//------------------------------//
// The Ultimate Weapon 
// Story: Celestia's Rocket Adventures 
// by Snake Staff 
//------------------------------//

Three standing stones stood in the deserted heart of Geosenge Town, as they had done since anyone could remember. Ancient, worn away by countless years of erosion, covered with hardy moss and lichen, and rooted deeply in the earth, they seemed as unmoving and eternal as anything could be. Today that was proven false.

Slowly, grindingly, the three stones began to shake. Age-old accumulated dirt shook free, as impossibly old mechanisms did their work. Designed by a genius driven mad with hate millennia ago, they had endured time’s ravages with impossible fortitude and now served their purpose once more. The three markers were dragged painfully into the depths of the earth, leaving gaping holes where they had stood for so many years. The ground trembled and was still for a moment, as though the world held its breath.

Then the earth trembled once more, and a small spike slowly pushed its way out onto the surface. It was beautiful, a smoothly-cut crystal that shimmered marvelously in the sun with all colors of the rainbow. It only grew taller and wider as seconds passed, first reaching to the tops of nearby homes and buildings, then exceeding their height. The diamond-like spike continued to rise, dirt merely sliding off of its pristine surface like water, until it at last reached nearly five stories in height.

With a great clank and a whir, the massive construct halted at last. Then it shuddered, and cracks appeared at the top. They raced frantically down the sides as the spike burst open, unfolding at last from its millennia of slumber. The spike came apart into three great parts, exposing a smaller spike within. This likewise split into three parts with a flare of brilliant whit energy, revealing a perfect orb emmeshed comfortably in the center. From above, one could see that the entire contraption resembled nothing so much as a gigantic flower of perfect jewels, hauntingly beautiful with the promise of eternal life.

The orb at the center flared suddenly and turned a deep crimson as further mechanisms began their work. The ultimate weapon had come.



While the onrushing tide of wild Pokémon certainly did not lack for strength or motivation, they still couldn’t match the latest and greatest in miniaturized rocketry for speed. Robo Mega Meowth pulled ahead of Luna’s forces easily enough, soaring over the trees in a beeline for the Team Flare headquarters. When they arrived, the trio found the earlier battlefield still deserted, the wreckage of trees and scorch marks along the ground the only evidence that the clash had ever occurred.

“I’m guessing that thing is their fancy new toy,” Jessie said, eyeing the crystalline flower sprawled out below them. “But where are Team Fashion Victim?”

“Still skulking underground I’d say,” James scowled.

“Well maybe we oughta dig ‘em out,” Meowth grinned.

The massive machine angled away from the massive gemstone flower for a moment, touching down instead next to the rock formation where they had seen the Team Flare members retreat towards in the last battle. Robo Mega Meowth pulled back an arm and made a fist the size of a small car.

“Knock knock,” Meowth’s voice boomed through the speakers.

The giant armored paw slammed into the grey rock face with enough force to shake the ground around it. Cracks began appearing immediately in the stone, and only widened as the fist struck again, and then half the face simply crumbled away altogether with the fourth blow, the rock face reduced to pebbles. Inside was a now badly-dented sliding steel door. A metallic paw reached down, claws punching through to the other side. Team Rocket’s robot got a grip and strained, all three of the trio pulling back on their controls with all the might. A moment later, with a horrible screech of metal scraping metal, the front door to Team Flare’s secret base was ripped off altogether. The robot flung the battered hunk of metal at the ultimate weapon, where it bounced off a spike to no apparent affect, crashing into a nearby house instead.

“No more safe space for you,” Jessie smirked at the exposed elevator shaft and, perhaps more importantly, emergency stairwell leading into the darkness below.

“Nobody can hide from Team Rocket,” Meowth put a paw on his hip, then checked the rearward monitor. “Looks like da slowpokes are catchin’ up.”

Behind the great machine and newly exposed entranceway, a horde of Pokémon was beginning to spill from the treeline. Hundreds strong, with a snarling dark alicorn racing at their head, they raced towards Team Rocket’s robot and the way down it had shown them.

“You know, I almost feel bad about making the twerps run with them.” James paused. “Almost, but not quite.”

“We’ll let them deal with the chaff down there,” Jessie decreed.

“And we’ll take care a dat big ugly bloom over dere,” Meowth grinned, before gunning it.



Celestia was flying above the bulk of her sister’s allies when she burst out of the trees and saw Team Rocket’s machine activate its rocket feet and soar into the strange and massive crystal structure that now dominated the landscape. It collided with what had to be the ultimate weapon with a deafening clang of metal but had no obvious effect beyond the pained moans suddenly issuing from the speakers. She winced.

The alicorn’s attention was suddenly grabbed by the sight of all too familiar red and orange boiling up from the ruined entranceway. With their ultimate plan in motion and their secret base now lying exposed, it was do or die for Team Flare. Poke Balls, Dark and otherwise, were flashing all around them. An opposing force was quickly taking shape in and around the open entryway as the tide of wild Pokemon surged towards them.

Celestia saw her sister, the very tip of the spear, fire the first shot. A purple and black beam of energy shot out of her horn, raking across a Swalot, a Toxicroak, a Liepard, and the human standing behind them all in a single shot, enveloping them all in explosions. Her followers that could began to fire as they ran, wildly inaccurate shots of fire and electricity, poison and razor-edged leaves hurling towards the defenders, who began to shoot back. A handful of the Pokémon in the front ranks fell, knocked from their feet by one attack or another, but the tide was too strong to be stopped. The two armies crashed into one another just before the entrance to Team Flare’s base, any attempt at order immediately devolving into a wild mess of snarling brawls as yes more Pokémon rushed to join the fight on both sides.

Celestia gathered her nerves, silently wished her compatriots luck, and hurled herself like a meteor into the fray.



Much deeper underground, Lysandre felt a moment of triumphant vindication as the heavy gauntlet was slipped over his right arm. As the visor covering his eyes flared to life with streams of incoming data, he knew in the depths of his soul that years upon years of planning and hard work had at last culminated in this moment and he was proud, like a blacksmith gazing at a well-honed sword. As the odd, flittering targeting relays emerged from his mechanical backpack and began fluttering like insects, he remembered what exactly he was about to do and his pride vanished beneath a sea of bitter regret. 

Lysandre allowed himself a single grimace, before he clenched his fist and steeled himself. It was too late for remorse, the die was cast now and he would remake the world or watch everything he hoped for go down in flames.

“Power intake has reached acceptable levels,” one of the technicians surrounding him announced. “Conduits are live. Energy dispersal is optimum.” The dark-skinned woman looked up to her leader. “The ultimate weapon is ready to fire, sir.”

“Very good,” Lysandre favored her with a smile. 

He took a brief glance over at Yveltal, thick red cables plugged into its massive frame, drawing deep upon the deadly energies nurtured within. The legendary Pokémon stared impassively back with its dead eyes, utterly obedient even to the most unnatural orders. The Dark Balls were truly a wonderous and terrible technology, necessary as the ultimate weapon itself but a small part of him still wondered that any human could be so sick as to make them in the first place.

As targeting data flooded in from the countless esoteric sensor built into the deadly crystalline flower above, Lysandre scowled to see the gigantic mechanical Meowth pounding on the petals of his weapon. Yes, the delicate circuitry that might be actually vulnerable was buried deep underground. And yes, the strange material that made up the firing mechanism was by necessity all but invulnerable to anything less than its own firepower, but he still didn’t want to risk even the smallest chance of the Team Rocket filth actually managing to damage it somehow. And it was thanks to them that Mable and Celosia weren’t here, had been robbed of their rightful place in the perfect world soon to come. That thought clinched it.

He had his target.

“Set blast yield to absolute minimum,” he ordered his technicians. “I want as small and localized a shot as this weapon can manage.”



Celestia saw it.

The crimson crystal at the heart of the rainbow flower pulsed once, briefly surrounded by a shimmering aura of energy that distorted the very air around it. The very next moment, before she could even think about shouting a warning or doing anything at all, it was suddenly and terribly all too late.

A shimmering lance of red and white energy, thick and broad as an oncoming freight train, erupted straight out of the ultimate weapon’s heart. It punched right through the chest of Robo Mega Meowth in an instant, heavy reinforced armor of no more use than wet tissue paper against it. The beam tore right out the other side, streaking over the heads of the momentarily stunned combatants like the hand of a wrathful god, burning a solid path straight through the forest behind them, utterly annihilating anything in its path. It at last culminated in a titanic flash and a mushroom cloud many miles away.

The great thunderclap of the explosion immediately deafened everyone outdoors. The earth shook beneath their feet, and an instant later the shockwave hurled everyone, human and Pokémon alike, from their feet. The sprawled multitudes were pelted with bits of torn wood, a rain of ash and leaves covering the battlefield. The great forest for miles around now lay stripped bare, trees reduced to simple leafless stumps or snapped int half by the sheer force of the wave. The white alicorn had eyes for none of it.

As the princess stared up in wide-eyed horror from where she lay sprawled, Robo Mega Meowth teetered. All but sliced in two by the energy beam that had passed right through it, a hundred circuits had already cooked off in the mere second or two since the firing. Flames roared freely across its metal frame. With a creaking groan that none could now hear, it toppled backwards. In any other time and place, its impact would have seemed great, but right now it was almost pitifully underwhelming. The flaming wreckage lay sprawled at the base of the ultimate weapon, smoke racing up to join the great cloud forming rapidly overhead.

Celestia screamed, though she could no longer hear the sound of her own voice.

“TEAM ROCKET!”