Lucy AKA Gardevoir

Fenrir AKA Nidoking

Cinder AKA Ninetales

Phoenix AKA Jolteon

Havoc AKA Gyarados

Fluffy AKA Aerodactyl

"Today, nobody's stronger or better than the other. We're all soldiers and we got each other's backs."

The Pelican dropship had been prepped and readied with enough munitions and fuel to last for a prolonged fight. He had known that when he had first checked it and he knew it now that he checked the screens. The marines were all busy with something else and nobody had seen him enter the ship. He had procured a fully loaded assault rifle, together with five clips worth of munition. To further supplement his arsenal, he had taken two M6C Sidearms and four fragmentation grenades. The powerful magnums should be strong enough to punch straight through every Pokémon's skin but the toughest Rock- and Ground-types. The UNSC had upgraded since the war was over and he could feel the difference in his weaponry. He had checked the munition of both kinds of weapons and he had not been disappointed. The pistols fired a much higher-caliber round than the ones from his time and judging by the new grip of the Assault Rifle, its recoil had been dramatically reduced.

"Everyone ready?" He asked the portion of his team that fit in the dropship once again. He had withdrawn Fenrir too, allowing only the three smaller members of his team to stay inside of the ship. Fenrir stood taller than he did, meaning that the Nidoking could not possibly fit inside of the Pelican. The same thing went for Fluffy…and only the largest Scarab walker could hold Havoc.

He briefly considered the idea of Havoc fighting the quadruped monstrosity and then discarded it. He wanted to make sure that no Pokemon would ever be used against the Covenant, as this world was unique. It had to serve some other purpose than war. The UNSC had peace with the Covenant, so there no reason for them to start using these living beings as weapons. If Laughter was right, the Flood was still out there somewhere and they needed to be ready. Besides…something had changed in how the marines treated him; he used to be treated with awe and respect. Sure, he would inspire more fear in them than a Brute duel-wielding an energy sword and a Gravity Hammer, but they had still respected him.

No they treated him as if he was some unintelligent ODST. He did not like being left in the dark about things concerning him…and he was aware of the irony of that. ONI had always left people in the dark regarding him when he had served his purpose…and now he was the one being left in the dark.

"I am ready! I am ready! So ready! Oh yes ready!" Phoenix rapidly and cheerfully yelled, jumping up and down while investigating the metal objects around her. Her curiosity was a liability to the craft. The Electric-type was very enthusiastic regarding her new environment and if he didn't calm her down during the trip, she would probably discharge a burst of electricity and fry all the systems in the dropship.

And knowing his luck, that would happen just as they were flying high above the ocean.

"Oh please, I was born to be ready," Cinder haughtily laughed, "Our enemy is but two and we are seven." It was good to see that her demeanor had improved as of lately. The Ninetales had had a problem with morale and willingness to fight when everything had turned south…and that had started long before the disastrous ambush at Saffron city. But it seemed as if their journey towards Cinnebar Island had improved her confidence again. And as annoying as she could be when she was being arrogant, she was even worse when she was being depressed. He would much rather have her arrogant than depressed…arrogant he could deal with. Depressed not.

"How can one truly be ready to face one's self?" Lucy stated, setting a perfect example for how members of her typing behaved: cryptic. There was no indication that she was stressed, neither did she look as shell-shocked as she had before, back when she had realized that she was a clone. She had come a long way since he had first saved her, all those days ago…even with him as her master. None of the terrible things that had befallen her would have happened if it hadn't been for him. It was basically what he did; bringing death and destruction everywhere he went. She was lucky that recent events had played out in her favor, as she would have never gotten rid of Spartan-Lucy otherwise.

Everyone in his team had grown strong and capable in the brief time they had been together. Lucy's mental prowess was only rivalled by that of Mewtwo and her own clone and he had yet to see the two Gardevoir's fighting against each other, so Lucy might even prevail without assistance. And even though Cinder wasn't as psychically gifted as Lucy was, she too had considerable abilities. And she compensated for her lack of psychic abilities by being able to breathe fire, like a dragon could. Her ability to create searing flames at a whim would prove invaluable in the coming fight…and it was very handy in a survival situation.

The individual abilities of his entire team would be invaluable in the coming fight. Havoc was a humongous serpent with scales that could resist bullets, a stamina that rivalled a berserking brute and the ability to shoot both water as elemental attacks out of her maw. The Gyarados was without a doubt the most destructive force in his team –he had yet to see a Pokemon that was capable enough to bring her down.

Granted, the Pokemon that might have enough energy to bring her down was already on her side. Phoenix the Jolteon, with the ability to create deafening thunder-strikes purely by wanting them to happen. He had seen what she could do during the brief moment he had had to observe her: Phoenix was able to directly absorb electrical energy and use it to heal her sores and strike back at her foe. Of course, he didn't even want to start thinking about her physics-defying ability to shoot the razor-sharp hairs that grew on her body as a projectile. That was plain silly –and precisely the kind of twisted pattern of evolution that might identify her as a beast of war.

But Phoenix wasn't a beast of war. She was a kid –an overly energetic, bouncing and destructive child, but a child nonetheless. That description might also fit with Fluffy, the murderous Aerodactyl. He wasn't too sure about the viability of using that reptile in the coming fights, but his air-superiority was without a doubt a tremendous factor in their coming victory. It had finally calmed won enough to listen to him, making it a destructive tool of war. The actions that had resulted in the Aerodactyl's creation had all been completely and totally random...but if he gave it some more thought, it had probably something to do with the forces roaming through the land interfering with him.

But still; the presence of a bulletproof, tank-destroying force of nature that listened to the name of Fluffy and was led by its hyperactive electric canine was a presence he could tolerate.

As was the presence of Fenrir, his other mass-destroying bulletproof and tank-destroying…tank. Fluffy might be almost indestructible, he still looked a bit frail. The eight-foot tall Nidoking did not. Fenrir was, for all intents and purposes, a tank. He dealt punishment, took punishment and caused collateral damage on equal scales with a Wraith-tank. And both were purple. The difference was that one of them was the most awe-inspiring and lethal sight humans could see before their guaranteed death, while the other one used Plasma.

And even though he had only known those six for a week at most, he still trusted them above the UNSC. He did not know why his people had treated him like they had, but it couldn't be normal. Something had happened in the past months…something that had damaged his reputation beyond repair. Either that, or ONI didn't think they needed him anymore.

Not that he really gave a damn about his reputation, but the thought was still disturbing. With the one form of stability and reality in his life gone, he had no choice but to either continue on on his own…or to trust the few allies he still had left. And those allies were the Pokemon that had been created as a part of a Forerunner scheme. Everything considered, he had more in common with his team than with the marines that had been sent by ONI. Both him as his Pokemon had had no control over their life for a long time, as he had been bouncing back and forth between one mission and the other, while his Pokemon had all been part of a mixed scheme of Mewtwo and his AI.

He didn't blame the UNSC though. He knew perfectly well that he wasn't capable of returning to civilian life, especially not now that there was peace. There couldn't be a use for him in ONI's eyes…but he knew better. He had decided to put his trust in Laughter Under the Coexisting Years…and the female AI had basically told him that the Flood was still out there. She had spent more than a hundred-thousand years preparing for the return of the parasite…and he wouldn't sit idly by while they returned. After everything he had done to protect mankind, he would never let a foul parasite destroy them.

But he couldn't be certain of anything before he had killed the two remaining targets. After the two Spartan-things were dead, he could talk to the UNSC and initiate diplomatic activities between them and the AI responsible for the Pokemon caretaking. If they worked together on this planet, they might stand a chance at convincing the AI to reveal where she had sent the other ships.

"Master, might I ask you a question?" Lucy asked him.

"Since when do we need permission to ask a question?" Cinder added dryly.

"Permission granted," He told the psychic while turning around to stare at the Ninetales, who stared right back at him with a smug expression on her face. He had been about to activate the dropship, but it seemed that the two ladies wouldn't let him fly without a few comments.

Cinder yielded and looked away, while Lucy explained what she had on her mind –while at the same time placing her hand on top of Phoenix' head, gently pushing her down when the Jolteon had been looking at a piece of electronics. "What is it that Mewtwo told you?"

He activated the jets and prepped the Pelican for leaving. "Not yet."

"Strange message," Phoenix saw fit to notify him.

"When the time is ready," He notified them and pushed the throttle. Normally he would need a co-pilot to maneuver the Pelican, but he would have to compensate. He was a Spartan, he was certified to fly the things. But…the design was so new. So alien. The UNSC had made some very noticeable changes. Nevertheless, the engines roared and the thrusters burned. Soon, the ship shot into the air.

"Math evolved into a psychic-type…" Cinder sarcastically stated.

The Pelican dropship quickly gained speed and the land sped away underneath them. He still had no clue where to go…except for north. He had been everywhere in the land except for the most north part…and for some reason, he thought that the one foe remaining would not want to fight in any of the known areas. Spartan-Lucy was created from his bottled up and boxed away emotions, feelings and needs. She had Lucy's tremendous mental capabilities and his mind. At her core she was just like him…and that mean that, in a way, both she and him thought the same things. And he would not go to any place his enemy had visited before, as they would have a probable advantage there. Even though the psychopath had been in Lucy's mind all along, she still had to physically visit that place.

So if she chose a place to engage them, it would be a place she could plan an ambush, lay traps and sabotage the area. It would be neutral grounds for her, but hostile grounds for them.

"What he said is only important if we can win," He clarified and looked at the various screens and images on his HUD, which was intimately linked with the Pelican's software. He could see the round reticule where the 70mm chainguns would fire their depleted-Uranium rounds, the current altitude to sea-level and even a strange bar that looked similar to the one that signaled the current strength of his Energy Shield. The UNSC couldn't have reverse-engineered an energy shield for dropships yet…could they?

"Alright, we can talk about something else if you want to," Cinder agreed…

He heard the sound of skin sliding over metal and he became aware of Lucy attempting to enter the cockpit. The girl liked to act like she was above the odd traits and mannerisms of the rest of her team, but on the inside she could be just a child as they were.

"What is this?" She asked him while pointing at a screen.

"A large-range motion tracker."

"Ooh...and what does it do?"

"It indicates hostile and friendly elements on the battlefield."

"Can I touch it?"

He didn't want to turn around and shoo her off; he had to focus on driving the ship after all. But if Lucy was going to mature into a new version of Phoenix just as he was piloting a delicate piece of equipment, he would threaten her with swimming. Not that he would actually throw her in the water, but still.

"No."

"If I understand correctly," Cinder mused, "We are in a metal bird roughly…a hundred meters in the air-"

-He looked at the altitude-meter and saw that they were actually two-hundred meters in the air-

"-and it can actually fly faster and longer than a Pokemon can?"

"Depends. Without fuel, it can't fly. It's faster than living beings though."

"And this is the same kind of thing Lucy took us to once you had been ambushed, to strip your armour?"

"Yes," He said, frowning when he thought back at that day. It had been the day that he had taken his armour off, leading to a lot of injuries…like the giant puncture in his abdomen, given to him by a Nidoking. Lucy and Cinder had determined that the pain in his head had come from his suit acting as interference…but that had been false. It had actually been the Kirlia, already sharing a close link with his thoughts and accidentally harming him by being near him. Only when she had evolved into a Gardevoir had the pain stopped…he should have noticed that.

But he hadn't. And his team had suffered because of it.

"It is."

"And your people used this in the war?" Phoenix asked, sniffing at another piece of equipment if the sounds he was hearing were any indication.

Lucy looked bewildered and started to poke at random buttons and screens.

"They did."

It was amusing to see the usually so calm and contained Pokemon act just as curious as Phoenix did. It confirmed his theory that at their core, the creatures were similar to how they had been before evolving. Lucy had only recently reached the 'maturity' that her new form offered her…and come to think of it, so had Cinder…and Fenrir…and even Phoenix. The only creature that hadn't been a child when he had found her was Havoc. In a way, the Gyarados was his senior. She had been hardened by life and age when he had found her while he, for all intents and purposes, should have only recently exited puberty.

But the Augmentation process at the ripe age of ten years old had artificially induced the effects of puberty in his body, causing him to rapidly grow in body and mind. The experience had been unpleasant…to say in the least. Despite having had to learn how to control a body that did not fit with what he knew, it had been the sheer pain and misery that that particular augmentation had caused. It hadn't been as bad as the one that had replaced all of his nerves with hyper-conducting wires or engrafted titanium implants in his bones, but it had felt plain wrong. Of course training had never really stopped, even though they had placed him in his own set of MJOLNIR roughly a year or two later.

He had made his very first kill when he was eleven, when ONI had inserted him in a rebel outpost to test his new capabilities. Fifteen people he had shot and killed before he had found their leader…and then he had murdered him too. Even though a good eight years of indoctrination and training should have readied him for it, he hadn't expected to feel the emotional backlash he had felt right after the mission. Of course he had steeled his heart and soul to do what had needed to be done…but once the mission had been over, He had had plenty of time to overthink what had happened. The sensation had been terrible…the realization of what he had done had hit him directly on the ride back home and he had locked himself in a room, away from all the humans on the ship. And he had cried. Cried like a little child… for the people he had killed, for their families and for himself. It had taken the officers from ONI at least five hours to find him and when they had, they hadn't even seen how he had been struck by the deaths.

He had still been wearing his MJOLNIR.

The mere sight of him had scared and unnerved them and all but one had left, while the last one had asked him what he was doing there. What the officers had seen was a Spartan hunched in a small room, away from all eyes and ears. What had really been sitting there had been a disturbed and traumatized child, weeping because of the terrible feelings of guilt and shame that were overwhelming him.

And the feelings had been gone the next day.

As if she sensed his brooding, Lucy stopped trying to massage the copilot's seat and turned to look at him, her large eyes radiating concern and curiosity. She was still closely linked to his mind and she could still sense his emotions, as vague and suppressed as they were.

"Are you alright, master?" She asked him.

"Affirmative," He replied.

"Is he having emotions again?" Cinder asked from the back, moving towards them as she spoke.

"Impossible!" Phoenix whispered.

"I heard that." He told her.

"…double impossible."

"I was just thinking," He told them, "that if we win this, we will have to find a way to keep the rest of the UNSC away…or at least a mutual agreement to form an alliance with both nations."

"How are you going to do that?" Cinder asked him while Lucy kept staring.

"I don't know."

"How are we going to find the bad lady and her you?" Phoenix curiously asked him, bringing a new subject.

"I was curious to that as well, master," Lucy asked him without giving up on staring. "You have plotted a course, but where to?"

He remembered having seen a map of the region once, in a Pokemon Center. He had seen plenty of places that they hadn't visited before, but one of them had looked pretty promising.

"There used to be a Pokemon League to the north, at the Indigo Plateau," He explained. Because the war between Laughter and her enemy and his own war against team Rocket had most likely chased all official tournaments away, that Plateau would be empty. "We've never been there, our target has the advantage there. She will be there."

"Don't you think you are getting a bit too close to the enemy?" Cinder asked him.

He smiled, albeit without any semblance of humor. "They're both clones of me. It doesn't get closer without being ansty."

"I don't like nasty things…" Phoenix exclaimed and jumped from one seat to the other, clearly amusing herself with the activities. "Fenrir did nasty."

Excellent. He didn't want to pursue that subject and Phoenix formed the perfect diversion. Wait…what?

The two mature ladies looked at each and then burst into laughter, but he was less amused. He jerked around and nearly ripped the handle he was holding out of its socket. "And how do you know that young lady?"

Lucy and Cinder quickly stopped laughing and jumped backwards, Lucy throwing herself over the seat of the co-pilot and Cinder quickly disappearing behind a chair.

"Duh, that's easy. I have ears…and a nose. And he is very loud…and she was very loud…and when you and Lucy peeked on them-"

"-we did not peek, we just found them there!"

"I was sneaky and followed you. And then I saw them there and they were being nasty."

He felt the desire to throw something at the kid. "You are too young to have seen that. Forget it."

"Why?" She asked. "Isn't that supposed to be natural?"

"It is. Now forget it."

"I think Math is a bit shy!" Cinder's head peeked out from her little hidey-hole.

"I think we should stop talking about this. Now."

As soon as he had told that, Lucy appeared over the seat of the chair, wearing a headset.

"What is this?" She asked him.

"You talk through that," He told her while feeling his greatly increased reserves of patience declining rapidly.

"A completely different topic, but exactly what are we going to do once we find the evil twin and her sidekick?" Cinder asked.

He remembered how the 'sidekick' had looked…how he had extended a hand towards him, asking for help. Whether he was a clone or not, he was still a Spartan. A Spartan should exist purely to protect mankind…not to threaten it.

He wanted to think that a Spartan should also never serve such a dark and corrupted force…but he would be lying to himself. His whole life had been laid down in service of the UNSC –but under complete and utter control of ONI. He and his clone were simply two sides of one coin…and which side would land upwards when the coin was flicked away depended on the circumstances of their fight.

"We locate them, ambush them and send a round through their heads," He explained. "Preferably from a large distance."

"That's kind of a…desperate tactic," Cinder told him.

"No close-combat, its too dangerous for you."

While the three ladies continued to ask him various questions and discuss their strategies with them, he realized that they were very close to the indigo Plateau.

"Hang on," He told them and then pushed the throttle, forcing the nose of the dropship down. Then, he cut half of the thrusters to minimize their velocity before firing the counter-thrusters. The ship descended rapidly, but his effort to slow it down was more than enough to prevent it from slamming into the ground with too much force. There was a large building with an orange roof ahead, but the way towards that building was littered with rocks and weird structural arcs, all preventing their ship from properly landing.

"Think this is it?" He asked Lucy. The Gardevoir closed her eyes and fell silent for at least two minutes while he circled around trying to find a way to land the Pelican. Eventually, Lucy opened her eyes again and nodded slowly.

"His mind is as closely guarded as yours…but I sensed it, alongside hers. His mind is remarkably close to yours, master."

No shit; his clone was like him? What a wonder. "Why is he helping her? Of his own accord?"

The psychic frowned and bit her lips, looking very unsure. "I cannot say with accuracy…she seems to want him to be close to her…and he does not wish to go away. He is not bound in any way….neither is he combating someone with his mind."

So 011-II wanted to stick with Spartan-Lucy willingly? That meant he would have to kill him too.

He briefly wondered how killing your own clone would feel like and discarded the thought. It shouldn't bother him more than the murder of any other human and Lucy had had worse; she had been living with her own psychotic side ever since she was born. Would she have a problem with fighting Spartan-Lucy?

He spotted an open area on top of a flat bed of rocks and decided to land the Pelican Dropship there. After all, there was no knowing what the clone–or second clone, as Lucy herself was a clone- would do with the power of the energy conversion project.

As soon as he had deactivated the engine and gotten up from the seat, the link between the ship and his HUD faded away. While it did, he noticed a little message in the corner of his vision, right below the Energy Shield-bar.

"Reclaimer, you must worry. Your foe might realize the extent of her powers and once she does, she won't need the Project –just like she won't need this world anymore. She will stop at nothing to destroy it."

How did the AI know that? She was obviously still in contact with his head, but how did she know what Spartan-Lucy would do?

On the other hand…Laughter Under the Coexisting Years had been the creator of the Pokemon-world. She had created the Ralts-line and she was more than aware of the limits of the creatures that lived in her world. If she thought the Clone would want to destroy the world using her psychic powers, she would know.

But how? How would Spartan-Lucy destroy the world? It was such a cliché goal, really. She didn't have a Covenant fleet to assist her and neither did she have an army or a stock of nuclear missiles…so what would she do?

He opened the hatch and Phoenix immediately jumped out, rolling and jumping over the rocks. Cinder and Lucy both had the decency to let him exit before them and when they finally left the ship, he closed the hatch and looked around with his rifle already brought to his shoulder.

"Phoenix, save your energy for later," He ordered the Jolteon. Then, he released Fenrir and Fluffy. Havoc would have a hard time maneuvering in there. She would have to wait with squishing the two Spartans until he had reached them.

"Listen up," He started, but then he heard the sound of a rifle-shot and he had barely any time to twist around and dodge the shot that would have impacted on his back.

"Scatter!" He then ordered his team. The effects of the adrenaline-induced time-dilation was more than welcome right then, as it helped him sort the ambush out without any difficulty –for it had to have been an ambush.

The shot had come from the building called Indigo Plateau itself; a window was placed right at the top of the roof and a dark barrel had been jammed through it, in such a position that the gunner was only barely visible to his eyes.

"Fluffy, take off! Fenrir, take point! Lucy, take Cinder and Phoenix and teleport to the entrance!"

The Pokemon quickly acknowledged his orders and jumped at their individual tasks; Lucy disappeared with Cinder and Phoenix by her sides, after throwing him a worried look. Fluffy jumped in the air, beat his wings twice and then shot up in the sky while Fenrir lowered his head and started a wild push upwards the hill. There was only one person firing at him and he knew just who it was. Even though the first shot had missed, the continuing shots all managed to hit at least one of them. One round flattened itself against Fluffy's head, another one bounced off of Fenrir's think hide and a third struck him against his own helmet, being reflected by the energy shield that surrounded his armour. It was curious how the gunner hadn't aimed once at the softer targets, even though he had had plenty of time to do so. He could have made the first shot count many times more by simply shooting Lucy in her head, killing the largest threat on the battlefield.

But for some reason, the cloned Spartan had not taken the kill-shot.

Instead, he had been shot –something that the enemy must have known would not kill him.

He banished the doubting thoughts and sprinted up the hill, taking over the Nidoking's speed within seconds. Another three shots rang out, but none of them found their marks.

Being the first one to have made it across the open road to the Indigo Plateau, barring his teleported Pokemon who lacked the brutal strength and Spartan-thoughts to do so, it was up to him to break through the enemy's blockade. No way that a single Spartan had been the only one guarding the building. Spartan-Lucy was bound to have laid a dozen traps –and he would most likely be the one to trip them. No matter; he was more than resilient enough to withstand any and all traps that might have been laid and they wouldn't hurt his team if he activated them first.

He used the classic break-roll-and-shoot technique and broke right through the wide glass doors, shattering them into little pieces as the 500-kilograms weighing armour t\smashed right through them.

Lucy, Cinder and Phoenix quickly followed him inside and after he had swept his rifle through the large atrium, making sure that everything was clear, both Fenrir and Fluffy entered the building too. Nobody had been hurt by the Spartan's salvo…which was strange, considering that Spartans tended to have a one-hundred percent accuracy rating. Why had this one opted to miss?

"Anyone hurt?" He still asked, not trusting the situation. One of them might be suffering under a mental attack even as they were speaking.

But they were all unhurt by the sloppy ambush. The next thing that was to come was finding the two clones and dealing with them.

A task that would not be easy.

"Was that your clone that shot at us?" Cinder asked, sounding a bit shaken by the sudden teleport.

"Yes."

"And he is here?" Phoenix asked.

"Yes," He replied, grabbing the Poké ball that contained Havoc. The next room he barged in might contain his enemies; that meant he needed everyone in his team at the ready.

The current room was relatively large; approximately three meters high, but easily twenty meters wide and deep. He saw a computer standing near the right wall, right next to the same counter that the Pokemon Centers had. This had to be the gathering area for when the Pokemon league started…whatever that meant. He had heard about the League a place where people would test their skills, but that was just a smaller part of it. This entire country had been controlled by higher forces, like ancient AI's and crime lords.

'Giovanni…' He thought. Because of all the more important things and problems he had been forced to deal with, he had completely forgotten about the head of the terrorist organization that had been his fore-most enemy. Giovanni and the mentally gifted Operative had disappeared inside of a chopper and he didn't know where to.

No matter. Once he had dealt with the problems at hand, he would track down and kill the two manipulative hostiles too.

He released the Gyarados and then marched to the only visible door. What lay behind it was clear, but he still did not know how he was going to beat the two Spartans if shooting them didn't work out. He might have to improvise on the go during the fight.

"This is it," He told his team. "Be ready for anything."

He opened the door slowly, jamming the barrel of his Assault Rifle in-between the frame of the door and the wall. Clearing centimeter for centimeter as he further opened the door, he soon found the first room to be clear of enemies. It was a cubical room, roughly ten by ten meters large. Another door lay at the end and he breached that one in similar manner. He and his team worked their way through another two rooms, before Fenrir suddenly growled.

"I can hear them…" He then hissed and swept his tail around, sliding the heavy appendage across the ground.

"I don't smell anything…but I can feel them. They are there," Cinder verified.

"I can feel their minds. The next room holds them both," Lucy then added.

He nodded, looked at the three members of his team that had stayed quiet and then mentioned with his head at the door. Fenrir took the hint and moved towards the entrance, gently pressing his right shoulder and arm against it.

He pried his elbow into the Nidoking's side, letting the creature know it could get to work. Fenrir then increased the weight he put onto his shoulder, bursting right through the door and stumbling inside.

The explosive breaching allowed him to get a perfect few on hiss enemy and he took in all the information within half a second. Spartan-Lucy was standing underneath a large, round hole in the roof. The cloned Spartan was standing next to her, but he moved as quickly as the original version and reached for an old machine-gun that had been used in this country frequently.

Using the relatively bullet-proof Pokemon as a shield, he poked his head and rifle out and fired off three shots at the two clones. But the warrior standing next to the psychotic Gardevoir fired back with his own rifle and one round impacted on one of his rounds, producing an odd 'clank' and sending the two bullets falling to the ground in flattened bits. The rest of the bullets went wide as both of them dived to the side to avoid them. This Spartan was as trained and disciplined as he was when it came to firing arms. So why hadn't he killed anyone during his opening ambush?

He rolled over the floor, snapped his rifle up and unleashed a spray of deadly fully-automatic fire, filling the area with 7.62 NATO rounds. But by the time he could lay down that field of superior firepower, Spartan-Lucy had reacted to the combat as well. She somehow managed to act faster than the normal Lucy did, placing a reflective barrier that absorbed many of his shots. A few managed to penetrate it, but those rounds merely pinged off of the Clone's armour and the wall behind him.

'You filthy human!' A rough, yet young female voice screamed in his head. 'You dare harm my companion?'

He ignored that obvious emotional remark and stopped firing, allowing the rest of his team to pour inside. The room wasn't that large –if would only limit them all in fighting. It was fifteen by fifteen meters large and at the very back of the room, an oversized console rested.

The helmetless Spartan looked at the sadistic Gardevoir, before shifting his gaze and staring at the kind one instead.

Then he frowned.

Spartan-Lucy looked at her partner, a scowl appearing on her face.

"It has come to this?" Lucy asked her.

"This world is not my world, these people not my people."

"Everyone can find a place."

"Not us. Not me. I do not belong in this world…therefor, I shall remake it."

He frowned, taking notice of the aggressive Pokémon's words. "How will you remake it?" He asked her without letting her partner out of his eyes. The cloned version of him kept a careful eye on him too, just like would expect of a good soldier. This clone was so terribly similar to him that it actually disturbed him.

'Calm your tongue, or I will tear your liver out,' The bitch then threatened him. He snorted subtly when he heard that especially violent promise. How would such a frail female harm him? Apart from flaying him with her mind, of course?

"No living being holds the power to remake a world," Fenrir growled, "You speak of foolishness."

"Like a vicious animal would understand. You are so much like your trainer, Fenrir. All of that cruel power…all of that desire to kill. He taught you well."

This girl's hatred for him was as obvious as it was puzzling. His mind had basically been the template for hers; why did she hate him like that?

'Math, give the sign for the attack,' Cinder subtly spoke in the back of his mind.

He didn't acknowledge her. Something was terribly wrong…and it didn't have anything to do with needless threatening or the likes. It was as if Spartan-Lucy's presence was unnerving him; he couldn't look at her for longer than a few seconds before averting his gaze again. There was something profoundly wrong with her…and it made him uneasy. Was it her semblance to the original Lucy?

But the problem was that there wasn't an official Lucy. The Gardevoir he had come to care for was also a clone. The DNA had been taken from a random wild Ralts, before being molded into Mewtwo's personal weapon. Which meant the personal weapon of the AI that had controlled and manipulated the Mewtwo.

"Laughter?" He whispered, hoping that the AI was still with him, as he needed her assistance. "How do you kill a Forerunner AI?"

He continued listening to the conversation as the female AI send him another message, excruciatingly slow this time. "Ancilla's are unique creations-"

"Then how? How can a lone Psychic working for her master change the world?" His Gardevoir asked her namesake.

"I do not work for anyone!" Spartan-Lucy snapped at her, causing a great wind to rage through the room despite the little detail that the room was not connected to any outside area. "I am a free being!"

"-we can exist in many ways, be it console or micro-chip-"

"Free my scaled backside!" Havoc snarled at the frail psychic, "You are a slave to your own insanity!"

This was slowly running out of hand. He had guessed that both Spartan-Lucy and Math-II worked for the enemy AI. If the psychopath denied that accusation…it made them unstable. Unstable enemies were even more dangerous.

"Havoc, shut your mouth. Were it not for your pitiful attempts at hiding your incompetence, you wouldn't even BE talking right now."

The Gyarados roared and attempted to strike at her foes, but he held up a fist and gestured her to stop. This fight would start when HE wanted it to fight. And he wanted information, not bloodshed. Not yet.

"-to destroy a Forerunner AI, one must destroy their main form of materialization. His console-"

"Tell me now," Lucy insisted, "How do you plan on changing the world when you are but one?"

Phoenix was nervously walking back and forth while growling softly at her two enemies, while Fluffy constantly moved his own body above that of her, in order to better protect her. Both Havoc and Fenrir were enraged to the point where only his command prevented them from attempting to destroy their foes with all their might. And he doubted whether that would last long enough to gain him his information or not.

"You have been in his mind too, haven't you?" Spartan-Lucy asked her clone, "You have seen the many things that swim around in his –in our- mind."

"-is standing in front you. Destroy it and you destroy him."

The corners of his mouth curved upwards in a small smile when he fully read the AI's message. Unbeknownst to the enemy, he had just received a way to remove their leader. When he struck, it would be a quick and decisive action. Their leadership would be decapitated in one blow and he could then proceed to murder the remaining elements.

"What are we waiting for? Slap her!" Phoenix yapped.

"I have seen many things in the past days. Your creation is the one I regret the most."

Spartan-Lucy smiled; a creepy, depraved gesture that only served to unnerve those who stood before her further. He decided that enough was enough and spoke up. "Your master is located in in the terminal behind you. If I open fire now, he dies. I suggest you-"

"What, this terminal?" The psychic interrupted him with a smile. Then, she did the one thing that he had not expected. The one thing that he could have never expected. Had the crazy Pokemon been sane, he might have been able to account for it. But she wasn't…and he couldn't.

With a simple motion of her right hand, the terminal imploded. It was as if some invisible giant wrapped its hand around it and crushed it into a small fraction of what it used to be; fragments and sparks exploded outwards as the entire terminal got crushed into a fraction of what it used to be.

"Now…shall we get started then?" The creepy overpowered mad Pokemon bitch then laughed, her eyes glowing an eerie red colour.

He instinctively reached for his mind as he felt something plummeting itself into it. The sensation was very unpleasant and -if the sudden sounds and movements of his team were any indication- not limited to him alone.

His vision blacked out for just a second and during that second, the entire world changed. The room had changed into a vast, dark abyss, where many dozens of islands and other objects floated. It reminded him starkly of Lucy's mindscape, before he had fixed it. Only this one was worse.

He knew where he was. He knew what had happened. Spartan-Lucy had somehow pulled him and his entire team into her mind…or at least their minds.

This was bound to be an unpleasant experience.

~0~

The very moment that the psychic had started talking, she knew that they were in a bad position. The strange confidence with which the clone had spoken should have already indicated that she had something up her sleeve.

And boy did she have something up her sleeve. There always had been rumors about the untold powers of the creatures who fought with their mind. The rumors stated that they were supposed to have untold capabilities, with unlimited options available said to be limited only by their minds.

If the world she currently found herself in was any indication as to the state of Spartan-Lucy's mind, however, the crazy girl couldn't possibly possess the mental ability to do what she had just done. It looked, in one word, alien.

She looked around, spotting additional floating islands just like the one she was currently resting at. Her long, red coils were draped across a chunk of rock, drifting in the endless darkness that was her foe's mindscape. She knew that it had to be the mind of Spartan-Lucy, because she was not alone. She could see Fluffy flying to cross the gap between another two islands, before he disappeared on an abnormally large one. She couldn't see Fenrir or Phoenix or the rest of the team, but she knew that they had to be there too.

She frowned, looking around to see if she could spot her foe. She couldn't spot Math or his clone; could it be that, for some reason, Spartan-Lucy had only captured Pokemon in her mindscape?

Well…captured? That wasn't possible. What must have happened was that the psycho-bitch to have used some sort of hallucination-inducing technique on all of them, causing them to see the world as she did…or as she wanted to see.

She snorted loudly and redoubled her effort to find the person responsible for this, looking across the many islands for a sign of her. But she couldn't see the Gardevoir anywhere. Had she turned herself invisible or something?

"Come out of hiding you fool!" She cried at the psychic and trashed around with her tail, intent on proving that such a pitiful illusion could not hold her, a true force of nature.

As her powerful tail swept across the small island she was supposed to be trapped on, she took notice of the end of the appendage swiping into nothingness. Not the sort of nothingness that showed that the island was fake, but the kind that showed that the island did in fact have an edge…an edge where her tail could sweep right over.

Curious…so her environment was actually real. That meant she had to reconsider…well, everything really. The strategies she had been thinking up from the moment her world had changed were all tailored to dealing with an illusion. If the ground underneath her was solid and real…she was in deep trouble.

"Lucy?" She then yelled, hoping that her allies could hear her.

"Havoc!" The voice ofCinder replied with a shout. She looked around and then spotted the Ninetales, waving her long tails around to indicate where she was. "Are you alright?"

"I am fine. Where the hell are we?"

The Ninetales jumped from her own, smaller island to a bigger one, crossing the abyss between them with a graceful jump. A lone palm tree stood on the middle of the island, looking too alive to belong in the dark void they had stumbled into.

She watched as Cinder landed on the larger island, touching down on the dark rocks with her lean legs without any visible strain.

"I don't know!" The Ninetales cried out and looked around. She too spotted Lucy and Fluffy, but then one of the slowly rotating islands spun around at just the right time, revealing the muscular shape of Fenrir the Nidoking, looking around with more confusion than she had seen from him in a while.

"Hey Fenrir!" Cinder shouted at the Nidoking, who then turned to face them and waved when he actually saw them. But his island was rotating a bit too fast for him to keep up and soon he spun out of their vision again.

"Alright, that was weird…" She muttered and lowered her head. She felt a bit useless like that, draped across a large floating rock in the middle of nowhere. Why was it that they always fought in a location where there wasn't any water? She could only use so much water of her body to keep herself moisturized, lest she would start to dry out. And she didn't want that.

"Where are we?" The Ninetales asked her.

"No idea," She replied. If this wasn't an illusion, it had to be something else. Perhaps a nasty game played on her senses? No, that was basically what an illusion was. It could be that her foe had teleported them all to some unknown area where they would be at a disadvantage? But what unearthly location could this be then, that it would break all known laws of nature? And where was the rest of her team?

"These are horrors beyond horrors," A voice spoke up and she looked to her left. A Gardevoir was positioned on a new island to her left, one she hadn't seen before. The female Pokemon was floating roughly two centimeters above the rock, her arms crossed and an angry expression on her face.

"Ehm…Lucy?" Cinder asked the psychic warily –and she had good reason to do so. If this was the psychotic creature that had sent them here, they were in even deeper trouble than they already were.

"Yes," The Gardevoir replied and sighed. "And I think I can prove it. But before that, do you know where we are?"

"No," She growled at her. She hated having no idea where she was; it was a vulnerability that only made her feel weak. And she was NOT weak. "Do tell."

"There are two options, really. One is that…one of us is in a deep trance, made to feel real by a clever manipulation of the physical senses…like touch, hearing and smell."

"Only one?" Cinder asked.

"Yes. It means that whoever is in a trance is only seeing things, so the other Pokemon can not be real. However, this can easily be disproved."

"And how is that?" She asked.

"Touch. One might be able to manipulate the senses to a certain extent, but you can't fake a living, breathing being. "

"So if we touch each other, we will prove that we are all real?" Cinder stated.

"Yes. Our adversary uses unconventional techniques…fear those you trust. And as you two do not know for sure whether you can trust me, I shall let the two of you touch each other. Then, when you are sure of your existence, you can overwhelm me if I prove to be hostile."

"You have no idea how suspicious that sounds…" She told the Psychic, noticing that both Fluffy and Phoenix had fully disappeared from her sight. Fenrir's rock was once again turning back to face them and this time, the large Nidoking jumped across to the nearest island –which shook heavily in return to his heavy body landing on it. He would be having a hard time reaching them.

And if Lucy –if this really was her- told them the truth, they could muster a considerable defense. But…the implications were also present. If this wasn't just a hallucination to her, what was it then? What could have possibly happened for them to get pulled into such a strange world?

"How do you know so much?" She asked Lucy suspiciously.

"I am a Psychic, Havoc. I recognize what is going on when I see it."

"Then why won't you just tell us what is going on?"

"Would you believe me for my word even if I did not prove that I was, in fact, me?"

"Well…I cannot know that you aren't a psychotic murderous batshit insane mad Pokemon bitch…slut."

"…got it out of your system now?" Lucy simply asked her, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah Havoc, that was really brutal," Cinder agreed.

"I think we can be sure that this truly is Lucy," She told the two girls with a large grin on her face. "After all, nobody can stand being insulted like that." It was rather simple. Their enemy couldn't handle such insults being flung at her head and as such, she would have stopped the pretending to strike back. That hadn't happened, so this had to be the real Lucy. The Spartan one would have dropped all pretenses long ago.

"That…is actually pretty smart!" Cinder told her.

"Thanks."

"You are lucky that Spartan-Lucy is unstable, else she would have continued her façade. But you are quite right; she is unable to withstand being insulted like that, because she values herself greatly," The obviously real Lucy explained. "You could have also asked me a question that only I could know, as we have determined by now that our nemesis has only come into existence after my last evolution. And what is a slut?"

"Ehm..." Cinder cautiously said, "Well…it's an insulting name for a girl. That's all I want to say for now."

"Agreed," She added. "And hello to you too, Fenrir."

The Nidoking had finally managed to get across of the floating islands to reach them, but he didn't respond to their conversation in any way but to sigh explosively.

And then he saw fit to add a remark of his own. "Are you females done bickering? Where are we?"

It was funny to see that Fenrir was so simple that he didn't even question the things around him; he simply took them all for granted without complaining.

And now that they were all standing on their own individual floating islands, it was time for Lucy to start explaining. Which was basically what she started doing.

"I am afraid to say that our foe has reached a point with her powers that exceeds that of Mewtwo and me-"

"That isn't too bad!" Cinder interrupted.

"-combined."

"THAT is bad," Fenrir decided and seriously nodded. He looked like he was some scientist firmly concluding a new theory…and it looked strangely amusing, even though the situation was ten levels of messed-up.

"Can you explain that?" Cinder then asked. "And where are our enemies? Where is our trainer?"

Lucy sighed and sat down on a black rock. "I do not know where the two humans are…but I can feel my own clone. She is watching us, from up close. But I cannot see her, as we are currently in her mind."

"Hold on," She interrupted her friend, "We are in HER mind? How the hell does that work? I thought that psychic fights revolved around protecting your minds. Why would she want to have us –including, you of all people- inside of her thinking-box?"

"You misunderstand. We are in her mind, but not in her mind."

"That makes sense…" Fenrir the Professor nodded again.

"Does it now?" Cinder snapped at him, "Then you don't you explain what is going on here!"

"Very well. Spartan-Lucy has created a shared mindscape, where she has hypnotized us into. With all of our minds linked together in the mental world she created, she is free to do whatever she wants to. We can see and hear each other and interact with each other, but cannot escape unless she destroys the mental world."

"Yes!" Lucy confirmed, her eyes large with shock. "That is exactly what is going on! How did you know?"

"It is simple. I can see you all and you can see me. We cannot see the thoughts of our foe, so it isn't her mind. Yet this place is messed-up and damn crazy, so it is still her mind."

"Look at that, Fenrir the professional!" Cinder laughed. "Good…so that leaves us with one question: where is our trainer?"

"I do not know…" Lucy said, lowering her head and clenching her hands. "I cannot even sense his mind anywhere…so either we are beyond the normal world, or…"

She didn't finish her sentence and neither did she need to. Her sorrow was nearly tangible, it was that intense. The mere thought that Math could be dead –while annoying for the rest of them- was enough to nearly bring Lucy to tears. The mental link between a Gardevoir and a human was a terrible thing.

Any doubts regarding Lucy's true identity and motives were gone.

"Relax sweetie," Cinder kindly told the psychic and hopped right onto her island. "I am sure that he is fighting his own battle somewhere else, doing the one thing he does the best. Which is winning."

"Oh please, can't you separate the real from the unreal?" A familiar voice spoke. It was Lucy's voice, only it sounded way more mocking and seducing.

She turned towards the origin of the voice and immediately felt her temper shoot all the way into the danger-zone.

"Damnit…" Cinder breathed and slowly stepped backwards. Fenrir started to growl loudly and Lucy frowned, stepping in front of Cinder in a protecting gesture.

Spartan-Lucy appeared through a red tear in the black darkness, her body enveloped in a red aura as lances of energy crackled around her, buffeting the rocks floating close to her and occasionally spawning a new island that was larger than those they were resting on. She was floating in the dark air, using nothing but her pure psychic powers to keep her afloat. "Only now does fear begin its trickle. Can you feel yourselves losing?"

She didn't wait for anyone to reply and immediately attacked the psychic with a Water Pulse, sending the round shockwave of water racing towards the Pokemon with all the power she could muster. But the projectile never impacted on the Gardevoir, as the attack dissipated when it had covered about half the distance.

"What have you done, witch!" Fenrir roared at her.

The Gardevoir giggled and waved her hand through the air in a gesture similar to the one that Lucy always used. "Down you go!" She snickered and the rock that Fenrir was standing on exploded in a collection of small rocks and pieces of rubble, sending the Nidoking crashing towards a new island, where he impacted with enough force to create a deep crater.

"What did you do? Where are we?" Lucy carefully asked the crazy girl.

"Oh, your overgrown collection of needles and poison was quite right. I have sucked you all into a world I created myself…a pocket dimension, where only your minds are present."

"I knew it…" Lucy muttered. "Our bodies have not moved, have they?"

The other Gardevoir pulled her shoulders up and flashed a sadistic smile while doing so. "Unless some wild Pokemon has showed up to drag your unconscious bodies away for their own purposes, they have not moved. But you will feel every little thing that happens to your corporeal forms. Not that it matters."

"Where is our human!" The Ninetales bravely screamed at the senseless creature, showing no regard for her personal safety, even after having witnessed what had happened to Fenrir. "What did you to Math?"

"I have no idea where the humans went. Perhaps their minds got lost when I pulled them inside?"

"The lives of our masters are no things to joke about…you know this."

"One must know her limitations!" Spartan-Lucy angrily snapped. "Clearly, you do not."

The lances of red energy around the Gardevoir grew ever wilder and in the distance, all the small islands started to drift together. Then, the female clenched her fists –and the island where Lucy and Cinder were standing on started to disintegrate too.

"No!" She screamed, but Lucy clearly had other plans. While the Ninetales backed up to regain her footing, Lucy surrounded herself in a green aura and started to directly counteract the effects on the small floating island. For a second, it ceased disappearing.

Then Spartan-Lucy frowned and the destruction continued, causing many portions of the ground to simply fade away and disappear into the ether as the powerful Psychic gained control over the material. Millions of particles simply faded away, decreasing the size of her friends' underground with every passing second.

Lucy grunted with exertion and the psychic aura around her intensified, surrounding their island and completely halting the destruction of the one thing that kept them afloat.

"Fool!" Spartan-Lucy cursed at the original Lucy. "You are no longer my equal!"

The kind Gardevoir shook her head at the psychotic one. "I never was. A creature with our power…and the mind of my master…could be considered a broken angel."

"More like a demon…" The floating psychic muttered and her smile faded away.

"Let me help you, Lucy, lest you succumb to insanity."

For a split-second it looked as if their enemy might give in to their words, but then her red Aura strengthened itself many times, while the islands behind her continued to grow in size and frequency. Large pieces of land cluttered together and formed new land and soon, one large mass had formed.

"Do you know the difference between insanity and genius?" The mad Gardevoir laughed loudly and touched down on a large spire of black stone, landing with her frail feet on the top. Lances of red lightning struck the islands around them and soon, she could spot things moving at the places where the Pokemon had impacted her energy. "I do not know why you continue to rebuild your minds, all of you. You are so afraid of what lies deep inside of you and yet you keep struggling to contain it. No more."

The forms that she had been seeing slowly crawled closer and one by one, she could recognize just what they were. And what she saw chilled her to her core.

"I shall tell you what sets me apart from you," Spartan-Lucy continued, "For the difference between insanity and genius is success."

The red energy-discharges that the mad girl had been unleashing everywhere had been creating Pokemon. She spotted a Gyarados, crawling around an island with a tower in the middle. The large, blue coils wrapped themselves around the massive stone structure and crushed it with ease.

On a different island, a storm of fire appeared. A lone Ninetales sat at the top of a rock, summoning many tidal waves of fire by simply waving her tails around. To her right, a Nidoking crawled out of the bowels of a smaller islands, its movements powerful enough to tear through solid stone.

"Oh no…" Cinder whispered. The Ninetales had spotted exactly what she had spotted, and more. She could see a Jolteon crawling from underneath a tunnel and a giant Aerodactyl simply appearing from thin air.

"Oh yes!" Spartan-Lucy grinned and crossed her arms, laughing at them with a vicious smile. "Now beings the downwards ushering of your souls."

There were six new Pokemon, scattered throughout the area. All of them had strange tints of red and black over their bodies…and all of them looked more powerful than nature could have intended.

This was what her foe wanted to happen; the mad girl wanted them to be vanquished by their own forms.

This was way worse than the fight that Mewtwo had set up.

~0~

The many islands were slowly floating towards each other, slowly entering the vicinity of the giant one. He could see a total of twelve Pokemon spread out and fighting, two of each kind. It reminded him of a strategy employed by the Pokemon called Mewtwo; setting two creatures up to fight each other on the same grounds with the same tactics…only this was way worse. Spartan-Lucy had somehow created exact copies of his team, forcing them to fight each other in a deadly game of hide-and-seek. The many dozens of floating rocks, debris and islands made a considerable battlefield, but also allowed for deadly traps. He had found that out at the very moment he had entered the world, fighting his own clone.

The Spartan was without his armour, garbed only in a strange, black bodysuit.

And so was he. He had appeared inside of the dark abyss without his armour, which had led him to believe that the world around him wasn't real. It couldn't be, as it was so incredibly reminiscent of Lucy's mindscape. This had to be Spartan-Lucy's head he was stuck in…but that also meant that the unstable hostile had managed to draw his entire team plus her own guardian in. If that were true, they were currently fighting inside the head of a psychotic murderous and very gifted Psychic.

That wasn't a positive thing.

He had been exchanging blows with the other Spartan for at least sixty seconds before they broke off, allowing each other a brief moment of rest.

"Why are you fighting me?" He asked the cloned human. This Spartan possessed the pattern of his brain and the power of his body, yet his personality could not be the same. The personality of a human was dictated by environmental influence foremost. Even if the two of them were the same on the genetic level, this person could not be like him when it came to the mind.

The clone, who had just been about to launch another attack, stopped dead in his tracks. "You want to hurt my companion."

"She wants to destroy this world."

"I won't let her."

That was surprising. "You are on her side. Why stop her?"

"She doesn't know what she's doing. She needs more training, more discipline."

"And then?"

The Spartan looked to the west, where the dark clone of Phoenix was currently traversing the smaller rocks and stones to get to the mainland. Fluffy was moving to engage his larger double, while the violent tremors and shockwaves all around them indicated that Havoc was also fighting her own copy.

The two of them were standing on a moderately large island, just large enough to allow for multiple combat rolls and techniques to be utilized without falling off. From that vantage position, they had a perfect view on the brawling and fighting that went on underneath them.

"I have your memories. I know of the UNSC and I know they're here. I won't leave this world… I won't leave her."

He nodded, understanding where his foe was coming from. Both Lucy and Math-II were based off of him, so it would only make sense for them to understand his thoughts. It would also make sense for them to have the same, tight bond that he and Lucy had. The problem was that he had been trying to ask for help last he saw him. His team had believed that Spartan-Lucy would abuse and hurt him…yet here he was, fighting for someone he claimed to care for.

"She's a danger to humanity. She must be neutralized."

"I can help her. She cannot handle our dark side."

"My dark side. You came after her."

"She wasn't the only one who had your neural pathways stuck in her head. Your partner was augmented too. She decoded your brain…and Mewtwo took advantage of that to make me."

"You have my brain? "

"Not a flash-clone, but close enough."

"If you have my mind and body, you're a Spartan. Humanity should be your first priority."

"My Gardevoir is. I'll train and calm her- she won't be a threat."

He looked aside and spotted the two psychics locked in an epic battle, utilizing everything around them as weaponry to batter each other's shields. Lucy was constantly being forced on the defensive by her adversary, who was too ruthless and vicious to be blocked effectively. Spartan-Lucy then tore an island out of its path, forcing the two combating Ninetales to jump to a different island and continue there. Then, the psychic ripped the black plateau apart and split it up in seven different projectiles, all long and elongated nails.

Lucy spun around and dodged four of the launched spikes, destroying the remaining three with a blast of psychic energy.

"Yeah, no threat at all," He sarcastically said and took up a combat position. "Where are we?"

The other one looked around and took the environment in one more time. "Looks like my Pokémon's mindscape. But we're not wearing our armour… your team is here too."

"A neutral middle-ground?" He mused.

"Probable. Based on Gardevoir's mind, with our minds pulled inside."

"Why haven't they seen us yet?"

"Don't know. I tried to contact my ally several times, but she won't hear me."

That was surprising to hear. "How did you contact her? We're fighting."

"Mentally. She taught me how to do it when she brought us here."

He snorted, realizing the extent of his foe's corruption. He had been with his Gardevoir for days and he had never been capable of speaking to her mind like that. But he had a different problem now; dealing with the idea of a Spartan wishing for peace. That wasn't the way it was supposed to go, not at all. His plan was to kill two enemies and talk the UNSC into a peace-treaty with this world.

His plan did NOT involve a cloned Secret-Spartan wishing for peace and a chance for his psychotic partner. Things were rarely as black and white as he had wished for, but still. If this man wasn't a direct threat to him, he couldn't kill him.

"I won't let anyone harm humanity," He said and shook his head with finality.

"I won't let anyone harm her."

And with that, the stakes was set. As the opposing soldier moved to engage him again, he ignored the two Aerodactyl's that suddenly flew up from behind. He stepped in with his right leg and threw several quick punches at his enemy's face, but the other Spartan blocked several of the blows and ducked underneath the last one.

Then the clone launched an uppercut towards his lower jaw, but he twisted to the side and grabbed his foe's shoulders with both of his hands. Then, he wrenched the Spartan to the side and tried to throw him off the platform.

The clone countered that by placing his hind leg firmly into the ground and opening a salvo of quick, distracting jabs. Some of them were aimed at his face, others were aimed at his limbs.

He was forced to let his target go and step backwards to gain some distance. The brief moment of pause in their fight was enough for the other Spartan to gain some leverage, going on the offensive again.

He was just about to jump backwards when the entire island started to shake, throwing him off-balance and forcing him to lower himself to the floor –a tactic mimicked by his foe.

It appeared that Spartan-Lucy, while in the middle of attempting to crush normal Lucy, still tried to fulfill all of the smaller islands' dreams of being united in a single large mess. And as their combat-ground was moving towards the gigantic island with considerable speed, he noticed two Jolteon's running around on it. One of them had a dark colour and the other one was lighter. Both of them were lashing out at each other with their paws and teeth, all the while flaring with high voltages of electricity.

To his left, the two Ninetales continued destroying each other's cover with waves of fire and scorching heats. Everytime one of them reached another island, tree or rock, the other one blasted it to smithereens. As such, both of them constantly forced each other to keep on moving, never allowing the other to have a moment of respite. They too were making their way to the mainland, but at that rate one of them would fall off and die.

"Cinder, keep an eye on your enemy!" He ordered her, but she ignored him. No, ignoring wasn't quite right. Normally, a subtle twitch with an appendage or rustling of hair would indicate that his orders had not gone unnoticed.

But there was no such indication. Cinder actually did not hear him –which was especially odd, seeing as he was close enough for everyone to hear him. Fenrir had extremely sensitive hearing and even the vixen could hear better than most humans.

So the question was: why didn't anyone hear him?

"Gardevoir has made copies of the darker edges of your Pokémon's minds," The Spartan explained to him. " They're fighting themselves."

"Why do you keep talking?" He snapped at the soldier.

"Because I am tired of bloodshed," The Spartan explained.

"You have yet to see bloodshed –you didn't see any of it."

"Your memories are clear enough. I want peace…I want this to be over."

Peace? Peace would be nice…very nice. It was the only thing he wanted to create now too. But his peace was between the UNSC and the people of this world. If the cloned man truly wanted to teach Spartan-Lucy how to live in peace…there might be a place for him.

"The UNSC is here now. I spoke with Mewtwo about a way to preserve peace."

"How?"

Their island impacted on the floating mainland before he could respond. The impact was violent enough to throw both of them through the air and into a collection of rocks.

He tried to roll with the force to remain unhurt, but the sharp rocks dug deep into his shoulders and he clenched his teeth. When he and his clone got to their feet again, all hell had broken loose. Phoenix and Fluffy were both fighting their respective copies, while Fenrir had also moved on to the mainland to fight the dark Nidoking. Cinder and the Ninetales were shattering rocks with their extremely hot jets of fire and Havoc was bashing into the other Gyarados with her entire body, only to retrieve the same punishment twice as hard.

This whole fight was insane; he and his team were stuck in a mind-dimension created by Spartan-Lucy, where both he and the other Spartan could not be seen or heard.

"Lucy!" He yelled, realizing that the Gardevoir was the only Pokemon that had yet to land on the largest chunk of island.

The mind-Nidoking slammed into Fenrir with his shoulder and forced him a few meters backwards, getting awfully close to him and his own foe.

He dodged the incoming behemoths and lashed out with his leg at the hostile Nidoking. The kick hit the Poison-type against his chest and the monster turned around, growling. But instead of moving to engage him as well, the Pokemon simply looked around and returned brawling with Fenrir.

The creature hadn't seen him. He had been standing right in front of him and the Nidoking had not seen him.

Was he invisible to them?

"They didn't see us…" The other Spartan verified his thoughts, frowning. "Curious. If this is a world where the Gardevoir holds the strings, why doesn't she see us?"

A world that was defined by the mind of Spartan-Lucy? The normal Lucy had told him often enough that his mind was a curious and strange thing. There were things that he could do that others couldn't, like seeing ghost-Pokemon and fighting Psychic humans. There was a good chance…well, a slim one.

"Our minds are too different. They can't see us in this world."

"Probably," The other Spartan replied. "If our own minds are too alien, they can't deal with them. They leave it out blank."

"Right," He agreed. "Why did you agree to help that Pokemon? She kidnapped you?"

"No, she didn't. She's lost…confused by our minds-"

"-my mind-"

"-and she doesn't know what to do. I needed your help to show her that her way was wrong."

"Why bond to her at all?"

"I could ask you the same thing. The mind of a Gardevoir is strange. In contrast to you, the mind of my Lucy is so much closer to my own. I understand her…and she me. We bonded as deeply as you did."

He looked aside, watching his team link up on the largest island. "How do we get out of here?"

"We don't. When Gardevoir has knocked your Pokemon out, we can talk peacefully."

"How does she want to do that?" He asked the other Spartan, seeing how his Pokemon suddenly switched targets.

"By letting them beat themselves. They're fighting their own versions; nobody beats himself."

"You sure?" He asked, feeling smug. His Pokemon had fought such a battle before, back in the Warehouse with Mewtwo, They had proven to be capable enough to survive…and they were just like him. They learned at a rapid pace, easily outclassing every other Pokemon when fighting together. He watched as Havoc engaged the Aerodactyl and Fenrir attacked the Jolteon. Lucy kept holding her own clone off, but Phoenix was capable enough to realize the type-advantage she would have by fighting the Gyarados –which she did. Even Fluffy proved to be intelligent enough to fight on a different level, as he chose the Ninetales as his target. Cinder was even more badass, as she did not have any type advantage at all and still managed to hold the Nidoking off.

"What?" His clone asked.

"My team's been with me from the start. They've trained and fought together. They know how to deal with this."

"They'll beat themselves?"

"They'll beat each other." He explained and allowed the enemy to see what he meant. Havoc launched a Hydro Pump at the Aerodactyl and knocked him out of the sky with ease, the hyper-pressurized jets of water striking him with the speed and accuracy of a Laser. Fenrir used one of his Earth Power attacks to let the ground underneath the lightning fast Jolteon erupt everywhere at once, catching the shadowy figure just as it was about to strike again. Phoenix dodged three attacks from her own foe in quick succession and then jumped off of a black wall, landing right on the Gyarados' back and gathering enough energy to power a Frigate. With that intense thunder flaring after her, the Water-Pokemon did not last long. And Fluffy pulled something off that he had never seen before: he grabbed the Ninetales in his sharp talons, flew high up into the dark air and the launched both himself and his target back down again, extending his wings at the last possible moment to prevent himself from crashing into the ground –something that the Fire-type could not say. And Cinder and Lucy delivered the decisive blow together, with Cinder blasting her enemy Nidoking right off of the edge with a well-aimed Fire Blast and Lucy actually slapping Spartan-Lucy in the face with a well-aimed punch.

"You were saying? " He asked the soldier, feeling smug as the world around him started to crumble. His team had bought Lucy enough time to disorient her own clone, allowing them to escape the dark world that was Spartan-Lucy's mindscape.

He jumped at the hostile Spartan one final time, even as all the Pokemon around him had disappeared out of the world. He struck at his foe until the ground under his feet crumbled away, sending both of them plummeting into a white abyss below.

With a flash, the black world disappeared and he regained control over his body. He took a deep, ragged breath and then opened his eyes. His HUD was visible…and then his eyes slowly adapted to the bright colours that the world was throwing at him. His shielding was slowly recharging and he could see the prone form of his own clone slowly getting to his feet.

"Status report!" He called out and tried to get to his feet. It was obvious that there had been a fight going on while he had been knocked out. There were burn-marks and dents all over the place and he saw movement all over the place, according to his motion-tracker.

A blur sped past him and he was able to make out the form of Phoenix, racing to intercept their adversary –Spartan-Lucy. The Gardevoir was floating in the air, with her arms held in a strange position. She growled softly and the red glare of her eyes intensified.

A red corona of energy wrapped itself around Phoenix and threw her against a wall. Cinder and Fenrir immediately charged in after Phoenix in an attempt to get to the psychotic Gardevoir now that they had broken through her illusionary world.

"No!" Spartan-Lucy growled and blasted the attacking Cinder and Fenrir away with a psychic shockwave, swatting them aside as if they were flies. "I will not let you stop us!"

He sighed explosively and moved with his team to engage the Psychic. The six Pokemon and him moved like one force, fighting together to put a stop to the mad reign of their adversary. He moved with Fenrir to stop and engage the cloned Spartan, blocking his strikes and keeping him busy long enough for the Nidoking to openly strike at him.

He side-stepped a stop-kick and spun behind his enemy, grabbing his arms and keeping them pinned to his side. His enemy then proceeded to lash out with his legs to catch him against his armour, but he kept stead. It bought Fenrir the few precious seconds his sluggish Pokemon mind needed to take action –and boy did he take action. The Nidoking slashed with both of its powerful arms, coated in venom, at the cloned Spartan. Even though the Forerunner alloy was strong enough to withstand bullets, that double-handed blow still caused enough damage to it to actually dent the metal.

Spartan-Lucy attacked them in revenge and a shimmery disk appeared in front of her, which then expanded and disappeared. A second later, the disk exploded directly in front of the Nidoking, sending him flying into a wall.

He instantly shifted his teamwork towards Cinder, who was trying her best to roast Spartan-Lucy alive. But for all her efforts and metal-melting attacks, she could not get past her foe's immensely strong psychic shield.

And that was where he came in. He was fast enough to temporarily distract the Gardevoir, allowing for both Cinder and Phoenix to close in on her. With the bulk of her attacks fixated on him, the rest of the distance-fighters could concentrate on whittling down Spartan-Lucy's defenses. And as his Lucy tried to defend her friends against the mind-raping tendrils that the evil psychic exuded, he saw the opportunity he needed to strike at her.

Fluffy touched down on the ground and then lunged at the cloned Spartan, his talons extended and the long, bloody nails ready to maim and kill. The Spartan was about to jump to the side when he was struck by a bolt of lightning courtesy of Phoenix, preventing him from moving and hurting him enough to stop him from otherwise defending himself.

The Aerodactyl slammed into the muscled and armoured body of the cloned soldier and knocked him into the ground, carrying enough weight and power to force him down.

"Your strategy is amusing at best!" Spartan-Lucy smirked, "I shall consume this entire world in fire, you are no different!"

Her previous movements and actions were strange before, but now they had escalated into completely crazy. She was holding her arms high above her head, softly moving with her fingers as if she was attempting to manipulate the air itself. What did she mean by consuming in fire?

He thought it strange…manipulating the air…fire…the entire world…

Then he started to smell Ozone and the full details considering his enemy's activities struck him. He knew what she was going to do –what she had been planning on doing ever since she had understood how to do it. Spartan-Lucy had seen his memories… his memories of the Covenant burning his home-world to a cinder. She had seen the destructive methods the Covenant deployed en masse against civilians…and she wanted to destroy this world. And as a psychic, her powers could be unlimited.

She was going to create a glassing beam to destroy the Indigo Plateau –and them with it. And with him and his team gone…there wouldn't be anyone left to stop her.

"Get out of here!" He snapped at his team, jumping to his feet as the adrenaline raced through his body. He just now realized the extreme danger they were currently in. "Move now!" He grabbed Fenrir's Poké Ball and recalled him, as did he with Fluffy and Havoc, for they were the least mobile. Then, he handed them to Lucy as the Psychic teleported by her side.

"What is it?" Cinder asked.

"I was just getting warmed up!" Phoenix complained. .

"What did you realize?" Lucy asked.

"Don't argue, leave! Now!" He shouted and opened fire on the insane Psychic. He was starting to smell more ozone…the air was already starting to burn. His target blocked all of his bullets and the other Spartan had also risen to his feet, but he didn't give them any thought. "Lucy, I order you to take the team and bring them to safety!"

"Master," The girl started, but he interrupted her.

"I 'll try and stop her. If I fail, the UNSC will need your expertise to bring her down. You six are the only ones standing between mankind and destruction."

The Gardevoir bit her lip, but slowly nodded when the truth of his words got through to her.

"If that is your wish…but I will come back for you:"

"Be careful."

He didn't pay his team any mind and stepped forwards, his rifle aimed squarely at the enemy Gardevoir's head.

"Gardevoir, stop it," The clone ordered his partner, but she didn't listen.

"No! I am doing this for us! For you! So that we might live in peace!"

"What are you going to do?"

"Their ruin is our conquest. They will curse me in vain as they breathe their last!"

"What are you going to do!"

"Oh master!" Spartan-Lucy excitedly said, "I have such sights to show you! One order, one master! They will succumb to the flames!"

"She is going to create a glassing beam!" He told the cloned human as he tried to spot a way to get to her. "Destroy this world and the UNSC."

"What?" He incredulously asked and turned to face his Pokemon. "Is that true?"

"I will merely root out the weak and thin the herd. There will be room for us master, I shall make it so."

"Lucy…" The clone slowly but very clearly stated, "You're not going to murder these people."

"Be quiet master, I need to focus."

"No Lucy. You won't."

The cloned Spartan charged forwards with considerable speed, considering the punishment he had received. The soldier seemed to have made the right decision in choosing to stop his malicious ally.

He realized what his namesake was planning and burst into motion too, sprinting towards the invisible barrier that seemed to protect their foe against all damage.

"Insignificant pest!" The hateful creature screamed at him and the internal atmosphere of his suit rose with at least seven degrees. The air in the large room grew thick and warm and a red glow appeared on the roof. It was becoming obvious that his enemy was ready to roast them all alive. He needed to take action and quickly.

He jumped to the side to avoid another strike of his enemy and then watched as his own clone jumped against a wall, pushed himself off and then flung himself at the floating Pokemon. But he got reflected by the same field that had blocked all their combined attacks and fell to the ground.

He scowled and sprinted towards the Gardevoir, intent on smashing right through her blockade. But the Pokemon was faster in her actions than he was and he felt a wave of scorching heat wash over him, slowly draining his shields. The ceiling collapsed and pieces of debris and rubble fell to the ground. He narrowly managed to dodge most of them, but the last one suddenly burst into a red cocoon if energy and launched itself towards him with more speed than he could have thought possible. He tried to roll out of the way, but a lance of red energy wrapped around his neck and pulled his head back, nearly pulling him off balance.

Had his foe reached for his feet or his waist, he would have been able to escape. However, as he did not balance his body with just his head, he was unable to account for the jerking movement fast enough and he was forced to step backwards to maintain his balance. In doing so, he could not avoid the accelerated piece of rubble and the large thing crashed right into him. He felt a powerful impact rocket his back and stars exploded in his eyes. He could hear the cloned Gardevoir sneering at him and he saw that his Energy Shield had been reduced to only twenty percent.

He might as well have been hit by a MAC round, as the Pokemon must have accelerated the round by a hundred-percent.

He struggled to get from underneath the rubble and saw the form of his clone rushing towards him as the temperature rose to almost unbearable levels. The other Spartan moved his mouth, but he couldn't hear what the man was saying.

He felt glad that he had send his own team away from this place, as he knew what was going to happen. The temperature had risen to over sixty degrees in his suit and droplets of sweat were starting to form on his face. He held no desire to just give in like that, but the large collection of rubble and his lowered shields were making it hard for him to move with the speed he needed to. Only a second had passed between him getting struck by the plate of stone and him spotting the other Spartan, but it might as well have been an eternity.

"Run!" He told his double, knowing that he would not survive the result of his own mind having bonded to a body as capable as Lucy's.

He managed to look at the hole that had appeared above the ceiling and saw something that could only be described as the pulsing core of a Covenant cruiser. It was a red circle, surrounded by deep blue dots. The very air around it was warped and distorted by the intense heat and he could even hear the familiar and lethal humming that always went paired with plasma discharge.

"Be gone with the wind…" Spartan-Lucy whispered, all pretends of teasing and sadism gone. Her voice was a beacon of hatred and malice; the very tone she spoke seemed to wish to throttle the life out of him. He had never before seen a female that hated him with such a passion –and he knew that this was the worst position he had been since he had arrived at the planet.

Then, something impossible happened. The cloned soldier –instead of running or engaging the Gardevoir- chose to grab his hand and pull. Time returned to its natural pace and he gave one final effort of strength, pushing himself up and forcing the ton of rocks on top of his back off of him. Then, the Forerunner-armoured being pulled him away from the trap and swung him to the side.

His body tumbled over the floor and he jammed his gauntlet into the ground, forcing his body to a halt.

And then he watched as the only Spartan he knew openly wanted peace, got blasted by the equivalent of a glassing beam. A thin stream of energized particles slammed into the surface of the Indigo Plateau and sent everything ranging from grains of sand to fully armoured Spartans flying away from the point of impact. The beam was roughly ten centimeters wide, but that was all that he could see before his visor polarized itself to prevent him from going blind.

It wasn't fast enough. He caught a mere glimpse of the energy projection that Spartan-Lucy had managed to create by exciting the atoms in the air, but that was enough for the image of the beam to be burned on his retinas. He felt a burning sensation spread itself across his eyes and he squinted, trying to dissipate the burning enough for him to see what was going on.

He stumbled upright, positioning himself against a nearby wall for support. His entire body burned and ached from that discharge, as brief as it had been. The bitch had glassed him! She had actually fired an energy projector at him, nearly burning him alive in the process!

He heard the familiar whining of his shields being blasted offline, but paid it no mind. He had his back slumped against the wall as he tried to get himself together. The whining might also be simple damage in his ears, as it didn't go away. But neither did his shields recharge, so there was that.

He stared at his gauntlets, feeling drowsier and dizzier than he had ever felt before. No matter how much he breathed, he couldn't get the air he needed inside of his lungs and neither could he steady his breathing. He felt a feverish shaking spreading itself through his entire body and the back of his head felt like it was on fire. He could barely see the white of his forearms, meaning that his eyes had been damaged by the intensity of the attack. So that was damage in his ears…his eyes…

He grunted when he tried to move, lances of pain suddenly shooting into every limb he possessed. He was aware of the pain in his body, but the all-consuming ravenous desire in the back of his mind was worse. So much worse. It burnt away all other needs until only one, primal and dominant desire remained. He vaguely remembered something about animals, but ignored it.

He slowly looked up and saw Spartan-Lucy sitting on the floor, her head bowed low and her hands folded together. Some patches of her skin had been burnt off by the intense heat, even though she had been nowhere near ground zero.

When he saw her blurred form, the feverish itch in his mind only increased. His eyes had been damaged badly enough for him to start producing tears, but he paid them no mind.

He groggily pushed himself away from the wall and reached for a weapon –any weapon at all would do. She needed to die…he wanted her dead. He NEEDED her dead. It was the only thing that could ease the all-consuming instinct that controlled his brain.

He ignored the pain of his flesh. He ignored the dull ache that lay in every bone and he ignored the fact that, should he choose to, he could slip in a coma.

Reaching for a side-arm, he noticed that all of his weapons were gone. His sidearms and rifle had been torn free by the shockwaves and the only thing that remained was his combat knife, scorched and half-molten, but still very much lethal.

With his weapon in one hand, he started moving. One foot in front of the other, always ignoring the pain and always ignoring the burning. He spotted the lifeless body of his clone, lying face-up and staring at the sky with dead eyes. Half of his face was badly burned…and a very faint smile was present on his lips. The Spartan had died with a small smile on his face…that should mean something.

It should mean something to him.

It didn't mean anything to him.

He slowly walked up to the sitting form of the Pokemon. She was still sitting with her head low and her hands folded across each other…sitting dead still. The perfect prey.

Willing his sluggish body to move faster, he crossed the remaining distance between him and the Gardevoir, brandishing his knife.

The Creature looked up at the same time he knelt before her, looking at him with her big, red eyes. Oh how they looked like Lucy's.

He grabbed her neck, pushed her backwards to get a clean shot at her chest, and then jammed the blade of his knife deep into her chest, right next to the bony protrusion on her chest-bone. The bone slipped between her ribs and she gasped softly, drops of blood flying out of her mouth. Her body was so frail…so warm…it was hard to believe that this creature had very nearly killed him.

He yanked the knife out of her body again and a spurt of blood escaped the hole in her chest. She would die from blood loss now very soon.

She looked up at him once again, struggling to say something. She he moaned softly and tears jumped in her eyes.

A small cough. More blood on his visor.

"I…k-killed…h-him…" She weakly stuttered, her life fading quickly from her body. "M-My…master…h-he…d-died…"

He didn't confirm her statement, for he knew that she knew.

She softly brought her right arm up and her hand touched down on his shoulder pad.

And it fell off again. The Gardevoir tried again and this time, she was more successful.

"I…I…I w-want..." She swallowed and more blood spurted out of her mouth. This was the only time he had stayed so intimately with someone he had murdered in close combat. He generally tended to keep moving…but sitting and watching his victim die, while the victim was an exact replica of the first true friend he had ever had? That was unexpected…and he didn't know what to do with her, besides listening to her final words. "…t-to see…him…a-again. P…please…"

He nodded and gently, as if he picked up something made out of glass, he held the broken Gardevoir in his arms. His body was on the verge of collapsing, but he had always been beyond things like biology and human limits. He carried the dying Pokemon in his scorched arms all the way to the body of her only friend…his own clone.

Math the second…the clone that had existed for no more than a day and had held so much promise. And she had killed him in her blind fury, murdering him with an energy projector. His armour had been all but destroyed and what remained was badly singed.

Half of his face had terrible burn wounds and his body lay slumped against the curve of the destroyed floor.

He displaced Spartan-Lucy to one arm and used his other one to drag the body of his namesake out of the crater, preparing his body for the last possible honors he could give him.

When the dead Spartan had been placed properly, he looked like he was simply sleeping. Peacefully and easy. He placed the Gardevoir right next to the fallen warrior, placing her so that she could reach out and touch the only friend in her brief, violent life.

More tears ran down her face as she placed a small, bloodied hand on the soldier's face, as tender as a lover's caress.

"I…am so sorry…" She said, looking like she was drawing upon her final reserves of energy, "…I…only wanted…to protect…you."

He breathed in and did not exhale. He had just remembered that Spartan-Lucy was nothing more than just that; an innocent creature cursed with every little messed-up thought and emotion he had ever felt. She was simply Lucy, corrupted by his mind. Mewtwo might have placed the seeds for her existence, but he had watered and fed them, cultivated and grown them until they had grown into the pained form that he had just killed.

"Will I see…him again?" She breathed, sounding softer and weaker with every word.

He didn't know what to say…he didn't know what he should say. What did she want to hear? What would make her death easier for her?

"The Forerunners weren't the only one with plans," He told her, not wanting to waste her final moments. "If there is a plan for one of you…it will involve the both of you."

Spartan-Lucy smiled –not the wicked, malicious smile she had flashed them so often, but a genuine and happy one.

"Together…" She whispered and closed her eyes. Her chest rose one final time…and then it stopped moving.

He slowly sank through his knees, succumbing to the tiredness of his mind. He ignored everything that his body screamed at him one final time to reach out and close the fallen Spartan's eyes too.

He didn't believe in a god…or in heaven. But he also didn't not believe. If there was a place after death…he was sure that Spartan-Lucy and Math would go there together.

He sighed and slowly raised his head. A few smears of blood covered the inside of his helmet.

He had gotten his victory alright.

"Master!" A female voice screamed, but he ignored that. He had spent so many years murdering his emotions and feelings…pushing them down, away and back. He had wished a hundred times that wouldn't have emotions anymore…and as he thought of everything that had happened…the things that still needed to happen…he wished it once more.

"Math!"

"Rise, human!"

"You must get back to your feet, trainer mine."

"Please? Be alive? Please please?"

A small smile played on his lips once more…he knew those voices. They weren't voices in his head…they weren't the animalistic aggression that had compelled him to stab Spartan-Lucy. They were his friends.

He stayed in his current stance, sunken through his knees and staring at the dead bodies of his "enemies". Multiple appendages wrapped themselves around him, but he couldn't see who belonged to whom. His eyes were starting to blur again now that the raging chemicals and hormones had dissipated once again. He counted a few golden tails wrapped around his waist, a small yellow creature driving itself between his knees and a heavy, purple claw settling on his shoulder. He saw a red tail creating a wall around him, the Pokemon and the bodies and he even saw a grey shape pressing itself up against him.

And he saw a green-white creature standing by his left side, watching the bodies in a solemn posture.

"I can't believe they died…" Havoc softly said. "I wanted them dead…but…what happened?"

He coughed and tried to bring himself to speak once more. "She killed him by accident…while trying to kill me. The grief stopped everything in her mind and body…and I stabbed her."

"And then you laid them out like that?" Fenrir asked.

"She asked me to see her master one final time. I complied."

"Did you say anything to her?" Phoenix inquired.

"She asked if they would stay together…I told them they would…after death. Stick together."

"Live?" A new voice asked. It was a rough, yet high-pitched voice that didn't sound remotely familiar. He looked to his side and realized who it was.

"That is his first word," Phoenix explained. "He wants to know how you feel."

Funny…Fluffy's first word.

"I thought he had a future…" He whispered. Talking was becoming hard to do now and the only thing that prevented him from falling over was his willpower. Spartan-Lucy's attack had been one too much.

"This was always meant to happen," Lucy softly said.

He turned to look at her, feeling confusion despite the dead fatigue that spread itself through his mind. "What?"

"I had visions. And Alakazam said the same thing…they all accounted to the one conclusion: Math would die. I only now realize…that it had never been clear which Math would die. You or him."

"There he is!" A human voice yelled and he instantly turned around and got to his feet, reaching for the knife that still had his foe's blood on it. A new spike of adrenaline raged through his body, but Havoc blocked his sight with her bulk. "Is he alright? Lucy!"

He recognized that voice…it belonged to the Lieutenant.

'The human is a tough one. He will make it.' A voice that belonged to Mewtwo said.

He looked at his own Gardevoir, feeling confused. "The UNSC? Mewtwo? Here?"

"Yeah," A female voice said. Havoc removed her large tail and allowed him to see who had entered the Indigo Plateau.

Two dozen men and women had entered the Indigo Plateau.

"Your AI managed to convince us, Spartan," The Lieutenant said and saluted him. "You did a damned fine job here, son!"

"Your Pokemon teleported right in the middle of our base –nearly scared the crap out of us," The female explained, "But they had interrupted storytime with Forerunner AI, so they couldn't have hit a better timing."

'It didn't take long to explain that which you spoke off with them, soldier,' Mewtwo told him. The large psychic was also present among the marines. Even though the soldiers gave him a wide berth, they didn't look particularly hostile to him. 'And your leader agreed.'

"He…did?" He asked, glancing at the Lieutenant with suspicion.

"What did you and Mewtwo speak of, then?" Cinder asked him.

No more than less than four medics rushed to his aid and he finally allowed himself to relax. "I told him that we needed a way to preserve this world, without letting it cost the UNSC."

'And he had an excellent idea based on his own experiences,' Mewtwo added.

"We create a neutral…grounds…for both worlds," He explained and allowed the medical personnel to give him a few injections. His pain slowly disappeared and his mind grew sharper again, no longer being clouded by the black rage that he had very nearly succumbed to. "UNSC personnel and Pokemon working together."

"This…Mewtwo…explained the plan to us," The Lieutenant told them, "And I know of a few marines I can spare."

"What idea?" Havoc asked.

"Don't you realize it yet?" Lucy replied, beaming with proud and happiness.

"No…I´ve had a very hard time understanding things lately."

"We choose a few soldiers and let them live through the same experiences you did," The Commanding officer declared. "Give them a young Pokemon, let them bond, train together then work to preserve the peace in this world."

"This world needs fixing," He added to the Lieutenant's tale, "We can't do it on our own. If some marines help us, however…"

'We can create an alliance between Pokemon, humans and this world!' Mewtwo finished.

"Wow…" Cinder muttered, "I did NOT expect that one!"

"It is a brilliant idea!" Havoc laughed. "I am proud of you, Math!"

"I like that. New people are awesome. I like awesome." Phoenix declared loudly.

There was one problem though. The entire idea of marines going out into the field with Pokemon allies was all fine and dandy, but there had to be order. There had to be some way to oversee it all. "Who will oversee the bonding? Send the soldiers on their travels?"

"We came here as fast as we could," The Lieutenant explained, "But your Pokemon still had time to explain some things. The ones called Cinder and Lucy were especially convincing. They told us of the people you met…and a special one, called tree."

"Professor Oak," He corrected the man.

"That one. From what I've gathered…he seems like a reasonable choice, what do you think?"

Could this work? Using marines from the UNSC Frigate as negotiators between his world and this one? They would have to be completely neutral…and ready for some extremely tedious work. But if it could work…they would have a group of independent peace-keepers, bonded with Pokemon and ready to assist those that needed help. It was a good idea…and it reminded him of the SPARTAN-II program, for some reason. Not the Secret-Spartans, but the true ones. Actual protectors and peace-keepers, serving humanity and preserving all

"It's a good idea…" He started. "But who would volunteer? It would be annoying and frustrating work."

The female sergeant stepped forwards. "I would, sir! A chance at a new group of allies in what will be a very dark future isn't a chance I want to throw away!"

'Good,' Mewtwo stated and nodded, seeing how the impossible plan they had cooked up together could actually work. 'I shall make preparations with Professor Oak. I shall let you humans work it out together.'

He watched as Mewtwo teleported away and sighed. "Sir…what about ONI? Are they alright with this?"

"The way I see it soldier, ONI doesn't know what happened. We are stuck on this world…and one of these days, ONI might find out. But for now, we don't need another war. I will give you some time with your team. You have done more than enough Spartan, catch some rest. You deserve it."

He groggily rose to his feet and watched the men from the UNSC leave the Indigo Plateau, staring at them until they had left.

"What do you think?" He softly asked Lucy.

"I think…that an emotion like love…or romance…can be seen as many things. Spartan-Lucy clearly had romantic feelings for her master, but she never acted on them. Their friendship was strong without love or romance…and in this case, her romance was indistinguishable from true friendship."

"What she means to say," Cinder added with a laugh, "Is that she agrees! This is a perfect idea!"

He sat down again, allowing himself to be embraced by his six Pokemon. Never had he dared to hope that he could ever have a positive future...yet here it was, waiting for him.

"No rest for the wicked," He told his friends after a while. "Giovanni is still out there…as is Arckson. While Laughter is busy with forming the new Pokemon trainers, we have a new mission."

Lucy and Cinder both slammed a limb against his visor. "Later!" They told him.

He smiled. They were absolutely right…later. He would destroy Team Rocket later…he would wrestle with Fenrir later. He would clean Havoc's teeth and swim with her later. He would comb Cinder's hair later and he would have fun with Phoenix later. He would fly with Fluffy later and he would play chess with Lucy later.

But for now, he would relax. And rest.

~0~

While writing this, I find myself both saddened as satisfied. Satisfied because I have managed to write 38 amazing chapters that all tied in with each other, before producing a real ending. Satisfied, because I have built up this amazing and close group of people that like my work.

But also saddened, because this is the end to a story that took half a year to make. I have worked hard, and learned even harder. I have tried to improve so much and if I am honest with myself, I think I honestly did improve. But I didn't do that on my own. I had more than 250 reviews to help me get insight in what I did. And I want to thank all of you, for sticking with me until the very end.

This story…has really been an emotional rollercoaster for me, but also for my readers. I know that the characters in this story are not real, but I cannot help but feel that I might have grown attached to them. And now…I have to say goodbye. I have to say goodbye to every character that I have created in this story and every development that I have made them go through.

And while this is a goodbye, it isn't a permanent one. I will be back with another story, as this work of fiction is only part One in a series that I call the Scattered Series. Part Two has already been posted: "When Destiny Burns", an Inheritance Cycle/ Halo crossover, telling the story of a different Secret-Spartan immediately after the events of the Scattering. In addition, when all is over and all the battles have been fought, the surviving Secret-Spartan units will all band together for one last, expendable-style mission with the fate of the universe in the balance.