"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings." - Optimus Prime.
Sayuri still didn't know why she had done it – all she knew was that it filled her with remorse and regret. Was it her active libido and anxiety about virginity that had pushed her to it, awaiting only an opportunity to strike, issues of war or peace be damned? Had the struggles of a refugee and a soldier pushed her mental health over the edge, had they made her do something stupid and violent? Or was it just that she was a terrible human being, awful enough to not only force herself on an apathetic Ayane, but to tarnish her pokemon's innocence by making them hold her down?
Not that it mattered. Yuji had spread her propaganda far and wide, filled with information about Lord Iga's electoral fraud. With the army away, Hotaru had launched her coup, and for the time being it was successful – Iga would have to crush Cerulean this time to grind it under his sandal. And regardless of the ultimate outcome of the war, right now Hotaru was in charge.
Hotaru. Her first crush – maybe even her first love. A girl whose greatness, as far as Sayuri was concerned, knew no bounds: detractors may have thought her a power-hungry megalomaniac no better than Lord Iga, or a soldier forced by circumstance into a position for which she was wholly unqualified, but to Sayuri's eyes she was the most amazing person in the world.
And now Hotaru hated her. She had to, didn't she? Everyone would after what she did – her only hope was to switch sides, melt away into Lord Iga's armies, and run away to a place she could survive. Heck, maybe she'd even get a taste of the women in cities they sacked. It was just that she didn't want to.
Maybe it was better to be a criminal than a traitor, she thought. As though she hadn't already committed treason.
"Sayuri?" Hotaru's voice called.
Sayuri had to confess her surprise. She didn't think she'd arrest her in person – couldn't she get some cops to do it? There weren't bodyguards, either – no one to take her into custody. This didn't make any sense. "What is it, Hotaru?" she answered.
"Join me."
"Join you? You mean in your army? My pokemon are hardly worth personally recruiting."
"I seem to recall they took down someone with the power of a Mewtwo," she said with a smirk – a smirk? At least someone could laugh about it; maybe there was some animosity between her and Ayane that Sayuri simply hadn't noticed. "But that's not what I'm here for. I need a right-hand woman. Someone I can trust."
"And you pick me?" she asked, flattered, her pink hair tossed around by the wind.
"I know you from Wisteria Town," Hotaru explained. "And I know each and every reason why you'll never turn on me. So is it a deal?"
The younger girl grinned, barely containing her enthusiasm. "Of course it is."
No sooner had Lord Iga conquered Lavender than the rest of his empire had melted away. Hotaru's coup d'etat had wrested Cerulean from his control, while Articuno spread his protective wings over Fuchsia and declared it part of his Zone of Peace.
This was wholly unexpected. Yes, he had planned for Fuchsia to be sacked by pirates, yes, Hotaru's coup was very possible if not actually probable, but he had never even conceived of the thought that Articuno would intervene!
"What is this, Zapdos? Why does Articuno challenge me now, when victory is finally within my grasp?"
"Do you think I can read Articuno's mind? If you want to know, then go there and discover the truth for yourself!"
While Haiiro and his comrades arrived in Fuchsia from the west, Articuno and Zapdos were meeting in a clouded sky, the latter claiming a ninja lord as his rider.
"Why?" the thunder bird asked, bereft of any emotion save puzzlement.
Articuno sighed as it slowly flapped its translucent wings and maintained its place in the air. "It is true. I was content to protect the peace of Seafoam, content to fly out every now and then and guide heroes to safety. But this is an interconnected world, and even I can not seal my caves from all angles."
"What do you mean?"
"A pirate ship attacked. They lit many of my pokemon friends aflame, stole priceless treasures from many trainers, and half of them escaped alive."
"Pirates? Those are from Cinnabar, you fool! I thought a legendary would know better!" Lord Iga shouted, laughing, as a black-clad boy on Pidgeot-back landed on the roof of the gym, intently watching the battle.
"That's what I thought, myself," Articuno answered. "It was a nice plan, you know. Lulling me out of hiding with a false flag attack and getting me to protect your coasts from piracy or maybe even open up a southern front in Pallet."
"False flag attack?" Lord Iga laughed, steeling himself from the pressure of the situation. "Do you think any of my men are so incompetent as to be caught? I assure you, if the Iga clan did launch a false flag attack, there would be no way you could tell it apart from a real one, even if you tortured them!"
"And tell me, all-knowing one. Your spy network is amazing, after all. So just list my current attacks."
Lord Iga smiled. "Ice Beam, Roost, Substitute and Toxic."
"I liked that moveset," Articuno said. "But there's a move tutor who fled to Seafoam. And I wanted to show the world why they had once feared my name."
"So then. Ice Beam, Roost, Sheer Cold," Lord Iga paused. How could he have overlooked it? How could he have been so stupid? "And Mind Reader."
"Zapdos," The bird of ice asked. "Will you still let this treacherous man fly on your back? Will you still fight on his side? You've seen the futility of shutting yourself away, so why not join me and rid the world of war?"
"Peace is for those who could not otherwise obtain victory. Thunderbolt!"
"Ice Beam!" The two attacks collided on Articuno's side of the battlefield, creating an explosion which drove the ground forces away: it seemed this would be a one-on-one fight.
Or two on one. Lord Iga was still there. He still had his pokemon – and although they were bugs, all of them could fly. Maybe it'd be as much as seven on one – though it was only one of them who really counted.
If they just traded their ordinary moves, Zapdos would win before long. The thunderbird was faster. His attack power was greater. He'd need his own rider. And a good flying specialist on his side.
"Shiro! White!" he called, giving the Pidgeot's trainer his gaze. "If you help me, I'll make it worth your while!"
"Don't do this! I saved you, remember? I knew you'd always amount to something someday, Shiro! Don't let me down!" Lord Iga shouted back.
The boy nodded in Articuno's direction. He didn't expect much of a reward from helping a legendary – indeed, before the war he hadn't even believed the legendaries existed. But even if Articuno sold him out after, battling beside him, taking on a Zapdos? That was something to remember, and even he wouldn't pass it up.
Even if it meant stabbing Lord Iga in the back.
"You traitor! Ninjask, go! Agility!" Lord Iga shouted, summoning his enormous yellow insect; Shiro supposed Lord Iga's other pokemon just weren't good enough to do much of anything in a battle of legends. Not that Honchkrow and the others were any better.
"Hishou, Brave Bird!" Shiro braced himself as his pokemon slammed headfirst into the enormous bug, taking it down in a single attack.
"Thunderbolt!" Zapdos shouted, firing a stream of electricity into the other bird's sky-blue wing, this one unchallenged by any counterattack.
"Mind Reader," Articuno whispered, its eyes taking a red glow as it concentrated on nothing but the bird before it.
"You fool! Can't you see that Zapdos is faster? You just blew your only shot of victory!" Iga yelled, sinking into maniacal laughter.
"I don't think so," Shiro answered. "Zapdos is faster than the average Pidgeot. But it's not faster than mine!"
"Pidgeot?" Iga taunted. "Who cares what a tiny little bird like Pidgeot does? I'm talking about Articuno, you moron!"
"Hishou. Tailwind. NOW!" The bird's long, pink and yellow hair stood up in the breeze as the pidgeot circled behind Articuno, creating a swift wind at its back which sped up the ice bird's movements.
"Thunderbolt!" Zapdos flapped its black and golden wings, and a bolt of bright lightning flew towards Articuno.
"Sheer Cold!" Ice crystals filled the sky, racing towards Zapdos. They slammed into the spiked bird, nearly knocking it from the sky, but a red sash on its talon glowed and the pokemon hung on.
Articuno, on the other hand, was not so lucky. It fell from the sky, defeated but not dead, and a group of friendly trainers surrounded it, determined to ensure it would fly another day.
"You've lost, boy!" Iga yelled. But as he struggled to hang onto the fainting Zapdos, Hishou flew below it, faster than he could react. An ultra ball flew towards the thunder bird, taking Iga's mount out of the sky and dimension in a circle of red light.
Iga grabbed a pokeball off his belt and opened it below him. Before he could plunge to his death, his Venomoth broke his fall and flew him slowly to the ground.. Shiro maneuvered below the ultra ball, holding it as it shook thrice, then stood atop his Pidgeot and made the most triumphant "V" sign of his life. He did not even notice that below the armies were again at war, Iga's men fighting not only for their hometown, but to capture Articuno's wounded, frozen body (capture in the sense of take captive: pokeball technology for some reason did not allow unconscious pokemon to be captured, just the badly wounded ones) and ensure he would never threaten their control of Fuchsia again.
"I caught Zapdos!"
On the ground below, the battle raged on, Saikaku charging on Stantler-back, Koneko doing the same on her Persian, each firing from handguns into the Iga lines; their shots were dodged by the quick reflexes of the ninja army.
Haiiro, his Clefable and Wartortle beside him, rushed through friendly lines to get to Articuno, narrowly dodging attack after attack from enemy and 'friend' alike: neither side recognized him. Unable to get any closer, he tossed the diamond he had received from Mew in a tall arc over the allied lines surrounding Articuno. A man on a Fearow caught the diamond (which had, after all, been thrown too hard) then hurled it down to the enormous mass of feathers which lay unconscious on the ground below him.
"Articuuuuu!" the bird cried, spreading its great wings and returning to the sky as Lord Iga's terrified army fled down the road to the east. "Do not pursue them."
"But we could overrun them and take the whole force prisoner!"
"Take 'em prisoner? Let's massacre them! They've tormented this city for far too long! Let's teach hell itself that never again shall Fuchsia quake beneath their sandals, and teach the Iga still hiding a lesson they'll never forget!" an angry young one-armed woman shouted; her other had been amputated for "revealing state secrets".
"You shall not pursue them," Articuno stated firmly, using an Ice Beam to build a wall between the two armies, moving the ice back and forth, up a slight level with each attack. It was a weak wall, one which could be broken easily by a reasonably strong charge or melted with a fire attack, but the firmness of Articuno's voice dissuaded them.
The bird cast its gaze first skyward to the Zapdos' new trainer, then to a charcoal-haired stranger in the crowded mass of trainers. "Gray. White. You have my thanks, now come forward and claim your rewards."
The trainers turned to stare at the heroes, equally shocked by their great names and the fact that they recieved thanks from Articuno himself, a few recognizing them for their role in the battle, although most were too focused on the enemy lines, or too distant to see the trainers well enough to rescue them.
"What is it you wish for?"
"Are you a bird or a dragon?" Shiro scoffed.
"There was a third hero," Haiiro said. "I knew her as Kasshoku, but her real name was Brown. She was killed in battle before she had the chance to do much of anything."
"Even I can not raise the dead," Articuno said with a sigh. "Only Ho-oh can do that, and only if their soul has not yet moved on."
"Could you put in a good word with him?" Haiiro asked, tears welling up in his eyes. "And what about the story of Red and pokemon tears?"
"Even this war is not sad enough to make a pokemon cry, and it takes more than a single pokemon's tears. White? What about you?"
"Your ice," he said. "I already have Zapdos – it can give me a bolt."
"Moltres is dead. Masuo has snuffed its flame."
"Its flame at the Indigo League. I'm sure another burns somewhere."
"If you insist," Articuno answered, placing its tail on the ground, then lifting it, revealing a small, ever-frozen cube of ice. "Don't blame me if it doesn't work. I have better gifts."
"This is what I want," he said, taking the ice cube, then placed it in his pocket, mounted his Pidgeot and flew far away.
"And you, Gray? I can no longer risk allowing myself to be captured – you are a hero. You need a legend, if you are to save our world."
Before Haiiro could protest, the bird swung its blue, translucent tail towards his belt, opened his one empty pokeball and dived into the sphere.
For two months, the Charizard horde had rained fire upon the city's houses, businesses, museum, pokemon center, people, and pokemon.
And Pewter did not fall.
For two months, the city had been surrounded, protected only by rock walls, artillery, and the courage of its inhabitants.
And Pewter did not fall.
Muk poisoned the water supply. Venusaur hurled boulders in with their vines, above the newly-built walls. Men and pokemon alike manned the guns of the hastily-constructed Pewter Castle, then when the gates fell, battled them in street-to-street warfare.
And Pewter did not fall.
They fought not like heroes, but like men – men backed in a corner, men who had heard of the atrocities of Wisteria and feared they would be next, that the choice was to fight or be slaughtered. That Wisteria had been burnt for a personal grudge and to spread fear was unknown to the people of the town: the museum head had been astonishingly successful in suppressing any offers for peace or negotiation.
Occasionally, Pewter was reinforced. Trainers and pokemon from the surrounding villages, their food stolen by the invading army, infiltrated the starving city to provide aid. Hotaru's government sent the occasional brigade of fighters, enough to keep their manpower up to replace the dying - and of course, there were many dying. The historians would say that the city had been depopulated by a rate of 50%; what they meant was that half the people in Pewter were dead, the stench of their bodies wafting through the air, their corpses breeding diseases to infect the survivors. Brothers and fathers, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, starting pokemon and new companions alike had been lost.
And Pewter did not fall. And Pewter alone stood strong, when city after city had been conquered in Johto and Kanto and been added to Masuo's growing empire.
From atop his Charizard, Masuo himself was growing bored. He had desired a challenge, and he got one, but it was wholly of the wrong type: he had wanted a real battle, a fight against a tactical master or an equivalently numbered force. For a time, he had hoped Lord Iga would become that foe, but no sooner had Iga taken Lavender than had his empire melted away. The siege was getting dull, and worse, he saw no way save attrition to break the stalemate.
On the other hand, attrition would certainly work. Cerulean's army could enter the meat-grinder – their whole army, not just brigades. So could Vermilion's. The day could someday come when they ran out of men, and he? He dealt with desertions, he dealt with rebellions, few would serve a man who willingly slaughtered the elite four.
But when one rules with an iron fist and a network of loyal supporters upon whom one had showered power and rewards, the people didn't exactly have to be willing.
Lord Iga was a defeated man. He had contemplated suicide for some time, but decided against it: he had no desire to repeat in his own family the chaos of the sort that had engulfed Cerulean after Mizuki had taken her own life.
Furthermore, his plans had not completely failed. Certainly, his empire had shrunk: he struggled to impose order in Lavender Town with Zapdos sitting in Shiro's ultra ball, and the army which had joined him to march on Cerulean had little desire to impose his rule on their hometown by force. Hotaru was also a foreigner, but at least she had distinguished herself in battle and restored order to the city – her biggest problem was the fact that Lord Iga had taken her (organized) army, and the city was barely able to quelch rebellions and send token forces to aid Pewter. Slowly but surely, however, the problem was solving itself as regiments filtered back, leaving Iga's mad ambitions behind.
Celadon could not be impacted: the people were violent, radical, and in no mood for such things as hereditary clans in any profession, let alone ninjutsu. In Vermilion, democracy lived on, the incumbent too powerful for him to rig an election and seize power.
In Saffron, though? An Iga man had become head of Silph corporation. If Sho remained loyal, he'd have the wealthiest company in Kanto at his disposal, along with the greatest spy network. And with that, he'd have a chance to rebuild. And if not, traitors would have to be punished.
But as his army approached, Sho carried a flag with the symbol of Silph Corporation, quartered with the Iga family crest; a flag which made clear his intentions: only the clan head had the right to fly Iga's arms. It was rebellion! And judging by the Arcanine upon whom he rode and the column of tanks behind him, a rebellion which was sure to be successful.
"I have come to take my rightful place as head of the Iga clan!"
Lord Iga cast off his helmet and removed his cape, summoned his Ninjask, flew over to the businessman and handed them off. "Take it. I've failed and I'm tired of fighting."
Surprised, Sho accepted the regalia and proclaimed himself head of the Iga clan, in a distant route far from Fuchsia City Gym. The former Lord Iga traveled the world as a priest of Arceus, finding solace in religion but viewing most of the legends as too weak to deserve worship.
Even Zapdos and Arcanine could be captured, after all.
They would call it the Wisterian Empire.
Hotaru was but one woman – if she even counted as a woman, having lived a mere seventeen years. She was untrained in the methods of politics: a skilled general whose co-ordinations of resistance had kept Masuo bottled up in Pewter, sure, and her brilliant masterstroke of calling for elections had brought her to power (albeit indirectly), but when it came to the matters of day-to-day governance, she was in completely over her head.
So she called on her friends for support, some who she had made over the past months, but Kazuki, Shuuta, Sayuri, Hikaru, and Yuji figured most prominently and influential among them. (Kumiko had been given the offer, but had declined, still mentally shattered by the destruction of her school. Taro was still stuck to his hospital bed and the others had already left town for Fuchsia.) She knew pokemon battles and had applied the skills to warfare with great success, but as a ruler she was incompetent and heavy-handed, and even her prosecution of the war was seen as more a personal vendetta than a sincere effort to keep Cerulean City safe.
It had started the ordinary way a revolution did: a street protest broke out against general abuses, the protest got out of hand, and like Mizuki before her, she sent her Gyarados in to quell the crowds. But to the Mizukiists she was a foreigner, and to the Kawadaists she was a dictator.
Before long, only Gyarados and Onix obeyed her orders. For a moment, she considered surrender: if she was allowed to maintain a general's rank and keep up the good fight, it didn't matter who ran the city itself.
"If I am so terrible, who among you shall take charge?" A competent politician would have asked this question first, or merely ignored the protests and let them fizzle out: it was far easier to demand an end to corruption and foreigners in high places than it was to enact a coherent alternative.
At this question, everyone stepped forward. Everyone. Perhaps one or two of the younger trainers in the crowd stayed back, but this was a minor detail of no consequence.
"I know everybody wants to be a master, but I can't relinquish power to everybody."
"That's how they did it in Athens! That's how they do it in Vermilion!" A man shouted from the crowd – not a demagogue, or indeed a man of any consequence, merely a democrat in the original sense of the world..
"Athens lost. Vermilion only won because Mizuki turned back at the last moment," Hotaru answered, a tear sliding down her cheek. "I've already lost Wisteria. I've lost way too many friends. I don't want to lose Cerulean too."
She sighed. Nothing she said was calming any more than a tiny percentage of the crowd: they wanted democracy, and not the sort of democracy which could win a war. She couldn't hold on, but maybe... maybe someone else could. Someone with a power base of his own, someone who could fight off the democrats and still conduct a war, someone who trusted her enough not to interfere on the military side of matters.
Someone like the purple-haired bishounen standing next to her. "I resign the office of the Mayor of Cerulean. With the election winner out of the running, control passes to the second-place finisher."
With a smile and his Ivysaur's flowers floating behind him, Kazuki turned the crowd against itself. Its effects would reverberate throughout the city's subsequent history, but for now, he could gladly claim the position of Mayor of Cerulean City.
Shiro had taken off again, riding on Pidgeot's wings, Zapdos still resting in its ultra ball. Legendaries in hand, Haiiro and Ayane wished to follow him: the war was horrible, certainly, but they thought they had the strength to end it. Saikaku, inspired by the monument at her great-great-grandmother's grave, had been inspired to join them as well.
Koneko, on the other hand, wanted nothing more of the outside world. Her pokemon were little stronger than they had been when Wisteria was burnt, and even if Mew, Raikou, or Entei wound up in her pokeball, she would not use them to fight: violence just led to more violence, and revenge was never worth it.
And more to the point, she was tired of war – so tired she wanted to close her eyes and make it all go away. Wandering the pokemon world wouldn't do her any good; it would just make her remember what the world used to be and what the war had made of it.
Luckily, she didn't have to. Articuno had created a land of peace in the Seafoam Islands, and the Seafoam Islands were only a boat ride away. With quick embraces she said her goodbyes to her comrades, then stepped on the ferry, Skitty in her lap as she looked out on the shining, blue caves of ice.
As the ship sailed into the caves, into the small city of refugees, made it to her new home, and logged on to what remained of the internet, Koneko smiled for the first time since Akira's death.
Finally, she was home.
As Senshuken looked at the walls below him, the wind whipping past his wings as he dodged the sound of gunfire and threw boulders into Pewter City's walls, he wondered what had become of his trainer, what had drove him to such insane, awful orders. Yes, his past with Kumiko was one fraught with bitterness on both sides, but burning her hometown to the ground was a step too far. How many millions had died just so he could find something more fun than an ordinary pokemon battle? How many more would follow?
Senshuken would like to have seen that for all he conquered, Masuo was never truly happy. If this were the case, then he would be justified in rebelling – rebelling against the trainer who he had served with since he was a Charmander and his trainer was ten years old and just beginning his pokemon journey. It wouldn't be treason then, just a pokemon putting his trainer back on the right path. But after every child he burnt and every enemy he killed, he strained his eyes to look upward. Usually he couldn't see his rider, but he didn't have to: he knew all the same that Masuo smiled each and every time. And when he could see him, it was clear that his trainer was happier than he had been in years.
And it was just so wrong that he had sunk so far.
For a moment, he pondered rebellion. One flick of the tail or spin in the air and his trainer would fall. And another Charizard would catch him, and he would be torn to pieces just like Moltres.
Just like Moltres. It was deicide – but what was deicide but just another sin? Arceus would make him pay in the afterlife, if he wasn't worn out by all the souls now sent His divine way.
Part of him hoped that the other Charizard would see the error of their ways. That there would be a rebellion in the midst of a ferocious battle, that Masuo would fall to his death and the world be spared the scourge of war and be allowed to rebuild. That someday, like in that revolution long ago, the pokemon troops would refuse to fire.
And if it wouldn't inevitably mean the death of his closest friend, that day couldn't come fast enough. He just wished the others would do something about it.
Most of them wished the others would do something about it.
Today, someone was doing something about it. The people of Pewter were always doing something about it, and this time, a charcoal-haired boy on the back of Articuno was shooting down his friends one by one with his enormous rifle, while his pokemon (was it his pokemon? Had the legend been captured once again?) did the same with beams of ice. On the ground, enormous blasts of psychic energy ripped through the arena, tearing space-time with such force he thought Dialga and Palkia would intervene to prevent them.
No one intervened. The Battle for Pewter continued on.
That Celadon City, the one part of the Pokemon World which still took communism seriously, and Saffron City, which trembled beneath the Master Ball of Silph Corporation, would come into conflict was inevitable. This was not the sort of inevitability theorized only by Marxist historians, either – the two were ideological opposites in close proximity, and low-level raiding had been taken place since the moment that Masuo's armies had broken the peace of the pokemon world.
When Saffron's army had marched to Cerulean, Celadon's People's Army had briefly occupied the town, only to be ejected (along with many impoverished exiles) in bloody street-to-street warfare.
Sho was not an ideological capitalist. His loyalty was to his family and his personal ambition, and he would use Silph's resources, but he was more than willing to lighten the load on the working class or sell out his economic system for a bit of power: indeed, his only attachment to the old order was in their usage of surnames. He was an Iga, after all. What Celadon City did was of no consequence to him: all he knew was that he wanted it, like Lavender and Saffron, as part of his clan's domains, so that he could build a sufficient force to retake their homeland of Fuchsia.
This fact, unfortunately for his ambitions, was no less obvious to Raizo, leader of Vermilion City's Gym. Fearful for his homeland's independence, he had conducted a quick and desperate alliance with the people of Celadon, hoping that his troops could not only rein in the radical excesses of the new Celadon Revolution, but that they could also stand against the approaching tanks and planes of Silph Corporation, ghosts of Lavender, and ninjas of the Iga clan.
And behind them all rode Sho, mounted on Arcanine. The Arcanine. A beast who, had he waited until this battle to attack Saffron instead of impulsively rushing in, could have broken the power of Silph Corporation once and for all: instead, powerless to resist the Master Ball's commands, his impulsiveness seemed as though it would finally herald the end of the revolution.
"Raichu, Ampharos, go!" the gym leader shouted, sending his pokemon to take the lead, a dash of panic in his voice. His own army was a low-level one, inexperienced and made up primarily of the flora and fauna indigenous to Vermilion and Celadon, none of which were particularly terrifying. The Ursaring cavalry were, and could match up to the tanks, even resist the ghosts. But he lacked air supremacy, he faced a legend, and there was still the question of what dirty tricks the Iga were plotting.
It was enough to make a man want to surrender. A man with less conviction, one who found surrender preferable to death, would have done exactly that. Raizo was not that kind of man.
From the back of his lines, a boy of about seventeen approached Raizo, clad in a dark and melancholy outfit. "The flame."
"What flame?"
"Moltres' flame. Give it to me," he said, producing from his pockets a small chunk of never-melting ice and a tiny, electrically charged black and yellow feather. "Arcanine doesn't stand a chance against Lugia."
Raizo nodded and reached into his jacket, revealing a torch of a type given to each and every gym leader, so that it could be lit again at the Pokemon League should ever the league itself be extinguished. Not only had the league been extinguished, but so had Moltres. Raizo had hoped that someday, when the war was finally over, he would light the flame to begin the next annual tournament of the Pokemon League. It still wasn't scheduled for another three months. If the war was settled quickly enough, the league could go on, albeit with far fewer trainers than usual.
He hoped there was still a gym leader left to light the flame. Celadon's, as he was horrified to hear, had been killed in the revolution. Cerulean's had committed suicide, Fuchsia's had probably resigned, and Saffron's had been died in battle. He wasn't sure about Viridian, Pewter or Cinnabar – he'd just have to hope for the best.
And if the flame were to burn out but the league were to go on, it would be better than the alternative.
"Lugia! Here are your precious treasures! Cease your slumber beneath the Whirl Islands and come to me! I, Shiro, Master of the Air, summon thee, so arise!"
In a burst of red, blue, and golden light, a vaguely saurian bird with a blue underbelly and enormous white hands at the end of shining wings appeared in the sky, its wingspan stretching to encompass the entire battlefield.
"Master of the air?" the bird laughed – a haughty laugh which shook the ground like a Sonicboom. "The hubris of your race is matched only by your violence, human." He looked at the battlefield. "Even now, you can not help but destroy each other."
"But... I've done it! I've summoned you! Articuno and Zapdos have blessed me, as has the League which Moltres established so long ago!" Shiro shouted, tears dripping down his face: was this all that hope was good for? He never should have given optimism a chance! He should've gone to Fortree: even Masuo couldn't strike everywhere, despite his earlier pessimism.
"Your power and achievements are impressive, but they are nothing compared to mine," Lugia's voice boomed, paying no notice to the dog which gave him nothing but menacing barks: his mind had already been enslaved. "Cease your incessant warfare and pay for your sins against pokemon!"
"Zapdos, go! Talk some sense into him!" Shiro yelled, throwing the ultra ball desperately in front of his face. [delete one "desperately"]
"Zapdos?" Lugia asked, surprised. "So that's how you allowed your thunder feather to be taken. Do you truly believe humans have changed?" For a moment, time stopped. Some would call it a coincidence that, at that very moment in a land far to the north, Dialga had been wounded in battle for the fate of Sinnoh, in a war begun in parallel by the Champion of the North.
Lugia did not believe in coincidence, only hitsuzen, a term typically translated as inevitability, destiny, or fate. Dialga's troubles meant something, he just wasn't sure what.
"No," the bird of thunder answered, to Shiro's grave disappointment – a rare emotion for him, as he was seldom sufficiently optimistic to feel disappointment. "They maintain the capacity for violence, for hatred, for all sorts of evils against each other and pokemon. But at the same time, I've come to believe Articuno was right."
"What are you saying?" Lugia asked.
"That not all humans are the same. That there are more pokemon today with trainers than there are left in the wild, and that it is foolish to dismiss themm all as traitors. And most importantly, that intervening in the human world can be fun in a way which shutting ourselves off could never be."
"Is this why you allowed yourself to be captured?"
"I did not allow myself to be captured," Zapdos answered. "I had my best battle all century with Articuno and this boy's Pidgeot... and lost. My focus sash kept me from being knocked out, but I was powerless to break out of his Ultra Ball. And I like to think this battle taught me a lesson, and it's not just the ultra ball talking."
"Very well then," Lugia said. "I am still not convinced, but I will not prevent you from fighting." The enormous bird turned to the other side of the battlefield, giving Sho a menacing gaze: he would swear for the rest of his life that Lugia could learn Mean Look despite all evidence to the contrary. "I have no interest in what humans do to each other, but I will not forgive those who enslave legendary pokemon. If you value your life, release Arcanine now!"
Too terrified to resist, Sho tossed his master ball aside and raised a flag of surrender. With Arcanine freed, Lugia left the world once again, departing to sleep beneath the Whirl Islands as it had for generations. And thus the combined armies of Celadon and Vermilion marched to Pewter, intent on relieving the siege of that great city of stone.
The walls of Pewter had fallen. This did not, however, mean that the city had done the same: it was a city where, to the invaders, it seemed as though every rock was an Onix. Every street was defended by a mass of trainers from all across Kanto, where boulders were still launched into the skies to try and knock the Charizard out of the air – and where the Charizard themselves so feared the rock attacks so common in the city that they stayed at such a distant range that their flames barely burnt a thing. To the city's west, Haiiro still rode on Articuno, who fired Ice Beam after Ice Beam in a long-range inconclusive battle with the Charizard.
Despite Kazuki's best efforts, the democratic faction of Cerulean had ascended in power, and a failure to see impossible progress had demoted Hotaru to the rank of a mere soldier – but a damn good one. Her Onix had evolved, and together with Gyarados they were more than a match for just about any pokemon that came their way.
The battle had taken her down a back road, residential in nature, notable only for controlling the approach to the local Pokemon Center.
She didn't know why she had spotted him. Didn't have a clue what Masuo was doing there, flying low above the streets like a common soldier, getting into the action in a way wholly unbecoming of a general: had he been... replaced? Or was he just being his mad self?
She didn't know. It didn't matter. All that mattered was that, with only three Charizard beside him, her chance was at hand.
"Steelix, Stone Edge! Gyarados, Aqua Tail! Target the central Charizard's rider!"
The pokemon charged. Behind her, a Marowak emerged from the ground and slammed its thick club into her skull. Steelix continued on, but Senshuken ably manuevered his trainer out of the way. Gyarados turned back and snapped the Marowak in two with an Aqua Tail, then rampaged back until it reached allied lines and searched for a new trainer. It would find one in Sayuri – who was, after all, the closest thing Hotaru, with all the barriers she erected between her and others, ever had to a friend.
And Hotaru – Hotaru, who had led the refugees of Wisteria for so long, whited out once and for all.
Many, many battles over the years had taken place at the Pewter City Gym. But not like this.
An enormous horde of Blastoise and Venusaur had broken down the door, and a small detachment of militia from Cerulean had joined the necromantic gym leader in its futile defense. Kabutops and Omastar were powerless against their double weakness, Aerodactyl only had so much death to reign down from above, when it was able to shake off the ensnaring Venusaur vines. Calm and collected, he had ordered a fighting retreat, one which the men and women of Cerulean had loyally followed. As they retreated, their reptilian foes pulled deeper and deeper into the gym, filling it with little regard to any of their theorized objectives: it seemed they were not there to assassinate the gym leader, to ransack the gym, or indeed to take any territory at all, but only to slay the army which was retreating into the gym's grasp, a poor usage of military resources.
This bloodlust was exactly as the gym leader had planned. Standing in his trainer's box, he laughed with a mania rivalling Masuo's own and pressed a button on a small remote.
And then the entire Pewter City Gym exploded.
There were no survivors. But in terms of casualties, the dead gym leader had won a clear victory.
The war was over. This fact, however, had not yet been communicated to the pokemon still on the battlefield.
There was no question left about who would win and who would lose. The Charizard had struggled to push back Haiiro and his Articuno, Ayane and her Mewtwo arm. With Arcanine, Shiro and his Zapdos, Raizo and Arcanine added to the mix, Masuo was left with a simple choice: surrender or die.
And judging by the fact that he was still fighting, Senshuken noted with fear, he had chosen to die and take the enemy pokemon with him.
A young woman in men's clothes, her long hair hidden under a legendary hat, stepped forward from the reinforcements' lines, bidding her allies to cease fighting, if only for the moment.
"I call upon the powers of the Viridian Forest! Senshuken," she stated, the Charizard wondering how she had gained knowledge of its name, "it doesn't have to end this way."
"Char?" it asked.
"You know what to do," she said, then turned back to her own side. "People of Kanto! Pewter City has suffered enough! Let us end this bloodshed, even at the cost of allowing our enemy to escape: it does not matter, so long as he never makes war again.
Reluctantly, sadly, the people agreed.
Masuo did not. "Char!" Senshuken roared as he knocked his trainer unconscious with a thrash of his tail. The rest of the invading army dispersed, and for the rest of their lives would struggle to cope with the reality of the horrible things they had done.
A Blastoise and Venusaur beside it, Senshuken flew off to the hospital. And with the Elite Four dead, most of the gym leaders dead, and Kanto in ruins, the war finally came to a close.
For the first time in the last three months, the Wisteria Academy had gathered. They sat in Hikaru's secret base, eyes around the television, Haiiro and Ayane playing the part of affectionate lovers on a strange, solid blue couch.
On the screen, their former teacher hurled a pokeball into the battlefield, then turned and faced them (and millions of others) with the first genuine smile any of the former students had ever seen.
Maybe, just maybe, between the dead people, dead pokemon, shattered innocence and broken world, the war had taught them something, had made them appreciate their utopia more. Or maybe it was that, with everything else gone, they had nothing left to do but try and grasp their dreams.
They didn't know. Nor did they care: they were too focused on Kumiko's words, too intent on watching the battle at hand.
"Jynx, come out! We've made it to the round of 32 – let's show the world how much we've improved!"
I want to be the very best. Like no one ever was.