Chapter 6
In Which a Final Epic Battle Occurs

"What does she mean, we can't miss the Sliph Co. building?" Angel questioned.

"Probably because it's right behind us."

"Oh."

Still pristine, unlike the other buildings around them that were on fire, the tall building read in big, bold letters: Sliph Co. building, home of the Final Epic Battle.

"So this is it, huh," Peter said.

"Guess so. Let's go."

"Wait. Angel, I wanted to say…"

"Yes?"

Peter blushed. "You're the coolest nonexistent computer-011100001-related character I've ever met."

"Thanks," she said with a blink. "Wait; did you just say what I think you just said?"

As her eyes narrowed at him, he blushed even harder. "I-I didn't mean it as an insult or anything, it's just you're a video game character and I…"

"No," she interrupted. "Let me try. 134697456. Whoa."

"Do you think Suethor rolled her head across the keyboard for that one?"

Angel shrugged. "Maybe. Now, shall we do our Final Epic Battle?"

"Isn't there something you want to tell me?" he stalled, looking at her hopefully.

"Oh," she said, blinking. "Well, I mean, I could have found 134697456 plain, disinteresting boys to be my sidekick… but I think you're the best one for the job."

"Aw, shucks," he said.

A man wearing the traditional black uniform with a red R of Team Rocket poked his head out of one of the Sliph Co. windows. "Hey down there! Are you two done passively insulting each other? We're all in here waiting to fight you, after all," he yelled, cupping his hands around his mouth to be easily heard.

"Yep, we're coming!" Angel called.

"Okay! I'll get all the guys ready," the Rocket said, disappearing back into the building.

"Such a nice guy," she said as they entered the building. "So…where do we go?"

"Traditionally, we have to fight our way through about 134697456 Rockets to get a card key, then 134697456 more before fighting the rival, and finally Giovanni."

"That's a lot of Rockets," she commented.

"Well not one in all uh… 134697456 times 2 of the Rockets ever decides to heal his pokemon and come after us. We should be fine."

"Don't you mean 269394912?"

"Whatever. 134697456 is a good number."

"Uh, hi guys," said a Rocket. He too was wearing the usual Rocket uniform. "Are you ready to like… battle yet?" he held a pokeball hopefully.

"Yeah, sure," said Angel in a distracted tone. "Go, Beautiful!" the milotic burst from her pokeball and beat the Rocket's pokemon so fast it's barely worth describing the battle to you. So it won't be described.

They took two steps and another Rocket appeared, looking exactly the same as the first. And so it went for a numerous amount of battles. "You'd think she would run out of PP," said Peter.

"Pee pee? C'mon, Pete. She doesn't fight with pee pee."

"No, no, PP. You know that acronym that nobody knows what it stands for but limits how often a pokemon can use an attack?"

"I've never heard of that before," she said, eyebrows scrunching. "So how many of these guys do I need to beat?"

"134697456."

"We're going to be a while."

So Angel fought 134697456 Rockets, all identical and nameless. She and Pete wondered how exactly so many men could be stuffed in the same uniform and look the same, and even forgo their names too. Such was the logic of the pokemon universe, however.

And then a voice said, "You know, fighting 134…err, lots of people in a row and succeeding is only cool when it's a challenge."

Turning around in a swivel chair that had suddenly appeared, Flamewind crossed her arms and gave a sardonic look at the 256th Rocket that Angel had defeated. "Flamewind!" Pete gasped. "Are you here to save us?"

The author shrugged. "Kinda," she said. "I was more here to see how Suethor does with her Final Epic Battle. I told her there needed to be a wind up and a challenge as you two fight to finish the story. Maybe kill someone off that will make poor lil readers cry. And what do I see? You two fighting… what was that number again?"

"134697456 Rockets," Pete and Angel supplied at the same time.

"One hundred thirty-four million, six hundred ninty-seven thousand, four hundred fifty-six Rockets," she corrected.

"That's a big mouthful, isn't it?"

"Tell me when an author could feasibly use a number that high."

"Uh…"

"Plus, you're fighting Rockets. This is a cause for concern too," she said, snapping her fingers. A real rocket appeared next to her, its fuse lit. "What do you think will happen if you play with one of these?"

The rocket launched itself, the pointed tip getting stuck in the ceiling. "Oops," Flamewind said as it exploded, leaving a large hole behind. The two characters edged away from her slowly.

"Anyway, I guess what I was trying to get across with this self-insert is this…" the author said, clapping her hands. Their surroundings blurred.

Angel felt a sudden change in the very core of her being. She stood up a little bit straighter. Her hair became more ordinary, her eyes less orb-like, more human. Makeup rained from her face, disappearing into nothingness, leaving her looking more like a 10 year-old girl. She was… plain.

And afraid. Her heart quickened its pace to a staccato thumping in her chest as she found herself moving slowly into what looked like a board room, set with several chairs as well as a polished desk. By her side was her loyal sidekick, Pete, who was pretty much the same. Their glances met. She saw trust and confidence in the depth of his eyes, well earned through a long journey to this point. Together they stopped in the middle of the room, watching the high-backed chair, its occupant turned away from them.

"Giovanni! We have come to stop your nefarious Team Mauve plans and to bring you to justice!" Angel said.

A feminine chuckle lit the air as the chair slowly swiveled around to reveal… Mewtwentytwo. The clone's face was drawn back in a grin, her paws steepled. "Giovanni? I took care of him already. Now I control Team Mauve! Now I will control the world!"

"No!" Pete gasped. "We can't let you do that!"

"You and what army, little man?"

"The army of us," Angel said confidently. "But, Mewtwentytwo, first. Don't you want to just live like a normal pokemon? You don't have to do this."

The clone full-on laughed, before hitting the girl with a psychic blast which knocked her into the far wall. Angel got to her feet with a moan, feeling her sight swimming. It was a low blow, for a pokemon to attack a human. Unheard of in modern society, yet here was a pokemon who levitated over the desk, looming over them, her paws glowing with mauve energy. "This world is MINE! I was created for this moment, to make the world BURN! You want to stop me? You will be the first to die!"

Angel released her strongest pokemon first. Whiptail the dragonite roared, flaring his wings in challenge. "Wait, isn't this the purple people eater?" he asked, pausing mid-pose.

"I told you. I. Am. MAUVE!" she screamed, hitting him with a ball of psychic energy. It exploded, leaving a char mark on the carpet around Whiptail's feet. The dragonite himself was fine, he merely shook off the blow and growled as he powered up a ball of pure energy.

In the meantime, Pete released his eevee, Rogue. The shaggy-furred pokemon looked around, eyes wide. "Oh finally, I get to see one of these," he said, voice filled with glee.

Whiptail fired his hyper beam, blowing a hole right through the back of Sliph Co. as he cut a wide swath of destruction where Mewtwentytwo hovered. When their eyes adjusted, they saw the clone in the same place, having sustained serious burns all over the front of her body. The psychic shield she'd kept around herself for protection had kept her from being annihilated like the rubble while framed her form on all sides, but now it was gone.

"How dare you," she said menacingly as she hovered toward Whiptail. The dragonite had needed a moment to recover and catch his breath from such a devastating attack, but soon he stood upright again, squaring off against the clone.

Rogue attempted to tackle her, succeeding only in getting flicked to the side like a rag doll before he could make contact. He cried out in pain as his small form hit the far wall of the room.

Mewtwentytwo balled her paws into fists and raised them, before clearing the distance between her and Whiptail in a flash. The dragonite was psychically thrown downward with all the might the clone possessed, the impact sending him through three stories of the building. Angel yelled down to her pokemon, "You can do it, Whiptail! You're the only pokemon we have that can stand up to her!"

Meanwhile, Pete knelt next to his pokemon. Rogue was obviously not the most enthusiastic of eevees, but he was still a good pokemon and Pete's first. "Don't leave us now," the boy said, gently stroking the pokemon's cheek as he struggled to breathe. "I know you must be so taken advantage of as an eevee. But you fought back against all the stereotypes. I really respect that."

Rogue, for the first time in his short life, realized he held affection in his heart for another being, and gently licked Pete's hand. A white glow suffused his body.

"Oh, my! Angel!"

"Kinda saving the world over here," she said crossly.

In actuality, she was just watching as her dragonite and Mewtwentytwo continued to destroy more of the Sliph Co. building. By that point, they had caused severe structural damage around the center floor, where they traded punch for punch, evenly matched but both exhausted. Then, the building started to crumble.

Whiptail's first thought was for his trainer. He took flight and surged upward, where Angel and Pete were white with fear. He grasped first his trainer, then her sidekick, who cradled his new, purring, espeon close to his chest. They flew out the hole that he'd made with his first hyper beam, watching as the Sliph Co. building collapsed with a mighty roar of shattering glass and collapsing steel.

Mewtwentytwo's first thought was of nothing but her plans for Team Mauve. Unfortunately, those were in a vault on a floor below the one she'd been fighting Whiptail. She was crushed in the collapse, a victim ultimately of her own greed.

"Think she's dead?" Angel asked as they hovered there. Her dragonite nodded once in reply.

"There's no coming back from that," he said in Draconic.

She smiled widely. "I did it! I saved the day!" She punched the air victoriously as her exhausted dragon—the true hero—landed on a mostly intact building close by.

"You sure did," Rogue snickered. He jumped out of Pete's arms as the boy suddenly flinched.

"I feel… strange…" he said, looking down at his hand. Slowly, the digital bits connecting him together were fading into nothingness.

"I guess this is goodbye, then," Pete said. He knelt and hugged Rogue, before turning to Angel.

"I'll miss you," she said simply. "You're like, my first boyfriend or something. There's no forgetting that stuff."

They waved to each other, and he vanished.

Angel's shoulders drooped as she looked over the ruined cityscape of Saffron City. The day was saved, but her companion was gone, and her journey at an end. She didn't realize how bittersweet this moment would truly be until she got there.

"You see? That's how you finish a story," she could hear Flamewind murmuring in the background to another, younger author. "Now, go ahead, give her an HEA. Stands for Happily Ever After."

Several years later, an adult Angel stood overlooking the now-restored Saffron City. She and Whiptail came to this spot every year, hoping that Pete would return so they could go on another adventure. But Pokemon Mauve was done, and every year they returned home sadly.

Angel had decided to put her skills to the test in the Pokemon Academy, earning the right to someday become a professor in her own right. To spend her life with dragon-type pokemon was her ultimate goal, and it seemed she would someday have her wish.

"Hey," said a male voice behind her.

"Pete?" Angel gasped, eyeing the man before her. He smiled, showing the hint of dimples as he nodded.

"My… how you've grown," she said, eyebrows furrowing as she looked up at him.

He winked at her. You see, while Angel grew into the beautiful woman everyone expected her to be—the perfect dime—Pete had become handsome, somewhat like the ugly duckling transforming into a beautiful swan. The two of them eyed each other as equals for the first time.

"Want to go get coffee or something? I gotta tell you about this new game, Pokemon Extremely-Obscure-Color-That-Nobody's-Ever-Heard-A bout-Before."

"Sure," Angel said, blushing. Their hands linked.

"Undeniably Awesome, no?" asked Suethor.

The reviews certainly said otherwise.

THE END

A/N: And done. :) Not much here to explain. Type out your numbers in most situations or they will look like an eyesore. Write twists to your plot that your readers won't expect (did you expect Mewtwentytwo to come back? Eh...maybe you did. Try to be twisty, at the very least.)

Something I learned from writing this story: I'm definitely not as humorous as I was in 2006. Looking back at the first chapter of this, I was like, "How did I even think of that stuff?" Anyway, hope you've enjoyed the story, even with all its aliens.