Celestia wasn’t in any mood for games. Her friends had been hurt, and much was at stake here. She drew again on the power inside of her, commanding Psychic to reach out and seize the Poke Ball before it could open, and…
Bent double, wracked with shivers, as Lysandre’s ball burst into an explosion of silver light.
“That’s a downside of using Hyper Beam,” the man said with a smile on his face, as his Pokemon took shape around him. “You are unable to use any other moves for a short period of time afterwards.”
But Celestia wasn’t paying Lysandre any attention. Her focus was entirely on the monster he had just summoned.
It was… big.
Gyarados was a towering serpentine monstrosity, easily the biggest Pokemon Celestia had yet seen. Even in the cavernous factory its head almost reached the ceiling, and it was plain to see that by leaving a bit less of its body on the ground it would run into it. Every inch of the Pokemon’s vast serpentine coils rippled with muscle. Its body was a vivid blue, with faint yellow spots along its sides and a matching underbelly. It lacked any limbs, instead featuring a finned tail, four separate white fins running down its back, two more fins poking out from the side of its face, a pair of blue barbels on either side of its jaw, and a three-pointed dark blue crest emerging from between and above its eyes. There was a small jewel attached to the center point of the crest – it rather reminded the princess of a crown.
Lysandre’s Gyarados threw back its head and roared, an ear-splitting sonic boom powerful enough to shatter glass, topple stacked crates, rattle steel, and force Celestia to press her ears to her head. She stared up at the Pokemon in undisguised awe. She had known from her studies that this species was large, but knowing that intellectually and seeing it in person were two separate things. Even Tirek as he was when he stormed her throne room would have been dwarfed by this thing!
"Gyarados,” Lysandre’s voice cut in. “Use Aqua Tail.”
Water burst forth from Gyarados’ tail, swirling impossibly to create a miniature vortex around the vast fin. This it swung at Celestia with speed more befitting the strike of an ordinary serpent. She jumped into the air, wings pumping furiously. Behind her, she heard the metal floor where she had stood shatter to a million pieces, felt some of those pieces bounce off her coat.
Celestia opened her mouth, drew her head back, and spat a Flamethrower down at Lysandre himself. The man didn’t move one inch – Gyarados’ head dove down in front of him at lightning speed, and a wall of turquoise energy sprang up. The fire pattered against it like a rainstorm against a window, and to no more effect. Quickly the stream of fire died off, with the wall vanishing shortly thereafter.
“Thank you my friend,” Lysandre rubbed one of Gyarados’ cheek fins, to which it nodded in a surprisingly affectionate manner. “You see?” he said. “You’re not the only one who knows Protect.”
“That doesn’t mean that I won’t put an end to this, human.”
“You cannot stop,” Gyarados declared, head rising to Celestia’s level and the two locking eyes, “what is to come.” It roared again, the sound painful in the princess’ ears.
Lysandre pointed. “Gyarados, Crunch!”
The massive serpent lunged forward, jaws open wide and fangs gleaming. Hurriedly, Celestia called on her own power and used Psychic. A golden glow enveloped Gyarados’ head, and then spread down its neck, locking it in place. The two strained against one another, Gyarados struggling to break free and surge forward, Celestia doing all she could to hurl the beast back onto Lysandre himself. Seconds passed in eerie silence, as both gave their all to the contest. Celestia quivered with the effort, sweat running down her face and neck.
“Gyarados!” Lysandre’s voice broke the silence. Both combatants’ gazes shifted slightly towards him. “I know you can do this!” he yelled, fist clenched over his heart. “I believe in you!”
Gyarados’ eyes went back to Celestia, then narrowed. Its jaw stretched as wide as it could go, revealing an enormous black pit of a throat, easily large enough to swallow the princess whole. Its head pulled back slightly, muscles tightening. Then it surged.
And shattered Celestia’s Psychic like glass.
The princess barely had a second before the monster’s jaws were on her, clamping down with the promise of impalement and oblivion. At the last second she managed to throw up a hasty Protect, and Gyarados found itself clamping down on a turquoise bubble of energy instead of alicorn flesh. Celestia was half inside the serpent’s mouth, and so got an up close and personal view of powerful white fangs crushing down on the bubble she struggled to maintain.
“Toss it!” Lysandre commanded.
Gyarados whipped its head around, spitting the bubble and princess inside at the nearest wall. She hit it hard, Protect fading away as she slumped down, gasping for breath.
“Follow up with another Aqua Tail!”
Gyarados roared again and swung another vortex-encased tail at the princess. Celestia tried to call up another Protect… only for the move to fail, as she had been warned it might if used in sequence. She took the full weight of the car-sized tail on her own, which would have been enough. That fact that the water was effectively acid against her coat only made things worse.
Celestia hit the ceiling hard enough to dent the steel, then fell limply to the floor below with a great crash. Her world was pain. Pain and dizziness. Her legs quivered underneath her as she attempted to rise. Her body wanted nothing more than to be back in her safe, warm Poke Ball at that moment, but her friends needed her. She refused to give up so easily!
Slowly, painfully, Celestia rose to her hooves, dripping with water and sweat, breathing hard.
“You see?” Lysandre smiled, Gyarados looming over him. “When the lives of people and Pokemon are joined in friendship… when two hearts beat as one…” he clamped his right fist over his own heart. “There is no one we cannot overcome!”
Gyarados unleashed yet another almighty roar.
“I may not know what you are,” Lysandre continued. “Or where you came from… or even what you can do. But this I do know:” he closed his eyes. “Our friendship is stronger than any power you may have!” his eyes shot open. “Gyarados, use Return!”
Fast as a striking serpent, Gyarados lunged forward, head surrounded by a brilliant white aura that made the beast seem almost black and white. Before Celestia could do anything, could muster any defense, it impacted with all the force of a runaway train. She flew through the air like a ragdoll, bouncing and rolling across the floor and right up to the remainder of Team Rocket.
“Finish this!” Lysandre called. “Hyper Beam!”
Gyarados’ jaw opened wide once again. An orb of yellow-orange energy formed in the center of it, and then its head jerked forward. An all-consuming energy stream tore up the factory floor on the way, and then reached Team Rocket, where it culminated in a spectacular explosion. Through all the burning pain, Celestia found herself rising very rapidly, smashing straight through a glass panel in the factory’s roof and showing no sign of slowing down.
“No fair!” she heard Jessie’s voice shriek. “We were so close!”
“And yet so far,” said James glumly.
“Yeah,” Meowth moaned. “But now…”
“Looks like Team Rocket’s blasting off again!”
“Ash?!” Ash could vaguely feel someone shaking his shoulder. “Ash, wake up! Please! Ash!”
“I’m…” he moaned faintly. “I’m… awake…”
He could make out sounds of relief from multiple voices.
“Oh thank goodness!”
“Alright!”
“Yeah!”
“Just hold on, Ash,” said a strong, deep voice. “An ambulance is already on its way.”
“What about… Pikachu?” he managed.
“He’s already being taken to the Pokemon Center,” the voice answered. “I assure you, he’ll be in good hands. Please, just lie still and wait. You took a Hyper Beam from a very powerful Pokemon, and that isn’t easy.”
“What was… that… Pokemon?” Ash managed, just before drifting back into unconsciousness.
Later the following day, when the sun was just beginning to rise on the damaged Poke Ball Factory, Lysandre was walking down one of Laverre’s side streets. This early, there were few people up and about to see him, and those that did usually recognized the famous philanthropist and gave him a smile or friendly wave. He walked through boulevards, main streets, alleys, and market squares in a long, circuitous route.
At length, Lysandre walked into one narrow alley between two herbal shops. A woman with dyed red hair was walking down it from the opposite end. The two exchanged no words, only a simple nod of greeting as they passed. They neither paused nor hesitated as the flowed past each other and out the alleyway’s opposite ends. An outside observer would never have noticed that he had slipped her a small piece of paper:
The boy and his companions are not such a threat as we had feared. It would seem that all of his previous encounters with Legendary Pokemon were little more than an unlikely series of flukes after all.
TR has been chased off of the premises. Damage is extensive but enough facilities are in working order. Proceed as planned.
The woman read the note, smiled, and then tore it into a thousand minuscule pieces. These she tossed into a passing stream, watching confidently as they were washed away into nothingness. Then she turned and went to give the signal.
Team Flare had a job to do.
The employees arriving at the Laverre City Poke Ball Factory that day were in for two very great shocks. The first was apparent when the shift manager opened the factory’s door and beheld devastation. It looked as though a localized hurricane had stormed through large parts of the building while they had slept. The walls, floor, and even ceiling were covered in dents, scars, discolorations, and scorching. Carefully-laid stacks of crates had been toppled and smashed open, mechanical arms thrown out of alignment, conveyer belts cut up, windows shattered, and there was a hole in the roof. The factory was, in short, a mess.
The second shock came a few moments later, when one of the uniformed employees grabbed the manager from behind, slamming something in front of his nose and mouths. Three others threw Poke Balls into the air, which burst open to reveal a trio of Weepinbell. The plantlike Pokemon flapped their leaves to emit prodigious qualities of powder into the air. As the factory was highly automated, the actual number of employees was quite low. It wasn’t half a minute later before every last one not wearing concealed filtration systems in their nose and throat hit the pavement, snoring.
While those that were still standing wearing dragging the sleeping employees inside and into a storage closet, a pair of enormous delivery trucks rolled up. Looking nothing out of the ordinary, they flung open their cargo doors to reveal several more men and women wearing the uniforms of factory employees. These disguised Team Flare operatives hurried to take up their positions inside the building complex. Having had people working there for months, all knew exactly what needed to be done to operate those systems that were still standing.
Last of all came a trio of uniformed administrators. All were women, one with red hair, one with green, and one with purple. The latter carried a carefully-sealed box containing the most crucial part of the plan: an empty Dark Ball presented by the boss himself, to serve as a template for the factory’s remaining systems to replicate. The team set to work immediately – they only had a few hours before they risked someone noticing something was off, and there were fewer working assembly lines than they had wanted.
But it would be enough.
Several hours later, Team Flare Scientist Celosia held up a black-grey sphere in her thin finger and smiled. All the time spent searching across the criminal underworld for a single sample. All the months of painstaking research and reverse-engineering. The long, careful process of infiltrating the Poke Ball Factory and precisely documenting how make it function at peak efficiency. All of it had come down to this, this moment, this little black device.
Celosia put two fingers to the edge of her visor. “Outing party to base,” she said, looking out on the maze of churning machinery. “Mission successful.”