all the time." The
little girl looked down, an unhappy expression on her face.

"How come?"

"It long stowy." Then she looked up at him, eyes brightening. "But she
happy befowe! Wanna see?"

"Um-"

The girl abruptly turned, gesturing with her small hands. Ash was
surprised as it was the same sort of gestures that Misty had made when
she was using her element abilities. But it was even more surprising when
the forest to their left began fading into something different. The land
split into two and water began to flow through it in a slow moving river.
The sound of trickling water gushed as it splashed past. When Ash
blinked, it was Misty there, twelve years old, sitting on the edge,
fishing on that day long ago. She had a peaceful look on her face, but an
underlying sense of loneliness.

Her pole then hooked a ten year old Ash. In complete surprise she studied
the wet, bedraggled figure she had swung onto shore. After a short series
of events, including a scolding for the tired-looking pikachu she had
spotted in his arms, it ended with ten year old Ash tearing off with her
bike, and Misty cursing after him.

Ash winced at the memory.

But the little girl watching it with him was smiling. "She don't look
wike it, or reawise it, but she wiked that boy and his pikachu ...
excwept when he stowle her bike!" She giggled, a tinkling sound.

It was so infectious, even Ash smiled.

"Now this one is when she reawises something about the boy." She gestures
anew and this time, the area shifts to just normal forest. In this one,
ten-year-old Ash is standing up to Team Rocket for the first time with
his new caterpie. Twelve-year-old Misty is watching.

"And this one..." The little girl gives life to another memory, and then
another. Ash is smiling again as he remembers the various mishaps and
adventures they had, given life by the infant Misty in front of him.
Ultimately, images of him and Misty wrestling around at the bottom of a
Victory Road pit trap come into being, each with furious looks on their
faces, bruises covering each of them. He had even gotten a black eye.
Before finally admitting they liked each other, trust them to beat each
other up to a pulp.

"But the boy is what make her vewy sad," the girl said suddenly, softly,
her images disappearing like smoke in the wind.

Thunder rumbled roughly in the distant sky and abruptly shadows fell over
them as the sun's light cut out. Startled by the sudden mood change, Ash
looked up past the upper canopy of the forest to see thick blue-black
clouds that were not in the bright sky before, slide over the golden sun,
covering it as a hand covers a candle flame. It was as the present real
world ... a world covered in shadow. An icy wind flapped the edges of his
cloak and he could feel strands of his hair being blown about, rustling
in time with the shuddering leaves of the trees and bushes around him.

His eyes returned to the little girl apprehensively. She stood looking up
at the shadowed heavens, skin pale as chalk. There was a new frightening
darkness to her eyes as the black clouds were reflected in their deep
midnight depths. Her yellow dress was no longer bright yellow, but
instead had blackened to match the gloom around them. Her bright red hair
was dark as welling blood, the streak in it, white as coldest snow.

Without a further word, she gestured once, paused, then let her small
arms fall limp by her sides. But this time her blue eyes blazed, glowing
artic ice in the shadows cast by the clouded sky above. As the image she
wrought came to being, Ash stepped backward, one hand shading his eyes
from the now fiercely blowing wind.

Darkness flashed then formed. Misty, eighteen years old, watched by the
grassy shore as a correspondingly younger Ash stared out over the
violent rippling waves of the lake, his back turned toward her. The cold,
hard wind blew unrelentingly, rustling their clothes, even causing her to
shiver. The sky was clouded grey, no sun visible.

"Ash?" There was a growing puzzled look on Misty's face. "I thought ...
you wanted to see me."

The other Ash didn't turn around. "Hi, Misty." A few more seconds passed
before he finally turned his head, looking over his shoulder, offering
her a sad smile, the wind blowing his longish black hair slightly over
his brown eyes. "I ... just wanted to talk."

A concerned look appeared in her own blue eyes. She rushed forward and
hugged his arm. "What's wrong?"

He seemed to stiffen at the touch, then sighed, as if resigned. "Nothing
really ... it's just ... how long have we been together?"

At the question, Misty stepped backward, letting go of him as if his arm
had turned into a snake. A frightened suspicion slowly rises into her
eyes. "What ... what are you trying to say?"

"Nothing ... oh, I just ... I think I need a little time alone. You know
how you went back to Cerulean to visit your sisters a couple months back?
I think I need some time to myself too."

"You ... you want to leave me?"

"Just for a little while."

Ash watching the scene couldn't keep his silence any longer. "What the
hell? That didn't happen!" He looked at the little girl, as if to beseech
her. "I don't remember that! It's completely wrong!"

But the little girl didn't answer - she was still watching the sad scene
unfold. In it, Misty was now backing away from his alter-ego, who had
returned his silent vigil on the tumbling waves of the lake. A tear
trickled unseen down one cheek as a single question of why was stuck fast
in her mouth.

Ash shook his head and continued weakly, "It's ... wrong..."

"Well of course it's wrong."

At the matter-of-fact voice, Ash looked up quickly to see Sabrina
standing there, her twilight blue-purple cloak and green-streaked long
hair impossibly still and calm in the wake of the violently cold wind.
Falling leaves that blew around them seemed to fly right through her as
if she wasn't quite solid ... her or the leaves.

He narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean?"

As if she hadn't heard him, she continued on in that emotionless voice
she had. "But then, what you remember isn't exactly correct either."
Nonchalantly she waved a hand to the side. An image instantly appeared,
that of him and Misty by the lake, him on his knees asking her to get
married. In the same movement, she banished it with another flick of her
hand.

Confused, Ash shook his head forcefully, even as he unconsciously
retreated a step back. "That's not true. I remember that day like it was
yesterday."

For the first time in what Ash thought was probably years, Sabrina
offered a sign of emotion. A strange half-smile that seemed more sad than
amusement. "You'd be surprised how unreliable memories can be, especially
on matters of great emotional distress."

Numerous things suddenly began to start making a frightening sort of
sense. Amid the turbulence of a thousand thoughts in his mind, all he
could do was ask softly, "I don't care about me, but what exactly did you
do to Misty?"

She nodded at the scenes the little red-haired pony-tailed girl was
still watching. "Altered her memories ... made it seem like you were
drifting away from her day by day." She said it as if she were reciting
the weather.

"Why?"

Sabrina's luminous twilight eyes locked on to his own. "Why is the sun
bright? Why are the shadows dark? Why is water wet? Why are rocks hard?
It just is. Just like life is. Just like destiny is. Without pain, there
is no incentive to grow. Both of you being apart, forced both of you to
grow stronger. To grow stronger or die. To grow stronger or let the world
die."

Anger made his eyes blaze with golden fire. "This has all been one big
game to you, hasn't it? Well I have news for you. I don't give a damn
about this world! It can go to Hell where both it and you belong!"

Sabrina stared at him, unwavering. "That's not true. You care a lot about
the world. About the people you love. And pokemon. Being hurt as you were
may have made you thought different, but think of all that you've done in
the past years."

Ash offered a grim smile. "Kill a lot of people."

"In the protection of what you care about the most."

Ash cut her off with a sharp wave of his hand, some of the continuous
raining leaves around him disintegrating in the force of his anger. "Like
I said, defend me all you like, but I know what I am. For shadows sake,
I'm even insane! There's something inside of me that probably wants to
destroy the things I care about as much as I want to save them." He
looked back at the girl. "What I want to know is if you just made it seem
like we were drifting apart, why does she hate me so much?"

Sabrina followed his gaze once more. "Watch."

Ash noticed that the scene the girl was now watching had changed once
again. In it, Misty was walking through the forest, expressions of
determination and worry warring across her face. She looked haggard, as
if she hadn't slept in days. Her skin was pale, her long, red hair
uncombed, so wisps had escaped from her ponytail to fall across her eyes,
which seemed slightly swollen. Her clothes seemed as if they had been
haphazardly put on as if she hadn't cared what she wore - rumpled jeans
shorts and a frayed blue jumper.

"Hurgh?" her Starmie grunted in query which was hovering in the air as it
followed her close behind.

"We're going to find Ash, Starmie," she replied without taking her eyes
from the front as she navigated around trees, shrubs and rocks. "I'm
worried about him." She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them. "He
hasn't been acting himself lately. Like he's avoiding me. And now he's
been missing for two days..."

"Hurgh..."

"Yeah I know that he's old enough to take care of himself now, though
knowing him, maybe that isn't a very good excuse," she said wryly, though
with an underlying sense of upset. She brushed a stray tendril of hair
away from her cheek, then stepped off the trail toward the area Ash
usually frequented, past two tall trees and various medium-sized stones.
"I-I just wonder what's kept him so busy that he hasn't had time to see
me..." She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. "I mean did I do
something wrong?" Then she laughed softly to herself, though it sounded
more sad than amused.

Ash watching the scene unfold, could only stare in silence, his chest
feeling constricted. When had this happened? He had no idea. Only that he
felt so bad that Misty had felt that way.

New sounds of people talking softly abruptly arose behind several trees
down the slope and the Misty in the image quickly stopped, obviously
recognising the voices.

Ash could too. It was him. And another girl.

They were laughing softly to each other. "This is nice," the girl was
saying. "I love camping."

"Well you know how I have to leave for the Indigo Plateau next week, I
thought it would be fun."

Misty's blinked though her face didn't change expression as she stepped
quietly closer to peek a look past one of the covering trees. At the foot
of the grassy slope stood a clearing where a small tent was pitched, next
to a slowly burning campfire.

In the image, Ash and a blue-haired girl sat facing each other
cross-legged, their knees touching.

Duplica? He was shocked. More than shocked. And that was supposed to be
him down there.

But if he was surprised, it didn't seem as if Misty in the image,
watching, was. She just held a frightfully blank expression on her face.
If her eyes weren't still open, it was as if she had fallen asleep. Her
starmie beside her floated completely still.

The Ash and Duplica laughed again at something else. His hat. He had put
it on her head, and she looked cute wearing it.

And then they kissed.

Misty stood up, turned around, and just walked away in silence.

The scene faded away.

The little girl collapsed on the ground, sobbing, her face hidden within
her hands.

Ash just felt numb inside. "None ... NONE of that happened," he stated
tonelessly. Then as what he had seen slowly began to sink in, he began to
feel something. He could feel the constriction in his chest rise, his
palms stinging as his fists tightened, the nails digging into his skin,
his eyes burning.

That something he was feeling was anger. Pure fury.

Thunder cracked in the sky and forks of jagged blue lightning streaked
across the cloudy heavens. It began to rain, the wind blowing it almost
horizontally across the tops of the forest. The air thickened with
blowing leaves and now hard downpour as the rain found its way past the
upper canopy to begin drenching everything in sight.

He whipped around, the air around him crackling with black electricity,
black electricity that his body was now giving off uncontrollably. Flying
leaves and rain steamed to nothingness as it met the hot aura covering
him.

In complete contrast, Sabrina looked at him calmly, her arms nonchalantly
behind her back.

"How DARE you." His forearms raised of their own accord, elbows locked to
his sides, his fists glowing bright in the shadows around them, black
with held lightning.

Sabrina's eyes flicked briefly to his spitting hands, then back to his
face. "Much as that scene helped destiny along, I'm afraid I can't claim
personal responsibility." She looked pointedly behind him and her form
brightened, her eyes glowing yellow and he knew she was using her psychic
abilities.

He turned and saw that the scene the little girl had created faded back
into being to continue where it had left off, after Misty had left.

The Ash and Duplica weren't kissing anymore. In fact, Duplica looked
kind of upset.

Someone tall stepped out from behind the tent. Someone tall with longish
spiked brown hair, with dark skin, and wearing brown forest clothes. His
slitted eyes held a hint of satisfaction.

"I have to say, you're pretty good," Brock said to Duplica with a smile.
He held a rough hand over his eyes to scan the top of the slope where
Misty had been watching but was of course long gone. "I think she bought
it."

The 'Ash' suddenly blurred, then shrunk to a little violet amoeba-shaped
ditto. Duplica abruptly stood up. There was no mistake now. She looked
furiously upset. "I can't believe you're so happy about it," she blurted,
looking at him. "You just really hurt the girl you professed to me that
you're supposed to love."

Brock just shook his head, a bemused expression on his face. "I don't see
why you've got a reason to be upset. You also love Ash don't you? Now
you'll have him."

Duplica just looked more and more distraught. Then a growing horror began
to appear in her brown eyes as she stared at Brock, faintly smiling at
her, as she slowly realised what she had done. "I don't know how I let
you convince me into doing this. If I really loved Ash, I would have
wanted him to be happy." As her ditto jumped to her shoulder, she began
to turn, determined. "I'm going to stop this..."

"Fine, confess what you've done. But not only will he know why you did
it, are you prepared to have Ash hate you?"

That stopped her. Her brown eyes welled with tears. "What happened to
you, Brock?" she asked softly, rhetorically, without turning back to
look at him. "There's something wrong with you." She put a hand to her
forehead, but then stopped at the feel of something there. Ash's hat, she
was still wearing it. In sudden saddened disgust, she wrenched it off and
threw it on the ground, then ran away into the trees, a tear trailing
down her cheek.

Brock watched her flee for a moment. Then shaking his head yet again, a
confused look suddenly entered his eyes. "What happened to me? I don't
know," he answered the empty air. Then his eyes hardened as he looked
down at where Duplica had thrown the hat. He stepped over and picked it
up.

The scene faded away again.

To Ash, the world seemed as if it had been tipped upside-down. His anger
had left, and what replaced it was once more, a feeling of numbness.
Dimly he felt the rain leaking over his wet hair, plastering it across
his head, the rain now being free to strike him.

Brock betraying them. Duplica loving him. Brock betraying them.

Duplica loving him.

What the hell? He wasn't even worth loving.

Brock betraying them.

There was something wrong. It couldn't be true.

Sabrina answered his thought. "It's true. How do you think I even got
involved? He asked me for help, and I knew he was going to ask me."

He turned back to her. "And of course, you helped him."

"Of course."

His thoughts turned back to Brock. All that time, he thought Brock was
his friend. Like all friends, he loved them, fought for them, defended
them, cared about them. Friendship was one of the only things that he
truly believed in, in fact had been the only thing he believed in, those
times when he thought all was lost.

But friendship could not go only one way. Friendship was a two-way
relationship, just like love - in fact a different kind of love. Just
like unrequited love could not ultimately survive, an unrequited
friendship could not either.

He felt betrayed.

Which he rightly should. He *had* been betrayed. In a dim part of his
mind, a horror arose. A new feeling toward his once old and trusted
friend had begun to rise. Was it hate?

But then the rational side of his mind interfered. If it was hate, it was
definitely not undeserved. He thought back to all that had happened. What
Misty and others had been telling him all along. But his unbreakable
loyalty had kept him blind to the truth.

He laughed softly to himself. Only in a world like this, was an
unbreakable loyalty a distinct character flaw.

Brock had not only destroyed his relationship with Misty, the love of his
life, all those years ago, but had been actively trying to kill him, not
just once, but repeatedly. There was no question that Brock hated him.

And instead of redressing the wrong, he had offered his life for Brock to
take. And would have, if Valdera had not stepped in and saved his
worthless life.

"But of course, like you know now, you weren't spared from the psychic
manipulations either," Sabrina said, breaking his train of thought. "But
I didn't think that you could actually protect yourself from them
somewhat."

With growing unease, Ash focused on her eyes that knew so much. "What do
you mean?" he asked uneasily.

"Think. If Misty only left you, why would you have held so much hate and
betrayal for her before you met again all these years? Whereupon, your
close contact with her would naturally make you both remember your love,
your souls, if not your minds."

"I-I don't know." But he was afraid he did know. Unbidden in the darkest
corner of his mind, forgotten memories stirred. Forgotten memories that
he just somehow knew had broken him once before.

"How wondrous the human mind is. When something hurts it so much to the
point that it could not recover if it allowed itself to know, the mind
seeks to forget. To cover. Misty wasn't the only one stubborn. When she
left, you didn't just give up on her, did you?

"I ... I ... don't remember."

Not even acknowledging the false-sounding claim, Sabrina continued. "Of
course you didn't give up. We're speaking about *the* Ash remember?
One-time Pokemon League champion. No ... you found her."

And then the forgotten memories exploded over him, out of the dark
corners of his mind.

He closed then opened his eyes.

A figure suddenly materialised out the air in front of him. Misty. Her
eyes held a look that frightened him to the core. It wasn't even anger or
upset. It was strangely indifferent. And that's when he knew something
was appallingly wrong. He could have taken the anger of a hundred Mistys,
because that meant she was normal. But this indifference ...

"Why did you follow me?" Misty asked softly. She was wearing a blue
travelling cloak, a new one that flapped loosely in the wind. A small
brown backpack hung off one shoulder. Her long red hair seemed darker in
the evening air, worn loosely over her shoulders and back, different to
how she usually wore it in a ponytail. It made her seem more mature,
beautiful. Unapproachable.

The forest around them was quiet.

Just like all those years before, Ash was taken aback, as if this was
some crazy re-enactment. He looked down at his clothes, and it wasn't the
black, Pokemon Master cloak he wore anymore, but the brown, forest cloak
that he wore before the wars. Even the hard rain had disappeared, and
though they were still in a forest, it wasn't Viridian anymore, and it
was evening, the moonlight shining down upon them through the cracks in
the branches high above.

He found himself saying the correct lines. "Why are you going? Why did
you just go? I don't understand."

Her aqua eyes looked over him with all the life of a pair of cold
unliving sapphires. "I'm going away. To live my life."

"But I thought ... I love you. You said you loved me. So why are you
leaving? We're a team."

She shook her head, her face still indifferent. "Love. It's such a strong
word. We were so young, did we even know what love really is?" She looked
at him directly, her gaze flat. She answered herself. "I don't think we
did. We romanticised, what was really just a childhood faze. We just
mistook friendship for something more. We're older now, we know better.
We're adults ..." She paused. "At least I am ... You're still just a
kid ..."

Deep hurt replaced his confusion. "Just a kid?" he whispered.

Not hearing him, she went on, "One day you'll realise that you don't even
love me, when you realise what love is ... just like I don't love you."
She paused. "Who knows? Maybe that day passed for you already."

The world was fast dropping out from underneath him. "But ... when did
you decide this? Maybe you're acting too fast." He swallowed his pride,
anything to keep her with him. "Please, just come back with me, and maybe
we can make it work. I *will* make it work. I'll prove it to you that we
just didn't mistake friendship. And of course, we *are* friends first and
foremost, and that's what makes us work so well together. For our sake,
just come back, at least for a couple days, and we can sort this out."

"I don't think so," she said calmly. She looked away from his eyes, and
brushed her loose hair away from her cheek. "Besides ... I met someone,
while you were away that last time."

His chest constricted. First with disbelief, then with anger. An anger
that swiftly grew so much, he didn't know if he had ever felt this angry
before. "So all of this that you were saying was just an excuse, to leave
me for this new guy." He laughed sickly at himself. "Some older guy I
take it, with all your talk that I'm just a kid. No matter that I've
probably accomplished more in the short time that I've lived, than this
guy will accomplish in ten of his lifetimes. Well I guess the joke is on
me." He stared hard at her, and she still couldn't meet his eyes. "So who
is this mystery guy that you're dumping me for like some old pet that's
no fun anymore? Forgive me if I'm morbidly curious."

But Misty just turned around, as she shrugged her pack more firmly on her
shoulder. "Let's not drag this out and make it more unpleasant than it
already is. We can still leave here as friends."

"Oh, the 'just friends' line now? How predictable." His eyes narrowed at
her back. "But save it. A friend doesn't just walk off when a new friend
comes along. A friend doesn't abandon their friends. You walk off, and
we're strangers. Though the way you're acting, you were always a
stranger, I just didn't know it."

"Goodbye." She began walking off.

"Wait," he growled. He ran forward and stepped in her way, grabbing
something from within a fold of his forest cloak. "I was going to
give this to you eventually, I just never found the courage, though now
there's no point. But I still think you should have it."

She looked blankly at him.

He took out the small box and opened it, revealing the ring, a perfect
blue diamond set within its slender, golden band. "I know you won't wear
it, but just have it, as a sign of the friendship we once had. You can
even throw it away later as you should, so you don't even have to think
about me, but at least I know that I showed you our time meant something
to me." Then he stepped out of her way and turned his back. His voice
deadened without expression. "But after this, it's true what I said. We
are strangers. Goodbye."

And when she had gone, he collapsed to his knees upon the leafy ground of
the forest. He didn't know how he had kept it inside of him for so long,
but the grief slowly escaped. There was no more anger now to cover him
like an anaesthetic. "Just a kid ..." he mumbled brokenly to himself as
he stared at the foliage upon the ground. His eyes burned.

Inside all he could feel was emptiness.

He closed his eyes, then opened them.

Not surprised, he was back in the haunted dreamscape Viridian Forest of
earlier, the rain still pouring, the leaves still blowing around him
in a powerful artic wind.

It was all a mistake.

Misty hadn't been throwing him away as he had no doubt believed back
then, but only trying to save herself further hurt at the hands of who
she believed to be him. There was no mystery guy. In fact, she probably
meant Brock, which he already knew, she had only gone to him as friends.
Which he had obviously mistaken as something more.

She had been lying to save herself.

But now that he knew the cause of all their problems, the deeply held
memory which had just assaulted him, no longer had any power left to
hurt. Instead he felt elation, the first true happiness he had felt in
five years.

He turned to Sabrina, who all this time had been watching him in the
rain. Then he turned to the little girl who still lay upon the ground in
front of him, sobbing softly to herself, barely audible in the howling of
the wind and rain and thunder.

He felt a surge of fierce determination. "I don't care what you think,
Sabrina, but now that I know what happened, nothing's going to stop me
from putting this to right." He briefly swivelled his heated gaze to
her. "Not even you."

Sabrina lifted her hands palms forward in apparent surrender. Incredibly
she smiled, and it was a true smile. It seemed kind of wrong on a face
that usually wore such seriousness. "Of course not, Ashura. I wish you
good luck." She hesitated slightly. "And if it helps, I am sorry. For
everything." Her form flashed white, then she disappeared.

Without pause, he returned his gaze to the girl. He stepped forward
slowly, now feeling unsure, when just a second before he had been
confident. All he knew was that to reach Misty, it was through this
bizarre avatar of her, this cute figure of her childhood.

At the wet sound of his footsteps, the little girl stirred, then looked
up to face him. Her water-darkened red hair was plastered to her face. As
she watched him approach, a startled recognition entered her swollen
eyes. She jumped to her feet and stepped backward away from him, all the
while fury beginning to darken her cute face.

He stopped.

"It's you!" she accused, her shrill scream sounding above the wind and
rain. "I wecognise you now! You're that boy that hurt my fwiend so much!
Only all gwown up!"

"Yes..." He swallowed. "It's me, Ash."

"You're not goin to hurt her anymowe, you hear me?" Her childlike voice
suddenly turned serious and slightly deeper, Misty's adult voice. It
seemed terrifying coming from the apparent little girl. "NOT ANYMORE."

Ash swallowed again, as the little girl's hair turned black, as well as
the dress she was wearing. Her blue eyes blazed with power as they stared
at him with anger and contempt.

Then, amazingly, she started growing. Growing older before his very eyes.
Her limbs lengthened, slenderly curved legs and arms, as well as her
body, the black dress increasing in size to match her. Breasts formed
beneath the upper part of her dress and even her hair lengthened in
proportion to her size, losing the ponytail to hang loose midway down her
back. Cute childish features on her face matured, the baby-fat
disappearing, to form into her adult countenance, high cheekbones over a
pert pointed nose, pink-tinged well-shaped lips, elegantly arched
eyebrows over bright blue eyes that were framed by sooty, dark lashes.

In seconds, an adult Misty stood before him, only one with long, black
hair, as black as his own, instead of red. But the gaze full of ice-cold
hatred had evolved perfectly, the expression still upon her face as she
stared at him, her lips tightened in anger. The black dress she was
wearing, cute on the girl, held a deadly sensuality on the adult, the
mini-skirt only reaching to her mid-thigh, the sleeveless top, tight upon
her chest, and wet from the rain so that it left her curves with very
little to imagine. The sandals the girl had been wearing had changed to
knee-high leather boots that matched her hair and clothes.

She let out a hard laugh, her teeth flashing white in the darkness.
"Isn't it enough that you already invade my mind with your memories, and
yet you still come here in person?" An aura of blackness abruptly
enshrouded her body and instantly, rain that fell near her froze to a
chilling white fog which drifted around her. A twisted half-smile turned
her lips. "You are not welcome here."

Resolute, Ash stared unwaveringly into her glowing blue eyes. "Misty. It
was lies. All of it." He took another step forward.

"Lies? Like that you loved me?" She looked pointedly at his booted feet
that had stepped toward her. "So eager for pain, dear Ash?" Her aura
flared for an instant.

Burning agonising pain shot all over his skin, and he almost gasped at
the torture of it. It was like an artic-cold wave of fire that bit into
his flesh like a thousand acid-tipped needles. Even the skin that was
covered by his cloak and clothes was not spared from the anguish.

"Leave here and never come back," Misty said softly, dangerously. "Leave
me and never come back."

He shook his head once, then determinedly tried to shove away the
feelings of pain to a back corner of his mind. His whole body burning
with dark ice, he took another step forward. "This pain is nothing
compared to the pain we've kept inside of ourselves all these years, each
thinking that we betrayed the other," he forced out calmly. "You were
right. I should have listened to you all along. It wasn't us who betrayed
ourselves, it was Brock. Even all the way back then."

"Words are nothing but gusts of breath in the air. Empty gestures of
meaninglessness." Her aura flared once more, and the thousand needles of
cold fire that seemed as if they were ripping into his skin magnified a
hundred-fold.

This time Ash gasped audibly and he could feel tracks of hot tears
beginning to leak down his frozen cheeks, the heat perversely causing
even more pain upon the pale skin of his face. But he still managed to
take yet another step forward despite the impossible agony. "Misty, this
hell on earth that we created for ourselves - it should be over! We're
free now. All those people playing with our lives ... we should take our
lives back for ourselves. And show them that they failed to break us." He
managed to stumble a few more steps forward so that only a few feet of
distance separated them now.

The deadly anger shining in Misty's eyes wavered. To start being slowly
replaced with fear. "D-Don't step closer!" she screamed. "I will not be
hurt anymore! I will not be vulnerable! I won't! All love is ... is pain
... sorrow!"

This time her aura, when it arose, did not subside, and Ash could not
believe that it was possible to feel so much pain, the frozen fires now
burning though his veins and arteries, dark rivers of pure, chaotic
torture. "M-Misty," he choked, feeling blood well up in his throat, his
black hair falling across his eyes. "Loving and being loved ... it means
being vulnerable. But don't you see? Just like all things in life, there
is risk and reward. The greater the risk, the greater the reward. I
understand now. Love is one of those things." Then putting everything he
had into it, he forced himself to take the last step toward Misty finally
closing the distance. He prepared himself for yet more pain, such pain
that could probably even kill him even though he currently didn't even
hold a physical form.

However, strangely, at the words, Misty's eyes just widened in complete
shock. "What you just said! It was just like ... she ... said ..."

At her confusion, he didn't waste the opportunity. He quickly raised his
arms and hugged her tight, his arms wrapping around her back. Her body
was stiff, ice-cold, and wet with rain. He held his cheek to the side of
her head. More incredible pain thrashed at him, but he ignored it. "Misty
... you once said to me that I didn't understand love. Well, if hurting
inside, a million times worse than you had just done to me because it was
on the outside, at the knowledge that you didn't care about me, that you
weren't by my side, that you were throwing our friendship away, that you
never wanted me with you ever again ... if hurting like that means I
don't love you ... then love couldn't exist. But it does. And I'll say
this now so that there is absolutely no mistake. I love you, Mistaria!
And make sure that no matter what happens, you never forget it!" He
lifted his cheek from hers and leaned back to stare into her eyes. He
focused all that he was feeling into his softly glowing gaze, into his
warm embrace.

At first her body was hard, unyielding, her blue eyes as cold as frozen
granite. Then all of a sudden she softened, warmed. Her arms which had
been rigid by her sides raised to return the hug, first hesitantly, then
unbreakably tight. Remarkably he could see the wet tendrils of her long
hair slowly lighten to her usual dark red. Her eyes moistened with tears
as he continued to stare into them, the icy depths deepening into a warm
ocean. "Oh, Ash ...!" she cried. "I accused you of not understanding love
... but it seems like I was the one all along who didn't understand it.
Or I understood it, but never admitted it to myself. But now I know." She
stared harder into his eyes and her mouth slightly opened. "Now I know
that I've always loved you ... maybe even from the first when I fished
you up out of that river ... I knew I was more upset than I had a right
to be when I saw you that day. And now I'll say it again so there's no
mistake with me either. I love you, Ashura, and you better make sure that
you never forget it either!" Her eyes blazed back into his returning all
his feelings if not more.

When their lips finally met it was as if the forest of her mind around
them did not exist. Nothing existed except for the two of them.

It was a kiss of a new beginning.

A kiss of how things were meant to be.

A kiss of return.


<><><>


Ash opened his eyes and found himself back upon the cold street, still on
his knees, his hands holding Misty's as she kneeled in front of him.
Distant thunder intermittently rumbled in the skies above, behind and
below the horizon dome of shadow that covered the city.

Misty's eyes were open, staring into his own, shining blue in the
darkness, happy, tear tracks along her cheeks. She was smiling, and that
smile made him feel that no matter what happened from now on, he ...
*they* would succeed.

A coldness on both of his cheeks from the passing wind told him that she
was not the only one who had cried.

Misty's eyes left his and went behind him, narrowing, a chill entering
their aqua depths so that they darkened to the blue of a winter ocean.
"A-Ash ... make everything right," she whispered, and then she sighed,
leaning forward on to his chest, immensely tired. Her eyes closed.

"I will," he said, holding her gently. His head then turned, his eyes
burning as he recalled what he must do. Like before, like when he had
found out who was responsible, the anger welled up from within, hot,
boiling, begging to be released. The anger was darkness ... the darkness
his element.

Duplica was standing in front of him, her back toward him, as she seemed
to be covering them from Brock. She did not know he was back and was
still talking to the man he had called friend.

"You're a sick freak, Brock," she was saying with quiet anger. "He was
your *friend*. She was your *friend.* I've tried to forget what you made
me do, but I couldn't. So I tried to atone for all that I've done. But
look at you. All these years what have you done but create pain and
suffering wherever you go? What have you done but betray and keep
betraying?"

Ash couldn't see him from where he was kneeling with Misty in his arms
behind Duplica, but he knew that Brock was smiling ... a smile full of
malice. "Pain and suffering?" He laughed. "True, but it was mostly pain
and suffering for women ... stupid bitches like you ... and you all
deserve it."

Ash had never realised it before, but there was a wrongness, an ugliness
to Brock that was now just so obvious ... and it must have been there
since ... who knew when. Even back at the Rebel South Lavender base when
Brock had tried his best to kill him, he had been making excuses for him,
still thinking that Brock was a good person. Brock was right. He really
was naive.

"Like I said back then, there's something wrong with you, Brock," Duplica
continued quietly. Her tone had calmed but Ash knew she was anything but,
as her violet cloak suddenly writhed along her body, floating with her
hair, as a bright, purple aura surrounded her. "I know Ashy will let you
off, just like he always has, because he's just that kind of person.
Loyal to a fault. So *I'm* the one who is going to finally take you out."
She paused for a second, looking him over. "I can sense your power ...
this Forbidden prophecy has magnified it. But power doesn't matter when
you face against an element of opposite reaction. Water, Grass, Ice ...
I'll let you choose your death."

Brock laughed harder. "Females are so amusing! But amusing is all you are
- to use and dispose of, just like toilet paper." His tone frightfully
hardened. "But you won't be just amusing. You'll also be dead."

"I don't think so, Brock."

Startled, Duplica turned and stumbled backward. "Ashy?" she asked
hesitantly, her elemental aura disappearing.

Revealed now, Brock focused his slitted eyes on him. His muscular arms
were folded against his long, brown Master's cloak. "So sleeping fool
awakes!" he shouted derisively. "It's been an entertaining ten minutes
waiting for you to finish, staring like an idiot at your red-haired
whore, but Duplica was excellent company ... for a harlot."

Ash looked back down at Misty's unconscious face, his eyes softening. So
it had only been ten minutes. It had seemed like a lifetime in there. And
maybe it was. Then, concentrating, he cloaked them both in shadow.

"Running away, Ash?" Brock called out as he watched them disappear. "I
really wouldn't have expected it of you. You may be incredibly stupid,
but I know you're not a coward."

When he finally reappeared a few moments later in the centre of the
street in front of Duplica and facing Brock, Misty was safely deposited
in the alleyway behind the building a block away, sure she was safe from
harm while she recovered. "No, I'm not running away, Brock, not this
time," he said, the darkness raised within him, and still rising, so that
a wind emanated from his body, blowing his longish black hair to float in
the breeze along with folds of his thick cloak of equal colour. He could
feel his eyes heat as the golden light pulsed from within. "Not accepting
who you are and what you've done, is a form of running away. But no more!
You were my friend once - a best friend. But now I honestly don't see
where that friend has gone. I see a man I don't even know, let alone
recognise. All I see is a shade, a ghost, that has nothing to do with my
friend." His eyes burned. "A shade that must ... MUST be stopped."

Brock's slitted eyes creased and his voice grew quiet. "I see you must
have found out or you wouldn't be so serious. How?" Then the corner of
his lip quirked and he turned his narrow gaze on Duplica. "So that means
you found out about her too."

At the pointed look, Duplica gasped, quickly looking at Ash. Somehow
sensing that he knew as she looked into his face, her light-brown eyes
moistened closed as a sob escaped from her lips. Her head bowed, blue
hair blowing over her cheek, and there was an expression of pure
misery on her face. "Ash ... I-I," she said haltingly, "... hate me if
it will make you feel better. This may sound pathetic ... but all I can
say is  ... I'm sorry."

Looking at Duplica, the anger he was feeling, bursting within, suddenly
dropped, to be replaced with a yearning sadness. "Duplica," he said,
smiling weakly, "I don't blame you for any of this. All I can blame,
besides myself for being so ignorant, is your choice in ... men. I'm
really a poor choice for any woman ... I don't even like myself. But,
Misty ... it's a wonder that she could still take me back." He choked,
knowing that he was saying all the wrong things, as usual. "I should be
the one saying sorry. I do love you too ... in a way ... but not-"

"-That way," Duplica finished for him, her head still bowed. And this
time she smiled too, though it was a bittersweet smile, a smile of
regrets. "I understand ... and to confess, I had given up on you ... had
to give up ... when I learned the truth." She looked up at him, all of a
sudden serious, determined, her brown eyes abruptly familiar, fierce.
"Because your mother, Cordelia, was my mother too."

Ash just looked at her, silent. If there was an emotion greater than
complete surprise, shock, astonishment, he was feeling it. The world
seemed so still, so far away. So completely fitting and yet foreign at
the same time.

His voice was soft, almost a breath. "You're my sister."

She nodded, her brown eyes glowing now, softly gold. The same as his
mother's, he had realised. The same as his.

Her smile turned more genuine. "One day I was going to tell you, but-"

A brown flash. And then Duplica was suddenly stumbling backward, a soft
cry of pain that was cut off almost before it had even started, her waist
all red, dripping, a long sharp spear of dull rock embedded in her side.

Immediately, Ash turned, the dark energies within him exploding inside.

Brock was clearing his throat, standing sideways, one of his
arms still extended from the throw underneath his thick, brown cloak.
"Excuse me, Ash, but you two were making me sick." He grinned
maliciously, his thin eyes, underneath long, jagged brown hair,
swivelling back to Duplica, who had collapsed to her hands and knees upon
the cold, rough street, bleeding profusely. "Besides, she was only a
girl, even if by some twisted, disgusting chance of fate, she was really
a relation."

The anger screamed at him to be let out, once and for all. But as he
looked back at Duplica, he was torn between helping Duplica, and going
after Brock. After a split-second of indecision, he started to turn
toward Duplica.

"N-No ... Ashy-boy ..." Duplica said faintly, though her eyes were fierce
as she looked up at him from the ground, one arm clutching her side, the
other holding her upright on the street. "I-I'll be ... okay. You know
me. Just get that son-of-a-bitch ... for Misty, if not for me." She
sighed as she lay down, still looking up at him until he turned, as if to
make sure that he would do what she said.

His mind now clear, Ash looked back to Brock. He let his fury take full
reign, his elbows raised, arms bent, and the cold wind around them
exploded in a sudden fierce gale. The deep sound of thunder rumbled in
the domed heavens above, faster, quicker, and long tongues of black
lightning came into being, streaking across the horizon. The wind
exploded his cloak around him, lifting his hair above his forehead and
out of his eyes once again. Dim streetlights that lined the road by their
sides cut out to darkness as their glass lamps shattered, along with all
the windows in the buildings behind and before them. Cement and brick
walls groaned under the tremendous pressure, and the sounds of people
screaming in fear filtered to them from distant blocks.

Black darkness, his black darkness, shadows, enshrouded his form,
electricity as dark as his element crackled and hissed all along his
length.

"Pikachu."

His black pikachu, silent and ready, unwilling to interfere until now,
leaped out of the pack still worn on his back, and stood on his left
shoulder. His pointed ears and jagged tail were raised in anger, and the
cobalt-blue eyes were glimmering, small body sparking as much as his own.

But Brock still seemed unperturbed as he stood tall, his cloak flapping
in the wind, watching them with those ever-enigmatic eyes. "Impressive,"
he said. "Much more impressive than when you first challenged me for the
Boulder Badge back at Pewter City, all those years ago." He smiled in
remembrance. "When your pikachu could barely shoot a Thundershock and
could only win by cheating." His face hardened and the smile disappeared
as if it had never been. "Well now I'll show you, what I, myself, learned
over the years."

Brock's muscled body under the flapping cloak began to radiate with brown
light as he lifted his arms to the sides. Slowly the skin of his arms and
the parts of his chest and neck that were visible began to visibly
solidify. Hard planes and flat angles formed, morphing to grey and
brown-tinged rock, and incredibly, despite how big he already was at over
a head taller than Ash himself, he actually seemed to increase in size.
Even the skin of his face turned to stone, and the mouth and eyes in that
face were now as hard as the material they were made from. Hard
boulder-like fists, flexed and unflexed. Only his long, jagged, brown
hair remained unchanged, flying about in the wind.

The slits in that rock face that were his eyes gleamed as red-tinged
earth. "And of course ... my pokemon. Who your insane alter-ego tried his
best to destroy. But since we are Forbidden now, just like you, 'dear
father,' it managed to recover itself." He waited, as if listening,
then shouted, his deep voice vibrating in the wind, "ONIX."

First, it seemed as if a small earthquake had begun as the street
literally rolled from underneath them, shaking the buildings around them
like domino towers. Then there was a massive crack as the granite beneath
Brock's booted feet, groaned, then ruptured as the massive, thick, black
rocky snake head thrust out of the earth, sending dirt and rocks
everywhere, lifting up its master several stories high with its long,
immense, segmented body.

When finally the onix stilled, balancing its long body up high, almost as
high as the nearby  three-story buildings around them, Brock looked down
at him from up, up above. "Ready for that rematch?"

There was still some random flying stones and debris from the explosion,
drifting and falling through the air. Around Ash's aura of black electric
death, the pieces just disintegrated to nothing as if being swallowed by
the night. With both hands, he reached behind his shoulders to his black
hood and slowly pulled it deeply over his head, casting everything but
his burning eyes invisible in shadow. Still clutching the folds of the
hood in both hands, his elbows bent, he shook his head. One arm lowered
while the other continued its movement to reach into the opening of the
backpack to grasp something. Finding it, he brought his arm down and in
the same motion, flicked it so hard at Onix' torso, that it roared
ear-deafeningly loud in pain as dozens of pieces of black rock shattered
from its skin.

"What?" Brock exclaimed in confusion, then looked down at Onix' curved
belly. In its centre stood out a small silver-coloured token in the
hexagonal shape of a boulder.

"Your Boulder Badge," Ash said quietly, his voice rising up with the
wind. "It no longer means anything to me." Then he crouched slightly,
looking upward at a low angle, his mind silently joining with Pikachu's.
"Let's begin."

For once, a sign of anger, and something else Ash couldn't identify,
flashed in Brock's eyes. Then he too reached back over his shoulder and
pulled his hood over his head, casting his stony face in darkness. "You
forget, Ash ... only the Gym Leader may announce the battle." He paused,
Onix rearing up higher. "And I announce that now!" he roared. "Onix, Body
Slam!"

Air whistling, Onix, with Brock on its head, bellowed as it came crashing
down up above him with the tremendous momentum of tons and tons of
rock and stone.

The whole street seemed to shake like a beaten carpet, and some buildings
actually half-collapsed, as the onix' belly met with the ground,
detonating the road in a crater thirty feet in diameter, to dust.

His Onix' head resting on the ground within the crater after the attack,
Brock turned all around looking for him. Not finding him, he looked up.

Ash looked down at his friend of a lifetime ago as he crouched upon the
top of one of the only lamp posts that had not collapsed in all that time
earlier. Pikachu was still clutching on to his shoulder. "You may be
strong, Brock, but you're still too slow," he commented. Before even
finishing his words, he flipped upside-down in a hand-stand, grasping the
top of the street light with both hands, and then continued the flip,
powerfully ripping the long steel pole out of the ground and swinging it
around like a massive hammer to drive it down upon Brock with lethal
force.

But the heavy steel light pole just bent like an oversized nail as it
crashed on Brock's head. Surprised, Ash used the force of the pole's
swing to propel him to the other side of the street. The destroyed steel
post fell to the ruined street in a clatter. After landing atop
the only other street light to remain standing, though it was slightly
crooked leaning at a slight angle, he turned to see what had become of
Brock.

Letting out a surprised breath, he blinked. At the very least, he had
expected Brock to be knocked off his Onix, but the Rock Master just stood
there as if nothing untoward had happened. In fact, his shoulders of his
brown cloak were shaking slightly as if he was laughing. A chuckle
escaped from the opening of his hood, confirming Ash's suspicions. "I may
not be as fast as you, Ash, but with a body like mine, do I need to be?"
Two small horizontal lines of brown light that were his eyes flared once.
"Onix ... Earthquake!"

Like a massive worm, Onix gyrated upon the ground once, heavily, but
rapidly.

With a huge crash, another small building collapsed behind Ash as the
ground seemed to jump from beneath him, crumpling the light post he was
balanced upon. He began flipping to the ground.

"Onix ... Tail Whip!"

A burst of air suddenly smashed him in the back as his body was rolling
in midair and he grunted in pain as it threw him into the brick wall of a
half-collapsed building to the side. Unfortunately he didn't explode
through, but instead bounced off it and fell the two stories to the hard
ground upon his back, Pikachu flying off his shoulder to land several
feet away, while a dust cloud flew into the air.

"Come, Ash ... I thought that when you finally fought me, you would give
a better reckoning of yourself," came Brock's taunt from his footing atop
Onix head, still in the same place he had been till now, though its head
had risen once again to its full height. "Was yours and Misty's pain
worth so little?"

Red-hazed blackness filtered into his vision, but he desperately fought
it off, afraid he would lose control. Finally, he shook out of it, though
the deadly anger at Brock's comment had not gone away. The ruined street
around him exploded as he forced himself violently to his feet. "Pikachu,
return," he called out tightly. When Pikachu resumed his place upon his
shoulder, he lowered himself into a stance, left gloved-palm forward, the
right trailing behind, elbow bent. His glowing golden gaze narrowed. "You
want me to be serious? Fine." The ground detonated in a dust cloud as he
burst forward with so much impossible speed, he disappeared.

The glowing brown slits within Brock's hood actually widened. "Onix, Rock
Spears, rapid fire!"

Like a fully-automatic weapon, sharp shafts of stone shot out of Onix'
mouth incredibly fast, one after another, all around the area in front of
them. What was left of the road, slowly disintegrated to the dirt and
rocks underneath, and even revealed the underground sewerage system in
places.

But unharmed, Ash reappeared on the tip of Onix long rocky tail, still
sliding forward to the attack, cloak flapping, his booted feet smoking as
they scraped along the rock snake's rough back.

Brock had barely enough time to even notice he was there before he
reached him at the Onix head and began furious strikes of fist and palm.
Bits and chips of rock flew up as Ash hammered upon him, first with
stomach blows, then face blows, then chest blows. For the finish, he
moved smoothly into a double round-house kick, initial strike in the
breastbone, the second on the chin.

However, he was off-balance, when expecting Brock to be launched into the
air, instead he was still standing firmly upon his Onix' head. "That
actually hurt," Brock growled as he grasped on to Ash's
still-outstretched foot, crumbs and pebbles falling from his angry face.

Incredulous that Brock had grown so much in power, Ash quickly grasped
Pikachu from his shoulder while balancing on the one leg. "Thunder
Shatter!" he yelled as he thrust his pokemon down upon the top of Brock's
head.

"PIKA!"

Caught by surprise, Brock bellowed in pain as Pikachu, sparking with
black lightning, ricocheted off his head with a crunching of rock and
burst a whole chunk out of his hard right shoulder with a cloud of
crumbled stone and a red mist of blood. As he was distracted, Ash tried
to break out of Brock's grip with several kicks, but failed, the hard
fist feeling like a diamond shackle.

"Fucking little bastard!" Brock growled as the movements attracted his
attention. He whipped the hand still holding his foot up, and Ash flew up
into the air upside-down like a reared whip, the city a black blur far
below. Then pain exploded in his front as Brock cracked him down like one
too, upon the hard rocks of Onix' neck, causing him to drop Pikachu from
his hand, separating them. "BIND!" Brock whipped him up again, but this
time threw him down to the curved coils of Onix below them.

And then all he could feel was tight, constricting agony as his eyes
opened to find himself completely surrounded by huge segments of rounded
black stone. It covered him completely from ankles to neck, and the smell
of earthy rocks suffocated his nose, smelling like an old grave. Distant,
loud growls of Brock's Onix somewhere above him, were interspaced with
periodic tightening of the coils, causing his eyes to water and his bones
to creak, like over-taxed wood. Desperately, he tried to flex his arms
outward to break free, but the hold was much too strong, stronger than
anything he had ever felt before.

A noisy thud of the ground somewhere in front of him sounded, and Brock's
voice came from behind the rocks of Onix' body. "I won't let Onix have
all the fun." There came a crash of rock upon rock, and the segment
squeezing his chest abruptly jerked further inward at an impact, smashing
his chest harder and he cried out in pain as a rib or two snapped. The
coppery taste of blood welled in his throat. He couldn't take much more
of this...

"Pikapi!" came a cute yell from somewhere behind the rocks squeezing him.

Brock yelled, "What? Pikachu!"

"PIKA!"

The sound and feel of immense, dark electricity building to a point,
then the sparking, crackling sound of it being released, the air heating
up around him at the massive discharge. A sudden shout of Brock's was
drowned out as something exploded through the stone segment in front of
him.

"Pikapi!" Pikachu's head was sticking out of the sudden, smoking,
dust-filled hole in Onix' body in front of him. His blue eyes flashed in
the darkness, his body still wavering with dark energy, as he jumped on
to his shoulder.

Onix' Bind had loosened. "Pikachu ..." he said breathlessly. "Thanks." He
concentrated, then thrust upward with all his strength, using the onix
own segments behind him for leverage. The damaged rock in front of him
just detonated as if there were a bomb within as he burst out into the
fresh open air, somersaulting away to land on the mostly-destroyed street
in an angled crouch, one hand poised for balance upon the rough ground.

Spitting out dirt and blood-tinged rocks from his mouth and breathing
heavily, he turned around to see Brock pick himself up from the floor by
his Onix' side, smoking slightly, holding his right shoulder with his
left hand. In turn, the massive onix had suffered severe damage with a
whole chunk missing out of its mid-section where first Pikachu had burst
through, then himself after.

"Rock-Ground-destroying electricity," Brock mused aloud, calm now, as he
let go of his damaged shoulder letting it bleed freely. "So that is what
you used to kill the first Master Pokemon, Golemdor, two weeks ago, or
so. I was wondering how you did it. Although, I can't say I'm surprised.
You always made up for your lack of common-sense with sheer ability."

Ash shook his head within his hood at how ridiculous and twisted the
situation was. "I didn't get where I am today without a lot of your
coaching, Brock. You always said that to succeed, I had to cover my
weaknesses."

"You're probably thinking that I now regret all the sage advice I gave
you. But I don't. For some strange reason, I'm happy that you succeeded.
It shows my skill as a trainer ... as a Master. What I do regret is
this world. A world as sick, as perverted as this, does not deserve to
live."

"Then why even help Gary with the Forbidden Prophecy? As destructive as
it is, ultimately, it *is* a rebirth."

"Why indeed." His slitted eyes flashed and he turned to his massive Rock
Pokemon. "You've hurt my Onix quite dearly. Unfortunately for you, as
that makes it even stronger  ... and quicker." He back-flipped back up on
to its lowered, large, blunt head, brown cloak flapping. "Onix ... RAGE."

Before Ash even knew what was going on, he found himself and Pikachu just
pounded into the ground as impossibly, even though Brock and his Onix
were at least more than a dozen yards away across the ruined street,
aside collapsing buildings, they just suddenly reappeared incredibly
close, allowing the massive Rock Pokemon to smash him down with the end
of its thick tail.

As the tail elevated again for another rapid, repeated blow, Ash
propelled himself away with a thrust of one arm, the other hand, grasping
a slightly-worn Pikachu, who had been knocked off his shoulder. He let
his anger take over again, had to, or he would keep remembering Brock as
his friend and never finish this. Landing nimbly upon his feet, despite
the severe beating, sliding backward in the broken gravel, he reared his
arm back. "Pikachu, Thunder Shatter!" he cried again, flinging his
pokemon upward, toward Brock, who was crouching on Onix' head.

"PIKA!"

Brock was ready this time, lifting his arms up, forming a boulder he grew
out of his hands to use as a shield. "I'm disappointed in you, Ash!" he
called out disbelievingly as he knocked Pikachu away safely, though his
boulder-shield shattered into a thousand pieces. "You know that won't
work again!" He turned back to look down at him, his mouth opening to
let out another order for Onix.

However, Ash was already gone.

"Where-" He was cut off as Onix underneath him unexpectedly shook as if
something had struck it, and he stumbled, almost losing his balance. Onix
roared in confusion.

"Right here, Brock!" Ash shouted from behind, his eyes narrowed as he
grasped at the end of Onix' tail. Gathering all his strength, his body's
aura glowing darkly, he heaved at the tail, shouting out in effort,
electric sparks shooting from his hands in contact with the black rock.

Brock yelled in denial as Onix with him still upon it, was swung like an
oversized olympic hammer in a wide half-circle, whereupon, Ash just let
go, flying backward at the sudden release. In turn, the Rock Master and
his pokemon collided into the base of a dozen story building down the
street, the whole structure just collapsing down upon them to the weight
of hundreds of tons of rubble. There was a tremendous rumble and a
continuous crash as two of its neighbouring buildings succumbed to the
force, collapsing as well. The ground all around shook to the forces of
the falling structures.

Quickly, Ash sprinted after them, his right arm outstretched to the side.
"Return!" he called, and Pikachu flew to land on his wrist as he
continued dashing forward toward the still-crumbling piles of buildings.
He knew a little thing like a collision with a building was not enough to
stop Brock, but maybe it would distract him enough so he could deliver a
killing blow. Pikachu silently transformed into blade form, and he caught
the hilt of the long, black katana in his right hand and swung it
horizontally behind his back.

His eyes darkened within his hood, burning. Was it tears? He coughed, his
throat feeling closed up and tight. Could he really do this? Could he
kill his friend? To save the world? For revenge? For petty revenge? But
he wasn't a friend anymore, was he? Though older, larger, he still looked
the same. His best friend, and sometimes mentor, with those
ever-squinting eyes, dark complexion and spiked, brown hair.

He finally reached the point of impact and jumped on to the high,
cracking, steaming, hot pile of destroyed cement, bent steel girders,
shattered wood framing, bricks, glass and stone. With agile leaps and
steps, he hopped through the mess, trying to spot or sense a hint of
Brock and his Onix. His chest felt constricted on what he would do when
he found him. As constricted as when Onix had bound him in coils. Maybe
worse.

Suddenly he spotted a hint of black rock. And then strands of brown
hair, underneath a split cement beam. One slitted eye closed, the hood of
a brown cloak fallen off its head.

His teeth clenched and the katana he held behind his back began to move.

He hesitated.

And in that moment he knew that the eye had opened.

"Onix, Self Destruct."


<><><>


When he awoke, his body felt strangely numb, as he lay flat on his back,
some sharp objects in the pack he still wore behind his shoulders digging
into his spine. His eyes stared almost unseeing up at the black-clouded
and domed, dark artificial sky. Black lightning still flashed up there,
though it was fading. There was no thunder now, but a strong wind was
blowing, gusting some flying leaves and rubbish across his field of view.
A wet trickle was sliding down from his forehead along his temple,
somewhere from the top of his head, within his hair. As red touched his
vision, he realised it was blood. His own blood.

He lifted his head weakly, still feeling nothing all over, to take stock
of himself. He almost wished he hadn't. His body looked like it had gone
through a blender, complete with added shrapnel and hard boulders. His
black cloak was all ripped up, more holes and ragged tears in it than
elementary fabric. His loose, long pants looked scorched as if someone
had taken to it with a flame-thrower. His under-tunic didn't even look
like it existed anymore. And somehow he knew that ... that thin sharp
metal pipe was not meant to be sticking out of his midsection, stained
red with blood.

"Pika ... pi ..."

He turned his head to see Pikachu lying next to him upon the battered
street. He looked simply like someone had gone after him with steel bat.
And forgot to stop swinging after the thousandth swing. Blood leaked from
the corresponding section of his small waist. A piece of his left ear was
missing.

With the amount of damage he had taken, he knew he should be feeling
something, anything. But he still felt nothing. Only a slight coldness.

"It seems such a shame," came Brock's voice, somewhere to the side. "Such
a shame to die to such a cheap move."

He turned his head to the other side. Brock was sitting close by on a
piece of destroyed building, staring at him quietly, his hood removed so
that his longish brown hair was ruffled by the wind. He had suffered some
damage too, his own cloak torn in several places, his forest clothes
underneath roughened up, and his skin, back to normal instead of rock,
showing several cuts and burns. His right shoulder and the top of his
head was still slowly leaking blood.

His hard face was emotionless. "Yes ... as luck would have it, you've
been impaled by a piece of junk right in a vital point. You're bleeding
to death." He paused, then went on, "I know I should be feeling happy
that I've finally did it ... but you know, Ash, all I feel is emptiness.
Yes, it took the suicide of my own pokemon - even though it had Forbidden
qualities, there's no way it could ever come back this time. But I don't
feel empty because of that. It's something else."

"I-I ... think you've been empty for a long time, Brock. You just ...
didn't know it..."

He stared at him. "You know ... if you didn't hesitate, the battle would
have ended a completely different way. Why did you?"

Ash closed his eyes, his breathing ragged now. "I don't know. Maybe it's
because I still believe somehow ... underneath somewhere ... there must
be that same Brock I first met ... loyal, brave .... loving pokemon ...
loving women ... loving life."

His voice hardened. "That Brock died a long time ago. This is what I am
now. And that was your final mistake ... for believing that boy was still
there." Rocks crumbled as the sound of him standing up came to his ears.
"I should put you out of your misery. As it is, it might take hours for
you to die, gut impaled as you are. Maybe there is a little mercy left
within me, but not much."

Ash stayed silent, unmoving, his thoughts turning back to the woman he
loved. Somehow he felt happier ... yet sad at the same time. Even though
the prophecy would now probably run its course, at least she was safe
here in the city. He hoped she would get over him and live a long life,
maybe even find another love. She deserved that, at least, after all
she'd been through. But he wouldn't be there to see.

I'm sorry, Misty ... Mistaria.

"BROCK."

At first he was terrified that it was Misty and she would see him die,
but then he calmed down as he realised that the voice was different,
though still a woman. The sound of Brock jerking in surprise interested
him however. He lifted his head to see who had shouted the name with so
much revulsion.

At the end of the street, a tall woman with long, braided, dark-blue hair
stepped out from behind a still-standing building and began to slowly
approach, the wind pulling at her black-overcoat. Her brown eye that
wasn't covered by her wavy bangs on the right side of her face were
initially a flat colour, but soon began blazing as red-orange as a
wildfire as she stared longer and longer at Brock.

"S-Suzie?" Brock stammered, uncharacteristically unnerved. "I thought you
were dead!"

She didn't speak again till she stood less than ten feet away from them.
A smirk appeared on the half of her pale lips that could be seen. "Can I
use your favourite line, Honey? ... I get that a lot." She laughed an
unnerving sound, the sound of a crazy woman.

Brock finally recovered, his face showing amusement. "Women are like
those stupid boomerangs ... you can step on them, smash them, bite them
and almost destroy them ... and they still keep coming back. How's your
face, Dear? Did you like my make-over just before I left you to die?"

"You mean this?" Ash almost gasped in surprise as she flipped her bangs
out of the way with a flick of her neck. The whole right side of her face
was criss-crossed with hundreds and hundreds of scarred blade marks as if
someone had once taken to it with a carving knife. Though it had
undoubtedly been some considerable time ago, and all healed now, it still
looked completely vicious. Her now-revealed right eye was as burning hot
as her left one. "I find I like it. It suits my new personality ... half
of me is beautiful ... the other ... terrifying."

"Very sexy," Brock said wryly. "At least to me."

Suzie then turned her gaze down to Ash and she lifted her unscarred left
eyebrow. "Got you, did he? I'll wager that it was some unworthy move on
his part. When he finally jumped me, I was still asleep on our bed." Then
she turned back to Brock, smiling maliciously. "Though I'm glad it turned
out that way and you didn't win. Because then there wouldn't have been
enough Brock left for me."

Brock laughed. "You're dreaming, Dear."

"But before I kill you, Honey, I'm going to tell Ash just how messed up
you are, what messed you up ..." She paused, her smile growing wider,
horrifying on those half-scarred lips. "And who messed you up."

Brock suddenly went quiet. His thin eyes flared. "What are you talking
about?"

"Since Ash is going to die, he might as well know." She was still
smiling. "I studied up on you, Honey. When you were around eighteen or
nineteen ... you stayed with a woman Professor ... Ivy was her name,
wasn't it?" she said questioningly, but it was obvious she already knew
the answer.

Brock looked scared again as he seemed to visibly recoil.

"I saw her photo ... very beautiful," Suzie seemed to relish saying.
"Long, dark-blue hair ... maroon, sleepy, bedroom eyes ... sexy adult
body ... it's easy to see how a young, teenaged guy like you could fall
in love with her, especially since you were her assistant for so long."
She clicked her tongue and shook her head. Her voice grew serious. "It
was a pity Ivy was such a bitch. Yes, she had you, how could she not,
when your worship for her was oh so obvious. But you were nothing but a
boy-toy for her. A servant."

"That's not TRUE!" Brock began to scream, voice hoarse. "She loved me!
She did!" His face showed extreme anger, but also fear and denial as old,
dark memories arose.

Suzie chuckled at his distress, seemingly hungry for more. "She used you,
Brock. I asked around. Her three other women assistants were easy to
find. Oh, the stories they told me! They pitied you, Brock. Nerdy, ugly
women like that! But they pitied you. How sad." She shook her head. "How
so very sad. It seemed everyone knew, but you. When you found out she
threw away your applications for Pokemon Breeding, you didn't even mind
all that much. She gave you a lovely night to make up for it." Then her
flaming eyes lit up even more as she said the next, lit up in unholy
pleasure. "Oh, but it got even better when she had the misfortune of
falling pregnant!"

Brock choked, his head shaking violently, a tear beginning to
dribble out from one of his slitted eyes.

Ash could only stare in silence at that.

"Of course, she didn't find out until it was too late to abort the baby.
If she tried, she would have endangered her own life with the baby's. Oh,
you were so happy, Brock!" she called out mockingly. "And so clueless!
You actually thought you were the perfect couple! And you have the nerve
to accuse Ash of a lack of common-sense!" She looked down at Ash, who
still couldn't quite believe all that she was saying, although Brock
certainly looked as if someone had dropped a bombshell on his head.

Suzie's voice went artificially sad as she turned back to Brock. "Then
just before the days she was due to give birth, she strategically sent
you out on an 'important' assignment. You complained that you
wouldn't be there for the birth, but as always with her, you gave in. Of
course that was the reason she sent you out." The corner of her lip
quirked with cruelty. "When you finally came back two weeks later, it was
to find Ivy slimmer, but no baby. What happened? you cried. Where was the
baby? She wouldn't tell. But you managed to find out anyway."

Brock had collapsed on to the building debris he had been sitting on
earlier. Tears like rivers now leaked down his cheeks, trailing wet,
forked tracks along the dirt and dust on his face. Ash knew he was
reliving the horror that Suzie was describing.

"Ivy had sent the baby - a girl child - to the meanest, poorest orphanage
she could find in the Orange Archipelago." Her voice was sad, contrasting
with the smile she wore openly on her face. "Of course, you immediately
set out, determined to find and get her back." Her voice slowed, taking
pleasure in what she was saying. "But it was too late. The baby had
already died. You couldn't even blame the head mistress as there was
barely enough food to feed the existing children, let alone a new-born,
baby girl... who rightly needed all the love and attention her parents
should have given her. You sat at that poor grave that the orphanage had
made for your daughter, and you cried like you never cried before..."

For a moment there was only a dead silence, before faint noises filtered
back into the background, sirens that were still sounding toward the
heart of the city, the chill wind blowing, some fires crackling, and some
rocky debris still falling to crack on to the street.

Brock finally spoke. "A-At least I killed her ... that bitch, Ivy..." he
choked.

Suzie blinked. Then she let out a loud crack of high laughter, her long
braid swinging as her shoulders shook. "Just how deluded are you, Brock
Honey?" she asked in between bursts of pitiless hilarity. "You never
killed her! According to my sources, you never even returned to her
laboratory! You ran back to Indigo Insula, Pewter City, a dog with its
tail between its legs! That was around just before the year of Returning.
Then after your trying to latch on to Ash's poor girlfriend didn't work,
and around the time of the Dark Wars when you unfortunately met me again,
you started secretly on the largest womanising spree I had ever heard of.
Women started to go missing ... do you know how many police were after a
certain rapist and murderer? But they were never able to use their full
resources to catch you, with the Rocket Army problems and all. It's too
bad I never knew this before I met you again!" Her voice went quiet. "And
I thought you were such a sweet man ... I always did like the cute
teenager who thought I was such a great breeder and wanted to be just
like me someday..." Her voice went dead. "I see now, that the teenager I
met, when I, too, was young, was by that time, already gone ... and that
I held a startling resemblance to a certain woman professor ..."

"LIES!" Brock abruptly screamed, exploding to his feet, "you're a fucking
liar, Ivy, you whore! I'LL KILL YOU!" His cloak billowed open as he
suddenly gathered such an immense amount of elemental power, the air
screamed with it, rocks and dust rising from the ground. His fist turning
to stony rock, he swung incredibly hard at Suzie's face.

Amazingly, Suzie caught the boulder-like fist with one hand with
unnatural calmness, the wind generated by Brock's attack ruffling her
dark-blue bangs to fall back over the ruined side of her face. The hand
burst into super-heated flame, and Brock cried out at the blistering
heat, his rocky fist glowing red, the ends of the folds of his cloak
shrivelling.

"Along with learning all there was about your past, Honey, I've also
worked myself hard over the years." Her voice was low, dangerous.
"Despite my element, I've made sure that when I found you again, I'd be
able to destroy the monster you've become. I've lost count of the amount
of Rock Pokemon I've destroyed, all for the goal of being strong enough
to kill you." Her hand abruptly crunched closed, and Brock shouted in
pain as he stumbled backward, two fingers of his hand missing.

Suzie's eyes were burning with a fire as hot as the ones covering her
hands. She reached behind her belt as she lowered her centre of gravity
with a bending of knees. "One of your mistakes was leaving me my old
Vulpix when you left me for dead. Well, as ironic as it is, she will be
the one to kill you." She threw a poke-ball out in front of her and it
burst open in a pyre of heated flame. "I choose you ... Ninetails."

Her large, red and white, elegant fox pokemon with pointed ears and
velvet black nose hissed in a hate as deadly as its mistress'. Nine
elegant tails that were its namesake waved about in the air, blazing with
scorching elemental fire, of equal colour as its eyes.

Just before she attacked, she screamed, "And by the way ... the name
isn't Ivy ... it's Suzie!"


<><><>


The feeling that something was dreadfully wrong was what finally forced
Misty awake. Her eyes shot open to find herself lying underneath a pile
of junk, though, admittedly, clean junk, in some sort of alleyway between
two buildings. As she roughly burst out from under cover, she smiled a
little at the thought that Ash was still trying to protect her from
everything. With that smile came a whole deluge of happy emotions and she
felt like jumping in rapture. Thinking that, however, would be silly for
a woman of her maturity, she contented herself with dusting off her
blue, hooded cloak, and smoothing her long dress underneath. She finished
cleaning herself up with a gust of breath, blowing loose strands of her
red hair out of her face.

She was still exultant. Their terrible past that she remembered was all a
lie! She felt like she had just woken up from some terrible dream, and
now that she was awake, both literally and spiritually, it all seemed so
far away. Ash had not betrayed her ... love swelled in her heart at the
thought of his smiling face, so cute with that pointed nose, large
golden-brown eyes that were forever being obscured by his falling-over,
black hair.

The only one who had betrayed her - betrayed them both - was Brock ...

Along with the depressing thought, came again the sinking feeling
that she somehow knew had to do with Ash. Without knowing exactly why,
she knew he was in trouble. Just before she had passed out, he was ready
to face Brock. Had something happened to him? Before running out of the
alleyway, she briefly concentrated on sensing him ...

There! She took off in a sprint, running out of the dark alleyway and on
to the street. It was mostly deserted with shadowed, tall buildings on
either side, although there were still a few people running away in fear
from the direction she had sensed where Ash was. A long, jagged crack had
split in the middle of the road and she jumped over it, cloak gliding
behind her as she continued in a rush.

When she had run at least a block's distance she began to see evidence of
what must have been Ash and Brock's fight. The whole street had begun to
slant in different directions, and most of it had seemed to be destroyed
by what looked like spears of rock that lay strewn about the place.
Various breaches in the road littered the area as if a meteor storm had
struck, along with several earthquakes with every single lamp post and
telegraph pole simply levelled flat. But that wasn't the worst of it as
at least every second building along this whole area of the city had
collapsed into piles of rubble and debris.

She suddenly noticed a red glow on the far end of the block and she
squinted, seeing two figures, and a pokemon, fighting. Was that Suzie?
And Brock? Her heart beat faster, and she swallowed, an abrupt sick
feeling beginning to emanate from her chest. Where was Ash? She closed
her eyes and breathed calmly, focusing once again, trying to sense his
presence.

Total confusion struck her.

Was that *two* of him that she could sense? She must be mistaken. She
opened her eyes and turned around in a circle slowly. No, there were two
signatures, she was sure of it. However one was very weak, almost
undetectable, while the other was especially strong. She turned to look
back the way she came. This more noticeable one was approaching from the
rear. Happiness once again dominated her emotions. That one *must* be
him! And he was very much alive, and safe, not even injured.

A low, rumbling sound that gave an impression of thunder on earth
slowly became noticeable, along with a vibration of the ground. It was
coming from the same direction she had sensed Ash, where she was facing.
Dust was beginning to rise up in the distance, along the horizon that was
visible all the way at the beginning of the street, blocks away.

Her eyes narrowed and she combed her hair with her fingers, mystified.
She could just see numerous figures upon horseback now. Riders? And Ash
was with them? Had he somehow found help? Then her slight frown
disappeared and a half-smile replaced it. Who cared, as long as it
was Ash! She began to run toward them.

As the group noticed them, a single figure on horseback - a black
rapidash she could see now - broke away from the group along with only
three others, also upon rapidash, though these were only of the normal
red and white variety.

Her smile grew wider as she recognised Ash as the rider of the black
horse pokemon. He was wrapped in his long, flowing, black cloak, and
hooded, but she knew it was him. Hooves upon the street were loud now,
and finally he screeched his mount to a stop, the ground sparking beneath
steel horse-shoes. His companions, three slim figures in loose, hooded,
robe-like garb, matching his cloak in colour, slid their own horses to a
stop right behind him.

Ash threw his hood back with one hand to release his longish dark hair,
golden-brown eyes smiling down upon her. The other hand clutched lightly
at the reins of his horse. "Misty."

"A-Ash!" Her eyes moistened. "You're safe! For a moment there I was
really scared that something had happened to you." Her gaze then shifted
to the three hooded figures behind him. "But who are these people?" She
started to feel more than a little confusion as she studied them. Somehow
they reminded her of something...

"Friends," Ash answered in a weird tone of voice as he slid off the black
rapidash which was snorting at her. He slowly approached, still smiling,
putting his hands behind his back.

All of a sudden, she frowned. Had Ash's left hand been a grey colour?
Then her eyes widened, completely shocked. "No!" she screamed.

It was too late.


<><><>


Someone screamed, a scream full of denial and despair.

Ash's eyes immediately exploded open and his fatal injuries were
forgotten as he simply blasted to his feet, one hand upon the ground for
balance, his gaze immediately locked to the people at the far end of the
block, near the larger buildings.

Misty stood transfixed in front of a man wearing a darkest-black cloak.

A man with his exact face and features.

The other Ash just abruptly drove his left hand into the right side of
her stomach, powerfully, mercilessly. Horrifyingly, it seemed to almost
drive right through her body, spraying some blood as dark as her hair out
through the back of her cloak. Seeming like slow motion, the dark liquid
splashed upon the ruined street, like a falling mist of rain. Then
without even a pause of compassion, the other Ash just ripped his arm
right out again with another mist of blood, and kicked her away to tumble
brokenly down the street. After several feet, her body hit the gutter and
came to a stop. And lay still.

Looking dead.

His hand slipping off the ground, Ash collapsed to his knees. He felt as
a statue, numb, as if it weren't quite real what he was seeing. Like it
was some terrible dream, or a vision, moving pictures - anything.

Anything ...


<><><>


At the saddening scream, Brock had also paused, to look across the block
at what had happened. Suzie and her Ninetails, which had been beating him
badly - the burns, cuts and mutilations they had done to his body
attesting to that fact - had stopped as well.

After the scream, silence. Not even the sounds of distant civilians,
further in the city. Not even the alarm sirens that had been triggered
back at what must have been Valdera's light show.

Far away, Misty lay on the street, in the gutter, unmoving, a growing
puddle of red spreading from underneath her to be absorbed by the dirt.

And Ash had done it? Incredulous, he watched the distant figure of the
Shadow Master look calmly at Misty's body, his black cloak and hair
wavering around softly in the wind. Misty's body which was sure to soon
become a corpse with as grievous wound as he had dealt.

Brock never guessed what he would have felt at Misty's death, but he
would never have betted on actually feeling sadness, regret, with all the
hate for her that he had built over the years.

His gaze suddenly shifted to the paralysed young man kneeling on the
floor some yards away, just silently staring at the same scene, his
thrashed body perfectly still, unnervingly immobile. Even his hair and
clothing was unmoving despite the city breeze.

No. That was Ash. Not the other one. That meant ... his slitted eyes
slanted in surprise.

The distant figure that was the other Ash finally looked across at them,
and though he was far, Brock could sense the half-smile on his lips.
Lifting his arms out horizontally on either side, the rippling, black
cloak, that covered the Ash's athletic frame, faded slowly to a dull
grey. In turn, his longish, black hair also faded to a new colour,
lightening, until it stopped at a shade of dark-brown.

Lord Garick ... Gary. The Master of the League.

For years, Gary had always kept his head hooded with his cloak, keeping
his features from clearly being seen. Now he knew why. How ironic.

He wasn't alone either. The three figures on horseback behind him
removed their own hoods, revealing three other women of sinister beauty.
Some of his personal guards, the sentinel.

A distant rumble of footsteps sounded then, as behind, across the narrow
horizon that was visible between distant buildings and other city
structures, at least over a hundred men, soldiers, trainers, even some of
the lesser Pokemon Masters, were slowly advancing down the wide city
street, from over the rise. It was like a snake of silver as most were
armoured and clothed in the colours of the League as they moved forward
in tight succession. An array of Pokemon Masters of all elements
accompanied them, their coloured cloaks easy to spot among all the
silver. They all halted some thirty feet behind their Master.

And behind even them, Brock could pick out hundreds of civilians, and
growing more numerous by the second. They must have been afraid to
investigate the action earlier, but now that the military were stepping
in, their courage must have increased accordingly.

No, definitely not alone. It seemed Gary was taking no chances.

But it wasn't a full army - there was no way a group of that size would
have been able to pass through the tight city with any organisation - but
it was certainly enough to stomp down any Rebel Master resistance that
could have been thrown at them. Not that they would have been capable of
mustering a large enough force after the purge he had led back at South
Lavender.

At their head was a mounted figure covered in a dark-blue Master's cloak,
long, spiked black hair distinguishing him from the others. So Lance had
finally come too, Brock mused. About time. He turned his attention back
on to Suzie who was still watching them, her single maroon eye that was
visible not showing any emotion. Her Ninetails, too, was seized by the
same interest, its flickering red and orange eyes locked on to Gary in
particular.

For a moment there, he had actually been afraid of losing his life. He
was bleeding in numerous places, far too many to actually count. It was
like she had been prolonging the fight on purpose, as a lot of her
attacks had even burned the wounds, sealing them closed. The smell of his
singed hair was still strong in his nostrils. If not for that, he would
have probably been already dead from excessive bleeding. Even if he had
been at full strength, with his Onix not destroyed, he doubted he would
have been able to kill her.

Not that he particularly cared about his life. But it would have been
terribly stupid if he had ended up dying to a woman. Even this woman.

Gary had not removed his stare from them ever since he had turned their
way. Even though it was some distance separating them, Brock was suddenly
unnerved by the thought that Gary was had concentrated his sole attention
on him. And adding his extreme resemblance to Ash, the only thing being
different about them being their colouring, and their voice, it was even
more unsettling.

"So ... Brock," Gary called out, his characteristic voice full of sarcasm
being carried by the wind, "I see you succeeded in subduing Ash." He
waved his right, gloved hand toward the silent, kneeling figure, not far
from Brock's side. If the cloak hadn't identified him as the League
Master, the voice sure did.

"My Lord ... I told you that I would," Brock replied in a hard tone of
voice. "There was never any doubt. I wanted this too much to ever fail."

Hard lips on that so-familiar-looking face curved up in grim amusement.
"It's truly a pity," he said, his light-brown eyes glowing softly. "You
actually succeeded, and yet, really, you weren't supposed to."

"What?" Brock exclaimed. His instincts were screaming at him and he took
a backward step involuntarily.

Gary had begun to calmly lift his left arm in his direction, spreading
out the dead-grey palm of his hand. "You were very useful, Brock," he
said, his voice thoughtful. "Without your manipulations of our favourite
couple, Ash and Misty here, the prophecy would not have been possible to
complete." His eyes abruptly turned red, glowing as if the sun were
setting upon blood, and his lifted, grey hand burst out in an aura of
golden psychic force. "But I do so hate people who would betray their
friends." The air shook as if something invisible had impacted the air,
and there was a bright light and a roar as the psychic blast left his
palm. Brock could only swallow, paralysed as he watched the lethal, gold
fireball of mental power arc into the black sky and then head
directly for him.

"Die," Gary said simply, turning around to walk off, not even waiting for
his death.

His mind deadened, Brock waited for the second he had left of life, his
eyes seeing nothing but a monotone of gold flames...

Except Suzie stepped directly in front of him, fiercely, her arms spread
wide, her black-overcoat and blue hair flapping in the wind of oncoming
energy. She let out a silent scream of undeniable pain as the golden
psychic blast enveloped her entire body in lethal killing power. It
seemed to go on forever, until she finally, mercifully collapsed, her
body smoking profusely, sparks of mental energies still running along her
length. Correspondingly, her Ninetails had broken down too, breathing
heavily and in pain.

Brock realised he had collapsed with her, upon hands and knees, despite
none of the blast getting through her to strike him. His mind was a whirl
of confusion ... and something else. Something both strange and familiar.
It made his chest feel so tight he would suffocate and his heart beat so
fast, it felt like a drum banging his whole upper torso.

Suzie lay on her chest, her head turned to the side, toward him. Her
braid had come undone and a spread of her long, wavy, dark-blue hair
slightly covered her face. Which was crying.

Her voice came in broken gasps and sobs. "I-I'm so s-sad ... aren't
I, H-Honey?"

Brock could only shake his head, rapidly, forcefully, feeling something
tickle the side of his face. Abruptly, he realised it was a tear.

"Y-Yes I am. I-It seems that ... e-even after all y-you did to me ...
somewhere inside ... my heart ... is still my love for you. A-Aren't I an
idiot? B-But I really did ... love you. Maybe ... t-that's why it hurt so
much..."

"You ... loved me?" Brock said tonelessly, softly.

She didn't seem to hear him. "Y-You were half-right a-about Ivy ... She
is dead ... B-But you didn't kill her ... I did. I didn't u-understand
why ... until now." Her eyes closed. "I-I'll always b-be sorry about what
happened... I ... S-So cold ... I-" Her voice softened to nothing. Her
red-brown eyes, still open, stared at nothing.

Hand shaking, Brock closed them.

She was dead.


<><><>


Ash knelt upon the floor, his eyes, glassy, his mouth, dry.

Blackness. Darkness. Shadows.

Blood.

Blackness. Darkness. Shadows.

Blood.

It was raining.

Raining blood.

Upon a canvas of shadows.

No resistance.


<><><>


Duplica lay behind a pile of broken cement, near a levelled building, out
of sight from the Pokemon League Masters and their lackeys that had
arrived. A makeshift bandage of ripped-up cloak was wrapped around her
torso, and yet she knew she was still bleeding dangerously, judging from
the dark stain that was almost leaking through. In fact, the dirt, gravel
ground she was lying on had already been stained pink.

She was feeling so weak. But she didn't dare let up from accessing her
power within. If she stopped masking her presence, by a strategic morph
of her body's signature to resemble the rocks around her, even for a
second, she knew she was dead. She had hidden here earlier so as not to
distract Ash from his fight from Brock by being a liability, but she had
lost consciousness. When she had awoken, feeling as if she taken the
opposite of rest, it was to realise that a veritable army of Pokemon
League had arrived while she was out cold. They were all unspeaking, but
she could tell the sheer amount of people from the hundreds of footsteps
she heard. It was only a stroke of dumb luck that they hadn't found her
before then. Something else must have been holding their attention.

And when she had heard the unmistakable sarcastic voice oh so near, she
had almost swallowed her tongue in shock and fear.

Lord Garick! Gary! He was here! He had seemed to be talking to someone
... someone standing all the way at the other end of the city street.

Brock?

But when she took a look, ducking her head in a small gap in the rubble
to see, she wished to the gods she hadn't been so curious.

Misty had been laying on the roughened street, next to an old, abandoned
shop, on her side, motionless, blood all over and under her body. Blood,
there was so much blood. Duplica felt like throwing up.

Gary was standing somewhat near her, dressed in his long, grey cloak,
three familiar-looking women at his back mounted upon horses, when
suddenly he had just fired an immense psychic blast somewhere in Brock's
direction. A wave of compressed air blew over everyone behind him, and
some of the wind even reached Duplica, dust blowing down on to her head.
Then turning around before the golden fireball even hit, the figure that
was Brock - and someone else she couldn't recognise from here -
collapsing, he strode off to his horse. It was a black rapidash which he
then mounted, and rode back toward the head of his small army behind him,
his women guards following.

Duplica's eyes widened at the sight of his handsome face. If that hair
were black, he could have been Ash's identical twin. What the shadows was
going on? The last time she had seen him, years ago, that hadn't been the
case. He had always shared some resemblance to Ash before now, but this
was just ridiculous.

As Gary passed her hiding spot, she could hear his statements of command,
and even though he didn't shout or say them particularly loud, what he
said was clear to everyone around them. "League. Clean up that mess," he
said without looking back, only indicating what he meant with a backward
jerk of his chin. He rode up to a dangerous-looking, tall Pokemon Master
cloaked in darkest-blue, at the head of the small army, who was also
astride a rapidash, though not a black one. His body was whip-cord thin,
but muscular despite that. Long, flaring spikes of midnight hair wavered
over a striking, hard face. Lance, Duplica thought. The Dragon Master.

Gary's voice seemed to smirk if that were possible as he locked
eyes with his second-in-command. "Lance, you oversee."

"Don't you want to kill your old rival yourself?" Lance asked somewhat
curiously in a deep voice. "I assumed it's why you wanted him kept alive
till now."

Gary smiled mysteriously as he took one last look at a distant figure
on his knees. "Isn't Ash dying anyway? It seems Brock managed to do his
job too good."

Duplica stared. The ground seemed to drop out from underneath her as she
looked over to the figure they spoke of. Even from this distance she
could see how mangled he looked, his cloak and clothes torn, bleeding
everywhere, and ... some sort of spike sticking out of him. What had
happened?

Gary's face assumed a bored look. "And I already got the person he cares
for most," he continued, waving his hand towards Misty's fallen body as
if she were rubbish.

"What about Valdera? Her being missing is a problem."

Again, he waved his hand toward Misty. "Not really." Then he hooded
himself with his grey cloak, to shadow his features once again. "I'm
leaving." The sound of his horse's hooves faded as he rode away. "Girls,
follow me," he ordered to those sinister women on horseback. The small
army separated down the middle, standing along footpaths and the sides of
the street to let them pass. At the rear were several crowds of watching
civilians, ordinary men and women who stared at the League Master in awe
and reverence.

When he had gone, the soldiers, trainers and Pokemon Masters formed up
once again. Numerous sounds of metal armour clinking, and boots crunching
upon the shattered road then became evident as the small army began to
advance along the wide, four-laned road toward the still-kneeling figure
that was Ash. Closer now, Duplica could count at least a dozen League
Pokemon Masters within that group, young men and women who could command
the elements as well as their pokemon. Red cloaks, yellow cloaks, brown,
blue ... even green. Her heart sunk. Too many. Too many and too much.

But Lance had a slight, perplexed look on his normally-serious face as he
glanced first at Ash, then at Misty. Then his face hardened and he
followed his men down the street, giving out orders.

Duplica collapsed back, behind her cover of rubble. She could barely keep
the tears in as she bent over, her face in her hands. Ash was dying.
And Misty - she looked dead already. And the prophecy of the Forbidden
would not be stopped. All the people she knew in the outside world would
die. She had been alone too long, and now she would be alone again.

Despite herself, the tears escaped, to trickle between her fingers, to
splash on to the floor.

All was lost.

Then her expression sobered. She would not be alone for long. She would
die too. She prepared to stand up, clutching her bandaged side at the
sudden pain there. She would die fighting.

She was stopped by a distant sound of thunder that rumbled in the heavens
above. Then another, louder. The sound of it was so deep, she could feel
the vibrations of it deep in her bones, shaking her blood. And the air
was rich with a growing smell of ozonic mist, the kind that accompanied a
storm.

Disturbed, she dropped her wet hands to the floor and tilted her head up
to stare at the sky. Before it had been relatively clear, the protective
black dome able to be seen, even through the dark clouds swirling about
the tops of the city's buildings. Now, nothing could be seen but
darkness - a darkness so complete, it seemed a void. A void if it weren't
for the violent, blue-black lightning that abruptly spread out all over
the horizon and heavens like a demon's claws, flashing, streaking,
flaring.

Another crack of thunder rumbled, so loud and body-shaking, she could
hear Lance's horse neigh out in fear. The buildings around them actually
shook with the sound - dirt, dust and cement falling off the high
structures. Duplica stopped looking up at the sky and covered her head
with her hands as bits of rock and stone came tumbling down from the
building behind her.

When the barrage stopped, she lifted her head and peeked out at what had
become of the League. Lance was cursing as he tried to bring his spooked
mount under control and the whole procession had stopped, men looking up
at the air in confusion. Even the Pokemon Masters looked unnerved as they
stared at the black lightning tearing the horizon.

"It's the Shadow Master, he's still alive!" one man yelled in
astonishment.

Duplica's eyes instantly moved to where she had last seen Ash, some
considerable distance down the street. Where she had expected to see him
still kneeling there, catatonic, she now saw him standing up, his
half-destroyed black cloak hanging off his shoulders by mere threads. He
was almost shirtless, the tunic he wore, burned and torn to hanging
strips of black material. His trousers were less damaged, though some of
the right side was missing. Blood still leaked down his face, down his
chest, and from the puncture in his waist where the steel girder had
embedded itself into him. For all intents and purposes, with that much
damage to his body, she couldn't believe he was still conscious, let
alone standing up. Let alone accessing his elemental powers, obvious from
the golden light emanating from his fierce, burning eyes.

And now she could also see his Pikachu on all fours by his ankle, looking
as roughened up as his Master with a piece of ear missing, though his
blue eyes were also glowing, vicious.

"If he's still alive, he won't be for long," some woman Pokemon Master in
the front said in an unsmiling voice, her yellow cloak sparking as she
summoned her inborn abilities, along with all the other Masters. A sudden
wind blew around their whole group as they halted upon the street,
Master's cloaks glowing with inborn light. Broken conversation drifted in
the air toward Duplica.

"... look at him, he can barely stand up ..."

"... seems a shame. He was once one of us ..."

"... the best if you believed the rumours ..."

"... good enough to destroy a full League army back at Cerulean ..."

"... rumours too ..."

"... don't know ... why is there so many of us here for one guy ..."

"... General Kas ... or Yas ... might have been able to take care of
this. Where are they anyway ..."

"... missing ..."

"... but it's not just him. See that Water Master there..."

"... Master Brock ... fallen over there ... think he's dead ..."

"... Shadow Master though ... he has to be dead on his feet ..."

"... never know ... there's so many rumours about him ..."

Only Lance was silent, his dark-blue eyes squinted at some inner thought,
his flaring black hair still in the wind. Periodically, he looked back as
if to search for Gary, but he and his woman guards had long gone, lost in
the sea of people behind them, soldiers, trainers, civilians.

Duplica looked back at Ash, and she gasped, startled. The golden glow
about his face had vanished ... to be replaced by a deep red. It came
from his eyes, two slashes of bright blood, visible in the shadows about
his dark face. A tiny gust of wind, strange in the abrupt stillness to
the air, seemed to blow his long fringe of black hair gently upward,
further revealing them. His pikachu's eyes had also changed, as evil red
as Ash's own.

Her heart began to beat faster. She had seen this before.

Lance seemed to have a similar reaction to hers. An audible intake of
breath expelled from his mouth, the sound so unexpected coming from a
man as cool and serious as him, it instantly silenced the group of
Pokemon Masters at his back, as well as any other soldier and trainer who
had joined in some conversation.

"Kill him! Now! All of you!" Lance screamed.

A second of complete confusion passed before his order was understood.
White light flashed like a show of fireworks as dozens and dozens of
League pokemon were released all about the street in front of them, a
whole array of different elements, though standard League types.

Red charizard took to the skies, roaring fierce howls as they flapped
huge, demon wings to elevate themselves above the rooftops of the city
shopping-district buildings still standing about in the area. Brown
pinsirs with huge mandibles upon their hard-shelled heads tromped forward
on two hooved legs, while green-winged scythers glided over the street,
arms like their namesakes held poised like giant mantis'. The
already-damaged street suffered even more mutilation at the hard, landing
stomps of the massive, horned Nidoking released from aerial poke-balls,
their thick purple hides of armour shining darkly in the shadowed air,
claws like hands of scissors outstretched from their torsos. They all
stampeded and flew down the broken street toward the single, lone figure,
standing in the centre, silent.

"Go!"

Soldiers and the pokemon's trainers, though confused, obeyed the order,
shouting as they sprinted after the attacking pokemon, the ringing of
over a hundred swords and pounding boots upon gravel and old tar almost
drowning out their bellows of attack.

For their part, the whole group of Pokemon Masters at the head of the
small army flared blindingly bright as full measures of power were
quickly gathered, the wind about them howling now in the sheer amount of
elemental energy gathered. Glows of electricity, fire, earth and water
swirled above them to the accompaniment of snarling and spitting sounds
of extreme strength.

Lance himself had ridden to their front upon his frightened mount, his
dark-blue cloak blowing about his form in a storm of jerking wind.
"Prepare to discharge power! And I mean all of it!" he shouted in an
amplified voice, his own hands raised, glowing with silver energy, his
flaring long spikes of hair flying like black sea anemone in the air.

Duplica stared, open-mouthed, as the figure that was Ash was still
standing silent, unmoving, though the League pokemon and soldiers had
almost reached him now, only dozens of feet separating them upon the
street. The charizard had begun to swoop down from the rooftops, fanged
mouths opened wide as burning hot tongues of flame were born.

Suddenly she realised that black mists of shadow were emitting from his
booted feet, and had been for some time, she just hadn't noticed it. It
drifted upward along his body, ebony liquid smoke. Impossibly, as each
rising tendril of dark fog caressed his legs, bleeding wounds seemed to
just disappear as if they had never been. Rips, tears, burns in his
clothing faded, knitting away damage like an invisible seamstress. Soon,
it was passing over his whole body - all his wounds gradually diminished
to nothing, leaving healthy but pale skin in their place, before becoming
covered by repaired material of his black, loose trousers and tunic. Two
halves of a steel girder dropped to the ground, the middle piece that had
been inside him completely dissolved.

His long, black cloak covered his shoulders, torso and legs, restored,
though his head was left unhooded, his hair floating in the breeze.
His pokemon, too, had fully healed, both pointed ears now intact, the
small, dark shape gleaming malevolent, still by his ankle.

What hadn't changed was Ash's narrowed, bloody eyes, malicious, incensed,
staring.

With the abrupt movement of one hand, he ripped off the brown pack he
still wore at his back behind his cloak, tearing the straps off
violently. Tossing it away to the side, it bounced brokenly off a cement
boulder on the street, where it broke open, some of his possessions
spilling out.

But Ash didn't look like he cared. It didn't look like he cared about
anything. His now-freed cloak, billowed half-open, showing half of his
black tunic shirt inside. He lifted his arms, crossing them over, to hug
his cloak closed, right hand clutching his left shoulder and vice-versa.

The first of the swooping charizard had reached him now, large dragon
wings spread wide, lower and upper claws all outstretched hungrily,
sharpened mouth opened to release a ball of burning, orange fire.

Ash ripped his arms out to the sides with one vicious movement, and the
swooping charizard was just suddenly ripped apart into two large, chunky
pieces of dead meat. Each half of the dead body flew away to collide into
buildings at the side that lined the street, blowing holes through the
cement walls as they shot through like massive bullets.

A wind pressure seemed to be created by the movement of his arms, and all
the other descending charizard that had been flying behind stalled in the
air, then all simultaneously began to fall out of the sky like swatted
flies. Clouds of dust and rocks flew as each crashed either on to the
pavement at the sides of the street, the street itself, rubble, or
buildings like the two pieces of the first charizard. Squeals of pain
were audible even from where Duplica lay watching in frightened silence.

Meanwhile, the approaching army of League pokemon and soldiers and
trainers behind them were charging too fast to hesitate at what had
happened and they found themselves reaching Ash with his arms still
outspread. Duplica lost sight of him as it seemed the whole wave of
pokemon and men had begun to swallow him up. Multi-coloured flashes lit
up the artificial night as pokemon elements were released somewhere in
that confused mass of soldiers and pokemon.

The sound of amplified, hard laughter abruptly echoed all around,
throughout the whole city block, loud and contemptuous. Duplica's eyes
widened as she looked all around herself, recognising the laughter as
Ash's, though, before, it had never sounded so ... evil. It seemed to
come from every direction simultaneously, from every corner, building,
crack, pile of debris, around them. The laughter was so loud, it sounded
as thunder, as it reverberated about from ear to ear and person to
person.

Then the crowd attacking Ash just seemed to implode into itself, a red
mist seeming to appear and get sucked into its own centre. After that it
changed direction and just sprayed out into the air, over a hundred cut
bodies of men and pokemon alike simply fountaining out from the tight
mass, all at once as if a bomb had exploded, a hailstorm of corpses.
Bodies landed everywhere, and there was screaming as the watching
civilians in the background just watched the carnal destruction as if it
were an evil nightmare come to life. Even some of the women Pokemon
Masters were screaming, as more than a few bodies landed around them,
seeming to splat as they met the hard ground, dead sacks of meat and
fluid.

Even Duplica almost gave herself away by screaming out loud when a
dead body actually landed and bounced near her back, a young man in
silver armour, body cleanly sliced despite the hardened steel, a
horrified expression frozen on his face in death. If that weren't
enough, a scyther's detached, sword-like arm was also embedded in his
leaking neck. Instead of screaming, Duplica covered her mouth with
both hands, and even then tiny sobs were escaping from her lips.

Thunder rumbled in the sky. Ebony lightning flashed faster.

"You are all ... DEAD."

This time the contemptuous, evil voice, that was the same and yet not the
same, only came from one direction. Duplica's shoulders shook as she
weakly lifted her head to look down the street where only less than a
minute ago, over a hundred people and pokemon were fighting.

Now only Ash stood there, a lone figure on the blood-splattered street,
his black cloak wavering over his torso in the wind. Strangely, there was
no blood at all upon his body. The only thing of his that was bloodied
was the gleaming, curved, black katana blade, whose long hilt he held
loosely in his right hand. And then not even that as he flicked his sword
once to the side, the blood flying cleanly off the blade to splash on the
ground.

One of the Pokemon Masters was still crying, Duplica gradually realised
as she turned her attention back on to the group standing in front of her
about ten yards away. It was that woman Thunder Master who had seemed so
tough earlier, claiming that if Ash was still alive, he wouldn't have
been for long. Now she wasn't so tough, showing just how young and naive
these new school Pokemon Masters really were.

"... h-he's a-a monster ..."

"... why ..."

"... c-can't believe ... all dead ..."

"... he was the one ... dark wars ... Assassin ..."

"... rumours ... true ..."

"... lord ... killed ... his girlfriend ... now ... us ..."

"... Master Lance ... what do we do ..."

"... Master Lance?"

"... He's gone!"

Duplica swallowed in surprise as she looked all around, even almost
exposing herself from behind her cover as she searched. Lance was gone!
She smiled a little grimly. Had he resorted to cowardice? Then she looked
back at where Ash was standing, his cloak floating, moving along his body
as if it were alive, his crimson eyes glowing with cruelty on his pale
face, night-black hair flying in the wind. She shook her head, her
shoulders shaking again. If it was cowardice, it didn't go without
reason. She had been frightened back at Cerulean, at what had seemed a
lifetime ago, but how he was back then, compared to how he was now, was
like comparing a magikarp to Mewtwo.

She looked back at where Misty lay, still undisturbed from where she had
fallen earlier. Still unmoving. Again she turned to Ash, at his
unforgiving countenance, his demonic eyes that glowed and were visible
even from this distance. She felt a little sad, though resolute. If
anything, this showed the immense love Ash must feel for Misty. That
losing her would do this to him.

"DEAD," Ash repeated. And then he ripped his sword at the air above him,
as if slashing the sky, with a powerful two-handed swing. He finished the
movement into a stance that held the sword's hilt at his chin, the point
of the blade diagonally-down.

The void of darkness in the sky abruptly disappeared, revealing the roof
of the black protective dome behind.

Like before, when the light storm struck, the dome cracked, splintering
right through its centre as if it were made of glass. Unlike before, the
whole of the dome quickly shattered to fragments of nothingness with an
ear-splitting roar and a wave of thunder and lightning. One moment it was
there, the next moment, nothing, and this time there was no white-hot sun
lighting up the city, but the largest storm Duplica had ever seen or
heard, even more violent than the one Ash had created at South Lavender.
It revealed the angry blue-black, clouded heavens above, shrieking,
wailing, swirling, flaring, and a rapidly descending wave of what looked
like hard rain as it was released to fall down on to the city. Falling,
the rain came, uncountable slashes of black water ever-descending, though
seeming impossibly slow because of the clouds' extreme height.

People began to scream, both in fear and despair. And it wasn't just the
civilians, Duplica heard. It was also some of the League Pokemon Masters
who were supposed to kill Ash.

The ground trembled with the storm's force, vibrating and shaking beneath
them with each clap of thunder. Two more buildings in the area began to
collapse, the tall glass and cement structures seeming to sink slowly to
the ground, like the earth was sucking them in. Some of the tops of the
taller skyscrapers in the city's centre, she could see, were suddenly put
on fire as ebony lightning actually struck their tops with visible dark
sparks and heavy, black smoke.

Then the rain actually hit, and everyone and everything was just
instantly wet, drenched, and getting wetter by the second as the heavy
downpour did not pause, but continued to grow stronger. Visibility had
turned extremely poor as it bucketed down, everything around hazier, dim
shapes in the hard rain.

But the heavy storm that had just been released from the dome's
destruction was not the worst of it, Duplica realised suddenly, with her
heart in her throat, and tendrils of her soaked, blue hair running down
her face. Her eyes stinging as she looked up into the sky, thick waves of
water falling into her face, she could just see, or more sense, the
thousands of dark shapes up there.

Dark, winged shapes. Swooping and spinning. And descending.

And above even them, up in the atmosphere over the city's centre,
half-shrouded by blue-black clouds, three swirling, dark-purple vortex'
that seemed less like individual entities than being one with the
shadowed heavens. Faint soul-searing screaming seemed to be emitted, able
to be even heard over the pounding of the rain, the roar of falling
buildings, people shouting and wailing, the cracking of thunder, even
from high up above. From Cerulean, Cinnabar, but the third one? Then she
remembered Lavender Tower, and the Forbidden Pokemon found there. But the
fourth and final vortex ... she could sense it wasn't open yet, but she
knew it would be soon.

Duplica whipped her head down and stared toward the edge of the city,
even though her view was blocked by a horizon of buildings. But if the
dome was gone, what was protecting Indigo Plateau from the existing
Forbidden?

The answer ... nothing.


<><><>


The old, white-haired man was sitting on the wooden porch of his
farmhouse, sliding back and forth on his rocking chair. Light from a
candle flickered gently on a small side-table. As he watched the
dark horizon of the protective dome in the distance across his acre of
farm land, he played his poke flute in soft contemplation.

Times were tough ever since the League had invoked the prophecy of
rebirth. He dropped the mouthpiece of his flute and chuckled sadly. Not
that times weren't tough even before then. Ever since the Dark Pokemon
Wars, it seemed that life had entered a dark age. Although he supposed he
was more fortunate then most. He lived in the city outskirts where farms
were more common than buildings, but the city was Indigo Plateau City,
the home of the Pokemon League - the only major power left in the known
world. In these days if you had to be alive, it was better to be alive in
a city with protection.

He was especially lucky since his farm had made the cut-off distance that
the Lord's dome of defence would cover. The city was about a mile in
diameter, and he didn't want to guess how much elemental power it had
taken to erect the damn thing. As it was, he knew of more than a few poor
people who were forced to leave their farms behind and move to the city
if they wanted to live.

Not that farming these days was particularly prosperous. Nothing seemed
to grow as it did in the old days, and in fact, since there was no more
sunlight for the past week and a half, all of his newly-planted crops
would die. He had been forced to survive on his canned goods and
vegetables that he had been saving for the winter.

He smiled then, at an optimistic thought, and again began to play his
poke flute, the sweet melody stirring his soul. At least by tomorrow, the
prophecy would be finally completed. According to the League's
announcement, the world tomorrow would be just like if the Dark Wars had
never happened. And the sun would return and there would be no need for
the dome. He wished Snorlax was still alive to see it.

Thunder rumbled in the sky, startling him, and an ugly squeal blurted
from his flute by accident. Putting the flute in his pocket, the old man
stood up and stepped off the porch. The sky above was still clouded, and
now he could see that weird lightning again. For hours now, the weather
inside the dome had been acting mighty strange. First when the dome had
partly-split letting in an extraordinary white light, and now this.

Something was definitely going on.

And that's when the black horizon shattered, black, crystal shards
revolving and fading to nothing. The old man was blown off his feet by
the sudden blasting wind, and the wooden walls of his small house rattled
like it was in the middle of a tornado.

Shaken, the old man picked himself up, fearing he had broken his arm as
the most terrible pain was racking his elbow. Then he looked across the
field, trying to see by the hard shaking of the candle flame on his
porch. He shaded his eyes from the wind and squinted to see.

The dome! It was gone!

Instead of the familiar horizon of black, he could now see shadows of
trees and forest ... the beginnings of Viridian Forest? But what were all
those glowing red dots? There were so many among the trees, so as to be
uncountable. Fire flies? He squinted again. No, fireflies could not
reach that shade of blood-red. And they seemed to be growing larger.

Or was that nearer? Along with the blood-red dots came spiny shapes with
them. Dark, spiny shapes that would have been invisible in the night if
it weren't for those weird, red lights.

The old man suddenly covered his mouth in complete, paralysing fear when
he finally realised what they were. Since the dome was down, and the
reason for that dome was to protect the city from destructive Shadow
Pokemon called the Forbidden, he could only surmise that these were in
fact that reason.

The wave of blood-eyed, black creatures seemed to extend from
side-to-side for as far as the eye could see. And they were all moving
as one, silent, except for the loud, crunching noises of clawed feet upon
grass. They pounced, ran, leaped over, or destroyed any and everything in
their way. Some hundreds finally reached his field and sprinted over the
landscape in a dreadful, wild eagerness.

When the falling rain from above finally hit, the old man and his house
had already been swallowed by the surrounding ocean of tearing darkness
heading for the city. He did not even get to scream.


<><><>


Laselle shivered as the wet, chilling cold wind continued to blow at her
soaked hair and clothes. The hard rain that had begun only minutes ago
seemed to almost fall horizontally, the wind blowing the storm that hard.
It was so hard, it was a continuous sound of water falling, splashing
everywhere. Hard rain bounced off buildings and fell down to the streets
where already it began to start flooding, the city's drainage system
inadequate in too many areas. And somewhere up there, though she couldn't
look that long from the rain hitting her eyes, were dreadful dark shapes,
swirling about. If she didn't know there was a protective dome, she would
have sworn it was Forbidden Pokemon. Although with the stormy,
lightning-filled clouds that covered the sky, she couldn't see a trace of
it.

The man behind her, holding her captive atop the horse as they rode
double, tightened his grip on her arm for no apparent reason, and she
couldn't even yell out in pain, the gag was so tight. Since the rain had
begun to fall, every soldier in the group had been on edge. She could
hear their sopping clothes rustle and armour clink as they shuffled
nervously. The horses, since their elements were fire, were in constant
pain as the water lashed at their bodies, their flame manes seeming to
actually have been put out, leaving their group in almost total darkness,
except for a lantern that one of the soldiers carried. And behind her,
she could hear Junior - JT, she wryly corrected herself in her mind - JT
sounded as if he were shivering as much as she was.

But no one was more on edge than General Kas himself. He had dismounted
and was crouched on the water-logged street, examining something. His
dirty-blonde hair looked black in the shadows, darkened by the rain and
the lack of light and his large, husky body was but a grey blur.

"You," General Kas said roughly, gesturing to one of his men to come
closer. "See if you recognise this body."

A body? Laselle shivered again, and this time it wasn't from the cold.

"Yes, Sir," the soldier obeyed. Then he rose and stumbled backward,
gasping. "S-Sir! That ... that's General Yas! He's dead!"

General Kas pushed himself to his feet and stepped backward, letting the
light from a lantern illuminate the body. Laselle felt sick as she saw
the mutilated body of a man dressed like General Kas, in a silver League
coat, laying there on the street, half-submerged in water. His skin was
palest white and the lantern was unforgiving as the light reflected from
it. Aside from being horribly dismembered, the body looked almost
squashed.

The soldier holding the lantern then moved it around, and more dim shapes
could be identified, strewn about the street and sidewalk, beneath
non-functional lamp posts and bent street signs. Mostly there were dead
soldiers, but there were even a few Pokemon Masters, judging from the
cloaks, some dead pokemon, including a charizard and sandslash, and
numerous others, and one woman in a black robe. All resembled the corpse
that was General Kas, mostly ripped up, and squashed-looking.

Suddenly her throat was tightened painfully, and she twisted her head to
find that General Kas had stepped beside their mount to choke her with
one hand. He looked absolutely furious, his amber eyes sparking in the
rain. "You little rebel bitch. This is the work of your friends isn't
it?"

She shook her head rapidly, not being able to talk through the gag.

The soldier behind her on the horse cleared his throat hesitantly.
"Permission to speak, Sir."

"What is it?" he asked roughly, turning to him.

"We all heard General Yas and the communicator. He mentioned sentinel."

General Kas paused. Then to Laselle's relief, he released her throat. "He
must be mistaken. The sentinel are Lord Garick's elite guards. Why would
he kill his own men?"

"Rogue sentinel, Sir?"

"Impossible. Those harlots love him too much to ever disobey even the
most insignificant order, let alone openly rebel."

"But I'd like to say, Sir, that I've never known General Yas to be
mistaken much on anything, if at all ... Sir."

The lantern's light shone on General Kas' face again, showing him now
wearing a perplexed, and even worried, look. "Neither have I. And that's
why I am starting to get a bad feeling about this whole situation." He
paused again, thinking. "Last time we were in contact, I told him of the
possibility of Rebel Pokemon Masters in the city. Then while we
investigated the disturbance at the city's south, Yas must have realised
where the Rebel Masters were and intercepted, or at least tried to. Then
we receive the distress call ... and now we find him dead along with two
companies of soldiers, and even other Masters and a chaneller ..."

"Sir ... just supposing that Lord Garick did order the strike ... and not
saying we are, just pointing out the possibility ... I think it looks
like Lord Garick don't want us after the rebels."

General Kas looked even more worried. "That thought is treason, soldier."
But his tone was hesitant, not the disciplining tone required of such a
statement. He was about to say more when a beeping sound emitting from
his pocket slowly got his attention. "My communicator?" The ever-present
sound of the hard rain falling around them was drowning it out and it
looked like he hadn't noticed it for some time.

He had barely taken it out and flicked the switch when simultaneously,
four panicked voices were screaming out of the small speaker along with
various explosive sounds in the background.

"... General! North dome has been breached!"

"... West guards reporting! Forbidden have broken through!"

"... Requesting backup, serious backup! South side has been completely
overrun!"

"... East guards! We're all dead! Forbidden ... ARGHHHHH!"

General Kas immediately began shouting into his device. "What's going
on?" he screamed, "Forbidden! That's impossible!"

One of the soldiers swallowed and pointed up at the sky. Her mouth dry,
Laselle followed his gaze along with General Kas and everyone else. The
slight pain of the rain slashing in their faces was forgotten.

At first Laselle thought they were demons descending from the heavens,
their curved, spiny wings, bat-like. But then their large sizes and sharp
black beaks full of horrible razor-like teeth and the large, muscular
hind legs revealed them as aerodactyl. Black, Forbidden Aerodactyl.
Hundreds, maybe thousands, dove from the sky like a plague of over-sized
locusts, their evil red eyes lighting up the air like stars. Though,
technically they were Rock Pokemon, the slashing wet rain didn't seem to
affect them as they smashed through the tops of various city buildings
and rooves. Haphazardly they came, not in any order as they just attacked
the city furiously.

A gust of hard wind blew loud somewhere to the side, gusting everyone's
clothes to flutter in the air despite their wetness and several men
screamed. Broken out of her shock, Laselle twisted her head to find that
where two soldiers had been on horseback at the edge of their group, now
they were just gone, leaving their ponytas without riders. She looked to
their back to see one of the winged shadows swooping up into the sky, two
shredded bodies clutched within each hind claw.

"What in the Hell's shadows is going on?" she heard General Kas scream
again and she turned back to the front to see another dark shape swoop
around and begin to descend toward them between the tops of the buildings
that lined their sides.

"Another one!" a soldier shouted, his voice hoarse above the wind and
rain.

"Soldiers! Trainers! Pokemon out!" General Kas yelled as he threw a
yellow poke-ball out on to the flooded street before him.

Various pokemon were released about them along with General Kas' sparking
electabuzz. But the electabuzz cowered in the falling rain, the water
causing its black-striped torso to crackle dangerously.

The swooping Forbidden Aerodactyl was almost on top of them.

"Attack!"

A burst of elemental energy blasted at the flying shadow. But even if the
rain falling didn't dampen the combined strike, it still wouldn't have
affected it as the aerodactyl simply smashed past, taking two more
unfortunate, screaming men with it.

"Electabuzz! You didn't Thunderbolt!"

The poor electabuzz pointed at the flooding water beneath their feet.

"You should have ... damn it! What am I thinking?" He paused. "Wait,
what's wrong? Electabuzz!"

Laselle just watched in growing horror as the whole group of League
Pokemon along with General Kas' Electabuzz began to flare white. Flare
white as if they were evolving. But the whole lot of them began screaming
out as if they were in pain. Their bodies did not change shape but
instead began to change colour ... darkening.

"What?" a soldier called out in confusion. "Wartortle, what's wrong?"

"Victreebel?"

"Why are you glowing? Kingler!"

"Primeape!"

During the commotion, Laselle heard a grunt behind her, then a sigh. She
turned to see the soldier behind her on the horse slide off unconscious
to reveal a cloaked shadow. She almost screamed out in fright though the
gag that it was a Forbidden, but then managed to hold it in as she
recognised Master Bruno in his maroon cloak. He was holding a furious,
but scared, looking Junior underneath one arm, while the other was
snapping open the bound ropes at her wrists behind her back. Tears of
relief streamed from her eyes. She didn't think she could be so happy
just to see someone.

"Shhh," he grunted as he finished with the binding and then heaved her
underneath his other muscular shoulder. Then carrying them both, he
stepped away from the snorting horse and began to quietly run away. There
was a narrow alleyway between two buildings that he slipped in to before
they could have been detected. Most of the hard rain cut out as they went
inside, the alley shielding them from most of the weather.

"Hold it right there, Master Bruno."

Laselle had just finished removing the gag from her pained mouth when the
familiar, husky voice halted them. Still being carried, she looked up.

A drenched heavy-set man with a brown beard and a maroon over-coat stood
blocking their way, a wicked-looking crossbow trained on them.

"Hikaru," Master Bruno growled. "What do you think you're doing?"

Though a sad look was on his burly face, he was resolute. "I'm doing what
it looks like." He jerked his chin toward the still-distracted group of
League soldiers and General Kas. "Back over there, if you please."

Laselle could feel the muscles bunch up underneath Master Bruno's arms as
he held them. Then he let them go slowly to stand up on their own, though
he still held his arms around their backs protectively. "You should know
that a stupid toy like that won't stop me."

Hikaru shook his head, his wet, bushy brown hair flopping over his
forehead. "I know. That's why I've got it trained on your son there." He
waved the point of the crossbow at Junior.

"H-Hikaru!" Junior finally blurted out in voice full of betrayal. "I
thought ... I thought you cared about us. Why are you doing this?"

Hikaru's voice cracked. "It's because I care about you that I'm doing
this! What's the use of saving the world when the League is right, it
requires reforming! What kind of a life is it to live, constantly on the
run, always wondering whether there will be enough food to eat the next
day? How can we help the survivors of the Dark Wars when we can't even
help ourselves?" He shook his head in disgust. "The world needs a leader
to help through these dark times. And that leader might as well be the
Pokemon League. Our society has always depended on them in the past, why
not now?"

Laselle found she couldn't keep her mouth shut. "It's because ever since
the end of the wars, the League has ruled in tyranny! Always thinking for
themselves, never about others! My parents died because of their
selfishness! Died when all they did was try to help people! You should
know, Mister Hikaru, that when the world falls under a tyrant, there will
always be those who rise up to oppose it!"

Hikaru stared at her. Then he laughed, defeated. "That's true, but what
are the alternatives? To die fighting? That's all noble and good, but
what does it leave? Just death!" His eyes narrowed and he jerked his
beared chin once again. "It's better to be a reed in the storm than a
tree trunk that gets uprooted. At least if I bring you in now and throw
you on their mercy, it may be lenient."

Though Laselle could feel Master Bruno literally shake with anger, his
voice was now calm. "So yet another traitor surfaces. How long have you
been with the League? Giving them our secrets?"

"Master Bruno ... It was nothing like that," Hikaru replied softly. "It
was true I met with League soldiers from time to time, but always, it was
for your protection."

"I guess you feel that bow is for our protection also?"

"Sir," Junior interrupted, directing his voice to his father. "Don't
worry about me. Just go."

"No," Master Bruno said simply, underneath his breath. "I'm not gambling
with your lives." He took steps backward to reverse out of the alley,
bringing both Laselle and Junior with him. Out from underneath the high
walls from in-between the buildings, the hard rain again began pouring
over them.

"What do you care, *father*?" Junior said with enormous sarcasm on the
last word. "You've always denied me ever since you stole me away from
Mom."

"I never denied you. I just never told you."

"If you weren't going to tell me, you should have just left me with Mom!"

"Out of the question!" Master Bruno roared. "I would never have left you
behind!"

"But leaving Mom was okay?"

Master Bruno went very still. "I know now that I was wrong. She was
already on a downward spiral, but my leaving threw her off the edge. And
I will always hate myself for it. As for you, you can hate me all you
want, but I will do what your mother asked of me and take care of you."

"Enough," Hikaru interjected, his bearded face full of pain for what he
was doing. "Let's get back." Suddenly his eyes widened as he looked over
to where the soldiers were. "What the hell?"

Screaming filtered in to Laselle's hearing over the pounding rain and
wind. Frightened, she whipped her gaze away from Hikaru's shocked face
and immediately saw what was the matter. Though she already had a sinking
feeling about what had happened.

While they were gone all of the League soldier's pokemon had evolved to
Forbidden. Their bodies had darkened fully to pure black with faintly
glowing blue lines, just like the graveller had back in Victory Road.
They were now attacking their own masters with newly-created fangs and
claws. It was a pure nightmare as blood flew, seemingly as copious as
rain, as soldiers were ripped apart like threshes of wheat. Black
victreebel bisected bodies with razor-sharp vines, primeape busily
smashed poor men into pulp, while even others were just simply
unrecognisable in their dark evolvement, looking like something out of a
nightmare. General Kas himself was apart from the main melee, his soaked,
grey-coated form slowly backing away from a dark electabuzz, black
lightning emitting from its spiny body.

Only Master Bruno was unperturbed. "Hikaru ... your League's prophecy ...
it won't save us, but kill us all."

Hikaru looked panicked. "This ... this is impossible! Something must have
gone wrong! Lord Garick said that the dome would protect us while the
Forbidden would clean the earth back to what it once was!"

Suddenly from out of the shadows, a horse screeched in rage. Before
Laselle even knew what fully happened, a night-black ponyta charged
seeming from nowhere directly at Hikaru, red eyes flashing, sharp teeth
biting. On its back was a decapitated soldier, blood streaming from his
ruined neck.

"No!" The burly Fight Trainer didn't even get a chance to scream as the
horse clamped on to his own neck with its dagger-like teeth, snatching
him off his feet and carrying him away with tosses of its head and a
spray of red rain.

Unfortunately, the crossbow he held went off and Junior shouted as it
seemed the thick quarrel would head directly for him. But Master Bruno
was already moving by that time and just managed to chop it out of the
air with a savage swing of his arm. The two pieces of the arrow went
flying away into the night.

"Can we please get out of here?" Laselle said, scared out of her mind.

"You!" General Kas shouted as he spotted them. His amber eyes glowing
furiously underneath his soaked dirty-blonde hair, he began to run toward
them, away from his dying company of soldiers. "Rebels! Somehow you
planned this!" Electricity hissed around his form, dangerous in the wet
rain. "Even if I die, I will die destroying you all as well!"

But he didn't see as his one-time pokemon growled feral from behind him
And began to pounce, the black electabuzz stretched out for the kill.

"That will be ENOUGH."

Simultaneous with the new voice, the black electabuzz seemed to be just
smashed backward as if an invisible bat had smashed it in the chest.
Hissing in pain, the Forbidden Pokemon was propelled away to smash into a
building across the flooding street, whereupon it hissed again, before
scampering off into the shadows.

General Kas was staring behind himself, confused. Then he turned to who
had saved him.

Laselle was looking at him too. And so was Master Bruno and Junior.

He stood there in the rain, an ordinary man with ordinary clothes, though
like them, he was soaked from the rain. He had short, grey-streaked brown
hair and sported a closely-cropped beard. What was not ordinary was his
eyes which were very narrow, squinted in slits. Laselle gasped at the
resemblance, and even more fear began to clench her stomach. And yet, she
felt she somehow knew this man, though she was sure she had never met him
before. Was this-?

"Flint?" General Kas breathed aloud. "Is that you?"

Bruno by Laselle's side seemed to jump and he pushed forward roughly, his
cloaked, muscled body beginning to emanate power. "Stay back, kids," he
said in a voice that held no nonsense. "That's Brock's father. As far as
I know, he's with the Pokemon League too."

Brock's father!

"Yes, it's me," the newcomer answered General Kas, though his voice was
weary.

"Good! Then you can help me kill these rebels here." General Kas again
turned to them, his amber eyes lighting up again.

"No. There will be no more killing of rebels."

"What?"

Flint stalked up to General Kas and shook him roughly. "Just what I
said!" he shouted angrily. "You always had a thick skull, but just this
once, Kas, listen! Can't you see that we've been used? Isn't it obvious
that Gary has his own agenda with the prophecy? He hasn't told us
everything! And I'm afraid that what he hasn't told us, is going to be
very hard ... on everyone."

"W-What do you mean?"

Flint turned back toward Laselle and the others. "The rebels here ...
they've been doing right all along. I know because I've watched them.
Watched them for a long time now. Meanwhile the League has just been
getting deeper and deeper into the mess of its own making. We were
wrong." He waved his hand at the sky, where hundreds of shapes of flying
Forbidden swooped through the storming air, still attacking the city. He
waved his hand behind them where the League Pokemon - now Forbidden -
were finishing up killing all of General Kas' men. "And look what that
cost us. How many civilians do you think have died already? One hundred?
Two hundred? One thousand? One is already too many! You were charged with
protecting the city ... I suggest you do that! And you can start by
joining forces with the rebels ... and become the Pokemon League of old,
as it should be!"

General Kas was speechless.

But during all that Flint had been saying, Laselle had caught onto only
one thing. "You've been watching us? But how?" Suddenly, she widened her
eyes as a revelation struck her. "No ... it couldn't be."

Flint smiled at her. "I see you aren't really as dense as I thought you
were. That's right ... I'm-"

"Butterfree," Laselle finished, shock and wonder going through her.

An annoyed wrinkle appeared on Flint's forehead. "Ditorion. The seventh
Master Pokemon. You know Butterfree was just an act."

"I know, but I think of you as Butterfree. You're cuter that way."

"What?" Flint called out, offended.

"But it doesn't make much sense," Laselle said, puzzled. "You can't be a
Master Pokemon. You're human."

Flint shook his head, a slight smile on his mouth. "What do you think
Master Pokemon are, Lass? Master Pokemon are generally humans who had
evolved to be Pokemon! Or even the other way around. Humans and pokemon
who are genetically linked. The only reason I can appear as a human now
is because of the Change-type that I evolved to."

"Then why didn't you tell us who you really were?" Junior finally said,
his curiosity getting the better of him.

"Look at how you reacted to me when I first got here!" His voice
saddened. "With all the notoriety my son has gotten, you wouldn't have
believed that I'd want to be on your side. But I do! I realise that what
the League is doing is evil and must be stopped. But we must find Ash!
And Misty. It is them that this prophecy revolves around. I realise that
now." He turned back to General Kas. "Well? What have you decided?"

The Pokemon League General looked into his eyes. "For now, I accept.
Protecting the city was ... *is* my job." He looked behind where all of
his men had been dismembered and now the Forbidden Pokemon had run amok,
scattering. "And I find that suddenly I am undermanned," he said with
perverse sarcasm. He pulled out his communicator. "I'll see about somehow
regrouping the city. We'll all fall back toward the centre toward the
palacial grounds, try to round up the civilians. Erect barriers at the
entrances to First, Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Streets. I think the
outer city lands is a lost cause by now. But I'll get up all the soldiers
and Masters I have left, and somehow we'll have a defence. But we need
more Pokemon Masters." He looked at Master Bruno. "Exactly how many are
there of you?"

Master Bruno seemed to think. "There's Ashura, Mistaria ... Erika ... and
I guess Doctor Giselle counts, though she doesn't like to use her
Mastery."

"Hmmm ... not including you, that's three of the original Pokemon
Masters. Impressive. Most of ours are dead, though we should have at
least a score of the newer, lesser Masters, along with a few chanellers
scattered about." General Kas smiled wryly. "And the Assassin himself. He
alone has caused us more trouble lately than all of you put together. Of
course, we do have Mistress Valdera as our answer to him, but that bitch
seems to have disappeared. And Lord Garick and Master Lance ... I don't
know about them, but like I said, I *will* save this city." His voice
grew softer. "Even with General Yas dead."

"It's a plan then," Master Bruno agreed. "But before I do anything else-"
He stepped forward and, without warning, punched General Kas in the
stomach, hard.

The League General doubled over, gasping, his face going red. "What the
hell was that for?" he wheezed.

"For manhandling my son and the kid there. Now where was I? That's right,
I was going to say that we better find Ashura and the others. I don't
think it should be too hard ... even I can feel some tremendous power
coming around from the west. Let's go." He began to dash off with Junior
and General Kas right after him.

Laselle looked at Flint. "Aren't you coming, Butterfree? I mean, Flint."

Flint seemed to be breathing hard. "Yes ... it's just that ..." He didn't
get to finish his sentence as he just stumbled forward, his body glowing
as it changed. "Dit ... just tired," the, now, little amoeba-shaped,
black ditto said upon her shoulder in a tiny voice.

Laselle turned to run after the others. "That's okay! I like you when
you're cute anyway!"


<><><>


Rain washed over the high car-park roof while black lightning flashed
directly above, illuminating the busy, three-way fight in brief bursts of
dark incandescence.  Cold wind blew the storm fiercely across their sides
and backs, drenching them in water, and damp clouds of smoke drifted
past, strong from the numerous building rooftops that were struck by
lightning, burning about the city around them despite the rain. It had
been going on for some time, none of them even noticing that the storm
had brewed and erupted, instead concentrating on killing each other.

Except for Persian. He was only trying to avoid the female persian's
deadly attacks to the background clashing of Butch and Cassidy fighting
with Jessie and James, sais against swords.

"Hsssss!"

Persian just managed to leap backward away from the deadly Slash attack,
the floor, instead, receiving the brunt of it, the cement being sliced
open in four parts as if it were cardboard and not as hard as stone. The
floor all around them had been slashed to ribbons.

"M-Meowsy!" Persian caterwauled as he flipped in the air and landed with
a light splash on the wet roof, "Stop that!"

She looked at him as she prepared to pounce again, her green
vertical-slitted eyes gleaming, ears reversed and flattened against her
head. "The name is Persia now, dirty street meowth," she purred softly,
deadly. "Perr ... as you can see, I've evolved a little since last we
met."

Persian could feel his whiskers heat. "Only if you stop calling me, dirty
street meowth! Perr ... I'm not as weak as I was back then either."

"You weren't weak, just stupid!" She pounced again, claws outstretched.

More of the wet floor was shredded, but only that as Persian again dodged
out of the way, this time sideways. "What do you mean I wasn't weak?" he
said, generally surprised. "Perr ... I was a weakling!"

"You were strong!" Slash.

"No I wasn't!" Dodge.

"Perr ... you beat the gang's Persian leader!" Bite.

"It was a fluke!" Jump.

She stopped at that, and padded slowly around him in a circle, the
puddles splashing lightly around her paws. Rain drops leaked over her
lashes, green slit eyes underneath confused, her whiskers and ears
hanging low. "After the Lady left me and I was forced to be that gang of
cats' whore, I had given up, content with being abused. When you came
back into my life, I thought nothing of you, just the same dirty
street meowth only even weirder with your old human-talk and your walking
on two legs. Perrr ... but after you defeated the gang leader, it taught
me that no one can be pushed around unless you let them. Only losers are
dependant on others."

Persian felt as if he was missing something here. And this time it wasn't
his nose since he had one now. "Then why didn't you leave with me? Perrr
... you said you wanted to stay with them!"

"Can't a girl change her mind? You should have forced me to go with you!"

"But ... you said you wanted to stay with them!"

"Are you a male or an effeminate weakling?"

Persian growled, his eyes heating. "Effeminate weakling? That's it!" He
leaped into high into the air, his right paw glowing. "Super Slash!" he
roared, swiping the air below him with ferocious intensity. The air shook
as four sharp blades of compressed air shot down at her.

Persia just managed to dive away from them, wet, furred body rolling into
a ball as she somersaulted away, the blades so sharp, they shot threw the
cement floor like knife-shaped bullets. As she landed, skidding to the
side, sprays of water flying from her paws, she let out a throaty, feline
laugh. "Perrr ... So there is some male in you after all!"

Butch's scratchy voice interrupted her as he clashed with James on the
car-park roof's left edge. "Persia! Stop playing with him, and finish him
off! Fighting these failures is taking up time better spent on hunting
down Ashura!"

Jessie fighting with Cassidy on the car-park roof's right edge just
expelled a disbelieving snort. "Butchy, you're just afraid we're going to
beat you and now you need your pokemon's help!"

A snicker came from Cassidy as she blocked Jessie's latest stab, spun and
delivered diagonal slash, though that one was parried too. "I can't
believe this is coming from the cowards who fled Team Rocket just when we
were beginning our takeover of all of Indigo!"

James managed to kick away Butch for enough time to turn toward her.
"We're not ashamed of that! We always drew the line at killing and the
Rocket Army along with those new Pokemon Masters were doing plenty of it.
We're evil ... but we're not *that* evil!"

Butch recovered from the kick and stepped in, pressing his attack with
quick cutting movements. "Which is precisely the reason why you two were
never any good at being Team Rocket agents. You three should have died a
long time before now, and now we will address that fact. Persia, stop
dawdling and kill that Persian! Use your special attacks too!"

Persian's outraged male anger hiccoughed upon hearing that. "Special
attacks?"

Persia's green jewel above her eyes started glowing a sinister light.
"Perr ... he means this, dirty street meowth." She back-flipped up into
the air, white body beginning to light up as well, a bright green aura.
"Super Skull Bash!"

The next thing that Persian knew, he was tumbling away on the puddled
rooftop, water flying everywhere, and his body feeling as if it had been
hit with a cannon ball. Finally he slipped to a stop, laying on his side,
and he looked up. He just managed to catch Persia landing from her attack
with a satisfied female smirk on her fanged mouth.

He was hurt. But he was also angry. "Fire Blast!" he growled, jaws
opening, a massive discharge of crossed fire exploding toward her, the
power of the Fire Blast, such that it just boiled away the rain around it
to puffs of steam.

Persia's jaw opened too. "Ice Beam!" An even larger discharge of blue,
artic watery ice expelled from her mouth, the rain around it freezing to
hail and fog.

The two elemental attacks met in the centre of the roof with a small,
nullifying explosion. Despite the cancellation, everyone was thrown off
their feet or paws at the impact, blasts of wind blowing out from the
force of the collision of opposite elements.

James was the first to stand, preparing to continue his fight with Butch,
when suddenly he spotted something in the sky. "What in the world is
that?"

Cassidy stood up too. "It looks like ... a black aerodactyl?"

Everyone else leaped to their feet, all eyes pointed up.

"Oh ... SHIT!" James shouted.

They all jumped away as the large black ... thing ... just dived straight
into the roof of the building, dust, rocks and cement flying as it
punched through floor. Several more crashes came to them as it seemed to
penetrate even more levels of the car-park below from the sound of it.

"W-What are they?" Butch rasped, breathing hard as he sat dazed on the
floor, loose bits of cement falling off his head.

"Perr ... they look like Forbidden Pokemon!" Persia hissed as she
crouched down, agitated as she watched the sky. "There's more of them!"

"But ... that's impossible! The dome should have protected the city!"

"What dome?"

"Here comes another one!" Jessie trilled, her voice high. "It's coming in
from the side. What do we do?" she called out, panicked.

Cassidy took charge. "Persia, do Payday! Now!" She looked at Jessie and
James. "Get your Persian to do it too! It's their strongest attack!"

Jessie and James looked at Persian.

"What?" he growled, embarrassed.

"You still can't do it?"

"Perrr ... don't look at me as if I were impotent!"

"Pathetic!" Persia said as she leaped into position. Her forehead jewel
glowed along with her eyes as she lowered her front legs as if to pounce.
But instead of the usual colour of green, they now began glowing a
bright, metallic gold, the colour of money. Just as the large flying,
Forbidden Pokemon came swooping down toward them, its red eyes gleaming
with the hue of dark blood, she shrieked out a brutal, animalistic
cry of rage. They were all knocked to their backs a second time as a
massive, metallic fireball erupted from her body's aura to the sound of
ringing coins.

The black aerodactyl screeched an ear-piercing call of pain as the energy
reached it, enveloping it with a golden-yellow mist. Heavy coins exploded
into the air at the impact, and its wings collapsed around its torso.
Persia jumped out of the way at the last second as it crash-landed right
where she had been crouching, bounced, then rebounded up to fly off the
edge of the roof to disappear into the shadows somewhere below.

However more shapes began flying their way, all attracted by the use of
elemental power.

"Let's get out of here!" Cassidy yelled.

But Jessie, James and Persian were busy scrambling about in the rain,
picking up the various gold coins that had come off the attack.

"Idiots!" Butch screamed. He clenched his broad sword. "We don't need
them! Let's kill them right now! Persia, use Payday on them! Maximum
power!"

Nothing happened.

"Persia?" Cassidy asked, looking back where their pokemon was last.

At the sound of the name, Persian looked up, broken out of the sudden
lust for money.

"Perrr ... I-I don't feel so good." She lay there on the rooftop looking
nauseated. Her sleek body seemed to be flashing, darkening, as if shadows
were entering her body. Her green eyes looked dull, though there was a
curious red tinge to them all of a sudden.

Abrupt, overwhelming panic just burst out in Persian's head. "No!" He
roared and slashed the ground with a single massive swipe. Water and
shards of cement flew and there was now a cut hole in the floor. He
pounced over to Persia, grasped her neck with his powerful jaws, then
leaped back into the hole he created, carrying the female persian with
him.

"Persian?" he heard Jessie and James say simultaneously, still on the
roof. "Wait for us!" The sound of jingling coins in pockets sounded.

Butch and Cassidy's voice sounded too. "Hey! Come back here! That's our
Persian!"


<><><>


Erika's hands and her ankles were killing her. They had been flying
through the city for quite a while now, her hanging on to Scyther's legs
as it flew, while Giselle did the same to her. They must have looked
quite a sight since, due to the weight and the storm, Scyther had only
been able to fly as high as a single-story building and numerous people
had spotted them, pointing at them from down on the street. Though not
that many did that now, as most were busy fleeing from some disturbance
further ahead to the west. It was a practical stampede down there, all
shouting and screaming, to the background noise of some sort of booming
and crashing.

"Where are we now?" she shouted below, spitting out rain that had
dribbled down into her mouth.

"We just crossed First Street about five minutes ago!" came Giselle's
voice, also shouting. It was hard to hear each other from the noise of
the rain and the excitement unless they were crying out at the top of
their lungs.

"Are you sure we should keep going? I think those people on the ground
are running away for a reason! And there seems to be more Forbidden
Pokemon flying about over there!"

"I don't know about you, but I think those crazy cheerleaders are still
on our tail! I can't see them, but I know they're there!"

"But we might be flying into something even worse!" Something sharp
digged into her left ankle. "Ouch! Hey, what are you doing?"

"Sorry, just checking my EDS!" Giselle was quiet for a second.
"Something's wrong! I know there's something heavy ahead of us, anyone
with any shred of elemental ability could feel it, but the reading I'm
getting is stuck at zero!"

"Maybe the rain's malfunctioned it!"

"But this device is waterproof!"

"Maybe-" Something ahead caught her eye, which she then widened along
with the other one. "Scyther! Evasive action! Dive left now!"

"What ... ugh!" Giselle grunted as the inertia of their sudden sharp turn
kicked in and their bodies tilted to the left, while their legs flew out
to the right.

Erika felt a gust of wind from above them as they flew around an old
ten-story apartment building, Giselle's outstretched feet almost close
enough to touch its walls. "We were lucky! That Forbidden Pokemon just
missed us! Scyther, turn right at the next intersection and continue on
course!"

Silently, her pokemon obeyed, flapping its wings faster, flying in
between tall buildings like a bee in a forest. But as they progressed,
she realised that a lot of the buildings in this section of the city had
collapsed into rubble. And from many of them still standing, their tops
were burning despite the torrent of rain washing over them. The Palace of
the Elite Four in the distance to their left was one of the only tall
buildings not touched by the lightning. Erika almost laughed at the
irony. Instead, way above it, seemed to be swirling dark-purple vortex'
... three of them. It seemed now that the prophecy was completing, they
had moved here from their places of origin for the final phase.

Giselle was busy with the EDS again. "Something's seriously wrong with
this! Now the reading is rising again! And fast!"

Erika ignored her shouting, having already surmised that the thing was
broken. "Stop playing with that and look over there! From what I
remember, I think that must be Fifth Street! I think I see some sort of
commotion!"

"You're right! Over there, I think I see ... League Pokemon Masters!
Lot's of bodies ... and ... on the other side of the street ... is that
Ash? That dark figure over there!"

"I think we better land! Scyther, land over there, on the corner just
before Fifth Street! We don't want to land right in the middle of that
mess!"

Scyther was unresponsive.

"Scyther?" She looked up. "Start descending ... Oh no!"

"What do you mean, oh no?" Giselle looked up too. "Oh no!"

Scyther had turned an evil blue-black. Just like the Forbidden Aerodactyl
flying about the city. It twisted its neck and looked down at them with
gleaming red eyes and a smiling, pointed snout. Shining ebony blades came
swinging down.

"Let go!" Giselle screamed.

"Already did!" Erika screamed.

"Aaaaaaahhhhhhh!"

They dropped the ten feet down on to the half-flooded street, water
splashing up, as they then continued rolling from the momentum. They slid
and tumbled about for several yards until they finally came to a stop.

Everything seemed to be so quiet.

When they tiredly stood up, they found themselves at the crossroads,
where the street they had been following west met with Fifth Street. They
had stopped just at the foot of a non-functional traffic light.

And almost right in the middle of the League Pokemon Masters and the
quiet, dark figure, that was Ash, they now saw.

Although there was something different about him.

"Ash-" Giselle started to say.

Erika quickly slapped her hand over her mouth and dragged her
away for more than half a dozen yards to behind a street sign that was
bent in half. "Sshhhh!"

But Ash seemed as if he hadn't seen or heard them. He walked past their
hiding spot with slow, deliberate steps, his thick, leather boots
splashing through the puddles. His long cloak looked the blackest
Erika had ever seen it. Almost as if he were one with the night as it
covered his shoulders, most of his torso and legs with small ripples of
movement. Only half of his slender, muscular forearms were left
uncovered, swinging ever so slightly as he walked. In his right hand he
uncaringly held the hilt of his long, black katana which waved around
over one leg due to the moving of his arms.

And however impossible it seemed, he looked quite dry, even though the
rain had not let up ever since it had started. Head unhooded, his longish
black hair blew about with the wind, covering and uncovering his eyes.

Which were dark, menacing red.

And that was the detail Erika had noticed at the first, giving her the
panic that had forced her to act quickly in getting her and Giselle the
hell out of the way.

Thunder cracked in the sky. Still Ash walked toward the League Pokemon
Masters on the end of the street with slow, even steps. All of them were
glowing brightly, a sure sign that all held their power within them and
ready to be unleashed. But nearly all of them looked terrified, their
young faces pale with what they must have seen. Erika was actively
ignoring the piles of bodies littered about the half-destroyed area. She
didn't even want to guess at what they had seen.

Then one of them at the front, a young man with red hair, stepped
forward, a brave look on his face. He wore a matching red cloak,
indicating a Mastery in Fire. "This is for Indigo Plateau!" he shouted as
he drew a short sword. "We must defend it!"

Then another young man, and another and another.

"Defend Indigo City!"

"With our lives!"

"For the Plateau!"

They all ran forward, wet cloaks from the rain streaming behind them.
Their hands and eyes flashing with held power, they also threw out their
pokemon to the side, which then ran or flew by their sides. A charizard,
a blastoise, a muk and a graveller.

Erika closed her eyes briefly. Idiots.

Ash continued his slow walk as if four Pokemon Masters and their pokemon
were not charging him. The katana gleamed darkly by his side.

The Fire Master and his charizard reached him first. A Flamethrower
exploded from its dragon-like mouth as the Master himself stepped in
close slashing with his blade which had burst into flame.

Ash ignored the fire as it burned away part of his cloak and blackened
his left shoulder, stepping into and through the flame. He pointed his
left hand at the charizard's head, palm open, and a burst of black
lightning just blew off its head. As the dead pokemon flew over him to
crash down on the wet street behind, he smoothly reversed his hold on his
katana and met the Fire Master directly. In one swift motion, he lowered
his raised hand, while the right, holding his katana in reverse, slashed
up, knocking the Fire Master's burning blade away, then continued upward
to smash the end of the hilt into the young man's chin. Choking, the man
was lifted straight up into the air at the powerful blow, but Ash didn't
let his body go any higher than his head as his left hand again went up
to catch his left ankle. Jerking him down by the leg, he swung the man
down, headfirst, his katana going straight through the man's back and
chest. He finished the sequence with a vicious separation of his arms,
ripping the Fire Master in two.

The next Master and his pokemon met him as his shoulder seemed to heal,
with the black cloak regenerating automatically to cover it. This one was
the blastoise and its Water Master. Armed with a katana as well, though
this one made of ice by the look of it, the blue-cloaked Master charged
just like his comrade, the long, icy blade pointed right at Ash. The
blastoise rumbled by his side, two balls of Hydro Pump generating in its
twin cannons on its shell.

These two, Ash didn't even let attack, as he just stepped past them, his
black sword slashing horizontally, impossibly fast. Behind him, the large
blastoise and its Master just stood there looking surprised, before a
line of red appeared in their chests in exact, corresponding places on
their bodies. They collapsed, their torsos half-severed from their legs,
only stuck together by thin tendons. The twin canons of the dead
blastoise fired into the ground, causing an explosion of wet gravel and
streams of water.

Seeing the carnage in front of him, the Ground Master and his graveller
just turned and ran, their morale leaving. Ash slashed in his direction
uncaringly, and they, too, were bisected even though there were at least
a dozen yards between the,. The unfortunate man's cut body, collapsed in
mid-stride, to fall and slide away on the wet road, while the Rock
Pokemon just broke into two bits and rolled away to melt in the rain.

The Poison Master and his muk seemed to be the smartest ones of the lot
as they had stayed in the back. The purple-cloaked young man had raised a
bow, and by the colour of the arrow-heads, Erika knew they were poisoned.
Despite this, he still dipped each arrow into his slime-like muk, before
he shot each one. Even in the rain, he shot accurately and rapidly, an
obvious marksman.

However Ash didn't bother either dodging the arrows or knocking them
away. He just dashed forward letting the poisoned arrows pepper his arms
and chest. A couple of arrows even shot toward his head when the Poison
Master realised he wasn't getting anywhere with the body shots, not
pausing Ash in the slightest, even though the force of each arrow would
have been enough to knock any other man several feet backward. But the
shots just glanced off the sides of his head, the way that Ash was moving
ruining his aim.

Then just before Ash reached him, the Poison Master panicked and ordered
his muk to throw a Smoke Screen. A cloud of blackness blew out to cover
them and Erika couldn't see them anymore.

Ash ran into the cloud. Someone screamed from inside. Then Ash walked out
of the cloud, his body still full of arrows. He stopped and looked up at
the struggling Poison Master he held up high in his left hand by the
throat while his right still held his katana loosely. The Poison Master
was missing an arm.

Ash's red eyes gleamed. He floated up into the air a few feet,
levitating, his cloak rippling around him. After a second of evil
amusement, he bent over and drove the man's face into road with a
cracking of hard tar and gravel. Then he lifted the, now, dead man back
up by the throat, let go of him, and before the body could drop,
roundhouse spin-kicked it in the face, sending it flying away to smash
through the wall of a building across the street.

Finished with his attackers, Ash turned his attention back on to the
group of League Pokemon Masters who had been too afraid to help their
comrades. The arrows in his body fell to the ground in pieces, as his
body and cloak, again healed in seconds. Again, he began his slow,
deliberate walk toward them.

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God," Giselle couldn't stop saying.

Erika felt as if someone was jack-hammering her heart. "We missed the
times before when Ash apparently lost control. I wish we could have
missed it this time."


<><><>


In all the commotion, Duplica had broke cover and limped her way over to
see what had happened to Misty. After watching Ash kill so many of the
League's men, she had turned back to find that she couldn't see where
Misty lay anymore. Furious with herself for not trying to find out if she
could have helped her sooner, she had come out of hiding, pushing herself
to walk over there despite the pain in her side.

Except, when she finally got to where she had last see Misty, there was
no trace of her. Only a slight trail of blood leading over the gutter and
somewhere along the sidewalk before it cut out. Duplica was about to
investigate further when she heard someone calling her name. She looked
south and saw a group of people running toward her from a side-street,
hugging the shadows of the buildings along its edge.

"Mistress Duplica!" a girlish voice repeated, and finally she could see
them clearly, the lack of light and the hard rain worsening even her
night vision. "You're okay!"

"Laselle!" she smiled, though weakly as she was still in pain. "And
Junior, Bruno and ... who's this man?" She looked at the silver coat and
then at his face, at his shock of dark-blond hair. Her eyes widened and
she began summoning power to change even though it felt as if her wound
had opened again, leaking out of her makeshift bandage. "That's a League
General! Step aside!"

"No!" Bruno said gruffly, stepping in front of him. "This is General Kas.
He's going to help us. The city is in danger now since the dome has
failed. He's ordered the remaining guards and chanellers to set up
blockades all around the inner city, at entrances to the five main
streets heading toward the palace. All citizens will be evacuated to this
area. Remember, our war is with the Pokemon League, not the common men
and women who live here."

"But ... why would he help us?"

The aforementioned General Kas stepped around Bruno to address her
himself. "Master Pokemon Flint has ... how you say ... convinced me." He
nodded at Laselle's shoulder where her black butterfree was perching.

Duplica looked at it blankly. "Flint, you say?"

"It's a long story," Laselle said as the butterfree began ... morphing?
Into a small, black, amoeba shape ...

Duplica clapped her hands in delight. "Oh! A ditto!"

Laselle was looking at her strangely. Then her brown eyes lit up in
understanding. "Oh! That's right! You were still unconscious when we all
found out. Butterfree here is really one of the League's Master Pokemon,
but he defected to our side."

"Dit! My name is Flint, not Butterfree!" the little black ditto said
crossly.

Duplica clapped her hands again. "It can talk! Even my ditto couldn't
talk when she was still alive. Though she does live on through me, in a
way."

"All Master Pokemon can talk if we want to," the ... Flint ... said.
Duplica still didn't know what to think of it. "We were human once, after
all," Flint continued.

"Flint was ... is Master Brock's father," Junior explained.

At the name, all of Duplica's worries and hurts came crashing back down
to her. For a while there she had actually forgotten what had been going
on and in fact, was still going on, in the block behind her.

"Mistress Duplica," Laselle said, concerned. "What's wrong? You look
scared and sad all of a sudden."

"I ... I-"

"What in the shadows is going on over there?" General Kas yelled.

Duplica turned to see the dark figure that was Ash slay yet another of
the League Pokemon Masters. There were only eight of them left now, and
most looked like they were going to retreat. Some were shooting barrages
of elemental attacks at him, but with each blast, Ash just seemed to heal
himself, unaffected. All around him were bodies, some from the ones he
had just killed, others from the first explosion of cut up soldiers.

Bruno was looking at a nearby charizard head on the street by his boot.
"It seems we've missed a lot."

Laselle was looking at a severed arm, along with Junior. They looked
nauseated.

"That's Ashura!" General Kas abruptly shouted, surging forward now with a
hand on his belted mace. "He's killing those Masters! We need them! Get
him to stop!"

Duplica roughly pushed him back, wincing slightly at the pain in her
wound. "Stepping out there is suicide. If those Masters aren't smart
enough to retreat, it's their own fault."

Bruno squinted, rubbing rain out of his eyes. Then he went still. "His
eyes. I can see them from here. He's lost control again. What in the
world happened?"

Duplica almost choked. "I ... I think Misty might be dead. And Ash saw
her. That's what I was doing before you got here. Looking for her body.
But someone's taken it."

Bruno's maroon eyes flared. "The hell, you say! Who did it?"

"Gary ... I mean, Lord Garick. He ... was here earlier."

"The League Master himself? Good Lord! When I see that little shit again,
I'm going to bash his arrogant face in."

"He had Ash's face," Duplica suddenly found herself saying.

"What?" Bruno said, his eyes locking to hers.

"He had-"

"I know what you said. But what it could mean ... damn! A lot of things
are kind of making sense now. I heard the rumours about Professor Oak,
years ago."

"What rumours?"

"That Gary-"

"They're coming this way!" General Kas exclaimed.

Duplica turned again to see that the remaining League Pokemon Masters had
turned tail and fled, running toward them, wet cloaks from the rain
streaming behind. As they grew closer, eyes widened as they spotted
General Kas along with them.

"General Kas!" a woman Master shouted when they got close enough to hear.
"What are you doing with these rebels?"

"We have to join forces!" General Kas shouted back. "The dome has been
breached and Forbidden Pokemon are swarming in. From communicator reports
from various guards, I think sixty-percent of the outer-city is lost. The
citizens are lucky that they decided to gather here earlier since the
rest of the soldiers can now more easily herd them back towards the
palace."

"But Lord Garick and Master Lance-"

"Belie those orders! They've betrayed the people ... the League! Killed
Master Yas! Your priority is to defend the city!"

"But ... but that monster!" one of the other Masters said as they finally
reached them, all coming to a stop and breathing heavily, wet cloaks
rustling. "He's gonna kill us all!" He looked hard at Duplica and Bruno.
"He's one of you! I thought you were the noble ones, wanted to save us
all instead of just the city. But look at him!"

Duplica did that and horror arose as she saw what Ash was doing. The
storm above was growing if that seemed possible, and in his left hand he
held a growing ball of crackling, black lightning. He was looking
directly at them with those malevolent eyes. Wind was blowing out from
him from the immense power he was gathering within that ball and he was
close enough now that she could see a half-smile on those hard lips. He
lifted his sword and began fitting the ball lightning to its blade. "Why
be afraid?" he laughed, the evil sound echoing all around them. "Death is
a natural state of being. It is the final evolvement. There is no pain in
death. But there is pain in life. Life is pain! Life is overrated!" With
that last statement, he pointed the sword at them and the wind changed
direction to all get vacuumed toward him in a ring.

"Holy!" Bruno said, sucking in his breath. "Move ... now!"

Duplica felt paralysed. "No, the blast of that attack ... I can feel it.
It's too powerful. We can't escape."

Ash reared his glowing sword back. "Dark Lightning Sla-"

Duplica closed her eyes.

"Stop it, Ash," a woman's voice said calmly.

Eyes whipping open, Duplica was shocked to see Valdera standing directly
in front of Ash, blocking his sword from swinging. She stood in the rain,
looking as dry as him as well, her golden blonde hair and white cloak
blowing about in the wind. Her artic eyes, the same as Misty's, were
staring at him in contempt.

The evil look in Ash's blood-coloured eyes had changed to confusion,
flashing to golden-brown. A moment later, they darkened to blood again.
"This world is dead already." He resumed swinging his sword.

There was a massive crack as Valdera slapped him in the cheek so hard,
Ash was propelled backward like a bullet that had been shot out of a gun.
He blasted at least fifty feet away before his horizontal flight was
stopped by the cement walls of a distant old apartment flat that was
still standing. There was a small puff of smoke as Ash disappeared from
view.

"Wow." Laselle's mouth was an 'o' shape. Just like all the League Pokemon
Masters.

A soft rumble sounded from the building. Then it began to rapidly
collapse with clouds of wet dust as a dark figure erupted from its base,
sliding toward Valdera with deadly velocity, katana held behind its back,
left palm forward.

But Valdera watched him come, unmoving, though still she held contempt on
her face.

Ash was almost about to reach her, the point of his black blade aimed
right between her eyes now, when suddenly he just stopped as if there was
an invisible wall only millimetres thick between them both.

He looked confused again. "W-Why can't I kill you?"

"You disgust me, Ash. I never knew you were a quitter," was all Valdera
said.

His eyes began to change colour again, though this time they flashed red
and gold rapidly. He stumbled backward, the sword lowering. "What ... are
you talking about?"

"I know this side of you ... is where you pushed all your hate, all your
suffering, all your dead emotions. It is the opposite of your other side,
the side that loves life, loves people, loves pokemon. I don't know what
triggered the splitting but it was inevitable given the nature of
yourself." Her eyes flashed. "But that side is also you. The two halves
make a whole. I fell in love with you, despite everything, despite all of
my effort not to. I tried so hard! But if Misty fell in love with you ...
how could I not?"

"Mis ... ty?"

"Whatever you do, don't give up on life, Ash. It's part of what makes you
... you." Then all of a sudden, Valdera doubled over as if in pain. A red
stain began to show up on her upper-waist.

At that, Ash blinked, and his eyes were now back to normal. "Misty?
Valdera!" In his haste to catch her, he dropped his katana on the floor
and hugged her to him. "Valdera, no!"

Valdera smiled weakly. "Even I can't ignore pain for so long. But
remember what I said, no matter what happens. Don't give up on life. And
life won't give up on you. Save the world. Everyone's counting on you."
Her form flared white and she disappeared right from his arms.

Ash was left staring at his empty hands, stains of blood upon them. And
then the rain which was now free to strike him, wetting his hair and
clothes, also washed his palms clean.

Duplica and the others all ran toward him. Surprised, she saw Erika
and Giselle step out from behind a street sign and come at him from the
back. She was happy to see them. But she was most happy that Ash was
back.


<><><>


Ash looked up to find that he was surrounded by all his friends. Duplica,
Erika, Giselle, Laselle, with her pokemon on her shoulder, Junior and
even Bruno.

Duplica had tears in her eyes that were not hidden by the rain. "Ashy-boy
... I'm glad you're back to normal."

He gave her a sad grin. "So am I ... sis." He gave her a wet hug to go
with the grin.

"Am I missing something here?" Bruno queried.

"You're always missing something," Erika said tartly.

Bruno lifted an eyebrow. "Hey, I'm glad you're okay too."

"How come I don't get a hug?" Giselle asked Ash with superiority.

Ash blinked. He gave her a hug too.

"A hug doesn't mean you can squeeze my butt!"

"Ash!" Laselle said, shocked.

"Just kidding!" Giselle laughed.

"Why would I want to squeeze your butt anyway?" Ash asked.

"Hurt my feelings why don't you?"

Then Junior hugged Ash's waist, his maroon cap getting knocked askew.

"What was that for?"

Junior stepped away from him a bit embarrassed. "I don't know. I just
felt like it."

"Oh. Anytime, kid."

"Pika!"

Ash saw that Pikachu was back to normal too, hugging his leg. He stooped
over and hoisted the black electric mouse on to his shoulder. "I love you
too, buddy." Then he looked around. "But where's Mister Hikaru?"

Laselle lifted her chin and sniffed. "Oh, you can just say he jumped on a
horse and never came back. But kind of the other way around."

"Huh?"

Bruno looked at Laselle sternly. "That's not nice, Lass."

"Well, he deserved it. He was a traitor." She briefly explained it to him
and Ash couldn't help feeling sorry for the man. He had liked Hikaru.

"Seriously now, though," Ash said, spotting the group of League Pokemon
Masters talking away back where Duplica, Bruno and the others had come
from, "What's their story?"

Bruno shrugged his massive shoulders. "Those Masters, you can say are
your survivors. The General is Kas and he's agreed to join what's left of
the League's forces with us to defend the city from the approaching
Forbidden."

"What do you mean? I thought the dome was there for that reason."

Duplica stared at him. "Ashy, the dome is gone. Destroyed."

Dread entering his belly, Ash looked up into the sky, into the falling
rain. Where he had expected the clouds with the background of the dome's
matt black, he now saw clouds, but with a background of a heavy lightning
storm, though it seemed to be lessening now. Even worse, when he looked
toward the south-west, at the pale tower that was the Palace of the Elite
Four, he spotted the Forbidden Vortex' ... three of them. And scattered
about it all, were flying black shapes, soaring and diving about the
horizon of buildings.

And he just knew. "I did it. I destroyed the dome. It's my fault that the
Forbidden are here." He looked about the ruined Fifth Street, where
numerous buildings lay in ruins, dozens and dozens of bodies of human and
pokemon alike lay scattered. "I killed all these people and pokemon. No
wonder those League Masters can't even look at me without shaking in
fear."

Duplica grabbed his arm. "Don't say that! It was Gary! He came, forced
you to change, by killing Mist-" She clapped a hand over her mouth, her
brown eyes going wide.

But the damage was already done. The painful, heart-constricting memory
came back to him with full force, like the stray sound that triggered a
catastrophic avalanche. "It was still me. Even with-" He choked, his eyes
watering. "Even with Misty dying. I had no excuse to do what I did. She
wanted me to save the world. It was always her reason. It was why she
came back to me in the first place. But instead, I tried to destroy it."

Duplica tightened her grip on his arm. "Look at it this way. If you used
a sword to kill someone, is it yours, or the sword's fault?"

"Well ... mine. But what if the sword were sentient? Could it not be the
sword's fault too?"

"Pikapi, pikachu," pikachu agreed sadly.

General Kas chose that moment to rejoin them, the eight League Pokemon
Masters, that were left, with him. He was giving Ash a look that would
have hammered nails into solid steel. "I know generally what happened
here. A stupid man would have blamed it all on you. Fortunately, I'm not
that stupid. Putting it together with the deaths of General Yas and his
men, I can see that Lord Garick deliberately left you alive after
severely provoking you so that you would somehow ..." He hesitated. "Go
crazy ..." He then looked at the others. "Though after what you did, none
of these Masters will work with you. But I'm sending your friends over to
the points of defence, one each, except for the girl and Master Pokemon
Flint who can probably go with the boy." He looked toward the Palace of
the Elite Four. "That leaves you to fix the mess you created. From what
I've seen and heard about, if anyone has got the power to do it, it's
you. You have to stop the prophecy now that the city has no defences. The
world can't reform if there's no one left alive to do the reforming." He
was interrupted by a shrill from his coat pocket which he then took a
communicator out of. Excited shouting drifted out of it as Kas answered.
He looked at the rebels and his remaining team of Masters. "Go now! The
Forbidden Pokemon are almost at the barricade points! Masters, show them
the way! Let's move out!"

"Yes, Sir!"

With brief goodbyes, Bruno, Giselle, Erika and the kids followed them.

Duplica strayed behind longer than the rest. "I'm sorry," she said
softly. Then she gave him a final tight hug before running with the
others, her wet blue hair streaming behind her. "We believe in you!
Avenge Misty and all the others that have died in this evil prophecy!"

Finally, Ash was alone on the ruined Fifth Street with only Pikachu to
keep him company on his shoulder. As he thought over Duplica's last
words, a slow anger began to build. A rage that would know no bounds. But
it wasn't the kind of anger that hid his hurt, hid his sorrow. Instead it
was an anger that became one with his sorrow, strengthening it with
purpose. He may be responsible for the deaths, the dome's destruction.
But Gary was responsible for the reinvoking the prophecy in the first
place.

Gary was responsible for Misty's death.

He would make him pay.

He would make everything right.

"My, my. You certainly look angry."

Ash slowly turned around. "Well if it isn't Lord Lance," he said quietly.
"I'd forgotten about you. And Sabrina did say all of the Elite Four who
invoked the prophecy had to die to break it, along with Gary himself." He
slicked wet hair back away from his eyes and began adjusting his gloves
out in front of him one at a time.

Lance stood still upon the street, his dark-blue cloak still upon his
wiry shoulders. His wet, black hair was spiked over his head, the water
seeming to make the ends more jagged. Small eyes the colour of his cloak
on a sharp-featured face were amused. "Ah, Sabrina. She has such a loose
mouth." His face hardened. "This brings back memories, Ash, that it does.
I still remember that cocky thirteen year old who waltzed through us, the
old elite, to win the championship from Gary, who held it for not even
half of a day." He looked at Pikachu on his shoulder. "In fact, that was
the one who did most of your winning. But you had other pokemon then, to
back you up. Can you defeat me, the Master of the most powerful type,
with just one pokemon?"

Ash turned his body sideways and smoothed water from his cloak. "One
pokemon is all that I've needed for a long time. And myself. A Pokemon
Master is not a true Master unless he also fights with his pokemon."

"Hmm? Then what do you call me, who now does not even have one pokemon?"

Ash narrowed his eyes. "I call you weaker than you could have been. A
pokemon doesn't just fight with you, it also joins its powers to yours,
the both of you becoming much more powerful than either of you alone.
This is going to be even easier than I expected."

"True," Lance mused. "But I find it different in my case. A pokemon is
also a weakness since if it were damaged, or even killed in a fight, it
leaves a Master very vulnerable, if not severely weakened. Since the
reforming, I've discovered my abilities growing exponentially over the
years, such that I think the advantages of fighting without a pokemon
outweigh the disadvantages. And now with the prophecy feeding me the
power of the Forbidden, I am even more powerful. Normally, I'd hesitate
to challenge you, Ashura Shadow Master, since, ultimately, you are the
epitome of what a Pokemon Master is. But now?" He laughed. "You should
be the one to hesitate to challenge me."

Ash's eyes flicked about the street, at the various ruined bodies.
"That's funny. You were conveniently missing when ... my other self ...
took over. Could it be you were afraid of me?"

For the first time, anger clouded the depths of the Dragon Master's eyes.
"I don't like to fight crazy people. They can be very unpredictable."
Then the anger left, and a half-smile replaced it. "But I know you can't
afford to ... what did you say? Let your other self take over? Because
you know and I know that your friends are depending on you to save the
world. Such a corny reason isn't it? But very true in this case."

"You should know by now that Gary was lying," Ash responded with a shake
of his head. "I don't know his motives, but this supposed rebirth was a
sham all along. He wanted this city destroyed along with everyone else.
Why would you continue helping him now that you know this?"

Lance rubbed his pointed chin. "I'll admit I felt some disquiet when I
first realised that. I used your explosion to find the time to think.
Then I realised that even though everyone else might die, I would not.
Could not, as I am that powerful. I'm already in this too deep, I might
as well see it through to the end. The only other way is for me to die,
and I'd greatly dislike that. Gary can die if he wants to, but me? I'll
just carry off the most beautiful girl I can find, hide her somewhere,
then rape her to repopulate the world. We'll be like the Adam and Eve of
that silly genesis mythology that some people believe in." He laughed
out loud at the thought.

Ash could taste bile in his throat. "You're disgusting, Lance. I thought
I was the most insane person here, but it seems I thought wrong. When
your abilities surfaced, a blood vessel must have burst in your brain
somewhere."

"An interesting thought." Then he yawned. "Well, enough talk, this is
getting boring." He whipped his right hand to the side and blue energy
formed into a long, steel weapon, half again as tall as his body, the end
of it a pin-sharp point. A lance, just like his name. "Prepare yourself,
Ashura. And this time, not for the power of dragons, but for the power of
the dragon himself!"

Ash lifted Pikachu up on his wrist as he smoothly changed shape into the
black katana, then caught it in both hands. He only said two words as he
blew wet tendrils of hair that had again fallen into his eyes. "Bring
it."

Lance smirked, then exploded forward, left hand clutching the shaft of
his weapon, the right palm forward.

Ash stayed still, watching the older man's eyes, until just before he
reached him, steel lance spinning before the thrust. High! Ash thought
and he dipped into a crouch, the sharp point of the over-sized spear just
missing his chest. Spinning low, he slashed upward with one hand as he
rose for the counter-thrust.

Unfortunately his blade met steel instead of flesh, Lance somehow being
fast enough to recover from the miss to block the sword with his spinning
shaft, using it as if it were a staff. Ash immediately slid the katana
off its edge and continued the movement into a sideways, overhead slash.
But that was expertly blocked as well, the Dragon Master somehow
compensating for his larger weapon with impossible speed. Thinking fast,
Ash flowed into a different series of strikes, and though these were
blocked too, he managed to find a tiny opening in the defence,
strategically hesitated, then shot a powerful sidekick underneath the
lance, right into his stomach.

Lance stumbled back coughing, and Ash slid forward after him, pressing
the advantage. He had lost speed now from the crippling blow, and now the
blocks weren't quite fast enough, first one cut appearing on the Dragon
Master's shoulder, then another one on his right arm, then another and
another. Have to finish him fast, Ash thought, thinking of the Forbidden
Vortex' above the Palace. Before the final gate opened. He was almost
delivering the final murdering blow when Lance just shouted "Enough!" and
thrust his weapon into the ground, exploding wet rocks, tar and gravel
flying into Ash's eyes. Blinded, he back-flipped away to regain his
eyesight.

When his vision was clear, the Dragon Master was breathing hard, bleeding
in places all over his body, though the rain was fast washing the traces
of it away. "It seems I've underestimated you once again, Ashura. You
have a very ferocious and fast fighting style, and you can fight with
both sword and fist. Tell me, who is such a master to have taught you
what you know?"

Ash replied, though he did while stepping forward, katana held by his
back. He still wanted to finish this as soon as possible. Gary, that
murdering bastard, was waiting for him. "I don't have any one master, as
you put it," he said slowly. "It was the culmination of many different
arts, most of them I learned while on my travels. I even made up some of
my own techniques. This is what let me survive during the Dark Pokemon
Wars. If you want, I'll kill you with one of them."

"I don't think so." Lance stepped backward, his eyes now gleaming. "I'll
admit you are better than me on the ground ..." His cloak began rustling
behind him when all at once, two large, leathery dragon wings were
expelled out from his back simultaneously. They flapped once, powerfully,
sending wind and rain flying into Ash's face. "But can you defeat me
where I am strongest, Assassin? In the air?" With that, his wings flapped
again, and continued flapping until he was airborne, eight feet into the
air and still rising.

Ash leaned down, forming the disc of shadow beneath his feet. He rose up
into the air to meet him, both hands clutching the long hilt of his
sword. "I guess we'll soon find out."


<><><>


West of Indigo Plateau, out in the black, turbulent ocean, a periscope
was observing about the wavey surface. It came from a submerged white
ship, the submarine craft, sleek and pointed.

"I can't believe we, like, finally made it here!" Lily said as she
pressed her face to the eye piece. "And after so much damage to the
Waterflower! That's scary old Indigo all right!"

Daisy, the only other person in the ship's bridge, was staring at the
pure black viewscreen, brushing her blonde hair with a yellow comb. "So
is it still storming up there? Like Forbidden Pokemon too? This black
ocean is so boring to look at."

"Ya, it's like raining growlithes and meowths. And, like, maybe flying
Forbidden? What will they think of next?"

"Like, damn! What about the city then?"

A pause. "Woah! It looks like it's seriously under attack!" She paused
some more, scratching at her long, pink hair. "And at first, I thought
that like the city was under siege by ants! Until I realised that at this
distance, everything moving looks like ants. So I think it's Forbidden
Pokemon!"

The door to the bridge slid open with a hiss and a blue-haired woman with
a serious-looking face and wearing armour walked in with a red-haired
nurse at her back. "It's almost the time that we have to go pick them
up," Captain Jenny said.

Nurse Joy looked concerned. "And that's what I'm afraid of."


<><><>


Fourth Street Barricade was almost finally ready. Between the two tallest
buildings in the area, a high-rise office building and a tall hotel,
soldiers had erected a make-shift defensive wall that surprisingly
managed to reach up to almost two stories and covered the whole width of
the four-laned street. As Bruno waited on top of it, behind a waist-high,
steel-girder wall, covered from much of the rain, he saw that it was
mostly made up of old cars, and vehicles that didn't work anymore now
that there was no more petrol or oil to fuel them. Along with those were
an assortment of cement and steel fittings, probably stolen from some
construction site, loose bricks, scrap metal, and they were all held
together by Fire Pokemon who had melted bits of everything together. In
fact, there was still some magmar down there, doing some last minute
welding, being directed by one of the League Fire Masters. Some last few
of the citizens they could find were also being herded through a small
opening in the barricade that they would melt shut when finished.

Bruno folded his arms and looked over at what his defence group was made
up of. Most were ordinary League soldiers and guards, and there were over
three dozen of those. However they wouldn't be as much help as the two
Pokemon Masters and the League Chaneller over there. The dark-haired
woman in black robes and silver charms stood atop the barricade as well,
though on its right side while he guarded the left. In between them and
evenly placed across the centre were the soldiers and guards armed with
bows.

The one large disadvantage they all shared, though, was that they could
not even use their pokemon, since once the Forbidden came, close
proximity would practically force them to evolve to Forbidden as well.
"Hurry up down there!" he bellowed down to the Fire Master - a woman. "I
think that's the last of the people! It will have to be, I think they're
coming very soon!"

"Yes ... Sir," she said grudgingly, finished up the exterior welding with
a blast of fire from her own fingertips and hopped through the pass-way
so that she could seal the wall behind her and her pokemon.

Bruno almost laughed at the irony of it. He was right back in the League
again, and in a commanding position, no less. Thanks to Kas. A beeping
came from inside his cloak and he reached in to remove the communicator
that same man had provided him with.

"This is General Kas at Third Street Barricade. Is Fourth Street ready?"

"Ready as it ever will be, given the timeframe," Bruno allowed. He looked
down and across the length of the street that the Forbidden would swarm
through to get to them. Surprisingly, the street lights still worked in
this area, and they lit up the whole block making it easier to see. Tall
buildings like the ones they had built the barricade across lined the
street on either side, giving the Forbidden Pokemon less room to
charge through.

"That's good, Master Bruno." Kas had taken to calling him that. "First,
Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth Street are all ready and waiting as
well."

In the background, Bruno suddenly heard Giselle's voice. "Forbidden
Pokemon elemental signatures continuing to rise!" she was saying. "We're
completely surrounded now. ETA, one minute!"

And that's when Bruno first began to notice the rumble in the distance.
And he knew it wasn't thunder as this deep sound of bass was continuous,
and growing louder. He watched the mouth of the street in the distance
with dread. "Everyone take their positions!" he shouted out over the
wind. Then he hooded himself and picked up his own longbow that he had
commandeered from a soldier earlier. He checked his supply of arrows on
the floor and tested the tight drawstring. He frowned at the rain. If
possible, it was always best not to let the bow get wet, but since it was
still raining, though thankfully not as hard now, what choice did they
have? A wall such as they had erected was best used for firing missile
weapons. And since the soldiers could not use their pokemon, and his
element didn't allow a self-generated missile attack, this is what they
had to make do with. Not good odds to hold off thousands of Forbidden. He
could only hope that Ashura stopped the prophecy before they were
overrun.

The rumbling in the distance was louder now, and he could feel the
barricade beneath him begin to shake. Windowpanes in the buildings
around them began to make rattling noises. Bruno swallowed the sudden
lump in his throat.

"ETA, ten seconds!" Giselle shrilled in the communicator.

Bruno fitted an arrow in his bow and pulled back on the string. Around
him, he could hear the creaks of the other archers preparing their bows
as well. He sighted at the rise of the street's horizon where they would
appear and closed one eye.

"Ten."
"Nine."
"Eight."
"Seven."
"Six."
"Five."
"Four."
"Three."
"Two."
"One."

A line of black appeared on the end of the street. A line of black with
evil red eyes. They came in a mass swarm, a living carpet, hundreds and
thousands of Forbidden, of all types. Black kabuto, rattata, sandslash,
venusaur, blastoise, flying charizard, jolteon, flareon, vaporeon - the
list went on. They all forced themselves on to the street, as much as
possible, all hissing a cry that went straight to the heart, chilling it
with its sheer inhuman power. It was like a dam had broke, but instead of
water coming at them, it was waves of darkness.

Bruno waited, still eyeing down his shaft. When the first of them reached
that chokepoint between those abandoned restaurants ... there! "Fire at
will!" he screamed as loud as he could. Summoning power into his arrow he
shot it at the thickest clump he could see. All the soldiers shot their
arrows too, while the Fire and Water Master shot streams of Fire Blast
and Hydro Pump from their fingertips. The chaneller began chanting a
spell.

Hundreds of black body parts went flying, while others were skewered. But
Bruno could already see some of those parts reforming, healing.

Inside he silently prayed for his son, Laselle, Erika and the rest who he
knew were facing the exact same thing at their positions. "Hurry up,
Ashura!" Bruno breathed as he quickly reached for another arrow.


<><><>


Ash banked desperately along the skyscraper's dark-windowed face, the
wind and rain pounding his front from the sheer speed he was flying at.
He was bleeding from several cuts and he was even burned along one arm
when Lance had thrown that last elemental missile.

"HYPER BEAM."

The top of the skyscraper behind him just detonated as a thick, pulsing
beam of pure physical force punched through it with a massive blast. Wind
from the explosion pushed at him hard and he was blown off his Shadow
Levitation disc, to flip crazily around in midair. With more luck than
anything else, he somehow managed to steer himself over to land on the
rooftop of another nearby high-rise, though his momentum was such that he
was thrown off his feet, to tumble along it sideways.

He felt the presence above him again, as he rolled. "HYPER BEAM."

Ash shouted as he sprung himself off the roof with his free arm, and the
resultant fiery discharge behind him did the rest, propelling him back
into the sky with a cloud of hard air and debris.

"HYPER BEAM."

He just managed to again form the disc beneath his feet and swoop up,
just missing the rooftop ledge of another building, which was just
blasted apart by the Dragon Master's most powerful attack. He had to
counterattack - now. He was sick of playing target practise with him as
the target. He continued his upward swoop to swoop upside-down and he
spotted Lance flying at twelve o'clock with flaps of his own wings. He
spun his katana blade up to his shoulder, Pikachu reforming back into a
pokemon. "Pikachu, Dark Shock! Rapid fire!"

"Pika!"

Shots of dark lightning sprayed down at Lance, who suddenly barrel-rolled
out of the way and pointed his arms up at him, right hand over left.
"HYPER BEAM."

Ash clutched Pikachu to his shoulder and dove down off the disc which was
then destroyed by the thick beam of blue power, directly to the attack.
Left palm forward, Pikachu again blurred back into blade form.

But Lance barrel-rolled out of the way again, and Ash missed, flying past
him. "HYPER BEAM."

Ash somersaulted to bring his feet down, formed the disc again, and shot
up, out of the way. Yet another building below them blew up in a mushroom
cloud of dust. "Don't you ever run out?" Ash called out as he flew upward
from the destruction. While tilted from the slant of his ascent he
pointed his left hand at the Flying Dragon Master and let fly with a
crackling surge of black lightning through the rain.

"HYPER BEAM."

Ash banked out of the way as the attack just blasted away through his
lightning, almost through to him. This was ridiculous, he thought as he
continued flying. He just could not get close. Lance was such an expert
flyer, he was right, he could not hope to best him in aerial combat. Or
at least, best him in any reasonable timeframe. The ever-present Palace
tower was in the corner of his vision, the Forbidden Vortex' seeming to
be larger now and ... sliding together? He narrowed his eyes. He had to
finish this now! Desperately, he crouched upon his levitation disc and
put in an extra burst of speed.

But Lance had anticipated him, and despite everything, just dodged as a
single flap of his wings brought him out of the way. "HYPER BEAM."

Ash screamed out in pain as it actually half-caught him in the back,
blowing him forward in a spin as if a truck had ricocheted him off its
side. The city beneath was a whirling display of shadows and small
lights. Then he crash-landed on some tall building's roof, bounced, then
flew off it before his next landing on an adjacent roof finally stopped
his body's momentum after a few uncoordinated flips.

Weakly, he pushed himself up, using his sword as a crutch, spitting out
blood as he did so. His shoulders were heaving.

"Well, it was a fine dogfight, Ashura," Lance was saying above, hovering
there with slow flaps of his wings. "You honestly scared me there for a
few times, you're so fast. If you hadn't been so impatient, you might
have actually won." He brought his hands out again, right hand over left.
"But I'm afraid you die now. HYPER - UGH!"

A figure seemed to jump from nowhere, grabbing him in a tight hold
from behind. Lance desperately flapped his wings, but his assailant
forced him down to the roof. "What? Who dares? Argh!"

"I dare," a deep voice replied as the figure continued holding the Dragon
Master from behind, rendering him helpless.

Ash was breathing hard, both from exhaustion and damage to his body, but
he was still surprised enough to jump up from his half-crouch upon the
roof. "Brock?"

"Hi, Ash." The familiar slitted eyes in its square, rugged face stared at
him from behind Lance's right shoulder. Long flares of spiked, brown hair
looked dark in the rain.

"Brock?" Lance exclaimed in complete surprise. "I thought you were dead!"

Brock smiled sadly. "I get that a lot."

Lance struggled fiercely but it was no use - Brock's hard-muscled body
was much too strong for him to break free of. "What are you doing?
Release me!"

"No."

Ash could only stare at his old friend with as much confusion as Lance
had been surprised. "Brock? I thought you hated me. Why are you helping
me?"

Brock turned his attention back on him. There was a melancholy look on
his dark-complexioned face. "I've realised something, Ash. Something
about myself. For the first time in years I managed to have one moment of
clear thought, without all my anger, all my pain from the past. And it
took the one woman who ever loved me, to not only save my life, but
to sacrifice hers for it."

Ash swallowed. "Suzie? Suzie's dead?"

Lance was furious. "That bitch? She saved your life? I knew I should have
checked you more thoroughly!"

Brock's face darkened and he viciously tightened his thick arms around
Lance's torso. There was a sickening crack and the Dragon Master cried
out in agony. "Anyway, Ash. With that clear moment of thought, I had
realised what I had become. And I know it isn't pretty. What's even worse
is that the suffering, the pain, it's still deep in my heart. It can
never come out. I still feel the urge to kill ... to kill all women. I'm
sorry, Ash. What Suzie said about Ivy. It was all true. But I forgot what
had really happened. I never loved Misty. I just latched on to her for
someone to love when I was first messed up. She was the only girl who
seemed to care for me, though as a friend. I thought she could be more.
But after what had happened all I could do was hate. Even my love was
hate. All I can still do is hate. Suzie .. she made me realise that when
she gave her life for me. But she was wrong, she should have let me die.
But if I die, it might as well be for this."

Lance's eyes widened. Widened in fear. "No! Brock! Let go of me! Don't do
it!"

Ash couldn't even speak from the tightness in his throat. Even after
everything, all his anger over what Brock had done, he realised that he
still thought of him as a friend. That's why he couldn't deliver the
killing blow when the chance had been his. Brock couldn't mean to do what
he seemed to be intending...

"It's at least one small way of redemption." Brock's narrow eyes suddenly
opened further, so much Ash could actually see some of his pupils ...
which were blazing a bright brown light, the brightest Ash had seen so
far. "Get out of here, Ash. Now. Save the city. Save the world."

Ash finally found the tongue to speak. "Brock, you don't have to do
this."

"No!" Brock screamed. "I do have to do this! Or I'll just keep killing
and killing and killing. Go NOW. Kill Gary. Avenge Misty!"

There was nothing he could do. Ash closed his eyes and opened them.
"Goodbye, Brock. I'll always remember you. As a friend." He turned,
crouched, and formed the Shadow Levitation beneath his feet. As he flew
away toward the Palace of the Elite Four at the city's centre he felt a
wetness in his eyes and cheeks that was not the rain.

Somewhere behind him, a Pokemon Master Self Destructed, taking out his
captive with him, the building they were standing on, and everything
around in a radius of almost a hundred feet. Everything was just blasted
in a huge brown fireball of epic proportions.


<><><>


When Ash reached the foot of the Palace, the white-marbled, massive
structure reaching to the heavens amidst its cement forest of companion
buildings, he jumped off the Levitation disc and smashed through the
thick, elaborately-designed front gates without ceremony. Silent, he
stepped inside, his black cloak flapping wetly behind him.

As he stepped inside the massive entrance foyer, he heated his body with
dark energy, drying his cloak, clothes, skin and hair from the outside
rain. The palace seemed deserted, the sounds of his footsteps echoing
about the pristine white floor and walls. No Pokemon Masters, no soldiers
... no one. He swung his sword over his shoulder so that Pikachu could
reform and perch upon it. He walked quickly into the halls knowing
exactly where he was going. Even after all these years, he still
remembered the inside of the palace as he knew the whole of Indigo City
itself. After all, it had once been his home.

He quickly navigated through many hallways, so many twists and turns, an
outsider would have become hopelessly lost if he tried to penetrate. That
was one of the features of the central structure, that if any hostile
force were to try and take it over, it could be easily defended. He
passed countless paintings, statues and trophies hanging about on the
walls, advertising the ancient history and respect of the Pokemon League.
This was where the elite of the elite of Pokemon trainers - Masters - had
lived, and though it had changed since then, it was where the Pokemon
League tournaments had been held, deciding the rank of all.

He finally reached the centre of the palace where the main stairwells
were located. But though the Palace of the Elite Four was also a tower,
he would ascend it. The way to the inner-stadium was in fact, down,
another one of the structure's confusing aspects.

Seven women wearing robe-like clothing with hoods, though their heads
were currently uncovered, were waiting for him.

Ash stopped and narrowed his eyes.

"Hello, Sensei," they trilled all at once with giggling voices.

"Hello, girls," Ash said softly, with regret. He would not like killing
them, but he would if he had to. "It's been a long time."

"Yes," they giggled, all simultaneous again.

He stepped forward, ready to get it over with, when surprisingly, they
just stepped out of his way. He paused at that. "You're not going to try
and stop me?"

"We won't fight you, Sensei."

"Why? I know you all love Gary. You must know that I've come here to kill
him."

"Oh, you're right! We do love Master Gary!" They laughed again, the sound
seeming slightly insane. "And that means we can't kill you, even if we
could. After all, you're Sensei! We did learn most of our martial art
from you during the Dark Pokemon Wars." They stepped aside even more.
"Please! Do pass!"

Ash slowly walked past them, staring at their bright, pretty faces.

Pretty ... but empty. He knew he wouldn't had have to kill them even if
they hadn't let him through. These girls looked alive and breathing. But
inside, he knew they were dead.


<><><>


All was silent within the large underground arena. A silence that
screamed of foreboding. Rectangular in shape, the battlefield of
Pokemon Masters awaited at the bottommost depths of the man-made cavern,
dug deep into the earth of the Indigo Plateau, below the tower of the
stadium. Deep enough that the life-giving light from the sun had never
once touched the hard stony ground of the complex - nothing save the
eerily dancing glow of orange, flaming torches that were attached to the
walls, and every so often along the narrow pathways between the hundreds
of sloped, red seating that surrounded the field below. Despite the hot
flames of the torches, the stadium still seemed to be shrouded in a cold
darkness that rivalled the blackest of forbidden nights - although it was
a darkness that seemed less insubstantial than physical.

A grey-cloaked figure awaited down in the centre of the arena - the arena
custom-built for the finals of the old Pokemon League. Larger than any of
the old four element stadiums by far, larger than even the inner stadiums
that would challenge the semi-finalists - the Pokemon Master Arena was
aptly named.

A single red eye gleamed within the shadows of its hooded face.

Until at the very top of the massive stadium, above the highest peaks of
the audience seating which surrounded the whole rectangular arena, one of
the four double doorways that corresponded to each of the four major
directions exploded open with an abrupt shattering of steel, wood and
stone. Debris scattered so far from the point of impact that some
rubble even fell over the width of the audience seating and fell far, far
below to land at the floor of the arena. Several seconds passed before a
piece of rocky shrapnel finally struck the floor and bounced, rolling,
until it hit the black boot of the one cloaked in grey. The rock
disintegrated.

"Welcome ... Ash." Lord Garick's voice arose up to the very roof of the
stadium despite the softness of the utterance. Echoes sounded through the
empty air bouncing off stark hard walls and seating until they faded to
the faint whisperings of a gentle zephyr. "Or should I say ... Ashura?"

Nothing answered him save the soft crumbling of the destroyed doorway
settling down. Not even the dark shadow that suddenly streaked out of the
black opening and came to rest upon a precipice above the audience
seating that overlooked the stadium far below.

"Murderer. There's only one thing that will satisfy me now," Ash said in
a voice that seemed utterly devoid of life. "And that is for you to die a
second death ... permanently."

Lord Garick - Gary stared up at him, indicated by the upward movement of
a single, glowing red eye that beheld him up above. Suddenly he let out a
bark of hard laughter that strangely seemed more inwardly-mocking than
outer. "Forgive us, Ash," he chuckled, "but you do realise that's awfully
funny coming from you. Haven't you realised what you are by now?" His
voice was familiarly scornful, but yet there was an emotion therein that
was impossible to read.

Ash closed his eyes then opened them. "I reject it."

Gary spread his arms wide, still covered within the grey cloak. But his
left hand was now revealed - a monotone three-fingered claw with wide
blunt fingers with razor-shaped white nails at the ends. The League
Master and Ash's old rival continued. "You reject yourself? You will find
that it is impossible. We have rejected ourself many times and we are
still here." He gave another bark of laughter that sounded like crying.
"But that will change soon. Everything we have done, we have done for the
sake of erasing ourself and everyone else from the very fabric of life.
Killing your girlfriend is now permanently bringing your true self free.
How does it feel to be the ultimate tool of Armageddon?"

Pain spiked within Ash's head, the pressure unbearable. Dark feelings
continued to threaten to rise up from within and take over him
completely. Misty's face kept flashing within his mind, and he could
barely keep to his sanity by the merest thread. "If tool I am, it's a
tool of vengeance."

Suddenly Gary ripped off his hood with a sudden motion, revealing his
face. Ash's eyes widened, the surprise breaking his poise. Gary's face
was as his own. Only his red eyes and dark-brown hair distinguished him
from himself. His voice changed tone from smugness to bitter. "But could
you kill yourself? Your own copy?"

"What ... are you talking about?"

"Look at my face!" Gary screamed. "My body! Isn't it obvious?"

"You weren't like that before."

"It's funny that way. When the Returning came, I found myself growing
more and more like you. We had always been a lot alike, but it was
getting worse. While everyone that had the spark of the elemental gift
evolved their powers, it seemed that I was evolving into ... you." He
paused. "I had always suspected some things about my birth, but it wasn't
until I realised what was happening that I finally confronted Professor
Oak, my grandfather ... though of course we aren't really related, at
least by blood." His red eyes narrowed. "He told me everything, just
before I killed him."

"T-That ... was you? We'd always blamed Team Rocket for his murder!"

"Oh, it was me all right. And I'm proud of destroying that sick excuse
for a human being. He wants to play at being a god, he'll find that gods
are not immortal. He knew about the Forbidden Prophecy, Ash, before
anyone else did. He knew about you, Ashura ... and about your
'girlfriends,' Mistaria and Valdera. That some day, you would come and
the whole fate of the world would rest upon you. Oh, he sounded so noble
telling me his reasons! He somehow knew your mother, Cordelia, would be
the one to give birth to you. He befriended her, spied on her, waiting
for when it would happen. And when she became pregnant, and from some man
not even her husband, no less, he jumped on her like a mother hen on a
newborn chick. But shock! Horror! Halfway through carrying you to term,
it seemed as if she would miscarry! If you did not get born, all hope was
lost!"

He stopped briefly then, his eyes flashing deep red. "You know what he
did then? He somehow managed to extract some of your cells while you were
in your mother's womb. Then using them along with technology gained from
the cloning facilities on Cinnabar Island, he created me. Though I was
'born' first, I am your clone, Ash." He laughed sickly as he whipped
folds of his grey cloak off his left arm to reveal it as dull and
dead-looking as the cloak. He wiggled his fingers up at Ash, revealing
only three, thick digits. "And not content with that monstrosity, he also
crossed me with cells of that psychic pokemon monster you knew as Mewtwo.
He wanted to create a super-human. Instead, he got me. Even more of a
monster."

Ash could not speak, the revelations bursting through his mind. Gary ...
was his clone?

Gary shook his head bitterly. "But it was all such a waste! Your mother
didn't end up miscarrying after all. You were born, one of the real
focuses of the prophecy. So I was just a waste." He looked at his mutated
arm. "We were such a waste." He lifted his gaze upward again. "It
explains why we were such good rivals, Ash, doesn't it?"

"But it just doesn't make sense ..."

"Of course it does! And since my ... 'father' Professor Oak, so loved the
prophecy, I found a way to reinvoke it, twist it, to destroy the world,
instead of save it. And like I said earlier, it would be best if you are
the one who is going to do it! Fight me, Ash! Let your true self free!"
He recited the last verse of the prophecy,


              "Son of night, daughter of morning
               Who is true to the end?
               For the world shall be rent
                 The bringer of darkness shall lead
               The one true to the blood
                 and shall grow from death's seed."


Ash's eyes narrowed at the haunting words. "I'll fight you, but I won't
let my other side go. I won't. I promised Misty I would save us all, and
I won't betray her memory."

Gary rubbed his chin, his face just like Ash's, eerily the same. "But
like I said, can you kill yourself? I am a clone of you. I am you."

"I'd kill myself and gladly ... but not before I send you back to hell
first," he growled. Without fear, he jumped from the ledge, the air
billowing his cloak out above him. A massive cracking sound exploded when
he finally landed far below on the arena just in front of Gary. Pikachu
was perched upon his shoulder, ready. "But you're wrong about one thing.
Though you share my cells, there is no way you could ever be me. You hate
life, so much you want to destroy it all. But it's a form of giving up.
And 'Ash' ... does not ever give up." He turned sideways, throwing a
loose fold of his black cloak over one shoulder. "It's time for a
rematch." Pikachu jumped down on to the floor by his left boot.

Gary smiled and thumbed his nose, a pointed nose that was just like his
own. He shifted sideways too, flicking his grey cloak. "I'm ready ...
brother. But first-" He flipped something small at him with his index
finger.

Ash caught it in his left hand without looking.

"That's your League Champion badge, Ash. I realised that when you gave it
to me, it was like you pitied me. I didn't deserve it, but I could have
it anyway. Well now, if I did indeed deserve it, I'll be pulling that
badge from your dead body."

Then they stood still, only about fifteen feet separating them, in the
centre of the deep stadium that was surrounded by thousands of seats.

"Wait," Gary interrupted again. "Something's missing." His red eyes lit
up. "That's right, how could I forget!" He pulled a black poke-ball from
his belt within his cloak. "Jolteon, I choose you."

The sleek and spiny, four-legged pokemon exploded out by his side. The
electric Jolteon, Gary's first pokemon that he had evolved from an eevee.
But it was now also black to suit his element. It also had red eyes.

"Now, we're ready." Gary crouched slightly.

"Yes." Ash lowered his centre of gravity as well.

Gary's eyes narrowed. Then he exploded forward with his pokemon so fast,
he seemed to disappear.

A split-second later, Ash also exploded forward with his pikachu, faster
than the eye could see.

They met in the centre of the stadium, right above the large logo of the
Pokemon League etched on the shiny marble floor. Jolteon thrust at Ash.
Pikachu thrust at Gary. Dodging, Gary threw a palm at Ash, while Ash
dipping out of the way of his pokemon, sent a side-kick back at him.
Their hand and foot met each other with a loud crack, and they both spun
toward their pokemon. As Pikachu formed Shadow Blade, Ash caught him and
swung, while Jolteon also blurred into black katana form which Gary
caught and met the slash. For a moment they struggled against one
another, swords locked, their strength seeming to be equal, before they
broke free and slid past each other, both on one knee, clouds of dust
flying from their boots.

Gary looked back at him and thrust forward picking up his Jolteon by the
scruff of its neck. "Nice... Jolteon, Shadow Bolt!" He threw his pokemon
directly at Ash and it blurred into a small comet.

However, just as Gary was finishing his command, Ash was shouting an
order at Pikachu as well as he picked him up to use as a shield.
"Pikachu, Darkness Repel!"

As the crackling comet of Shadow Lightning blasted off his pokemon's
small form, pushing him back, Ash used the momentum of the hit to
somersault backward. Propelled to the arena wall, he landed horizontally
upon it with his boots, then sprung forward with all his strength at
Gary, morphing Pikachu back into sword form as he did so.

Gary caught Jolteon flying backward at him and held it up. "Jolteon,
Electric Shield!" A half-sphere of sparking black lightning enveloped
them both. Ash, seeing it, flipped to land on top of it feet-first,
ignored the shocking pain in his feet at the contact, then jumped over
them both to meet the arena wall behind them. Again he twisted in midair
to land on it feet-first, and rebounded toward Gary's unprotected side.

"Pikachu, Shadow Bolt!" He threw pikachu forward to flare into the small
comet.

But Gary spun around simultaneously dropping his pokemon and roundhouse
kicking Pikachu away with a large cracking surge, while Ash landed upon
the ground in a quick slide, knocking Gary's Jolteon away with his
outstretched boot, sending it flying.

Continuing the slide, Ash then leaped into the air to catch Pikachu while
Gary dove the opposite way to catch Jolteon. They thrust back toward each
other to meet back in the centre of the stadium where they had first
started, using Shadow Blades once again.

Equally-matched black swords flew in various complicated manoeuvres,
before they again flew past each other, low to the ground and sliding
before they each came to a stop.

They both knelt on the ground, breathing heavily now.

However, Gary had an arrogant look on his face. "At this rate, Ash, you
will lose."

Suddenly a cut appeared on Ash's arm and blood dripped on to the arena
floor with dark red splashes. He ignored it.

"It seems evenly matched. But it's just an illusion I've been playing
with you. I can kill you at any time." Gary's red eyes gleamed. "I've
embraced my stolen Forbidden heritage. You must do the same or lose."

Ash clenched his gloved fist over the hilt of his pokemon sword. "I will
never surrender to that part of myself ever again."

His old rival smiled at him, a smile that was hauntingly his own. "Don't
you want to avenge Misty?"

Ash closed his eyes, desperately fighting off the dark depression that
arose within himself at the name. "I will not let this world suffer true
death."

"Then you will still die, and so will the world."


<><><>


Misty awoke to the strange feeling that she was staring at herself. She
opened her eyes.

It was Valdera. She was leaning on the adjacent wall of an old alleyway
staring at her, clutching her upper waist where she was heavily bleeding,
redness seeping out of her white robes and cloak.

Misty looked down at her own body that was leaning on the wall. She
wasn't surprised to see that she was bleeding in the exact same place.
She turned her gaze up and gave a poignant smile. "So I guess this means
I'm going to die. And if what you said is true, then I guess you will
too."

Valdera didn't return her sad expression. "You're wrong on both counts.
You're going to live. I'm going to live."

Misty looked down at herself again. And at Valdera's corresponding wound.
"I don't see exactly how. We've already lost too much blood. And I think
maybe some internal organs were ruptured." She closed her eyes, feeling a
deep sorrow. "I was so stupid. But I was so happy to see ... what looked
like Ash, I didn't follow my instincts."

"You were stupid," Valdera agreed. "But not as stupid as me. If I wasn't
so afraid, I would have continued ... what we were doing on that
building. And it would never have happened." She pushed herself to her
knees and she felt so much pain, even Misty felt it clearly. But Valdera
continued to crawl forward even though it felt like she was dying. "But
now, I'll redress that wrong. It was ... is our destiny. We are one
person. And now we'll make that fact true in the physical world, as well
as the spiritual."

Misty's hands lifted of their own accord, palms open.

Valdera's did too.

"Eventually ... all dualities will become one."

Whitest light flared, banishing the darkness.


<><><>


Ash was choking, the golden power just circling his throat, as it
continued to raise him higher, high above the arena. Both hands clutched
at the neck-crushing force, but it was no use. Blood dripped from many
slashes and cuts along his body.

Pikachu by his side was the same.

Gary looked up at them both with red eyes, his mutated grey arm raised in
their direction, a golden glow surrounding his claw. "It's funny, isn't
it, Ash? I am a clone of you, but most times, the clone can never live up
to the original. When a copy is made, sometimes some detail is lost." He
laughed, his sarcastic voice echoing up to him high in the air. "But in
our case it's different. Professor Oak may have been an evil bastard, but
I have to admit he was a brilliant scientist. He wanted to make sure that
the prophecy's 'child' would be the most powerful being ever created. Not
only Forbidden elements were used, but also the current most powerful
element, the element of the Psyche." He blew some stray strands of brown
hair from his eyes, the gesture of his own so familiar, Ash felt sick.
"I'll bet you don't even know who really killed your mother, do you?"

Everything went still for Ash, the pain in his choking throat forgotten
because he had also forgotten to breathe.

"That's right!" Gary smirked. "The blast that destroyed the first Pallet
Town was mine too! Of course, I didn't exactly plan it that way. I was in
the hills above Pallet Town contemplating about meeting my 'mother'. This
was just after I had killed Professor Oak. But then thinking about it
all, I summoned so much Psychic energy in my body from the anger that I
had to release it somewhere. Then your house from up there caught my eye
and suddenly I couldn't help it. Next thing I know, Pallet Town would
have been better described as 'Pallet Crater.'"

Darkness invaded Ash's vision and he could feel his control slipping.
When he looked at Pikachu he could see his pokemon's normally blue eyes
begin to flash red. He had the same expression of horror that Ash knew
was on his own face.

"That's it, Ash! Let it all go! Everytime you do, you become the eighth
Master Pokemon! Did you know that? Humans are 'pokemon' too! I should
have known you might crack at the news of how your mother really died.
You were always a mommas boy." Gary gestured his glowing hands first at
his feet, then at his Jolteon who all this time had been by his side
quietly. They too, began floating up in the air. As they arose, Gary
turned his red eyes upon the centre of the stadium, at the Pokemon League
logo on the marble floor. A small, twisting spiral began to grow at its
centre and rapidly began to enlarge, purple and forbidding. From
thousands of simultaneous voices, familiar haunted screams and shrieks
came from within.

Ash looked down at it, and though horrified, he found he was still losing
control over himself. He knew that soon, he would be destroying the world
along with the other Forbidden just like Gary wanted.

"That's it!" Gary yelled in wild, unrestrained enjoyment. "The final
Forbidden Vortex! This stadium is an upside-down tower ... the last
'Tower of Dread.' When this one meets the others, all of stupid, perverse
life will end! Life is nothing! A waste of time!"

A huge explosion blasted overhead in the stadium's roof sending falling
marble and other debris raining down from above. "Life isn't nothing," a
woman's voice echoed about loudly around them, around the whole of the
arena. "Nor is it a waste of time."

The blackness instantly lifted from Ash's eyes at the familiar voice. He
looked up and gasped.

A woman floated down from the opening. A woman cloaked in purest white
who was as familiar to Ash as the sun was to the sky. All shadows that
lived around them seemed to just evaporate in the face of the ethereal
light that emitted from her as she descended. Her long, red hair wavered
up high around her head, gliding, fanning out. But there was something
different about that red hair now. Now a slash of golden-blonde ran
through it, starting from the top, right side of her face, to continue
the whole length of her hair. Her white cloak floated up around her body
as well, revealing body-length robes that matched the pure ivory.
Surprisingly, she was bare-foot, her dainty feet tilted toward the
ground.

"M-Misty?" Ash stammered.

"Pipikachu!" Pikachu cried, awed.

Misty continued to descend until she was right next to him and smiled.
She waved her hand and the golden ring of psychic power that was choking
him and Pikachu just disappeared. Ash expected to drop down to the ground
after that, since nothing was holding him up, but he stayed in the air,
still hovering for some unknown reason.

"What the shadows?" he said, confused.

"Not the shadows, Ash. The light," she said in her voice, still the same,
though it was as if she that voice was at peace.

Chains of reason interlocked in his head. "You and Valdera!"

She nodded at him that was so like Misty, but then gave a devilish smile
with a twinkle in her aqua eyes that was so much like Valdera. But then
they had both shared those exact same expressions. Why had he not
realised it sooner?

"Noooooooo!" Gary was shouting, his red eyes aflame. "You're supposed to
be dead! How can you be alive? You're dead!" He lifted his grey arm and
spread his palm to launch a devastating ball of psychic power directly at
her.

Misty backhanded the powerful blast contemptuously, sending it flying
into the western audience seating the of the arena, where it detonated
and blew half the place up. "Poor Lord Garick," she said in a hard tone
of voice as she looked down at him. "You shouldn't underestimate a girl
who had lived a life of pain."

"I'll make sure I kill you now!" Gary screeched as he flew upward to
the attack, dull grey cloak streaming behind him.

Ash was about to move to intercept when he realised he needn't bother.
Misty just pointed her palm at him and a blast of light just shot forth
in a thin beam of golden sunshine. It blasted through Gary's chest and he
screamed as he was smashed all the way backward, until he collided into
the ruins of the western arena seating that he had destroyed earlier in a
large puff of smoke.

"That should keep him," Misty said, amused. She turned back to Ash.

"The Jolteon!" Ash warned as he spotted Gary's pokemon flying up to
revenge its Master, sparking with black lightning.

"What Jolteon?"

A bubble of water suddenly materialised around its head. Shocked, the
pokemon stalled in the air as it began to drown. It flew about wildly,
then let out a blast of electricity in its fear. Although that was a
mistake as electricity and water didn't tend to mix well, and after a
nice, sparking and sizzling effect, crashed to the arena seating on the
other side of the underground stadium, having fainted itself.

"Now then," Misty said to Ash. "No more interruptions." She floated
closer.

Ash grabbed her and kissed her - it was an instantaneous impulse - and
she gasped into his mouth, eyes widened. Then she returned the quick kiss
before saying against his lips, smiling, "Later ..." They broke apart. "I
said no more interruptions and that means that too, though it was sweet."
Her blue eyes shined at him.

"I'm just glad you're okay."

"Me too." She looked down at the fourth Forbidden Vortex swirling there
in the centre of the stadium. "But first thing's first. About the
prophecy, you should understand it before we can end it. I will tell you
a story. The story of the Prophecy of Armageddon. The Forbidden
Prophecy." She shrugged her shoulders. "Of course, it wasn't always known
as that. It only began to be called that when Team Rocket first invoked
it, though they did it in such a way as that the world would die."

"Yeah, I remember," Ash said darkly. He brushed his hair back with both
hands in sad remembrance.

Misty shook her head a little with a contrary tilting of her lips.
"Ironically, it was Gary down there who ultimately stopped them, though
in no small part to yours and Valdera's ... I mean my .... help. Anyway,
in olden times, the prophecy was known as the Return of Light and
Shadow. Long ago, Light and Shadow were as common as all the other
elements found today. But for some reason, they became lost. No one knew
why, and still no one knows why, just the fact that no more Light and
Shadow Pokemon were being born. Soon, these elements were called the
Forgotten elements as they had been gone for so long, only musty old
researchers and textbooks even knew they had existed."

She paused then, to lift her hand and stare at it, at its shining light.
"Then the psychics of those olden-time eras somehow predicted that the
Light and Shadow would return, but when they did, it was to come with a
hailstorm of death such that no one had ever seen before. That was when
people began calling them the Forbidden elements, as people believed that
these elements would cause the end of the world when they finally
resurfaced. But days of peace could not last forever. The Light and
Shadow were never destroyed, but just lay dormant. The world is a
balance, and nothing can be truly destroyed. And that's when a Light
focus and a Shadow focus were born." She looked seriously at him. "My
mother was the Light focus and your father was the Shadow focus."

Ash closed his eyes. "But ... all that I remember of my father ... was a
man I hated." Then he remembered Gary's words which he had thought to be
a lie when he had first heard it. His eyes opened, and widened.

"That's right. The man you remember wasn't your real father. He must have
hated you because he knew that fact. In all probability, your real father
would have just disappeared, just like my mother did, to be reabsorbed
into the world's balance of elements since what they had to do was done.
And that was to create a fully-human seed for the Shadow and Light to be
born again."

"Then what about the Forbidden Pokemon?"

She shook her head. "Like I said, Forbidden is just a word that people
invented, to describe the elements that would come with the world's end.
What we know as Forbidden Pokemon, Devils, Demons, whatever you want to
call them, that is just another way for the elements of Light and Shadow
to be brought back into the world. But that way is the brute force
method." She smiled at him again. "The other way is us. It was our
destiny to meet each other and join. It was what our elemental mother and
father wanted us to do. But we couldn't do that before now, because I was
split, and you too, though not in the body."

"So the real way to stop the prophecy is for us to combine? You make it
sound so sexy."

"Not that way, Ash," she laughed, "Though we can do that later," she said
evilly. "I meant we have to mesh our elements together ... the Light and
Shadow aren't proper independent elements. They were always co-dependent.
One cannot exist without the other."

"Okay, so how do we do it?"

"Lift your palms, like this." She lifted her hands out in front of her,
palms first.

"Okay." He followed her lead.

"Wait." Misty reached up on her white cloak to where a familiar
star-shaped badge was pinned against it. But Ash saw there was something
different about it...

"Starmos, I choose you," she called out and her ten-bladed star pokemon
enlarged to its proper size. But instead of it being black with a red
jewel centre, it was now as pristine white as her new element, with a
matching blue jewel. "My Pet, out you go," she also said, and white
electricity expanded from her hand to form into the white pikachu that
was Valdera's ... now Misty's own, though she was the same person anyway.

"Pikachu," Misty said, also calling for Ash's pokemon who just floated
there next to him with a bewildered expression on his cute face. "We
need you too."

"Pika!" Pikachu said eagerly and floated closer so that they were all now
floating in a circle, with Ash and Misty at their centre, palms facing
each other. Ash noticed a shy look on his pokemon's face as it looked at
Misty's white pikachu with green eyes. They had been close friends
before, though that had to end when Ash left the League.

"Okay," Misty said. "Do just like what you told me back at Mount Moon
when you wanted to join our powers to stop the Missingno."

"Right." He began gathering the dark, crackling energies within himself
as if he were powering up to attack or release it. The familiar warmth,
and the strength, flowed through him.

"Now." He could tell Misty was doing the same thing as he was, though
with Light instead of Shadow. "Now, you pokemon, you can see what we're
doing ... can you do the same thing?" She smiled with encouragement.

"Pika."

"Chu."

Starmos' blue jewel face gleamed assent.

"Now then," Misty slowly began to push her palms closer to Ash's.

He did the same, and that's when he could suddenly start feeling her
element. It felt ... wonderful. As if it was something he had lost for a
long, long time, but then found again. It gave him a feeling of peace. A
feeling of belonging.

Misty's pink-tinged lips curved at him and her eyes shone. He knew that
she was feeling the same thing.

"NO," Gary's voice came from somewhere below, the tone in his voice
seeming to be both dead and angry at the same time, however impossible it
seemed. He sounded as if he had finally recovered. Golden and black
blasts began exploding and booming toward them in a meteor storm of
thunder and lightning.

But Ash and Misty just smiled at each other, ignoring him, as if his
shouts and attacks were just the annoying buzzes of a mosquito. The
attacks were as effective as one too, as they just seemed to be getting
dissolved by the pulsing black and white aura they and their pokemon were
creating around them in a sphere.

"I won't let you!" Gary screamed again, his voice now hoarse. "The world
should die and everyone with you!" His body erupted with black and golden
flame and the destroyed seating around him just detonated as he thrust up
toward them, his whole body and veritable elemental fireball.

Ash knew the time was right when there was a slight widening in the
irises of Misty's beautiful blue eyes. He knew his irises and expanded as
well. They both looked down at the Forbidden Vortex and it was only
coincidence that Gary was flying up at them directly in their line of
fire.

"Thus the balance shall be engraved," he and Misty said simultaneously,
though he didn't know how he knew the words. He just knew.

Ash looked at Misty. "Darkness is Light,"

She looked back at him. "Light is Darkness."

Their palms joined along with their elements.

They looked down again at a now-terrified Gary at the sheer power of the
elemental forces they had raised. It was so powerful, the whole Palace
was shaking now, dirt, dust, rocks and bits of marble columns falling all
around them. The whole ceiling that was the floor of the palace above
them was caving in like a collapsing mountain.

"CALIGA ILLUSTRO!"

Their sphere of white and black energy pulsed and just erupted.

Everything was a shade of Light and Shadow.


<><><>


Bruno was in the middle of punching off the head of yet another Forbidden
Pokemon when the earth beneath shook, like an earthquake. And not the
puny ones that Ground Pokemon could execute, but the full-blown real
thing. He fell to the barricade's floor, shaken off his feet. The
climbing Forbidden Pokemon were knocked off to land on the massive pile
that was collecting at the foot of the wall, though hundreds more were
taking their place. "What the hell's going on?" he shouted.

"Sir! It's the Palace! Look!"

Teeth chattering from the massive vibrations and blinking falling dust
and rain out of his eyes, Bruno turned around on his back to look toward
the heart of the city they were defending. Through the horizon of
buildings, the marble walls of the pristine tower palace looked to be
pulsing as if something were trying to escape from it. Something alive.
The earthquake that was shaking the city to kingdom come was shuddering
to the exact timing of those pulses.

Bruno ripped out his communicator. "Giselle! What's the EDS say?"

"Bruno?" her arrogant voice came through with lots of static. "My EDS?
I'm afraid I can't say! It just sort of blew up in my hand!"

"Damn!" Bruno said awed. "What in the shadows did Ashura do?"

Just then a Forbidden Scyther swooped down on his face and Bruno yelled,
cursing himself for getting distracted. But before it could Slash his
head off, the pokemon just paused. Then it flashed, changing colour. To
white. It looked at him with its serpentine head with blue eyes and
impossibly it seemed to smile, before flying away from him.

"Not the shadows, Sir," the lady chaneller said as she stepped over to
him and lent him a hand to stand up. "The Light."

Bruno accepted her hand and rose up as if in a daze. All the black
Forbidden Pokemon had changed colour to white just like the scyther had
done before it tried to kill him. Their red eyes were gone, replaced with
blue. No longer attacking, they seemed to retreat, scampering, crawling,
sliding or flying away in a peaceful manner. The black carpet was now a
white carpet, that receded away from their barrier to all rush back where
they came from.

A rumbling sound came from behind and Bruno looked back at where the
pulsing Palace of the Elite Four was. The walls were slowly dissolving,
and it looked like uncountable twisting, turning strands of black and
white elemental energy were escaping up into the air from within. The
streams just rose up into the black sky looking like a giant, wavery
beanstalk, and when the first of those shoots hit the storming clouds,
the rain just abruptly cut out as if a faucet had been closed.

And then Bruno saw something that he hadn't seen in a long, long time.

The natural, golden rays of the sun.

The shadows that had covered the earth were gone.

Just the deep blue of the sky.

And though his eyes were tearing from the brightness he had not seen in
over a week, he found he just could not close his eyes, accepting the
discomfort.

He jumped into the air and clicked his booted feet, he was so happy. His
macho image was ruined, but he didn't care.

The chaneller was looking at him with a strange look, along with some of
the League soldiers who weren't still staring up at the sky. "Are all the
rebels as weird as you?"

Bruno beamed at her and he knew he must look quite a sight. He thought of
Erika, Giselle and the others. "Trust me, I'm the least weird of the
bunch."

"I'll not wager on it," was all she said.

He was so happy he hugged her too in a tight bear hold, and the
expression on her face was priceless.


<><><>


Laselle was looking toward the ruins of the palace tower. After the
Shadow's and Light's release, there was nothing there now but a hole in
the ground, she could just see. "I knew it!" she shrilled happily. "I
knew Ash could do it!" She mussed up her long brown-black hair and danced
crazily atop the barricade's ledge.

A young woman in the yellow cloak of a Thunder Master looked at her with
an expression of outrage. "If it weren't for Master Pokemon Flint, I'd be
tempted to give that girl a spanking. She needs it."

"This will shut her up," Junior, or JT, as that was how he thought of
himself, said seriously as he walked up to her. But if the Thunder Master
woman thought he would give her a mature scolding she would have been
very disappointed.

"Tickle attack!" JT cried as he jumped on her.


<><><>


Erika was the only one who had remembered that they were supposed to meet
the others at the western plateau ocean docks. Of course since she had
been stationed at the Fifth Street Barricade, she was also the only one
close enough that she could see the bright turquoise of the sparkling
ocean in the distance, when the sky and world's colours had returned to
normal.

She walked quickly down the road with her escort of League soldiers,
looking worriedly at her timepiece. Or at least at her bare wrist where a
timepiece was supposed to be if she wore one. Instead she looked up at
the sky and tried to judge the time by the sun. She was out of practise
from being out of contact with it for so long though, that she knew she
would be off a couple of hours.

As they grew closer to the wharf, suddenly dozens of people popped out in
ambush, pointing swords and bows at them. Erika's heart leapt in her
throat and she felt like she had almost suffered a heart attack. The poor
three soldiers she had roped into keeping her company threw their hands
up in fear.

Three woman in sailor jackets, one with blonde hair, the next with
violet, and the last with pink hair, stepped out from behind cover of a
building. "You! League scum!" Daisy said as she clutched at the flower
she wore in her hair threateningly. "Step away from the Grass Master, and
no one gets hurt."

"Daisy!" Erika sighed in relief. Then she noticed the green and maroon
livery that the men wore and began recognising faces, Bruno's Fight
Trainers and even some of her Grass Trainers. She looked back at the poor
soldiers. "Oh, don't mind these!" she laughed. "They're on our side now."

Violet blinked. "Say what?"

"What she said," Lily added.

"It's a long story ..."


<><><>


Duplica sat upon the ruins of some collapsed building, contemplating her
life. She had loved Ash, she knew. But she knew she hadn't been telling
the whole truth when she told him she had given up on those ill-led
feelings when she discovered that they were related. She knew she was
messed up. She also knew that it was related to her feelings of
abandonment when she was just a girl and was so lonely. When she met Ash,
someone who had seemed a lot like her, maybe it was natural what she was
feeling. The lines between romantic and sibling love must have gotten
severely blurred in her case. She really needed to find a shrink. She
smiled to herself and brushed a long strand of her teal-blue hair from
her cheek. She just had to find one that was still alive. Then maybe she
could go out into the world and take up where Ash had left off, trying to
discover new breeds of pokemon. After the Forbidden mess, who knew what
sorts were out there now. Or if not that, she was young. She was
beautiful. She could even change herself to meet other people's taste of
beautiful if she so wanted. She could be a star. Or maybe she could-

Some grunting sounds alerted her all of a sudden and she looked down. Her
eyes widening, she let out a bark of laughter.

Jessie and James looked up at her, offended, as they dragged the rickety
wooden cart down the street. "Oh!" Jessie said in her high voice. "It's
you! Don't just gawk at us, girl, help us pull this cart!"

Duplica was still laughing. "I'll pass up on that offer, thanks. Manual
labour is something I'm not too fond of." She squinted at the wooden
cart. There seemed to be some muffled grunts and shouts coming out from
it. "Who have you got there anyway?

"Oh, just Butch and Cassidy," Jessie said, trying to sound bored. "We
managed to defeat them easily. Now we're going to take them to Fuchsia to
see if anyone can give us the reward money."

James scratched his head. "Actually, Jessie, weren't we all running away
from the Forbidden Pokemon when we just smacked them unconscious while
they weren't looking and tied them up?"

Jessie gave him a well-deserved smack on the head.

"Ow!"

Duplica spotted a white cat by their legs. "And that's not your persian
is it? That's a female!"

"Well," Jessie replied, "she defeated Persian, but she said that she only
wanted revenge for him leaving her. Her goal was always to find him again
so that she could join him. She loves him after all. She first used Team
Rocket, then the League to find him again. Our Persian's still
unconscious in the wagon as well, snoring on Butch and Cassidy."

"Oh," Duplica said, as if she understood everything she said.


<><><>


Rainer was looking up at the blue sky. Then he looked around at the many
civilians dancing about in the street. He had been searching all over the
inner city, but he had never run into anyone or anything noteworthy.

"Did I miss something?" he asked aloud to no one in particular.


<><><>


Giselle was more interested in her destroyed EDS than what was going on
around her.

"He did it! He must have did it!" General Kas was shouting out
euphorically. Everyone else was shouting out as well, just staring up at
the sun as if it were a god.

Giselle ignored them as she curiously picked at the device. She let
out a surprised shriek when an electric spark shot out into her finger.
Annoyed, she sucked her pinky and stared daggers at the circuit board
that was still smoking. "I know that was Ash's elemental signature ...
but ... was that Misty's as well?"


<><><>


South of the Indigo Plateau, near where Viridian City used to stand was a
large, green forest. Tall, brown trunks towered into the sky forming a
wide, beautiful canopy of evergreen leaves. Over the years the Viridian
Forest had grew out, spreading so that it met the forest where a certain
river stream was located, below a wide waterfall. Small red flowers were
growing all along the river's edge.

The sound of the stream was soothing to the ears and the fresh smell of
clean water and roses was in the air.

It was especially soothing to the young couple who were there. One was a
beautiful, young woman with long, red hair streaked with blonde, sitting
on the bank with her legs dangling off the edge. She was wearing a long,
white hooded cloak with robes of matching colour underneath.

The other was a handsome, young man leaning against the trunk of a nearby
tree, his longish black hair drifting about over his eyes. He was dressed
in a hooded cloak as black as the woman's was white. A small black
electric mouse was chomping on an apple by his foot along with a matching
white one.

Misty was punching in all the new species of pokemon that Ash hadn't yet
put in his pokedex. "Should I put in two entries for Starmos, one black,
and one white, in here?"

"I dunno," Ash said as he scratched at his head. "Maybe you should call
the white one by a new name."

"What would I call it?"

"Stardungs?"

She blinked. "Forget I asked you."

She went back to tapping on his pokedex. Then she paused. "Hey, what's
this? I didn't know there was a pokemon named Misty, like me."

Ash's eyes widened. He jumped forward to snatch it from her.

It was too late. "Misty ... an annoying woman who really makes my blood
boil." She looked up at him with her blue eyes, a faint glow lighting up
from within.

Ash waved his hands at her. "I wrote that when I was angry at you! You
can't hold it against me now that we've made up!"

"You need to make up all over again," she growled as she jumped on him,
pinning him to the grass with her hands. She began rolling him around
trying to squeeze his hands so that he would cry mercy.

He looked up at her, desperately thinking hard for something that would
change the subject. As he felt something hard on her left hand with his
thumb he came up with the perfect answer. He snatched her hand to his
face and saw it. "Ah ha!" he said victoriously. "I knew it! You're
wearing that ring I gave you all the way back when you blasted me home
with my tail between my legs. You've always been wearing it, haven't
you?"

Misty looked embarrassed and let him up. "No comment."

"That means you accepted the ring of proposal! Now you have to marry me!"

"Who said?"

Ash put his hands up behind his head. "Well ... um ... the fairies who
say that when a woman accepts an engagement ring from a man, she wants to
marry him."

"Ha! You wish. What fairies?"

"Pikachu?"

"Pikapi ... pi pikachu," Pikachu said seriously.

"Pikachu's not a fairy! You know, you don't have to go to all that
trouble about tricking me into it. Why don't you just do it the old
fashioned way and ask?"

"But that would be boring."

She jumped on him again, grabbing his hands in her own and she began to
squeeze. "I have a better idea. Why don't I force you into asking the
question? Instead of you asking for mercy for me to stop, you have to ask
to marry me."

"Will you marry me, Mistaria?" Ash asked quickly.

"Now who's the one being boring?" Misty said crossly.

Ash quickly reversed their positions, rolling her on to the bottom and
began to squeeze her own hands. "Now, you have to say yes or I squeeze,"
he said mischievously.

"Bring it on!"

He tried with all his strength to squeeze her hands and make her cry out.
But she just smiled up at him, unaffected. She had always had stronger
hands than him, he remembered in disgust. He knew from all the fights
they had before especially when they were kids.

"Pathetic," she mocked, a twinkle in her eyes. "You may have been the
'Eighth Master Pokemon,' but technically, I'm the 'Ninth.'"

Ash narrowed his eyes. "Fine, I'll just have to do this then." He leaned
over and began to nibble at the side of her neck where her jawbone met
her ear. He knew she was a sucker for that spot. Valdera too, come to
think of it. Then again, they were the same person. It was weird but it
felt right.

She began breathing heavy. "You cheater ..." She swallowed, then sighed.
"Ahhh ... yes."

"Hah! Victory!"

"Fine, you got me." She sighed as she looked up at him, her long red hair
with the new golden streak in it fanned around her face.

"I can't believe it's all over," Ash mused as he looked deep into her
blue eyes.

"It's not over until you kiss me."

He didn't answer as lowered his head, savouring the coming taste of her
lips.

With the coming of the gentle kiss, so it had finally come to a close.



*** THE END


_________________________________________________________________________

                                POKEDEX
_________________________________________________________________________

SHADOW PIKACHU
Type 1 - Shadow
Type 2 - Electricity

Attack : Gurenken
Type   : Fighting

A rapid, advancing series of complex palm and fist combinations that can
be varied depending on the defence used against it. If successfully
landed, the series may be ended with a finisher attack, usually a kick.

Attack : Cloud of Blades
Type   : Fighting

Most sword attacks hold a specific target. This does not, instead somehow
striking any and all possible targets, simultaneously. In short, a Cloud
of Blades.

Attack : Dark Lightning Slash
Type   : Shadow / Electric / Fighting / Flying

The Shadow version of the Lightning Slash, it must be performed
subsequent to Pikachu's Shadow Blade. For all intents and purposes, this
attack is also a Shadow Slice, however the area of effect and range is
much more powerful.

Attack : Caliga Illustro
Type   : Shadow / Light

Shadow cannot exist without the Light to cast it. Light cannot exist
without casting a shadow. It is said that the balance of these two
elements - the Forbidden elements - would result in either destroying the
world, or saving it.

_________________________________________________________________________

Final Notes:


The original FFML will always hold a special place in my heart with all
times I've had with it, releasing and reading Ranma 1/2 fanfics, various
game fanfics and of course, Pokemon, though this wasn't the best place to
post them.

But after all, I *did* post the first chapter of this story here and that
is why it has so much sentimental value.

Now that I've finished writing this series though, there is nothing
stopping me from writing my other projects though I will be taking a
short vacation from writing to work on some uni stuff (Some vacation!
Bleh).

Well, signing off!

P.S. Any C&C wouldn't be out of order too! *grin*

Ace Sanchez
Emails : jsanchez@bigpond.net.au
       : aceywacey@hotmail.com
WWW    : http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/acey



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