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Disclaimer: Pokémon is a registered property of Nintendo, the Pokémon Company, and GameFreak. This work respectfully uses the world and characters of the Pokémon series for the sake of harmless, profitless fanfiction. Please support the official releases of the Pokémon franchise.

Short Change Hero

Chapter 1: Picking Up the Pieces

Dual City ruins, three weeks after the fall of the Rocket Empire...

An impatient wind blew down a blackened road and encircled a perfectly round crevice of building debris, white as snow. This shining circle sat at the center of a city in ashes; softly glowing embers scattered among a sea of smoking darkness. Mourners, human and Pokémon alike, gathered at that center of this massive graveyard blanketed in residue. Their watery eyes honed in on the lone, uniformed figure approaching the podium at the charred fringe of the road.

Newly elected Pokémon League President Shivu stood before the podium in front of the city hall ruins, taking in his surroundings with a hushed gasp; his gaze touched across a black funeral wreath that framed a series of large portraits commemorating the souls lost on that fatal day three months prior. Finally, he glanced down at the crumpled memorial speech in his trembling hands, choking up just slightly when he began to voice what he'd written.

"Justice was needed," he managed, his voice a scratch against the dismal silence. Feeling the countless gazes on him, he massaged his throat and carried on. "It was everything that Kanto and Johto deserved. And we paid the price for simply wanting it."

Silence persisted through the crowd, either out of respect or out of an emotion they all shared but no one among them could quite place; only the faintest sniffles of broken hearts seemed to penetrate the extended pause. It wasn't just civilians and press members in mourning either. Pokémon League representatives and Military Government officials, despite the commonly held opinion of them lately, stood with their heads bowed, perhaps to hide their shame. Shivu couldn't malign them. Some scars were harder to see than others, and he carried his the same as the rest of them.

Legendaries, how did they even get to this point? How could things have gone so wrong so quickly and easily?

The idle president hesitated briefly, dismissing the distracting thought before continuing. "Metsuma Rocket was supposed to be our hero," he read on, the name tasting acidic in his mouth. "But then… we saw his true colors. And only minutes later did Dual City crumble before our eyes, bringing down with it countless, innocent lives. And with them died the very heart of our very legislative body, the same body my colleagues and I were sworn to uphold before I was elected to the Pokémon Association. That being said, I will not let it happen again. I swear I will not allow another reprobate like Metsuma Rocket to slither into power."

Harsher. Their gazes suddenly felt harsher on him. If it wasn't brought on by his desperate attempts to reassure them, it was almost certainly brought on by simply mentioning the name. His name. The devil's name. The name of the lunatic who had reduced their government to cinders, more for a chuckle than to make a point. Now to so much as speak his name was to invite a curse or a hex. It was just an unwritten rule now.

Even the image of him—no, even the thought—made Shivu boil. He fought it back, composing himself, unclenching his fingers before they could punch holes into his speech. He shuffled the notes together, anxious to finish up and get down from the podium as soon as possible before a slew of angry curses could escape him and get the crowd excited. Tempting though it was, he couldn't allow it. He couldn't let himself or any of them stoop to the madman's level of rabid lunacy and unwittingly carry out his twisted legacy.

"We believed in… that man," he pressed on, choosing not to speak the name this time. "That was our mistake. That was our ministry's death knell." The words caught in his throat, drowning beneath angry sobs wracking to be free. He hastily stuffed the speech into his breast pocket and, in a fleeting rasp, finished with the overdue words they all longed to voice themselves.

"May he burn in hell."

Mountains west of Celestic Town, two years later...

Aurora slowly opened her eyes and gazed up at the silver sky. A foreboding wind danced through her fur, as if to jostle her into retreat, yet she stood immovable like a statue on the cliff's edge. Mount Coronet, though vast and lofty, was an extension of herself. Her master had seen to that. She'd made it easy for him, in all fairness, just by simply being a Lucario. Having been born naturally more attuned to the Aura than even the most spiritual humans, she had proved herself a quick learner.

And yet today there was something… out of balance. She could feel it tingling through the sensitive appendages dangling behind her ears. It wasn't the shift in the wind though, nor was it the promise of a storm bellowing overhead. No, this was more elusive, more disconnected from Sinnoh's natural grace and beauty than any other rift she'd felt in these sprawling mountains.

Could this have been the disturbance omened by the White Cloaks?

The sun's dying rays caught her eye just long enough before slipping away into the concentration of clouds painting the sky grey. Next came the rain, starting as a trickle and then pouring down in a steady sheet along the alpine landscape. No drop went undetected by her senses. Each struck the hard-packed earth as routinely and boringly as the last, yet the vibrations were an annoyance all the same, masking the movement of the anomaly she swore couldn't have simply been her imagination.

Drawing in a fluid breath, she pawed the base of the ying-yang talisman suspended around her neck, finding her focus somewhere in the rhythmic sound of the sky's natural yield smacking the rocks around her. That familiar rush power snapped through her like a whip, overflowing, trickling from her paw in a shimmering blue haze. She planted her feet firmly on the damp cliffside, squeezing her eyes shut and calling on that same surplus energy to scan the steep landscape below her.

Her mind's eye shot ahead, striking through countless more cliffs and passes until it stopped at a stretch of dirt road snaking through the lower mountain ridges. It must have spanned miles, punching into the backcountry skirting Celestic Town, yet conveniently blanketed under the cover of thick forestation. The trees in its path rippled violently in response, scattering the patches of snow dusting their tops to the wind.

Then she heard it—or felt it, rather. Vibrations. Not the rain this time. Unnatural now, erratic, pounding in her limbs the more ground she probed. She clenched the talisman a little harder to squeeze out a better look. Fresh tire tracks not yet deluged by the rainfall smeared the muddied road in twin streaks. She'd probed these mountains numerous times and had never known that back road to be traveled, especially not in weather like this. She was closing in now, if nothing else.

She came up upon the vibrations with another gentle push of energy, striking gold. An unusually orderly column of automobiles—large box vans, by the looks—trundled down the bumpy road in a hurry, their bleating engines tearing obnoxiously into her senses. She steadied her focus, trying to make out any distinctive details about the vehicles, trying to get a reading on the humans manning them.

Her visual on the vans became fuzzier the further into the boondocks they drove. She was wasting time, she realized; opening her eyes, she dove from the cliffside without a second thought, landing unharmed on the first of the many treacherous mountain slants barring her from her fleeing targets.

Of course, it wasn't her they were fleeing from, she understood.

The caw of a Spearow flock dragged her gaze to the skies further up ahead, though this didn't break her momentum as she effortlessly weaved and ducked through the landscape's varying obstructions. The Aura was guiding her body, yet her eyes stayed with the flock, observing their perfectly arrowlike formation skimming the treetops. It wasn't like wild Spearows to form up in such a way, let alone fly amid rain and lightning.

Upon closer inspection, she noticed that a Fearow was herding the flock along. No way these were wild Pokémon. They were domesticated, trained, clearly serving as aerial surveillance for the mystery vans peeling away in a frenzy. This was a strategic, coordinated effort—but for what purpose, she wondered?

A heist was the first possibility to cross her mind. There was more of value than simply nature to be found in the deepest crevices of Mount Coronet, after all. She knew it better than most. She also knew what happened to those that dared steal from the Coalition. If this was as she feared, these thieves were already marked for death. And there would be no mercy dispensed if she didn't intercept them first.

She came belting out of the treeline and onto the rutted dirt road before it could melt to mud. She kept her gaze forward as she dashed along it, putting all her energy solely into her leg muscles. She no longer needed her senses to trace the synthetic vibrations and sounds. The trail would bring her to them quickly enough, so long as she didn't slow down. It wasn't so much a race against the clock anymore as it was a race against the White Cloaks.

Kirby lowered the cowl of his disguise, letting red tendrils fall freely over his shoulders. He pushed the cumbersome strands out of his eyes, just enough to inspect the metal lockbox held firmly in his lap. He was starting to wonder if its contents were really worth all this sweat. He'd pulled off plenty of heists before, but nothing like this. There would be hell to pay if he wasn't compensated at least his own weight in cash.

From the corner of his eyes, his partner, Jax, sat rigid in the driver's seat. The younger man's leather gloves groaned as his grip on the steering wheel tightened. The kid wasn't nervous though. He was anxious, but never nervous. If Kirby knew Jax well, the cocky fool was probably fighting back the itch to howl out and bang on the wheel in triumph. And when he inevitably did, Kirby would have to fight back his own itch to slap the boy silly.

Rain suddenly splattered the windshield in icy pelts as the bumpy, slushing mountain road ahead led them and the rest of their party out of the forest's cover, past marshy, brown slopes void of any human habitation. There must have been another ten or so miles between them and Celestic. And he would be waiting for them there.

Kirby leaned his arm over Jax's, thumbing the windshield wipers for a better vantage. Small patches of dirt-brown scrub dotted the hills the further they strayed from the woodlands, so much so that the road seemed to melt into the identically colored landscape. Mudslides would follow next, slowing them down even more, he reckoned. He considered taking over the wheel, but doing that meant stopping first.

And stopping just wasn't an option.

Pressing the case tighter against his lap, he blew out a miffed gust through his nostrils before briefly glancing skyward. The unmistakable purr of helicopter rotors broke through the clouds, a reassuring sound. He withheld his smile until he had a clear visual on a pair of choppers descending from the overcast to join their Spearow escort. Better late than never, he reasoned.

Lightning streaked in jagged forks across the sky, each bringing with it the war drums of mother nature. The noise set the passengers in back on edge rather obviously. He could feel them squirming against the door panel behind him. They were much like him—older, more experienced, more aware and respectful of the dangers attached to a mercenary's life. Whereas young hotshots like Jax took it as a fun, thrilling game, the rest of them were smart enough to know when to be afraid. It all boiled down to a soldier's sixth sense; and using it, Kirby could tell there was more to this storm than met the eye.

Foolishly taking a hand off the wheel, Jax pulled back his own black hood, revealing a face the was all almond eyes, pearly teeth, and chiseled cheekbones framed by shoulder-length hair, not unlike Kirby's. The kid was just shy of eighteen and for whatever reason thought that made him king of the world. If Kirby had known Jax would turn out this way, he might have thought twice before taking him under his wing.

A carefree sigh escaped teenager's lips, his canines flashing a smile in Kirby's direction. "That hood was suffocating me, I tell ya. Felt like my head was in an oven."

"Eyes on the road," Kirby muttered quietly, lifting a finger to point.

Jax did as he was told—for all of ten seconds, anyway. His eyes flinched from the drenched road again before long, momentarily wandering to the valuable treasure resting in his partner's lap. "Any reason we gotta keep it cased like that?"

Kirby shook his head. "I wasn't given specifics," he answered flatly. "I was only told not to open it under any circumstances."

"I see." With a shrug, Jax turned his head forward again.

"Besides," Kirby continued, if only to satisfy any other lingering curiosities, "it's better we keep it boxed. I don't want to deliver it damaged."

Jax's mouth thinned into a stubborn, pouty line. "Look, I'm not an idiot." His gaze, suddenly solemn, darted to Kirby again to punctuate the point. "I know what he's paying us. You think I'd be stupid enough to let something this valuable slip through our fingers?"

Kirby sighed, rubbing his sore neck. He wasn't in any mood to argue. "Just focus on the road, will you? We can't let this storm slow us—"

The van gave a lurch, silencing him and nearly throwing the case from his lap. He caught it and clutched it to his chest like a life preserver; in this piss-poor economy, it kind of was.

"The hell?" murmured Jax, squinting into the side mirror. "Must have hit a bump or something."

Unconvinced, Kirby twisted in his seat. He knocked on the panel separating them and the men in back. Some moments passed before a reaffirming knock answered back.

"They're fine," chuckled Jax, sounding too sure of himself. "Just look where we are. Did you really expect a smooth ride?"

Before Kirby could shut him up, the van buckled again, more violently this time. The wheel slipped from Jax's grip, nearly sending the van careening off the road and into the ravine adjacent to them. Kirby lunged over his partner to get the car back under control, the tires screeching as he jerked the wheel toward him.

Once they were safely back on course, Jax swatted the older man's hands away. "Alright, I got it! Let go! We're fine!"

"No, we're not fine," Kirby hissed through gnashed teeth, hugging the case tighter. He leaned forward and craned his neck, angling his head to peer out the windshield and ensure Fearow's flock and the choppers were still airborne. He next looked into the passenger mirror to tally the other vans following behind them. All accounted for.

Everything seemed perfectly fine. That was the problem.

Then came a third, much rougher jolt. Kirby was prepared this time, gripping Jax's seat with one hand and clinching the case with the other as they rode out the sharp, rugged turn needed to reclaim the van's balance. Though Jax had reacted in time, that smug, self-assured smile of his was quickly melting away.

Through his mirror, Kirby saw that the other vans hadn't buckled as theirs did. He couldn't make out any bumps or divots in their tracks either. Whatever was happening was happening to their van, and only theirs.

"He said we wouldn't run into problems," uttered Jax, swallowing past a lump. The fear cracking through his voice was palpable now. He was unrecognizable from the cocky, chatty swashbuckler sitting in his place just moments ago.

Even so, Kirby scowled at the stupid statement. "That's why you're not suited for this line of work, Jax. You take everything at face value."

The teenager's fear suddenly morphed into panic, and he fidgeted in his seat. His mouth opened and closed but no words came out.

"We infiltrated their city," Kirby reminded his understudy in a harsh whisper. "Did you really think we'd get away so easily?"

Jax's grip on the wheel was visibly trembling now, and Kirby decided it wasn't best to scare the kid any further. He didn't want to endanger their lives any more than they already were. He needed a sharp pair of eyes on the road and a firm pair of hands on the wheel if they were going to make to Celestic alive.

"Protect the artifact," he decided on a whim, opening the glove compartment in front of him and shoving the lockbox inside. As soon as he closed it, he was already halfway done unbuckling his seat belt. "I'll deal with whatever dead weight we might have picked up."

Jax anxiously nodded as he kept his palms planted on the wheel, though the sweat pouring off his face betrayed any confidence he was trying to muster. Pitying the kid, Kirby gave Jax's shoulder a firm, bolstering squeeze.

"Remember," he whispered. "Eyes on the road. You'll do fine."

Once Jax managed a more convincing nod, Kirby turned in his seat and pried open the door panel behind them. He climbed in back where the other two soldiers were riding, ensconced in shadows. They were still donning their heist disguises, though something wasn't right.

It took him a squinting moment to register one of the two mercenaries lying unconscious on the floor. The other soldier—garbed in red—was kneeling at his side, checking his pulse.

"Damn it," Kirby husked under his breath, moving to crouch down next to the motionless black-cloaked man. "Must have been that last bump that knocked him out."

Across from him, the mercenary in the red cowl gave a nod.

"Figures," Kirby huffed in resignation, glancing around the van's compartment. "I guess there was nothing wrong after all. Kid's never gonna let me hear the end of this." He quickly shrugged off the nagging thought and reached to pull down the unconscious soldier's hood.

The face revealed, however, made his neck hairs stand on end. The mangled profile was black and bloodied with bruises, one lifeless blue eye staring off into nothing. He'd been beaten to death.

"What the—" Kirby jerked away from the body, shooting to his feet. He looked to the other cloaked mercenary. "Who did this? Damn it, why didn't you knock and warn us?"

The operative on his knees merely shrugged his shoulders. Was this some kind of joke, or was he simply in shock?

Annoyed, Kirby shoved the incompetent idiot aside and stomped his way to the back doors of the van. He pushed them open and waved his arms to the driver of the cruiser lumbering behind them. The rainfall made his hand signals difficult to make out at first, but eventually the cloaked driver behind the windshield acknowledged with a nod and reached under his seat to bring up his radio. Remembering his own walkie, Kirby fished out the device from his disguise and adjusted the frequency until the driver's voice was audible.

"What's wrong, sir?"

"We have a man down," Kirby answered sharply. "Did you spot anything hit our van? Did you see anything suspicious at all?"

The driver sounded every bit as floored as Kirby felt. "Heck no. Sure, I can't see squat in this weather, but I think I would have noticed those doors flailing opening."

"Then why is one of my men lying dead on—" His tongue went cold the moment everything clicked into place. The radio fell from his grip as he slowly turned about to face the sole survivor of the supposed ambush. The figure sheathed in red robes was no longer on his knees, now standing proudly over the body between them.

"You're not one of us," Kirby rasped, raising an accusing finger. "You're an impostor!"

The voice beneath the crimson cowl was deep and somehow robotic, yet punctuated with amusement, and rippling. "You don the robes of my people, yet you brand me an impostor?"

Thinking fast, Kirby swiped the radio up off the floor, dangling it in front of him in warning. "Stand down! You're outnumbered! I only need to give the signal and my men will take you out!"

The tall, imposing stranger either didn't hear the threat or didn't care. "Your employer gave you those cloaks, I imagine. Hard to believe he hired common thugs to take on a job so serious. No matter though. He's crossed us for the last time."

Kirby narrowed his eyes, coming to recognize the figure's disquisitive manner of speaking. Their employer had warned them about this very creep. "Brutis," he uttered the name the instant it came to him. "You pestering—"

"It's Lord Brutis," the other calmly corrected. Slowly, he began to close the gap between them in long strides. "And while I forgive you for this little incident, you're still going die for it."

Kirby frantically shuffled backward, bringing the radio to his lips. "Calling all units! We're under atta—"

The sentence went unfinished as Brutis's strong, leathered hand struck forward like a serpent, iron fingers clamping around Kirby's throat. The mercenary fought to budge free, letting the radio clatter somewhere at his feet so that he could put both hands into the effort. It was useless though. Brutis's arms were like immovable steel. Between that and his cold, synthetic dialect, he may as well have been a machine.

He tried to scream for Jax, but the crushing chokehold constricted both voice and air supply, and he started to gag. He didn't even realize he was being hoisted into the air until he glanced down and saw his feet dangling like limp noodles. He squinted into the black depths of his assailant's red cowl, trying to make out a face in the darkness, whether it be a man's face or a machine's.

But he found nothing. Legendaries, these people truly were phantoms.

The van buckled and Kirby's eyes darted left as the cruiser's back doors flung open and closed indecisively from the impact. The van behind them had smacked into their rear and was now right at their bumper; the driver must have caught on to what was happening. The soldier in the passenger seat beside him was now leaning out the window, leveling his rifle for a clear shot at Brutis.

Brutis, amazingly, didn't even turn his head. He released one hand from Kirby's throat while keeping him suspended with the other. The long, red sleeve covering the phantom's unoccupied arm rolled up with a flick of the wrist, revealing some kind of strange contraption strapped around his forearm. By the time Kirby realized it was a wrist cannon, its sleek, silver barrel was already trained at the doors, sparkling with blue energy just aching to burst.

Once it did, it was already over in the time it took Kirby to blink. The back doors of the van had been disintegrated and the cruiser behind them reduced to smoldering cinders and scrap metal, causing the rest of the procession behind it to come screeching to a stop.

He felt their own van slow down next, which must have been Jax reacting to whatever the hell had just happened. Kirby's first instinct was to cry out for his partner to pull over and flee on foot with the artifact, but even if he'd been able to scrimp enough breath to do so, his voice was lost somewhere. He was still trapped in the moment the vehicle behind them suddenly turned to dust, like it was nothing. How had that been possible?

Brutis's other hand returned to Kirby's throat, and the mercenary could feel the heat radiating off the lethal tech just inches from his face. If this was only a modicum of what the Coalition was capable of, how hadn't they wiped out all of Sinnoh yet with this technology? What the hell were these freaks still hiding beneath the ground for? What were they waiting on?

"You're out of your element, mercenary." There was a faint smile in the Red Cloak's distorted voice now—cruel, twisted, mocking. Kirby wouldn't let it be his dying memory though. Even as he felt the life being squeezed out of him, he fought to get out words of his own.

"Why... didn't you just take us out sooner?" he spat, little more than a rasp. "We… we both know you could have."

The phantom's powerful shoulders gave a shrug. "Forgive me. I simply wanted to get the measure of you."

"Well now you have," he sputtered, coming out as more of a gurgling noise. Brutis seemed to have heard it though.

"I have, yes," he replied, almost pityingly. "And I'm disappointed."

The sound of a neck snapping.

Jax heard it clearly and jerked out of his shock, knowing what had happened, knowing what it meant for him. The mission fell to him now. He slammed hard on the breaks. Hearing a thud in the back, the teenager assessed how much time he had before assailant came to, then scrambled to break free of his seat belt. He ripped open the glove compartment next, swiped the lockbox, and then kicked open his door. He tumbled out of the van on rickety legs, and wasn't sure which direction to go.

The twin helicopters circled the blustery skies above him in wait. He looked back down the road already driven, spotting the surviving three box vans finally managing to circumvent the wreckage of their annihilated associates. They were trundling toward him at full speed, hopefully to back him up against whoever had taken his partner's life.

A caw had him looking up once more. One of the Spearows was descending on his position, presumably to pick up the lockbox and carry it safely back to one of the two choppers. He held it toward the Pokémon, but a sound like that of a high-pitched singing twisted him sharply on his heel, just in time to witness a pillar of blue energy burst from the van's rear.

Blue smoke poured out of the gaping hole, followed by the silhouette of his partner's killer. The other vans, meanwhile, were closing in at full tilt in an attempt to run him down. The red phantom afforded them no such opportunity and outstretched his weaponized arm without looking their way, disintegrating each of them in rapid succession.

Jax felt his stomach drop. He might have vomited, passed out even; but the Spearow flailing behind him brought him to and he quickly spun around to hand off the lockbox.

"Evening, my good man," came the assailant's cold, empty greeting from behind, sending his pulse into a full gallop. "I'll be taking that back, thank you."

Ignoring the veiled threat, Jax shooed the Spearow into retreat and swung around throw a punch at the phantom. The faceless menace caught his fist effortlessly, looking down at him from inside his ominous cowl. There were eyes buried somewhere deep inside that darkness; Jax could feel them on him. And he wished at that moment he was the man his partner had wanted him to be. He didn't want to die a stupid boy.

The phantom apparently didn't care either way, easily lifting the boy up by his wrist and tossing him off the road. He nearly rolled off into the ravine before latching onto a root jutting from the ground, using it to pull himself back up to safer ground. He debated making a dash for the van and recovering his Pokéballs that had fallen underneath his seat. Might have been his only chance at defending himself.

But he was forced to reconsider when he came to his feet and realized he was eye-level with the phantom's wrist cannon.

Fight or flight instinct cranked up high, he dove headfirst into the ravine behind him just as the blinding blue blast rushed to claim him, consuming a chunk of the road in the process and sending pieces of it skidding down the steep slopes with him. He grasped for anything to stop his fall, but the terrain had long since turned to mud and mush from the rain, breaking off like clay with each attempted fistful.

The world fell out from under him, spinning.

He tumbled and rolled.

Then he hit the bottom, smashing his nose and forehead on something hard. He cried out when a shooting pain traveled up the length of his right leg, but was immediately silenced as the debris of the ravaged road and ravine wall buried him alive.

By the time Aurora arrived on the scene, the damage was already considerable. Smoldering metal littered the pulverized road. The vans were no more. The soldiers that had been manning them were nowhere to be seen. She'd felt their life-forces one instant and then nothing the next; like a light switch, they'd all just turned off.

Chaos was still rampant though—and at the center of it stood Brutis, abusing the sacred power of his crystal by setting it loose into the sky with murderous intent. The helicopters and Spearows caught in his fire weaved and bobbed, enduring, but unable to safely flee.

Sickened, Aurora sprung forward to stand before the Red Cloak. "Enough! We can find another way!"

"You're so right," Brutis agreed without emotion, lowering his arm. He didn't look at her though. He reached into his robe to pull out a tiny, shimmering crystal, then opened the back panel of his wrist canon to toss out the cracked, depleted gem inside and swap it with the fresh one.

"No!" she protested, pleading. "Not this way!"

He didn't listen and raised his arm over his head. Only, the mechanism didn't fire any shots. The crystal inside simply emitting a white flash, a quick but blinding thing, utterly harmless.

Or so she thought.

As if on command, the thunderclouds overhead roared louder, rapidly sending down lightning bolts en masse. She blinked wordlessly as the Fearow and its Spearow flock fell out of the sky, dropping all around her like flies, one after the other. One of the helicopters fell prey to the supercharged storm as well, instantaneously exploding into flames upon contact. Whoever had been inside were all incinerated now, their signatures in the Aura extinguished in one ruthless stroke.

The last helicopter didn't wait around to be crisped and made a mad dash away from the eye of the storm, toward Celestic Town. In response, the mass of gray clouds parted down the middle, releasing its winged orchestrator into the world.

Brutis's Zapdos, she realized. The true cause of the storm from the very start. All along she'd had the mercenaries pegged as the rift in the Aura, but this, right here, was the true wickedness she'd felt while meditating on that mountain perch. Brutis was to blame.

"Never can make things simple," the Red Cloak said under his breath, signaling Zapdos. Before Aurora could speak out against him, the Legendary Bird swooped down and carried its master into the sky in pursuit of the fleeing aircraft. He'd just been toying with the mercenaries until now, she understood with a sick twist in her stomach.

Nevertheless, she channeled her excess Aura through her pendant. Focusing the energy as needed, she catapulted herself into the air and zoomed past Brutis and Zapdos without giving them any warning. Her concentration was on perfecting her landing instead.

The chopper's cabin doors were wide open, making her touchdown easier. The men inside were caught off guard and immediately had their weapons and remaining Pokéballs trained on her before she could throw up her paws.

"You with the psychopath out there?" demanded one of the thugs. He had no weapons on him—just a lockbox lodged under his arm. She sensed an object of great power inside it and quickly understood why Brutis hadn't immediately dispatched this chopper as he had the other.

Before she could talk down the panicked thug, a thunderclap turned all heads to the cabin door. Zapdos was already upon them, angling its body so that Brutis could safely step into the aircraft. Aurora passed him a look meant to plead mercy for these men. She didn't see why any further violence was necessary.

"Good work," he said to her, indicating the lockbox with a gloved finger. "Now let's make this quick before all of Celestic Town wakes up and sees us coming."

"Forget it!" Perhaps on some gut instinct, the thug in question tossed the lockbox out the window behind him, making Brutis rush toward him. Aurora moved to intervene, but the Red Cloak was already finished snapping the man's neck before she could even get close.

The other men in the cabin immediately began unloading their bullets on both Brutis and herself. She dodged fluidly, the Aura pulling and pushing her movements until eventually, she attracted enough attention to become their sole target. Brutis, meanwhile, used the distraction to move to the cockpit and take out the pilot.

Left with no options, Aurora grudgingly went on the offensive, moving from one thug to the next and knocking them out cold to simply end the bullet frenzy. After that, duty and honor shoved her toward the cockpit after Brutis; with luck, she could safely land the aircraft without any further bloodshed.

But Brutis's frame blocked her path to the controls like a crimson wall. Past him, the pilot sagged lifelessly in his chair. She winced at the sight.

"Go after the artifact," Brutis ordered, his rigid tone brooking no argument. "I'll finish here."

She turned her head, looking to the unconscious bodies littered behind her. "I can't simply let them—"

"You can, and you will."

There was a pause as a war inside herself raged. Her feet obeyed the command first before her mind could even fully commit. She made for the cabin doors, maligning herself for it with each step. She'd been brought up better than this. She'd been taught to respect all life since coming to Sinnoh. And now, against her own will, she was being made an accessory to a senseless massacre.

She dove out of the doomed chopper before she could wait around to come to her senses. Not using the fall as an excuse to rest, she scanned the grounds below with her pendant-powered abilities. There was at least one life form down there, somehow, despite everything. A survivor, she guessed; no doubt gunning for Celestic Town with the artifact in tow.

Her land was painless, yet she felt distress all the same when an explosion lit up the sky above. Looking up, she wasn't any surprised to discover the chopper falling in pieces, its debris mixing with the rain to make soot. Brutis and Zapdos flew in the aircraft's place now, patiently hovering high above her.

Remembering her task, she traced the mobile signature she'd been tracking to an outcropping of rock formations several yards off the road where the ravine sloped upward. Her feet became a blur that barely scuffed the ground, the harsh rain on her face feeling more like a shy mist the faster she ran. Legendaries, she just wanted to be over and done with this already.

When she reached the hillock, she didn't have to search long. Attempting to slip away beneath an arch of solid rock, with the lockbox in hand, was a cowled shape not unlike the other disguised mercenaries. His cloak was blue, however—a color and rank nonexistent in the Coalition. Or at least, it was now. Whether it was meant to make a statement or simply draw the Coalition's ire was beyond her though.

Curiously, he didn't appear hurt. He moved with neither a limp nor a gimp in his step to suggest he'd just survived a massacre. If she didn't know any better, she might have thought he was never involved in the first place. And if that was true, had he been watching from the sidelines all this time? It made sense. She would have remembered spotting him earlier; for one thing, he was much smaller than others in stature, probably younger too. Certainly young enough to do such a bold, stupid thing as steal from the Coalition.

More than that, his Aura was… different. It wasn't that it was necessarily impressive or even all that strong, really. In fact, it was mostly unreadable, as if purposely blocked. That was what bothered her most.

"Stop!" she shouted through her telepathy, even if it was probably in vain. There was a thick patch of wilderness bordering the escarpment for him to easily flee into without looking back, and she expected him to.

But he didn't. Instead, he stopped at her voice. He turned himself to her.

She reached out to him with her thoughts, approaching him in slow steps but holding up her paws as a show of good faith. "I know you're not with the Coalition. And that's okay. I'm not either, technically. So let's just talk this out."

The thief flinched. Aurora immediately stopped walking toward him, allowing him his space. "Please," she said silently. "That artifact you're carrying is—"

A lightning bolt tore up the ground between them, and Aurora somersaulted backward, landing into a fighting stance. Zapdos swooped down above her but didn't engage her, instead soaring toward the thief with Brutis riding on its back. Refusing to let him upend her progress, she darted ahead of them.

The thief was already fleeing into the woods, however. At Brutis's command, Zapdos called down another chain of thunderbolts to bombard the trees. Though Aurora could have chased after the impostor, she knew she couldn't also ignore Brutis as he was, trying to burn down the forest with no apparent regard for the artifact anymore. It seemed personal now.

Listening to her heart instead of her loyalties, at last, she tossed up a series Aura Spheres to intercept Zapdos's bolts before any trees could catch fire and escalate into an even bigger disaster that might call the Coalition's existence into question. Not that Brutis wouldn't be able to weasel his way out of punishment somehow.

Upon realizing his efforts were bearing no fruit, Brutis lowered Zapdos to the ground and dismounted. He stomped toward Aurora without a word. He seemed to be waiting for an explanation.

When she could find none he would care to hear, she dropped her head. "I'm sorry," she murmured.

There were some fierce words hanging off his tongue, she sensed, yet they never came. He swung around to face the battered treeline, his red cloak swishing as he turned his back to her. She couldn't read his mood anymore. His stillness, his silence, it was unsettling. Even with all his deadly tech, that was somehow his most disarming weapon.

"Fascinating, how he set all of this up," he remarked to the rain, a quiet menace lurking in his voice. "It makes sense, in hindsight. He never expected his hired help to make it back to Celestic Town in one piece."

She nodded in agreement, not that he was even looking. It just seemed like something to do in lieu of coughing up meaningless words for him to brush off.

"He anticipated this," analyzed the Red Cloak, hands settling on his hips. "He was ready to slip in at just the right moment of confusion and make off with his prize."

"It was a very calculated plan," she concurred, though at this point she felt like he was trying to goad her into talking, lead her into a verbal trap somehow.

His hood bobbed. "It seemed like it, yes," he muttered, finally twisting around to regard her. "That was... until you had him in your sights."

There it was. She'd been waiting for it.

Silence reigned supreme again, save for the thunder and rain, until he began to circle her in a predatory way. "You could have foiled him then and there." He let that hang over her for a moment before coming to stand inches apart from her. "Instead, you stood idly by like the pacifist you are and let him escape."

"I had to stop you," she said, meeting his eyes, wherever they were in that dark abyss.

His hooded head tilted to one side. "You had to stop me from protecting the Coalition's interests?"

She glared at his twisting of her words. "The Coalition's first and foremost concern is secrecy. Forgive me, but burning down the mountainside isn't exactly subtle. I just did what I—"

"He has the orb!"

Aurora stiffened. She'd never heard him holler before. She'd never heard any emotion bleed through his glacial exterior. Even if this proved he may have been human after all, it was terrifying all the same.

Brutis regrouped quickly enough. He ignored her for all of the ten seconds it took to thumb the dial on his wrist tech and summon Zapdos back into its crystal. Afterward, he stood solemnly as he was, head tilted back on his shoulders. Perhaps he was watching the rainfall abate, perhaps he was gazing out to Mount Coronet's highest peaks, wondering which hidden pairs of eyes up there, if any, were stalking them through binoculars.

When the silence dragged on too long, he looked to her again. His voice had returned to its usual timbre. "You have no idea what has just been set in motion."

She held her chin and snout high. "With all due respect, I am an Aura Guardian. I was doing my duty."

He shook his head, more in amusement than disappointment, it seemed. "The Aura Guardians you think you know are ancient history. And your duty is to the Coalition." In one apathetic stride, he shouldered past her. "You and your meddlesome master would both do well to remember that."

She spun, watching him start back toward the disaster site. "I will serve the coalition, always," she promised to his back, "but not through violence."

He froze, but his reply wasn't to that specifically. "The High Prophet will be expecting a report."

She nodded, recognizing the threat for what it was. She was ready to accept whatever consequences were coming her way.

"I suppose I'll have to keep your name out of it," he decided after a pause, stunning her. She stretched out with her thoughts to ask why but he didn't allow her the opportunity. "You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nothing more."

Though she wasn't without her suspicions, she was a slave to good manners. "I… I thank you for it, Lord Brutis."

"You shouldn't, really," he warned sharply over his shoulder. "If it were up to me, you'd be dead where you stand. Consider yourself lucky the High Prophet holds your master in such high esteem. He won't always be around to protect you though."

There wasn't really a polite response to that, so she elected to stay quiet. To say she didn't feel endangered by his words, though, would have been lying. It felt like a slap in the face, really. The Coalition had invited her into their society, protected her secrets, and allowed her more freedom than most of its actual members were permitted. But times were changing. The Coalition was changing. More than that, the White Cloaks were preparing for something revolutionary and weren't as concerned with hospitality these days. Had she finally outstayed her welcome?

"The park rangers will arrive soon to try and make sense of all this," Brutis exclaimed from up ahead, scattering her thoughts. "The police will inevitably follow come the morning. They mustn't find anything to suggest what happened here wasn't simply a messy mishap between local thugs."

"I understand," she panted, sprinting to catch up to him. Not looking at her, he nodded and motioned to the scattered debris and metal fragments strewn across the road. Heavy mudslides had pushed much of the wreckage down into the gorge, fortunately. She hoped it might stay buried there.

"I leave it to you to clean up here," he said after some quiet inspection. "Leave no trace of your presence or mine."

"Yes, Lord Brutis."

"And be quick about it."

She swallowed. "Yes, Lord Brutis."

He departed without saying anything more, marching off the road and disappearing into the rain.

Pushing her feet into motion, Aurora surveyed all that he'd left for her. Fainted Spearows. Charred debris. Blackened dirt and broken heaps of metal from the vaporized vans and choppers. Not far to her left, a lone, mangled helicopter rotor spun pathetically in the wind. It all spoke volumes—to the frightening reality that the Coalition's days of simply waiting and watching comfortably from the shadows were coming to an end. She couldn't shake the feeling this wouldn't be the last battlefield she stood on before the White Cloaks reclaimed their property.

The worst was yet to come.

She cleared the road and nimbly climbed down the face of the ravine to inspect the collateral below and ensure she could account for everything. She wasn't sure the police would so easily swallow the version of events Brutis had proposed. Assuming all the pieces lined up, she could instead stage the scene to look as though a wild Zapdos has simply lashed out unpredictably; it was much closer to the truth anyway, and would have accounted for the storm and much of the damages. The way she saw it, nature simply doing its will wouldn't warrant an exhaustive investigation, let alone any real scrutiny, from the authorities.

She sighed. While a solid plan, it didn't make her any less disgusted with having to cover up murders. Following orders. That's what it came down to and she had to keep reminding herself of that. Her master had warned her to never go against the White Cloaks, so this was just her heeding his caution, she supposed.

She moved at a Slugma's pace as she began to pick through the mucky rubble, failing to achieve a single step without mud slurping at her feet in a desperate bid to keep her anchored. The rain had let up, at least, making it easier for both her eyes and Aura to scan the grounds further up the channel. There didn't seem to be much there though.

As she began to turn back, a stuttering pulse sent ripples through the Aura, bringing her still. Listening to her senses, she spun her head to the rugged bank of the creak now bemired in hills of mud. Something was buried there. Something alive.

She charted a plodding path to the streamside, tracing the faint signature to a mound of heavy rocks that looked to have fallen from the ravine wall. She dug through the obstruction, effortlessly tossing one chunk after the next aside until a noise registered with her ears.

A muffled cough.

Lifting away a final slab of rock, she found underneath a scarred, battered face caked in soot and dirt and blood. A human. His eyes were shut but his mouth was parted slightly to set free a small groan. Leaning down, she reached around his shoulders and delicately pulled him out of the rubble. She gently dragged him off the mound and laid him down upon softer ground where he coughed up a cloud of dirt. Though his eyes remained pressed shut, his head tossed weakly from side to side.

Kneeling beside him, she ran her paw over his forehead to ease his pain with her energy. This afforded her a brief window of opportunity to inspect him more thoroughly; his garments were torn and lacerated in bloody streaks, though not beyond recognition. It was a black cloak he wore, almost unrecognizable from most of the Coaltion's members, but the material was shoddy and without workmanship—just like with the other impostors.

So this boy was one of the thieves then. And he'd somehow survived Brutis's wrath, leaving his fate in her hands. She was sure the Legendaries were testing her now.

Another cough wracked through the boy and he winced in pain, one eye cracking open and closed and then open again. He was drifting in that place between sleep and consciousness.

"Tell me your name," she whispered before he could black out again.

He blinked up at her weakly. "J—Jax."

"Jax," she repeated the name back to him, nodding. "Okay, well, just hang in there, Jax. You're going to be okay."

"He… he said," the human uttered deliriously, the words broken and trailing off repeatedly before finally coalescing. "He said... we wouldn't run into problems."

Aurora blinked at him, trying to make sense of the words as well as the faint smile budding at the corners of his lips. Before she could voice the questions crowding in her mind, the teenager went limp again and sank back into sleep, leaving her with a choice to make and fast. Brutis or any other Cloak would have left him to die a slow, agonizing demise.

But that wasn't her way, and it never would be.

"So the pretender has the Lustrous Orb."

It was phrased more like a belittling statement than a demand for clarification, and Brutis knew it was no slip of the tongue either. That didn't fit with the esteemed Lord Morbis—First Brother to the White Cloaks, Leader of the Reverent Ones, High Prophet of the Coalition. And bearer of far too many titles for Brutis's taste.

Indeed, this silent keeper of judgment had a way of reminding everyone beneath him how pathetically their individual mistakes stacked up against the high stone chair he sat upon and all the burden and responsibility attached to it. He routinely exaggerated even their smallest, most harmless of mistakes as massive room for improvement.

But this was no small, harmless mistake in Brutis's case. Brutis knew it. The White Cloaks knew it.

While Morbis took his time to mull over the delivered news, Brutis scanned the Delve of Gathering from beneath the safety of his hood, counting the seven occupied seats casting shadows around him. The number was always the same each time, yet he liked to imagine entering the chamber one of these days to find an eighth erected in his name. Even a lower chair would have sufficed. It didn't have to stand at a ludicrous twenty feet like the rest of them. Just so long as he could wear the reigning color while sitting it.

White—the purest, most desired of all cloaks. He'd grown bored of red. He'd grown tired of the limits it placed on him. The white cloak came with no restrictions, no circumspection. Just undisputed power. He once mocked how a simple piece of cloth could hold together the fabric of a society. Oh, how ignorant he'd been then, unseasoned and untrained in the actor's craft.

But now he was ready to respect and love and cherish that piece of cloth for however long it took to fade unnoticed into its destined irrelevance. After all, the cloak by itself wasn't power. It was just the gateway to it. Even if the rest of the Coalition didn't see as much, he knew the truth.

Looking around even now, he could tell they all took their rank for granted. Many of them had been wearing their cloaks so long they'd likely forgotten their own faces. Morbis was equally guilty of this, proven as much by the long, winding beard that began inside his cowl and ended at the floor like a frozen, silver waterfall. He may just as well have been a wizard lifted straight from the pages of some gothic fairy tale.

Of course, no one could really say how old Morbis was. No one dared to ask. Brutis only knew he'd long since passed his expiration date. Unlike the other White Cloaks, Morbis didn't bother with gloves, which meant his gangly, bone-brown fingers were always resting out in the open for all to see. It was as if he wanted it that way to inspire reverence and respect. Really, though, he was just letting everyone glimpse how frail and vulnerable he was.

The longer Morbis sat quietly in his throne, the more obvious his disappointment in Brutis became. The blame had been deemed his to carry from the moment he'd entered the room. He didn't require the Aura to conclude as much, and he recognized it was a sentiment the other White Cloaks shared as well. The power to read his emotions inside and out with just a look—it was that collective gift of theirs they liked to boast in front of him. Make him feel small and inferior. He wasn't quite sure how they even reconciled their pompous entitlement with their deluded belief that they were the Aura Guardians of the modern day.

It didn't matter. He only knew it that made him feel like an outsider, looked down on simply because he couldn't use the Aura in any capacity. It was one of those unspoken things that loomed over him every time he came before them, constantly holding him back from worthiness in their eyes, robbing him of a place among their ranks and the cloak that went with it.

For that reason, Brutis elected to put an to the prejudiced silence himself rather than let it beat him into submission. He wasn't about to let the loss of the Lustrous Orb set him back after he'd had to struggle and claw for so long just get to where he was. He would never go back to settling for the pathetically mundane. If there was one philosophy he'd had to learn all on his own, it was to treat every setback as an opportunity to recalibrate and as vindication to seize what he wanted.

"The operation was apparently a setup," he elaborated on his earlier report, straightening his shoulders under the High Prophet's unmistakable scrutiny of him and leaving no tremor in his unmasked voice; he'd switched off his distorter out of respect. "The impostor escaped before I could attempt capture. Currently, our eyes on the surface can find no trace of him."

Morbis leaned back slightly in his chair, petting what length of his narrow beard he could reach. Twin columns of blue flames flickered softly from the torchlit statues flanking either side of his perch, the right one sculpted in Dialga's likeness and the other in Palkia's. The unlit face carved directly above his head, however, was far more hideous, and dwarfed the other two. The White Cloaks had always liked to imagine it was designed that way intentionally as to command a view of the entire chamber.

Brutis had never given much thought to it. He didn't really care either way, honestly.

"We have waited too long to delay our plans any further," scoffed the voice inside the stark white hood—a voice that was creaking with age, yet still sharp enough to convey indignance. Undeterred, Brutis fell on one knee and bowed his own cowled head, though his voice never betrayed his composure.

"How would you like me to proceed, Lord Morbis?" he asked. "There is only so much we can do on the surface world without drawing attention. Even my… doppelganger is no exception to that."

Morbis's head tilted to one side. "Do I sense hesitation behind your words?"

"Caution," Brutis politely corrected, standing his ground without being obvious about it. "We can't risk what little footing we have on the surface. I would counsel patience instead."

"Patience," Morbis parroted the word in a tone meant to demean the Red Cloak. "I have more than enough patience for the both us, Brother Brutis. That doesn't change the fact that we are almost out of time."

Brutis nodded. "I am aware."

"Aware, but not prepared."

Brutis took a pause to consider that. "Very well then. What can be done to right this wrong?"

The High Prophet's voice became softer, yet developed a steely edge. "If we are to recover what was stolen from us, then you must think outside the box, Brother Brutis. This disastrous turn of events transpired under your watch. Now pick up the pieces. Set things right."

Brutis carefully looked up at his superior. "We could contract some… outside assistance," he suggested, fishing for a reaction. "I know of some people who specialize in just this very sort of line of work. I could never proceed without your blessing, however."

Morbis fell back into silence again, this time twisting his head on his shoulders to exchange unseen glances with the other White Cloaks gathered. None appeared to have any objections. Even so, Brutis knew to tread carefully with this.

"However, given the sensitivity of this matter," he began to remind them, rising to his feet again, "I feel I should warn—"

"You will do what needs to be done," Morbis spoke over him, despite his voice only being a dull scrape against Brutis's much deeper inflection. Regardless, Brutis didn't press the matter.

"Of course," he replied, bowing his head again. "I only live to serve." When no response for or against that claim arrived, Brutis took it as an invitation to leave, and made haste for the stone doors behind him.

That was until Morbis called to him once again.

"Brutis!"

No title to preface his name? An odd touch, he noted, yet he nonetheless spun to attention.

The High Prophet bent forward on his perch, interlacing his gnarly fingers. "Should you succeed in retrieving the orb, I may consider you worthy of a seat here after all."

Brutis flinched, the words sending a jolt through him; it wasn't like Morbis to dangle empty promises. This was almost certainly genuine.

"You've always had eyes for the white cloak," Morbis reminded of what didn't need reminding. "I can sense your appetite for it as we speak. You could finally don it like the rest of us, but only after you've proven yourself."

Brutis kept his voice even, as if the offer held no sway over him. "An honor and privilege, to be sure."

"But do not mistake this proposal as permission to fail." The High Prophet's tone suddenly and curiously rang out with even greater clarity against the flames and the darkness. "Because if you do, there will be dire consequences. You remember what became of Melona, I'm sure."

Brutis winced slightly hearing that name.

"I would hate to see a promising prospect such as yourself share her fate," the White Cloak warned with pretend concern.

Brutis didn't miss a beat. "Your will shall be done, Lord Morbis. As I said, I live to serve."

Without a word, Morbis lifted a spindly finger toward the exit, dismissing the Red Cloak indefinitely this time. Brutis gave a nod in acknowledgment and promptly took his leave, pushing all his weight against the stone doors in his barely contained enthusiasm to set to work. The first roadblock was behind him now; he'd made it through the council's inquisition, somehow coming out with a brighter future than when he'd arrived.

He was pleased things hadn't turned ugly as he initially anticipated. Had it become a matter of self-preservation, he might have mentioned Aurora's part in the mishap, even at the risk of earning the reputation of a snitch. But he hand't. He'd left out of it. And at least now he could store that card away for a rainy day and hold it over her. The nosy Lucario would surely pry into his affairs again at some point or another. He would wait until then to play it.

But there was still the matter of the orb. His future with the Coalition hinged on its safe return, and he had no intention of letting the impostor's trespasses go unpunished.

He turned his head up as a fellow Red Cloak rounded the catacomb corner up ahead, carrying a data slate at his hip. He was moving in a clear hurry—and toward Brutis, at that. The golden Noctowl crest pinned at the top of his robes glinted through the thick shadows and made it easier to identify his trade in the Coalition. Despite that, it wasn't as though Brutis could match the information with a face.

"My lord," greeted the much shorter, slimmer servant in red, his breathless voice registering easily with Brutis. It was Salvis, one of his more recently assigned personal aids, as well as the keeper of the Under Region's lesser libraries. Brutis had given the scholar so little to do since his recent initiation in the Red Fold. Perhaps now he could finally make some use of Salvis's extensive learning.

"Brother Salvis," he returned the greeting, not wasting time with pleasantries. He set the pace for them as he began walking the narrow passage in brisk strides. "Your archives are up to date, I presume."

"Thoroughly, Lord Brutis." Salvis brought up his rusty slate in front of him, pulling forth holographic text with his fingers.

"Then listen well." Brutis turned his head stiffly to the other man to stress the importance of his instructions. "Gather for me every record and report you can find pertaining to this Team Rocket I've been hearing about of late. We need to find a way to get their attention."

TO BE CONTINUED . . .

A/N: It only took five years, right? I'd been meaning to take a hiatus from my other story anyway, so here we go, I guess. Though he doesn't make an appearance this chapter, don't panic, this is still very much Giovanni's story. This chapter primarily serves as a prologue more than anything else since both the Sinnoh Region and the mysterious Under Region will provide much of the backdrop of this story. I figured it was better to introduce the Coalition now than pile on too much information at once later on.

I'm just going to say this now. I don't have the free time I did when I was writing the first two Giovanni stories. These chapters aren't going to come out at a rapid-fire pace. I'm going to try my hardest to stay on top of it, but don't expect any kind of schedule. I'm telling this story at my own pace.

As always, feedback, constructive criticism, and even ideas are always encouraged and appreciated. That doesn't just extend to any readers of my previous stories, assuming there are any still even active on this site that hasn't moved on and forgotten me. To anyone who stuck around, thank you! To those that didn't, I don't blame you. To any new readers, welcome!

Next Chapter: We catch up with Giovanni, Meowth, and co., as well as some more new characters that will help drive this story forward.

New Characters:

Morbis: Leader of the Brotherhood of the Blue Flame, more commonly referred to as simply the 'Coalition'. He is a mysterious and mostly quiet figure, keeping his true intentions close to the vest. He is gossipped by his people to be the most powerful Aura User in existence. Before the theft of the Lustrous Orb put his plans on hold, he was preparing the Coalition for war—but against who?

Brutis: An ambitious but loyal servant of the Coalition, charged by Morbis and the White Cloaks to help further their agenda using his special connections on the surface. Despite not being Aura-sensitive, he has somehow managed to climb to the rank of Red Cloak, just one rank away from sitting upon one of the seven High Chairs presiding over the Coalition. He intends to keep on climbing.

Aurora: A determined female Lucario training under a retired Aura master. Until now, she has been mostly respectful of the Coalition's activities. Now she fears they may no longer hold the values of an Aura Guardian at heart as she once thought they had. Much of her early past is explored in my other story titled 'The Enigma Chronicles: Echoes", but to anyone who hasn't read it, don't worry. Events from that story will be touched on.

Jax: A cocky, young mercenary that was taken under the wing of his partner Kirby at an early age. For the longest time, he saw his job as all fun and games, rarely ever fearing for his safety. Now, with the loss of his partner and the rest of their team, he has something to fear.