All right, one last update for the road. Hope you enjoy the grand finale, and stay tuned for a brief wrap-up post after the story update.
---
There isn't even enough time for the stunned moderators to try to help the strange girl who's been delivered to them by their captors. Less than thirty seconds after arriving she's beginning to stir, opening strange vertically-slitted eyes and moving to sit up.
"Are you okay?" bobandbill asks. "Do you need anything? I don't know, we only have... uh, would you like some tea?"
The new girl draws herself up in a defensive stance, her blood-crusted blades up and out, and her eyes flick from one moderator to another. "Where am I?" she asks. "Am I still in a story?"
"You're d-d--" Dragonfree starts to say, but cuts herself off with a faint choking noise. The girl snaps her gaze in Dragonfree's direction, her head moving with abrupt, jerky movements, but she turns away again just as quickly when Psychic speaks up.
"We don't know where we are. We might be in a story, or we might not. Some weird creatures grabbed us and brought us here," Psychic says.
"You're the moderators everyone's looking for," the girl says. It's not a question.
"Oh? People are looking for us?" bobandbill asks.
"Yes," Mia says. She looks over the group again, lips curling up to show pointed teeth. "Have you been sitting here the entire time waiting for someone to come and rescue you? Aren't you even trying to fight?"
"We did," bobandbill says, glancing at his fellow mods. "It didn't do any good. No matter how much damage we did, the things kept growing back. They took our weapons and left us here with this black stuff all around. It isn't very strong, but it's thick, and it grows back, too."
"We're still trying to think of ways to get out of here," Psychic says. "You're hurt, aren't you? Why don't you sit down a moment and we'll see if we can help you out. You should have something to drink at least. Then we can see if there's some way you can help us get out of here."
Mia makes a disgusted noise and turns away from them. She swipes at the eye-studded wall behind her, carving out a long furrow in its rubbery surface. She slashes again, and again, ever faster, carving steadily into the wall, taking one step forward, then another.
The darkness keeps reforming after every injury, though, black flowing in to refill the gouges the girl scrapes out nearly as fast as she can dig new ones. It's soon clear both that she'll have to keep cutting at top speed if she wants to keep moving forward, and that she's tiring rapidly. Around five steps in she gives up, a couple of last, almost petulant cuts vanishing nearly as soon as they're laid down. Mia leans to one side and glares at the black for a few seconds, then turns and comes back out into the mods' clear area before the wall can seal up behind her.
"Come on, have a seat," Psychic says, shifting a bit to make room. "What's your name?"
"Mia," Dragonfree croaks. She's contemplating the table in front of her with a queasy look on her face.
The strange girl flicks a glance at Dragonfree, but doesn't comment. She doesn't sit down, either. Instead she asks, "How do you have tea?"
"I don't know. The wall keeps giving it to me for some reason," bobandbill says.
Mia's nostrils flare--she clearly doesn't care for that answer. But before she can do anything about it, the wall behind her, which no longer bears so much as a scratch, begins to tremble. When something comes through it, Mia leaps aside, clearly expecting an attack.
"Woo!" the delivery says, slightly muffled by her mask. "I knew it would work!"
"Do you recognize this one?" bobandbill asks Dragonfree, and she shakes her head, still looking stricken.
"I'm PikachuFan, and I'm here to save you!" the girl says cheerfully, getting to her feet.
"How did you get here?" Psychic asks. "Wait, how did
you get here?" The latter directed at Mia.
"The black things dragged me here."
"My friends brought me here!" PikachuFan chirps. "All you have to do is ask
politely. So, come on, don't you want to leave?"
"Yes," bobandbill says, standing up. The other two remain seated.
"Wait, hang on, who are your friends?" Psychic asked. "How are we getting out of here?"
PikachuFan makes an exasperated noise. She must be rolling her eyes behind her mask. "The black things! They're my friends. And they're really sorry for kidnapping you. They don't really understand people very well. They don't want to hurt anybody. And all you have to do to get back is walk into a wall. My friends said they'd put you back where you belong."
Mia appears to have taken "just ask" literally. "Why did you bring them tea?" she demands of the wall. "Why?" It just blinks at her with multifarious eyes.
"I don't think it knows how to talk yet," PikachuFan says, after giving the wall a critical look. "But I bet if you ask it for tea, it'll give you some!"
"I want my sword back," Mia tells the wall.
"Now
come on," PikachuFan says to the moderators. "Everybody's looking for you!"
"You two be skeptical, I'm getting out of here," bobandbill says. PikachuFan beckons him forward eagerly. Even she has to pause, though, and turn, as faint sounds come through from beyond the wall, something like the sound of tearing fabric, growing louder, and a faint, piping melody, likewise. PikachuFan takes a couple steps back, and then a few more, and is terribly lucky she did so, because a moment later a green comet comes hurtline out of the wall, leaving a huge dark rent behind it.
The strange object brakes impossibly fast, coming to a halt above the tea-table and revealing itself to be an overlarge green pea with a tiny red cape tied around it. It rises gently, trilling a kazoo-sounding theme as it goes, then disappears in a flash of light.
The bewildered onlookers blink afterimages out of their vision and stare into the long tunnel carved out by the... pea. Its ragged edges are smoothing out, and the walls are undeniably starting to grow back towards one another, but for the moment it's an undeniable way out. Psychic stands up, pulling Dragonfree with her, and everyone but Mia makes for the corridor, only to stop again when they spot someone coming down it from the opposite direction at a brisk jog.
The young woman comes puffing up to them and has to stand for a few seconds, breathing hard. By the time she's recovered enough to speak, though, she's already smiling. "Hello," she says. "Did you see a Super Attack Pea come through here, by any chance?"
--
Meanwhile, Wildcard Gamma plunges into darkness, Silvally glowing at the center of its bridge. The chimera stands at the center of a wildfire of free energy, flares and streamers of light crackling from the interface between his cheek-bolts and the cables hooking into the pirate ship's weapon array. The light shifts from color to color, deep red to green to orange to bright sky-blue, while outside the ship the cannons leak energy across the same spectrum, cutting a path through the living dark with a constant stream of fire.
Despite the crowding on the bridge, Silvally gets a wide berth, though some of the passengers simply sit watching his light show, mesmerized by the glowing colors. Others watch out the windows at the cannon-fire and the endless, rolling darkness outside, or chat, or squabble with each other. Farfetch'd and Octillery DeVillain appear to be locked in a heated argument off near the edge of the room.
Delirious ventures up to the front of the cockpit where the actual crew are strapped in, Macro with his feet up on the instrument panel and scowling at the darkness ahead. "Would any of you like some tea?" she asks. "I thought you might be getting thirsty after all the work you've been doing picking people up."
Macro only snorts, but Anchor says, "Sure, I wouldn't mind something."
Right eye spiraling gently, Delirious smiles as she sets out a teacup and saucer, pilfered from Necrozma's table, and tips her steaming kettle. Unfortunately this causes a scalding stream of water to arc directly onto the control panel, Anchor shoving his seat back with a yelp and a curse.
"Oh, I'm so sorry! It does that sometimes, I haven't learned how to control it, oh dear, is that normal?"
The various lights and panels on Anchor's console strobe and beep and fizz with electricity, and the granbull dives forward with a curse, prying the panel up while dismayed shouts sound around the bridge as the lights go out, leaving it perilously dark, as no light drifts in from the black outside. Silvally roars and claws at his face as charge surges back into him from the fizzing power grid, only for the energy around him to switch abruptly to a gentle tan color and the current to pass across him harmlessly.
In the dim red glow of emergency lighting Macro's at Anchor's side, demanding to know what's going on and if it can be fixed while the granbull, wiping carefully at the console's exposed circuitry, waves him off, and Delirious stands off to the side, apologizing profusely. The ship's engines have gone quiet, though it's hard to tell from the view outside, which is as endlessly black as ever.
A cool blue glow fills the bridge, and its restless inhabitants turn to stare out the window, where a huge blue bat pokémon is gliding through the air (or whatever it is out there), slipping up in front of Wildcard Gamma's nose.
Silvally's crest rises, and his claws rasp against the bridge's metal floor. "Necrozma!"
"You know that pokémon?" Macro asks pointedly.
"He's dangerous! We have to... Wait, why is he staying out there? Why hasn't he attacked?"
Necrozma's floating lazily outside the ship's cockpit, making faces at its occupants.
"Can't," Anchor grunts without looking up from his work. "The shields'll block cannon-fire, see. No pokémon could break 'em."
"I guess they must stop him from opening an Ultra Wormhole in here, too, or he'd already have gotten in," Silvally mutters. He watches the legend capering outside, now making "I'm going to get you" gestures at the ship.
The lights come on again, abruptly, and Anchor growls with satisfaction. The engines hum louder and louder, and the cannons outside begin to glow once again. A ragged cheer goes up from the people on the bridge, and Necrozma slips away again. Silvally watches him go, grimly, sure that he'll keep following the ship, looking for an opportunity to attack. They'll need to deal with him somehow.
"It's fine, it's fine," Anchor says, shooing a still-apologizing Delirious away, while Macro scowls openly at her. "No harm done. Just keep your tea away from the machinery."
A shout sounds from the far end of the bridge. "Captain!" A slurpuff's waddling forward as fast as his stubby legs can carry him. "The electricity's out! I can't get anything working!"
"Power's back on, Cookie."
"Not to the kitchen! All of the appliances are out!"
Macro and Anchor exchange a look. "We've got to get flying, Cookie. We can see to the nonessential repairs once we're out of the danger zone."
"But I just made a quadruple serving of my Pecha ice cream! It'll go bad if the freezer won't work!"
Which is how everyone on the bridge ended up with their own bowl of ice cream, much to the freak's delight. "That was the best power outage ever!" it says, offering a spoonful of ice cream up to Four O'Clock, who's too small to manage her own bowl. She trills happily and sips at the tiny serving with her proboscis. "Right, Great Nathaniel Morgan?"
The freak turns when it doesn't get a response, a dismayed frown creeping across its face as it notices a conspicuous lack of scowl over by the windows, its roaming gaze finding the bridge Rocket-less. "Oh no." Four buzzes at it. "No, no, I have to go find him. He must be up to something." It scoops the rest of the ice cream into its mouth with a careless hand and sets out apprehensively across the bridge. As it goes it skirts around Farfetch'd and Octillery DeVillain, who are having an argument.
"And then!" Farfetch'd squawks, jabbing his meat thermometer at the octillery, "He dropped on me out of nowhere! While I was innocently minding my own business! No, actively working to bring the alien menace to heel! Scouting the hallways to determine the best plan of attack! Clearly this mon is in league with our enemies."
The octillery, who has his copy of
How to Make Mods Disappear open on the floor in front of him, glares at Farfetch'd, his tentacles curling and flexing with anxiety. "If a-anyone's in league with the a-aliens, it's you! You were talking with them through your telepathic link. I saw it a-all!"
"Telepathy? Everyone knows that's a load of crock made up by new-age wackos and conspiracy theorists! And psychic pokémon, I guess. A noble farfetch'd like me couldn't even dream of any funny mind business."
Octillery Devillain slaps a tentacle against the bridge. "I know a-all a-about telepathy! I wouldn't have been a-able to create my mind-control beacon without it!"
"Oooh, a mind-control beacon, is that it? Sounding real innocent over there, aren't we, Mr. DeVillain?"
Tolgo watches the exchange nervously, scooting along the wall towards where Polly and Canisaries are sitting, finishing up their ice cream. Hopefully the squabbling pokémon have forgotten all about him by this point. Palkia floats nearby, apparently enjoying the spectacle, but most people simply ingore the pair.
"--not working with aliens? Then prove it! All I need is a piece of paper and a bit of ink to destroy the aliens completely. You have both of those, don't you? If you care about rescuing the mods at all, you'll give me some."
"I don't need to prove a-anything to you!" Octillery DeVillain protests. "I a-am trying to read! Everything we need to know, it's a-all right here, in this book. A-and I, Octillery DeVillain, a-am going to use it to find out how to make the mods disappear! Back to their normal places, I mean."
"Ah-ha! See? See?" Farfetch'd pokes at Octillery DeVillain with the meat thermometer while the octillery curls his tentacles up defensively, not taking his eyes off the book. "You have the means to destroy the aliens right there, and yet you won't lift a single tentacle to help! Innocent?
I think not!" Farfetch'd reaches towards the book, and Octillery DeVillain slaps at him with a tentacle. "See?
See?"
"I can get ink and paper for you," Palkia says, raising their hands and calling across the dimensions. Shortly thereafter a notepad and a bottle of ink clatter to the deck, wrenched there from some other world. Farfetch'd dives for them and starts scribbling furiously, blotting the paper crazily with ink as he tries to scratch words out with his unwieldy thermometer. "I imagine this is some plan to get the mods back?" Palkia asks casually.
"Of course! I'm going to write the most terrible, cliché-ridden story, forum-rules-violating story that I can. Then, I'll read it to myself to enter the world of the story, and one of you passes it over to the aliens. They'll take it to the moderators to be moderated, and when it gets to them, I'll pop out and get them to say that it's a perfect story and belongs in the library. Then the aliens will decide that the moderators are so bad at their jobs that they'll put them back where they belong and go find new ones to kidnap!"
"Oh, I see," Palkia says, watching Farfetch'd scribble. "That's certainly a daring plan."
"Of course! Who do you think came up with it?"
"Actually," Silvally says from behind Palkia, "that could be it!" His eyes glint strangely in the reflected light of the energy surging from his cheek-bolts. "You write the story and go inside. Then I'll write on the front, 'To Shane and the Mods.' Then we drop it outside the ship. Necrozma will see it and read the address and think Shane's working with the moderators! Then he's sure to try and go to them, too. As soon as he opens an Ultra Wormhole, we'll follow him through. Then I'll hit him with the Groovibomb." Silvally reaches up into the feathers that cascade over his shoulders and takes out the small, grenade-looking thing. "Shane says this is one of the most powerful weapons in any universe! I don't know if even this can defeat Necrozma by itself. He's more powerful than any legendary pokémon I've ever met. But at least it will distract him enough that we can follow up with our own attack and sneak the mods out while he's occupied!"
"And then I'll pop out and tell the moderators they have to accept my story into the library," Farfetch'd says, sounding a bit skeptical.
"I dunno, Cap'n. Sounds like one of your plans," Anchor says to Macro.
"Come on, my plans aren't
that bad," the mawile huffs.
"I like it," Palkia says, booming voice strange and disconcerting coming from his now-tiny body. "I think I like it a lot!"
--
With Wildcard Gamma cutting a swath through the alien darkness, Necrozma's has an easy, if boring, time following after. Every now and again he makes an attempt against whatever's blocking him from the ship, but it repels him every time. So the spaceship has a forcefield--figures. Shane can't hide in there forever.
The legend nearly misses the scrap of paper that comes fluttering down in the ship's wake, buffeted by thermals coming off the ship's huge engines and nearly lost against the huge ship itself and the deep darkness around it. Once Necrozma notices it, though, he swoops in to snag it, reading the front in the light of his own glowing wings.
"To Shane and the moderators? So everyone's out looking for that selfish jerk along with these 'moderator' people? Typical." He slits the letter open and starts to read, a dismayed frown growing on his face as he goes along.
"And what the heck is this?"
Closing the letter again, Necrozma taps it against his chin while he considers Wildcard Gamma, moving away from him now, but he won't have any problem catching up. It's not easy to outrun someone who can make Ultra Wormholes, after all.
"What are you playing at, you big Frankenstein-looking freak?" he mutters to himself.
"Oh, well. Don't care. Whatever you have in mind, there's no way it can stop me. Myeeheehee!" He tosses the letter carelessly over his shoulder, and it drifts until finally encountering the dark alien mass that fills most of this world. It's quietly absorbed into the black, and Necrozma concentrates, sensing for himself where it's bound.
"So that's where you're hiding, is it?" he murmurs after a moment.
"Easy enough. You won't escape from me, Shane!" With a gesture from one clawed hand, he opens an Ultra Wormhole and is away.
--
"That's it! An Ultra Wormhole's been opened!" Matrix says, jabbing feverishly at his controls. "Tracking the output location now!"
"Here we go," Macro says grimly, hands unconsciously going to the handles of his pistols. "DL, are you ready with the Groovibomb?" he says into his communicator.
"Ready!" DL's voice comes back. She's down in the belly of the ship, ready to toss the bomb out of the hatch the moment they've caught up to Necrozma--and, hopefully, the mods.
"We're locked on! Hang on, it's not far away." Wildcard Gamma veers dramatically, forcing everyone on the bridge to grab for a handhold.
Octillery DeVillain, already suckered firmly to the floor, doesn't need anything to hold onto. He scans the last page of
How to Make Mods Disappear, oblivious to what's going on around him. "A-ah-ha!" he announces. "I have it! It says here that the way to make the mods disappear is to... Well, it says they can be brought back by people who recognize their power supporting them, a-and that the most dangerous thing a-a person who wants to stop them has to watch out for is their own belief in what a-a moderator can do. So I think that means we should build a-an a-amnesia bomb, so that they can't remember they've been kidnapped a-and find themselves right back a-at home!"
Unfortunately it seems no one's listening to him, as usual. The ship continues its steep bank, Silvally lighting the bridge's interior with brilliant, color-changing energy, and most of the other people aboard are watching out the windows as Wildcard Gamma carves its way through the darkness, hopefully soon to reach wherever the moderators are being held. Octillery DeVillain goes on, oblivious. "If only I hadn't left my de-a-atomizer at home! First, we need to find some plutonium, or perhaps some uranium would do, hmmm..."
"Decelerating to target. Five seconds!" Matrix yells. "Four! Three! Two!"
A collective gasp sounds from the people pressed up against the windows as the darkness abruptly breaks, Wildcard Gamma having plunged through to a small, barren little clearing. The three moderators, down below, are unmistakable, as is the black-armored, blue-glowing shape of Necrozma.
"DL!" Macro barks.
"On it!" she calls back through her communicator, and the groovibomb, looking terribly small from this height, falls away from the ship, tumbling end over end as it arcs down towards Necrozma.
--
Necrozma hurtles through the Ultra Wormhole before anyone can try to make sense of the latest gift the walls have brought them, what appears to be an envelope. The legend unfurls his wings, making a quick check of the area.
"Hmmm. Looks familiar," he says, spotting a familiar table and tea-drinking paraphernalia.
"Is that... Necrozma? Dawn Wings Necrozma?" Psychic asks.
"Yes, pleased to eat you! Nyehehehe. Now, where's Shane? Ninetales, super fluffy, always going on about friendship and then stabbing people in the back? Don't play dumb with me, his name was on that godawful story you all got sent."
The moderators, plus a few recently-acquired friends, stare up at the armored bat that's blocking their way, but before they can say anything, the piece of paper on the barren, rocky ground under Necrozma tiwtches, shivers, and then disgorges Farfetch'd in a burst of blue light.
"All right! Moderators!" he quacks. "What did you think of my story? Brilliant, right? Totally worthy of the library! Go on, why don't you approve it right now?"
"We're a little busy right now," bobandbill says, looking warily between Necrozma and the dark wall around their prison. "But tell you what, if we manage to make it back to the library, I promise you can story, and we'll look at it then. How does that sound?"
"Ah-ha!" Farfetch'd points his thermometer at bobandbill. "Approving a story without even having read it? A story that clearly violates
almost every single rule of the forum? And you call yourself a moderator! Whoever it was that brought you here must have made a mistake. A grave mistake! And if they knew what was good for them, they'd put you right back where you--ack!"
Farfetch'd, turning to better address his audience in the eye-studded walls, finally notices Necrozma floating behind him. The legend's fangs and drool-flecked chin make it emphatically clear which end of the food chain he resides on. Farfetch'd takes a step back, making choked croaking noises.
"Come
on!" PikachuFan yells. "We have to get out of here! Follow me, my friends won't let that guy catch us."
"I don't think so," Necrozma snarls, unfurling his wings--only to let them droop in distraction when, for a second time, Wildcard Gamma comes to interrupt his meal. The ship comes barreling through the wall, cannons roaring with multicolored light, scattering black in a fine mist as it breaks into the open air of the moderators' prison. Necrozma snaps his attention back to the ground, only to find that Farfetch'd has taken PikachuFan's advice to heart and gone into full retreat, while the humans stare up at the ship themselves, dumbfounded.
Something arcs down from the huge blue wishiwashi, and Necrozma dodges with a flip of his wings.
"Ha! Missed!" he crows up at the ship, but the groovibomb, upon hitting the ground, simply bounces back up again, sprouting a bright white jet of fire that propels it into the air. It rises up, and up, above Necrozma's head, and suddenly erupts with light and sound, shining bright spotlights around the small clearing, spinning multicolored shards of light from its mirrored facets. A snappy disco beat fills the air, and Necrozma finds himself, somehow, compelled to dance.
"What?" he snarls, bobbing gently back and forth, rocking his wings to the music.
"A groovibomb? SHAAAAAAANE! I KNOW YOU'RE BEHIND THIS!"
Know or not, Necrozma can't escape the bomb's infectious beat. Below, Farfetch'd is briskly moonwalking away from Necrozma, staring at his own feet in utter horror, and Mia wears a positively murderous expression as she does an especially jerky Robot, muscles twitching as though she's trying to break out of her involuntary groove.
"Oh, so we're all dancing now? Okay, I'm gonna YMCA!" PikachuFan says. And she does, without any apparent regard for the beat.
Meanwhile, Psychic gets up on the table, tosses her head back, and throws a finger in the air. She discos away while the other humans circle around, caught up in their own dance routines.
"Hey, hey, hey, hey!" Necrozma snarls when a spotlight from the groovibomb shines directly on psychic, still commandingly dancing away.
"Don't you go stealing my spotlight! I'm the big bad here, remember?"
Even the aliens get in on the act, the walls growing long, flowing pseudopods that stroke back and forth to the beat of the music, like a great crowd of dancers backing up the main act down on the floor.
Up above, Silvally's been watching all this with pure dismay. "This is the weapon Shane would pick out of all of them? It didn't even hurt Necrozma at all!" Covering his face with a paw, he groans. "It is
Shane. I guess I should have expected this."
"Well, you wanted 'im distracted, didn't you?" Anchor asks. "Come on, everyone! Ladder down! Let's go get some moderators!" Wildcard Gamma's passengers surge past with an uneven cheer, piling up around the top of the ladder and swarming down with dangerous speed.
--
Tolgo didn't want to join in the rescue mission. He was actually doing just fine up on the ship, where there was tea and ice cream and nobody trying to kill him. The company, despite their weird round ears, seemed almost sane. But now, of course, they're all rushing off like madmen at their very first opportunity to get horribly murdered by aliens and/or slavering legendary monsters. Tolgo didn't want to join in
at all. But the lady in blue, who'd been engaging enough when she was just telling stories about taming crazed pokémon and defending human villages, seems like the most enthusiastic of all, and she's currently hauling Tolgo along with her like he's her only chance for success.
The elf clutches Luta's pokéball firmly in one hand, determined that, if he's going to go down there, he at least needs something to create a distraction before he starts running as fast as he can in the opposite direction. By the time Polly's boots and, shortly thereafter, Tolgo's, touch the ground, the groovibomb's music is fading, the dancers beginning to break out of their spell. Rather than going out with a whimper, the groovibomb shudders, then detonates, knocking Necrozma backwards in the air. The legendary merely looks briefly annoyed, though; he's up and flapping a second later.
"Okay!" Polly yells. "Pokémon to the front! Keep Necrozma back! Humans, let's go get those moderators!"
The crowd, now yelling various war-cries or, in Tolgo's case, simply yelling in terror, splits in two, the pokémon surging off towards Necrozma, the relatively few humans going to round up their brethren who are slowly coming out of their dance-trance, Dragonfree still waving one finger above her head in a kind of a confused way.
Tolgo, of course, belongs in neither camp, although it looks like the humans have the easier job, at least. He hesitates, turning the pokéball over in his fingers. He still doesn't know what to do with it, exactly, and he doubts it'll make any difference, but he figures he ought to try, at least.
Feeling more than a little silly, he shouts "Yah!" and tossess the pokéball directly at one of the eyes on the wall. It snaps shut, vanishing just before the pokéball can hit it. The ball strikes the black with a solid thwap, sticks briefly, then peels loose and bounces to the scoured rock of the ground, bouncing and rolling away. Tolgo sighs, his ears drooping even more than usual.
He starts when Polly rushes up and grabs for his arm again. "Come on! We've got to get those three over there!" PikachuFan, bobandbill, and Saoirse have been separated from the rest of the group by the scrum around Necrozma. PikachuFan's slinging pebbles at Necrozma, not coming particularly close to hitting him but apparently having a grand old time. Meanwhile, Saoirse has dug a very fine-looking fountain pen, the kind you might expect to find in the home of a famous composer, out of her pocket (how did
that get in there?). She brandishes it high, yelling "Deus vult!" with enthusiasm, while bobandbill keeps eyeing the wall behind them nervously.
"They're going to get killed," Tolgo gasps, watching the two of them preparing to charge Necrozma.
"Not if we get there first!" Polly says. "Metagross, let's go."
"
We're going to get killed!" Tolgo moans as the psychic type pulls them both up into the air, sailing over towards the humans behind Necrozma.
--
Meanwhile, Mark, May, and Chaletwo quietly peel off from the rest of the crowd, making for the wall of the enclosure that's turned into a chaotic battlefield, the interface with the alien force that kidnapped the moderators. Its eyes swivel to watch Mark as he comes up to it, blinking placidly. It doesn't appear bothered by all the fuss that causes the human to have to shout to be heard.
"Please, close the other portals!" he yells. "I know you don't mean any harm, but you're destroying the worlds you're moving into! You can't take things away from the place they belong."
"Indeed. Not unless you want some very cranky dragons showing up to give you a stern lecture. Or a banishment to the world of antimatter, depending on their mood."
Mark turns, surprised, to find the tiny Palkia floating near his shoulder. "Aren't you going to go help the others?" he asks.
"Oh, I think they're getting on fine without me," the dragon says breezily.
And, indeed, Necrozma's being overwhelmed by the sheer number of pokémon arrayed against him. Owen, Takato, and Delirious are up near the front, firing attacks, or in Takato's case, explosive shells, directly at the bat-legendary. In the air overhead, Thunder and Lightning, with Janine and Falkner shouting orders, buffet Necrozma with razor-sharp bursts of wind. A dunsparce yells and headbutts the legend in the side. Silvally charges in and out of the battle, now blasting Necrozma with an elemental attack, now leaping to block one of Necrozma's countermoves, his multi-typed memories ensuring he's always able to resist what the legend dishes out.
Necrozma fights back with shadow balls and dark pulses, bursts of psychic power and black meteoroids spewed from his claw-tips. Somehow Owen always seems to know where they're going to land, though, and his called-out warnings allow his teammates to evade almost all of them. Necrozma turns here and there, firing attack after attack into the crowd of pokémon, and seems to make no dent. Instead, he roars when Mia suddenly springs on him from behind, slashing with her katanas and arm-blades alike, a grin fixed on her face as she finally gets her opportunity to fight a legendary pokémon.
Necrozma teleports away, leaving Mia to thump to the ground, still smiling. The legend draws himself up and fires a moongeist beam into the thick of the enemy pokémon, and this at least does some damage, scattering Owen's team in temporary disarray. No sooner has he done that, though, than something pinprick-sharp jabs him in the side. A poison sting, maybe? Necrozma growls to himself and looks around for who might be firing on him now.
Another stab and the legend whirls, head turning this way and that. Where is that coming from?
Something yellow zips past his face, and he's stuck again, this time in the neck. Necrozma reaches up and claws at the air, but whatever the thing is zooms out of reach, then comes arcing around, headed straight for his face. It's moving so fast Necrozma can barely recognize it as a cutiefly, even when it's aiming for one of his eyes. The legend claws blindly at his face, ducking his head to protect it from Four's stabbing push-pin. The cutiefly trills and hums with delight, lightning-quick and feeling herself to be rather deadly, while Necrozma snarls and curses and flails at the air, trying to shake the bug off, up until a Judicator shell strikes him square in the chest and blasts him clear out of Four's range, at least for the time being.
While the furious fighting continues around Necrozma, Polly and Canisaries are doing their best to round up the moderators and the humanoids who don't have a lot they can do against Necrozma. They don't make it easy--they don't seem to agree about the fact that there's not a lot they can do against Necrozma.
"They're talking to my friends!" PikachuFan announces, apparently talking about Mark's group off to the side. "I'm going to go help!"
"No! Kid! You need to get on the ship!" But PikachuFan manages to slip out from under Polly's outflung arm, and she makes off at a rapid, yet apparently oblivious pace. Polly groans and bangs the butt of her staff against the ground. Turning to Canisaries, she says, "Okay, I'm going to go after that one. Can you get everybody else onto Metagross' back and have it take you back to the ship."
"Sure, I guess," the arcanine morph says. One hand stays firmly on the handle of her gun at all times.
The moderators go along readily enough. "Glad there's a ship, I didn't really want to go diving back into that black stuff," bobandbill mutters while he hoists himself up on Metagross' back.
Saoirse is less enthusiastic. "A holy warrior of God fears no creature of darkness!" She brandishes her pen enthusiastically.
"Okay. Get on the metagross or the metagross is going to make you get on," Canisaries says.
Saoirse looks from her, to metagross, to the battle around Necrozma. A manic grin flits across her face, and she tenses herself to run. Then a pink psychic glow surrounds her and she's tugged unceremoniously up onto metagross' back and, to all appearances, held there.
Dragonfree seems a little out of it, staring fixedly at Mia, who's now barely visible in the chaos of the battlefield. "Felicia?" she asks Canisaries when the arcanine morph sits down next to her.
"Uh, no. The name's Canis," Canis says. Metagross rises gently into the air, legs tucked up on its back as it floats towards Wildcard Gamma.
"Oh, sorry." Dragonfree frowns pensively at nothing for a few moments. "Are you a morph too?"
"Uh, sure. Let's go with that."
And whether Canis willed it or no, further awkwardness is averted by a submarine falling out of the sky.
--
The halls of Wildcard Gamma are quiet, almost everyone gone down to the surface of the alien world. The freak pads along in silence, every now and then pausing to bend down and sniff at the floor like some kind of strange bloodhound. At last it sights its target up ahead and picks up speed, moving with almost unnatural quiet along the corridor.
"What are you doing?"
The Great Nathaniel Morgan starts, turns, then plasters himself against the wall with a curse when he finds the freak standing not two feet behind him, grinning hugely and very pointily. "Nothing! I ain't doing nothing! Piss off already."
"We should be down fighting with everybody else."
"That's a ****ing fantastic idea. You go do that. Get yourself ****ing killed for me too, would you?"
"Come on," the freak says, reaching for him, and he jerks back, accidentally knocking into the control panel.
"Oh, ****, what was... what did I hit?" the Great Nathaniel Morgan mutters, peering at the flashing light on the console.
The freak strains to see. "The... emergency distress beacon?" it says.
"Oh. Well, I guess that don't matter, at least. Ain't nobody looking for us or nothing."
"What kind of room is this, anyway?" The freak looks around. "It looks almost like a little ship."
"Why do you even give a ****? **** off and go fight already."
The freak's eyes narrow as it considers their surroundings. "Is this... an escape pod."
"
No. Now fu--" Something strikes Wildcard Gamma's hull with a boom and a shriek of metal, and the whole room jumps, throwing both the freak and the Great Nathaniel Morgan into the console. A heavy metal blast door hisses down to seal off the small escape pod.
"What was that?" the freak gulps, struggling back upright. And then, immediately, "What did you do?"
"I didn't do ****!" The Great Nathaniel Morgan struggles over to the door and drags on it, cursing vehemently when it doesn't budge.
The freak turns back to the controls and pokes at them experimentally. "Automatic launch sequence in progress," the console says in a smooth, but perhaps slightly reproachful, voice. The walls start to shake as, somewhere, engines hum to life.
"Huh. Well, I guess this should be fun," the freak says, settling into the only chair. "Do you think this shuttle is really supposed to be for two people? It seems kind of small."
The Great Nathaniel Morgan kicks the door as hard as he can. "Open, you worthless piece of ****! Open!
Open! ****!"
--
The submarine's landed skewed to one side, nearly tipped completely open. It's an old, battered-looking ship, blue paint flaking, the stylized white
A up near the nose well faded. The top hatch opens with a clunk, and a woman fairly tumbles out in a jumble of mismatched blue clothes and a swarm of dark braids. "Who's callin'?" she demands of no one in particular. "We got your signal. Who's callin' up from the black?"
A small head pokes out of the hatch behind her. "We're here to help!" A cranidos jumps down, followed more slowly by a young human, one of the ones who'd assembled in the library earlier. "Oh, a battle," the cranidos says with evident delight. "Who's fighting? Whose side are we on?"
Silvally gallops over to the newcomers, and the cranidos doesn't appear the slightest bit put off by the chimera's mismatched appearance. "We're evacuating," the big pokémon pants. "It looks like your ship can't go anywhere anymore, so you should join the others going to Wildcard Gamma, up there." He nods towards the spaceship.
"I ain't leaving my ship," the woman in blue says, one hand dropping to the antique pistol strapped around her waist. "A
captain doesn't abandon her ship."
Silvally looks at her closely, sizing her up. "Make your own choice. The rest of you should get to safety."
"No way! I'm going to fight!" the cranidos says, and he scampers around Silvally and dashes off towards the battle. He's clutching what looks like a ragged stuffed monkey between his hands. Sai watches him go, then shrugs noncommittaly at Silvally.
"I'll stay here for now," he says.
The chimera snorts and turns wearily away. "Suit yourself. Once the mods are aboard, we're leaving. If you want to come with us, you'll have to be aboard by then."
Silvally dashes back towards the battle, but the cranidos is dashing even faster, head lowered. Having surmised what pokémon everyone else is ganging up on, he charges straight at Necrozma, flying into the legend with a powerful headbutt and simultaneously deploying his weapon. The beleaguered bat topples out of the air, landing heavily a few feet from the cranidos' decoy, what the pirate captain he was riding with would have called a relic. The ratty monkey moves jerkily, arms snapping in and out to crash the cymbals in its paws while a wheezy ragtime tune issues from somewhere in its chest. Meanwhile, the fuse on the dynamite strapped to its back quietly hisses.
"What?" Necrozma mumbles, turning to squint at the strange object.
"What is... Oh, you've got to be joking!"
But the explosion is no joke, cratering the bare-stone ground, knocking Necrozma flying, and causing the cranidos who'd set the trap to whoop and bounce up and down with delight. The other pokémon race to meet up with Necrozma where he's fallen, sensing that the end of the battle can't be far away. The legend's wings are ragged, their glow sputtering weakly. He can barely raise himself up, his arms are shivering and spasming so badly.
The dynamite knocked him closer to the odd submarine, though, and as he slowly begins to get back up, he pauses, head turning in its direction.
"Wait. I smell... I smell..." Necrozma abruptly hurls himself towards the submarine, claws shrieking against its metal-plated side. Its captain roars, drawing and firing on Necrozma, but he's utterly oblivious to the bullets, claws punching into the side of the ship, ripping it open without apparent effort. He digs deeper into the hull, demolishing gears, wiring, ductwork, until he finally reaches something that glows, something that streams golden light when his claws puncture it.
"Yes! YES! LIIIIIIIIIGHT!" Necrozma laps the golden stream of energy straight out of the air in a frenzy, completely ignoring the pokémon that are creeping up uncertainly behind him, the attacks that break across his back.
"What is that?" Silvally barks, racing back over to the ship's captain, who is cursing fluidly and reloading, and Sai, standing ready to back her up with his knife in hand. "What's he doing? What is that light?"
"Bastard's gone and ripped open the engine!" the pirate snarls.
"But what is that light? Is that fuel?"
"It's an old engine," the captain says, somewhat evasively. "From the before-times, if you must know. Very rare."
"And?"
"They don't make its like in these times," the captain says reluctantly. "It's called an Infinite Drive."
"What
is it?" Silvally demands, looming over her, crest in disarray but standing straight up in agitation.
"Well, what they say, anyway, is it's powered by the souls of the dead. Pokémon, that is."
"Pokémon's... souls?" Silvally muses. "Life energy? Oh... Oh, no."
Necrozma cackles hysterically, seeming to inhale the glowing streamers that waft from the broken submarine. His body glows a brighter blue, and the air around him begins to fill with glittering motes of light, a faint rainbow haze that shifts and swirls while the legend continues to gorge himself on light.
"Stop!" Silvally yells, racing off again. "Everyone back to the ship! We have to get out of here! Stop attacking and get out of there!"
"Oh? Leaving so soon?" Necrozma laps up a strand of twining golden energy that had been dangling from the corner of his mouth.
"You can't leave yet! Not until you've gotten a chance to have a taste of my Menacing Moonraze Maelstrom!"
The rainbow glitter in the air swirls and strengthens as Necrozma shines with brilliant light. People duck and cover their faces as harsh winds whip through the area, carrying with them searing threads of energy. Necrozma glows ever brighter, too brilliant to look at, and the air heats until it's a struggle to breathe. Somewhere at the center of the conflagration, Necrozma's laughing, and then even that noise is drowned out by a roar of superheated air. A flash of light that's brilliant even through closed eyelids, an immense impact whose tremors are enough to knock even Sai and the cranidos, practically opposite the actual attack, off their feet, and things at last fall still.
Humans and pokémon alike are strewn all around the clearing, some unconscious, some moving dazedly about. Metagross has been knocked out of the air, its passengers scattered on the ground around it. Wildcard Gamma still floats overhead,ow protected by its force-shields, but if it had taken the blow straight on, it might well have been on the ground, too.
Standing between Necrozma and the other pokémon, normal-sized and with its gauntlets up shielding its face, is Palkia, armor cracked and discolored by the Z-move. With several people unconscious even with the space dragon there to soak up the brunt of the attack, they might simply have been vaporized without its protection.
"Why, Palkia! Fancy seeing you here," Necrozma sneers.
"Showing up just a little bit too late as usual, I see. No need to jump in front of everyone else, I promise I would have gotten to you eventually."
Palkia lowers their arms slowly, glaring at Necrozma with wings spread. "Necrozma. I can't say I've ever encountered a version of you that's quite so irritating, but if you really want to fight me, I'm not going to hold back."
"Oooooh, how scary! Eeheeheeheehee. Well, if you're so eager to die, then I'm not going to stand in your way. Your light will be mine, along with with those of all those puny little mortals you have the gall to call friends."
Palkia brings one arm slashing down, sending a spacial rend racing towards Necrozma. The bat counters with a dark pulse, and the attacks annihilate each other, rocking the battlefield and sending scraps of multicolored energy showering down between the two legends.
"Everyone, get back to the ship!" Palkia yells. "No more fighting. Take the fallen and go!"
A few people are getting woozily back to their feet, and for the most part, they appear eager to follow Palkia's instructions. Polly rushes back towards the fight, her eyes and the crystal on her staff glowing blue as she recalls metagross and uses her psychic power to help struggling people back to their feet. Dunsparce comes hopping and fluttering over to her. "Need some help over here, boss?"
"Figures you'd be the one not to faint," Polly sighs. "Well, you can probably carry one person, right? Why don't you take Psychic, there, and help the others with the ladder?"
"On it!" Dunsparce floats away and somehow manages to pick Psychic up and take off with her, despite having no visible appendages besides tail and stubby wings.
Owen's team is looking ragged, the charmander having lost his fire extinguisher in the fracas though, no surprise, both Takato and Delirious have managed to hang on to their respective weapons. They skirt around behind Palkia, who's doing their best to hold back the brightly-glowing Necrozma. For the moment the bat legend appears to be aiming more for the pokémon around Palkia than directly at the dragon, perhaps because it keeps Palkia on the defensive, forcing them to constantly work to block his attacks, or because worrying about their teammates keeps Palkia distracted. Or perhaps he simply enjoys watching the smaller pokémon scamper when an attack comes their way.
"Don't think you can all just run off now!" he crows, spotting Owen and his friends in retreat.
"Not when the fun is just getting started!" He tries to teleport over to the charmander, but Palkia twists the space in the area such that he simply ends up reappearing back where he started instead.
It's not far to where the spaceship's ladder hangs down, its glowing bars of light easily visible from anywhere within the clearing where the moderators were held. Between them and safety is Silvally, though, passed out in a heap on the rock, probably having put himself between Necrozma's attack and some other pokémon.
"Come on!" Owen says, running over to the chimera. "I'll take one leg. Takato, take the other front one. And Delirious, can you kind of get up underneath him and lift?"
Takato looks at the Judicator leaned up againts his shoulder, now scuffed and blackened from serious use but still in good working order, and reluctantly lays it down so he can pick up one of Silvally's talons. Delirious works her way under the chimera's stomach, getting his hind end more or less off the ground, and the three of them set off at an ungainly shuffle.
It's painfully slow going, and Owen's arms are already trembling with the effort of holding Silvally up. He winces when a trio of black meteoroids slam into the ground uncomfortably close by.
"Maybe..." Takato wheezes from the other side of Silvally, "Maybe we ought to put him down and go get somebody bigger to help. Or that metagross, somebody strong who can... lift..."
"Metagross... already got knocked out," Owen says through gritted teeth. Their already-slow progress is slowing down even further, and Owen stumbles on an uneven patch of ground, a place gouged by some attack or other. "I don't know... who... else..."
Who would even be big enough to help? Maybe the granbull or the mawile from the ship, but Owen doesn't see either of them around, and it makes sense they would have gone back already if they have to drive the thing. Certainly none of the
humans are going to be any help here.
They can't leave him out here, either, not with Necrozma's attacks tearing up the ground around him, no matter how Palkia tries to block. Owen grits his teeth and drags at Silvally, but it feels like his legs are going to go out at any moment.
"Can't give up," the charmander repeats to himself, resolutely putting one foot in front of the other. "Can't give up, can't give up." It feels like it's going to take years for them to reach Wildcard Gamma, and that's if all three of them manage to hold up through everything.
Owen closes his eyes and strains forward, pulling as hard as he can. Remarkably, it actually seems to get easier the more he struggles. Warmth runs down his arms and his weary back, soothing aching muscles. Silvally actually starts to feel lighter somehow.
"Whoah! Nice!" Takato says, and Owen opens his eyes, confused. Something seems off, but there's nothing
nice that he can see; Necrozma and Palkia are still fighting, and Wildcard Gamma's still far away.
"Wish I could just up and evolve like that. You don't think Palkia could grab me a thunder stone from somewhere, do you?"
"Evolve?" Owen looks down and goes rigid with shock to find the arms connected to his body somehow thicker, a deeper, richer red color, the claws longer and curved. The world seems strange because he's suddenly grown taller, and of course Silvally feels lighter because his muscles have matured as well. In fact, shifting his grip so the chimera rests more atop his shoulder, he doesn't feel like he has to strain at all.
I actually did it! I evolved! Owen flexes his new claws and finds himself grinning, grinning, unable to do anything else.
He's going to have to celebrate later, though. "Come on, guys," he says, hefting Silvally up higher. "We can make it. It's not much farther now!"
--
Sai, having been exposed to relatively little of Necrozma's Z-move, does his best to help more injured people make it back to the spaceship. There's one group, though, that's huddled off to one side, apparently talking instead of evacuating like everybody else. Sai jogs over to them.
"What are you doing here?" he asks. "We're supposed to be leaving."
"Mark's trying to convince the aliens to close their portals to the other stories," says one of the girls in the group.
"
Other stories?" Sai asks. "Is this supposed to be a story, too?"
It used to be, I think, says the Mewtwo-looking pokémon standing nearby.
But it was abandoned a long time ago by its author. The characters kind of went--well, I don't know what happened to them. At least some of them .ended up turning into... this. He waves a hand around at the black walls, the eyes in them now winking rapidly, perhaps in some kind of distress. In the background Palkia screeches, and the ground shivers under a heavy impact.
I think maybe the story was about unown originally. I don't know.
"Anyway," the girl says, "the point is, the aliens absorbed everything in their own story, liked, turned in on each other somehow. There was nothing here but them, and without an author, nothing new could be added, either. They were lonely, I guess. So they opened those portals to bring new things into their world. Kidnapping the moderators must have been their way of trying to get attention, to make sure that they would have people to read their story. Or maybe they thought they would have the power to put their story right again, or finish it. I don't know. I don't know if they really know what they want, either."
Yes. I think whatever it was that caused the characters in the story to become... well, whatever they are, it probably affected their thinking. They may not really know what happened to them, or what to do about it.
"It's sad," mutters the first girl, her arms crossed over her chest while she watches her friend pleading with the wall, or whatever it is he's doing.
Sai does understand what it's like to be lonely. He was lucky to have his pokémon, and the aliens had been doing something similar, actually, trying to catch their own friends. He studies the blinking wall in front of him, and wonders what those weird dark eyes see when they look at him, or anyone. Had those things been like him one day? Did they even remember it if they had?
"I don't know what that other guy is saying to you," Sai says, "but I don't know. You can't keep taking people from other worlds. But I can understand why you would."
A screech from Palkia drowns out further words, and Sai looks back. The dragon's wings are drooping, scales blackened from Necrozma's attacks, and the glowing blue bat looks heartier than ever, cackling and pummeling his opponent with waves of shadowy energy.
I think we're running out of time here, the Mewtwo-creature says.
Mark. We have to go.
The boy grimaces and leans closer to the wall, speaking furiously. Sai turns back to the bank of eyes in front of him. "What do you want?" he asks. "I guess people have been saying a lot about what they're going to do about you, or what you ought to do. But nobody here really understands what you want, do they?"
The wall just blinks at him, not that Sai was particularly expecting anything different. "Let's go!" yells the woman with the staff from behind them. "Everybody else is back on the ship! You all need to get moving, or we'll leave without you!"
Mark, we need you to negotiate with the legendaries in our world, not get yourself killed trying to convince some kind of mutant unown to stop multiplying, the Mewtwo-creature says.
"Right, we'll have plenty of opportunity to get murdered during the War of the Legends," the girl says.
Enough, May. Mark, I'm not going to ask again.
The other boy turns half aside from the wall, obviously reluctant and trying to say one last thing. Whatever it is, he says it, and then reluctantly allows his friends to draw him away, leaving Sai alone with the aliens for a moment.
"I guess I ought to get going, too," he says. "I can't exactly promise you that anyone's going to come visit you, or try to figure out what made you the way you are, or finish your story somehow. It's up to you what you do now. All I can say is, I'm sorry for what happened, and I hope that you don't have to be alone forever. I'll try to come back and see you, if I can."
He turns and falls in behind the rest of the people filing towards the spaceship, and the wall blinks silently after him.
--
Tolgo wants to catch up with the rest, he really does, but this pirate's being completely unreasonable.
"A captain doesn't leave her ship," she insists.
"The spaceship can come back and pick it up later," he says. "Come on!"
"I don't think you understand, laddie."
"It won't even float anymore. You can get a new ship! It's not worth throwing your life away over. Just come with us."
"Aye, it won't float. Not here." For a moment the captain looks almost haunted. "There's no water here, none at all. It's
dry. It's unnatural."
"Come on!" The others are starting up the ladder. In a few seconds it will only be Tolgo and Polly and Palkia still on the ground. "I don't want to leave you here. I promise we'll do everything we can to get your ship back. Come with us!"
"Sorry, laddie," the pirate says, and folds her arms across her chest. "I ain't budging. That's the way of the sea."
Tolgo's frustrated retort dies in his throat when he glances up at the ship in question, lying on its side with a huge, ragged hole through its hull. Once it was lying several yards from the wall, where it fell out of what must have been a portal in the sky. Now the wall's come creeping right up to it, is actually advancing, swallowing the ship up as it goes.
The captain turns her head to follow Tolgo's stricken gaze. "Hey!" she barks, but her pistols have exactly as much effect on the aliens as they did on Necrozma. The black flows swiftly over the ship, swallowing it without a trace. The captain grimaces, curses under her breath, and then starts forward, walking towards the wall.
"Wait!" Tolgo says. "Just leave it!"
"No, laddie. I'm going to get my ship," she says, and in a second she, too, has been swallowed up by the black.
Tolgo stands where he is, shaking, staring helplessly at the flat black of the wall. It ripples and flows erratically, and then retreats again, just slightly, leaving a blob of black behind on the bare rock.
The blob gives a quick shake without even gesturing at getting up, demonstrates ears and snout and sarcastic red eyes. Luta's yowl demands to know exactly where Tolgo thought he was running off to, leaving her behind.
He's still shaken, but the familiar face is almost enough for him to forget about the pirate captain for the moment. "Of course I wouldn't be able to get rid of you that easily."