Whatever I can say of Karen's room, Lance's is twice that. His entire room is gold, from wall to wall, with massive pendulum-esque creations turning and swinging every few meters. The giant mechanisms make it look like we're in the midst of a giant machine, or something not quite real. In fact, with the red carpet in the center of the room and the pillars on all sides of the raised battlefield, it looks as if we're about to challenge a king... or a god.

Lance sees me first, his cape fluttering about his feet as he walks towards me. I pass sculptures of several dragon Pokemon, lifelike and furious, and ascend the steady ramp onto the field where our final battle will take place. He meets me in the middle, and with icy tact shakes my hand.

I'm so close that I can see the golden flecks in his eyes.

"Lance." I say, feeling another presence in the arena.

"I know. I know." he repeats, as if he's trying to convince himself. "We have to do this. I won't be going easy on you. For the sake of this world, I'm not allowed to."

"No cheating." I confirm.

He sighs, looking sullen, and then draws back to the other side of the battlefield. He tosses a Poke Ball in his hand. "Ashley Hart. We knew that one day it would come to this. I can not be at your aid today, but nonetheless, I wish you luck." He shakes his head, holding out his Poke Ball. "Merina, show them our power!"

A Gyarados emerges into the stadium, its eyes dark and its composure strong. Unlike Pisces, she doesn't flail or coil herself- instead, she moves in calm undulations, like the sea in the morning. I get the immediate sensation that her coolness hides massive strength, but Pisces, who is exactly as she appears, does not shy from the challenge.

She slithers around my team and up onto the battlefield, and I feel her tense.

Merina strikes. The other Gyarados wraps Pisces in her coils and bites down on her neck, in that tender area close to the fins. I feel ice pierce my own neck and yet Pisces hardly flinches. For all the apparent strength of the move, it's not effective type wise and Pisces tries to struggle out of the other Gyarados's grip, using bursts of water to ease its coils.

They fall into a deadly knot of snake and tooth, with Merina shooting bright Dragon Pulses left and right as she aims for Pisces's head, but though I wait for a counterattack before giving Pisces my own commands, nothing comes.

Energy laces up Pisces's side, a near imperceivable spark of purple, and it suddenly strikes me why she isn't attacking.

I open my Pokedex, incredulous, and confirm the unbelievable: Pisces has used Dragon Dance no less than four times in a row and is still going, losing little health for the endeavor all the while.

I realize with a jolt of fear that it's not a threat to the opposing Gyarados, nor to Lance. Instead, it's an invitation. She's preparing herself so that we can sweep his team together.

Lance, however, has caught on. "Risky strategy, Hart. Had I stricken a single critical by now, you'd be done for, and without your ace in a battle you're already outnumbered in." He grits his teeth. "I should hope you're taking this seriously."

"I was hoping you'd have something more potent to counter my ace with." I say, hailing her back. Pisces draws the knot over with an attempted escape, moving them just close enough that I can spritz her with Hyper Potion before Merina falls on her again with another painful Ice Fang.

Ashley. I don't have forever. Pisces warns me.

So we don't.

Are you ready to see what a true apex predator can do?

Though I hesitate, further prodding reminds me that if there was ever a time to do it, it's this.

I close my eyes and feel power akin to the times I've grown closest to Celebi wash over me, but unlike the infinite intricate connections Celebi's power brings, this is just a raw, pure torrent of power. It wants to drown me, to wash everything I am away in it, and I have to struggle to remain on top of Pisces's indomitable will and fury. I can hardly believe she was ever a Gyarados, or that this is what she and Rage have to suppress daily to prevent themselves from rampaging, but there's no time to muse over it now.

I sink into her skin and feel the full force of those bites against our skin. As we flash, the pain ebbs away and all that remains is the mission. We dip away from our foe and call down Thunder, our cry echoing through the room with the power to tear down worlds, and the blast strikes Merina, who falls defeated before us.

We curl our lip in disappointment. Easy prey.

The real main course is yet ahead.

Lance says something but we can't hear it. We assume it's just him calling out his next Pokemon, which happens to be an Aerodactyl. The old beast should have stayed extinct, but it's no matter. We're sending it back to its grave anyways.

The Aerodactyl charges forwards with a screech, jaws cloaked in lightning, and we retaliate with a bolt of water. As it's shocked by its own charge (foolish, foolish, foolish) we cloak ourselves in water, the Dragon Dance raising our already deadly attack to an impossible level. The water grows until we're fully submerged, and I can feel myself drowning again, in water and adrenaline both.

Our gills flex and I breathe again, though Pisces hasn't wasted a second. We curve with impossible speed upwards and surge down, catching our foe in midair and letting all the water we've gathered pour down upon it. The Aerodactyl sinks to the ground, but the water keeps coming for a full minute.

It gives a weak, spluttering cough and is finished. We sink back down, unharmed. What would be foolish enough to hurt us?

Lance's eyes catch ours. He looks infuriatingly calm, almost pitying, but he knows well as we do that this is the only kind of brute strength his levels will listen to.

"Get on with it." we hiss.

Behind us, our own Pokemon step back a bit. I can feel Fang trying to reach out but he's not able to penetrate the sheer power of what we harness together. Everything but the fight is white noise. I can hardly think at all.

I can go further. I tell Pisces, who had no plans of stopping anyways.

Lance calls out his first Dragonite and I have just enough time to realize it's not Bella before Pisces pulls me under again. The Dragonite, once one of the most terrifying Pokemon we could imagine, now looks small and punny before us, capable of fitting squarely in our jaws. We have another tool in our arsenal, furthermore, one that even Lance doesn't know we possess yet.

The Dragonite huffs, readying a bolt of lightning, but we strike first. We open those jaws to their furthest extent and breathe ice across the arena, a long blast of Blizzard. At first the Dragonite's concentration drops and its electric energy putters out, but then its shielding its head with its hands and soon it is completely incapacitated, slumped against the ground with its eyes wide and hazy.

"Try harder." we purr, inviting the challenge. Let us. Let us go faster and faster. We dare you.

Lance yells something, but it's nothing we want to hear. He's echoed by Reginae, which we definitely don't want to hear. He'd be jealous, naturally, but he's too shy to have the heart to become anything like this.

Another Dragonite enters the battlefield, furious winged avenger, and slams into our side ineffectively. We knock it back and this time, for the sake of spontaneity, run through it with a Waterfall. The Dragonite's barely up and flying again when we bear down on it, pouring out gallons of water and the full force of our impact onto the small, clementine lizard. It cries out in pain and anger before trying to throw us back, holding its arms out and getting a Blizzard straight to the face. It's still reaching out, frozen, when Lance withdraws it, tucking the Pokeball out.

Now, another Dragonite (how many does he have?) enters, but with a swaggering confidence the other two couldn't muster. She's significantly larger, with darker orange spots across one leg, and has a variety of battle scars, some of which I've seen inflicted.

"Bella." Lance calls, one word strong enough to break our trance, "Outrage."

My mind goes back to seeing Dragon Rush back at the Team Rocket HQ, to the broken bodies on the floor, but the lack of focus is just a prelude to what comes next.

With a single, furious swing, Bella punches me right out of Pisces. I feel our jaw tilt up and then the next thing I know I'm back in my small, underwhelming body that somehow fits wrong two years later. I look down at my hands, hardly believing they're mine, and then feel my entire body hurt. I want to heave but manage to keep it in, fortunately for the expensive upholstery.

"I need to... I need to get back in there." I say, looking up at Pisces.

"You can't." Reginae tells me, sounding just as small and desperate as when we used to fight back in his Bayleef days. "Please, for the sake of all of us, you can't do that. Do you realize what happened up there? You were gone. I don't even know if you were breathing."

I feel a snarl rise in my throat before realizing it's not mine. Damn, even this far into the Pokemon league, I still have so far left to go. It's humbling but also terrifying, given the challenges I have left to face.

"Come on, Ashley. What do I have to say to stop you before you both get yourself killed?" Reginae asks, unsure of what to say in my silence.

"Nothing. Bella said everything when she punched us in the face." I give him a weak smile, just in time for it to disappear as a monstrous thud sends Pisces to the ground. I don't have time to flip up the Pokedex- instead, I just withdraw her, arms shaking, and bless Mew for letting it work. She's alive, but the Outrage has done a number on her in just two hits.

I look to the rest of the team, and with Pisces out of the way, Bella looks twice as large and twice as terrifying.

Fang steps forwards, trembling, and for the first time I feel the way most trainers must, stepping in here unprepared and suddenly unarmed, like tribute set to be slaughtered and offered as a sacrifice. This carpet's red must match the gallons of blood poured onto it over the years. When we're off the battlefield, Lance might be a friend, but here, he's just doing his job, disposing of mere tools in a world where humans are just as feral and you only get to the top by beating everyone and everything around you into the ground.

Bella slams him with his tail as if he was just another abomination on the floor of the Team Rocket HQ, the place we'd fought for together.

The Pokedex pings. Red health.

Minerva, bright, wily, and furious, takes his place, jumping over her tail and getting in a good blast straight at Bella's chest. Her tails flare up as she charges and is round kicked right in the chest, draconic energy blazing around the wound as she, too collapses.

I withdraw them both and call, "Reginae. Please."

Reginae, ever faithful, walks onto the battlefield. He's tremendously slow and has no weapon against Bella, seeing as Petal Dance, a three-turn move, would only guarantee his demise. He parries her first attack with Reflect, but the barrier it makes cracks at once. He looks to me, and I close my eyes, though there's no way I can ease myself into meditation now.

I pull his bond, begging him for just this, but he instinctively recoils, as he always has- it's as if he's flinching mentally. Before I can call out to him, Bella swipes him aside too, bearing down on him with a massive burst of flame. I feel his petals singe, sensing phantom pains burning around appendages I don't have, and he, too, falls back. The Pokedex is making the warning dings that indicate a Pokemon on the verge of collapse.

Reginae exhales smoke.

I'm sorry, he tells me, feebly reaching into my mind in his inability to form words, I was still too weak to do this for you...

It's still my fault for not fixing this sooner. He doesn't say this because we don't have the time, or perhaps because he doesn't want to make me feel worse before the end of all things. Still, we both know, in the end, it all boils down to me not being ready once again.

He, too disappears back into his Pokeball.

"Ashley." Ten calls, the sole Pokemon by my side in the midst of this chaos. He waddles forwards, taking awkward steps, and brushes a wing over my side. "You did a good job, this time. Now leave it to us." he says, and then he takes flight.

Just as before, I'm drowning, but now it's under a new type of weight. Clair's gym. The end of the world. Lance stands on the other side, trembling, knowing that he can't stop any more than I can, lest Red pull the plug.

I'm going to die at the hands of an ally this time.

Panic and fire. Panic and lava. Panic and reaching out, in desperation, for anything, as Ten falls to the floor and I have no one to switch to.

Bella lunges forwards, her regret hardened by the rush of Outrage.

Not now... not when I'm so close.

No!

Ten looks up at the last sight he'll ever see and Celebi breaks loose in my mind, unleashing a hell of timelines where this ends now, of me throwing out Pokemon hardly able to fight and their spines breaking beneath the weight of Bella's tail. I see one timeline in the distance, one potential solution, and my blood runs cold.

A massive shape appears between Bella and Ten, and Ethan enters the battlefield. The giant, skeletal Lugia-esque figure looks a little better fleshed out, though it might be my imagination. Unlike Ten, unlike Pisces, unlike any of my Pokemon, Ethan does not flinch an inch as Bella hurtles into him.

He doesn't move at all.

Then, slowly, Ethan flares to life, as if he was an automaton and not a natural being of flesh and blood. His mouth opens and the whole room fills with a long, terrible screeching. The Pokedex identifies the move as Aeroblast, but it doesn't feel like the move which Lugia uses to calm the seas at all. This Aeroblast is worse than the storms. I watch in abject horror as Bella, strongest of Lance's Pokemon, is brought to her knees, her hands on either side of her face as the screaming picks up and up and never, never stops, not until she's long fainted, and then Ethan's mouth fills with draconic fire.

Lance withdraws Bella and I catch a glimpse of his face, his terror, as he looks at me. I have violated every rule between us by doing this. There is no turning back now. I have nowhere left to turn. Ethan takes a step back and I withdraw Ten before he can crush him.

Static screeches at the back of my mind, louder and louder, as Ethan tries to probe me.

Lance sends out his final Pokemon. A Charizard, just as tall as Bella and just as battle-weary, glows and turns black, a furious blue flame erupting from its mouth. Lance's eyes go gold and then he's watching me through the Charizard, watching but barely able to attack this thing I've set before him.

Ethan doesn't wait for such hesitation. A psychic energy unlike anything Ten's ever harnessed fills the room with a gasp, as if the whole area is being vacuumed into this single point. He throws the Charizard up in the air and slams it against the ground, slams it several times, with a brutality not unlike that of a child with a new toy. His whole body is rigid save for his ribcage, which is visible as it rises and falls with the rest of his chest. The Aeroblast flickers in his throat again and whines, whines until all the fire clears from the Charizard and the black coloring seeps back into red.

Mega evolution.

One of the greatest miracles known to our kind, swatted away like it was nothing.

Lance falls back, recoiling as if he'd been thrown into his body, and he falls to his knees.

Ethan shifts again, his monstrous head turned so his eye catches mine, that perfect gray eye. From the throes of the static, I hear four clear words: Did I do okay?

Shocked at the weight of what I've just done, I just nod and withdraw him. He disappears, leaving only Lance and I on the battlefield, facing each other with equally shocked expressions. My voice dries out in my throat, but I manage, "I needed time."

"You could've bought in a sixth Pokemon." Lance replies, though he can't speak either.

"And what, sent him to the PC? Lance, he could have..."

"You could have put him out of this." Lance continues.

"If I gave up on people when things looked impossible, I wouldn't be here right now."

After a good bit of hesitation, he says, desperation and sadness in his voice, "You're our last chance, Ashley."

He looks into the mouth of the room beyond, a black void where my Pokemon will be recorded for all eternity, my team posted as one of the greats. I clutch the Poke Balls between my fingers, knowing that one of them can not and will be recorded. Still, this rank, once a dream beyond my wildest fantasies, is mine and it feels hollow. I've stolen it from the clutches of a man who'd earned it, a man who I can hardly feel resentment for even though I know he would have stayed in his lane and done his job until his battle yielded the same results as his cousin's.

He's keeping his duties. I don't want them, and more importantly, I have a job to do.

I'm not sure how long I've been standing for, but Lance finally puts a hand on my shoulder and says, "Good luck."