Chương 85: Interlude - Alyssa 4

The first sign that something was wrong was sudden, and subtle. Just a slight flickering of the overhead lights, keeping the half-full stadium illuminated. Actually, that wasn't quite right. The actual first sign something was wrong was my best friend not showing up on my doorstep at eight AM. - I paced in front of the phone indecisively, staring at the device as I went back and forth both in my mind and across the carpet.

We hadn't made any firm plans or commitments last night, but Fe knew my schedule almost as well as I did by this point, so she had to be well-aware that I had a tournament to get to today. Had she forgotten? Overslept? I considered the phone for a few more seconds, and then made a decision. I reached for the handset and shot a call to her apartment, only to get sent straight to voicemail. That was odd, but not unheard of. Maybe their home phone was out of battery? Actually, did they even have a cordless phone?

I couldn't remember, it'd been too long since I'd been to Fe's apartment. I reached out to her Pokégear next, only an electronic voice to tell me that 'the device you're trying to call cannot be reached.'

"Young miss?" Wilma's familiar voice came from the kitchen, "Is Fe not here yet? She's going to miss breakfast."

"I can't get in contact with her," I told the aging housekeeper.

"Well that's odd," Wilma leaned around the corner.

"Did she mention anything about being busy today?"

"Not that I can remember," I shook my head as I replaced the phone.

"Maybe something unexpected came up?"

"Well I hope everything is alright," Wilma muttered as she and Montressue set our plates.

"You have a tournament this morning, right?"

"Yeah, it starts at ten."

"Well you'd better eat then. It wouldn't do to compete on an empty stomach." Wilma's kalosian toast did smell amazing, but the delectable smell did little to dispel the unease in my gut.

"Should I even go today? I don't want to head over alone with how the streets are nowadays."

"Just call some other friends," Wilma reassured me.

"Don't you know anyone else who will be in attendance? Or I can go with you, if you really need me to."

"I guess I know a couple of people who I might be able to call, but I should probably check on Fe. She really should have been here by now."

"I'm sure she's just running late," Wilma reassured me.

"And besides, not showing up for a tournament counts as a forfeiture. That won't be very good for your record." It was true, I'd been challenging people a little above my weight-class recently, and my win-loss ratio was teetering a little too close to the latter for comfort. I was almost at one loss for every five wins! Today's 'Teenage Titans' tournament would be a great chance to make up some ground on my ratio and earn a whole bunch of points in the process.

Only competitors sixteen and younger could qualify, which meant mostly fellow Green-Leaguers. And best of all, my peers wouldn't be able to avoid me like they'd been doing for the past few weeks. I knew my reputation was scary, but when people two-hundred places above me started outright refusing my challenges, I realized that I might have a problem on my hands. Fortunately, a tournament offered a way around that.

People were going to compete in these no matter what, and if their bracket just happened to put them against me, or one of the two prodigies who'd hit Blue before they turned seventeen? Well, such was life. Maybe I'd even get a chance to battle one of those two Blue League members, if they deigned to show up and my bracket was favorable enough. Pikachu and I had been growing in leaps and bounds under Mr. Gima's tutelage, and while I still wasn't able to crack the top fifty in Green (not for lack of trying!), anything below that was within my bounds. And none of those folks up that high in the league were younger than seventeen, which meant as long as no one from the next division was slumming it this weekend, we had a great shot of taking home the gold in this tourney. Which meant I really needed to get to Mercury Stadium in the next hour-and-a-half. Technically, I could try to hunt down Mr. Gima and request that he escort me.

The Unovan was surely watching my apartment from somewhere nearby (which was reassuring and disturbing in equal measures), but I wasn't sure how Wilma would take him as an escort, and explaining my relationship to the foreigner would necessitate telling her how much danger I was in, something I refused to do. That didn't leave me with a whole lot of options, but I could think of one person whose number I had who'd almost certainly be going to the tournament today.

They weren't a person whose company I particularly enjoyed, but desperate times. - Technically, just as the Teenage Titans tournament was open to Blue League competitors who fit in under the age limit, it was also open to battlers from the junior circuit who wanted to try their hand at punching up. Not many tried to make the jump, but the rewards in battle points for underdogs could be outstanding, and the opportunity to view inter-league battles was a big part of the appeal of age-bracket tournaments.

All that to say, it wasn't a guarantee that Bert and Gretchen would be trying to compete, but it wasn't Farfetch'd either. The other teen picked up my call on the third ring, his voice even deeper than I remembered from the last time we'd spoken.

"This is Bert."

"Bert, it's Alyssa," I said into the receiver.

"Are you and Gretchen competing in today's Teenage Titans tournament." I could almost physically hear the boy wince at cringe-inducing the name spoken aloud.

"Champ and I were planning on it, but Gee's on a break day. Why'd you ask?"

"Mechry Stadium is in a rough part of the city, and I wasn't feeling super enthused about heading downtown with just Pikachu and I. Do you want to meet up and travel there together?" Muttering came from the other side, faint voices that told me that Bert had put his hand over the receiver. That went one for a solid fifteen seconds before he responded, "Gee says that sounds like a good idea. What bus line were you going to take?" Everything after that was just figuring out logistics.

I had thought that Bert and Gretchen lived pretty close to Fe and I, we all went to the same school after all, but apparently they'd moved a little further out towards the edges of the city after classes ended. Apparently, their mom had something going on in this area though, so they told me they'd catch a ride with her and meet me at the nearest stop heading towards downtown. Escort secured, I set about grabbing everything I'd need for the day.

Wilma ended up walking me to the bus stop, and waiting with me for my former classmates to arrive. Hard-eyed security goons and roving bands of disgruntled teenagers prowled the streets, but Wilma's hard-eyed stare and Montressue's obvious strength meant no one bothered us as we sat at the bus-stop. Eventually, an armored van of all things pulled up, depositing Gretchen, Bert, and their partners onto the curbside before tearing down the street towards some unseen destination.

Both of their Pokémon had evolved, going from scrawny Machop and unmoving Kakuna to muscular Machoke and frenetic Beedrill. Their trainers hadn't undergone transformations nearly as dramatic, but some of Bert's acne was beginning to show signs of clearing up, and Gretchen had put on a bit of much-needed weight. Brief introductions were made, and then we were off, boarding the bus that'd take us downtown. I waved goodbye to Wilma as she and Montressue started the trek back to my apartment.

They technically had their own place nearby, but ever since public order had started declining, they'd been staying with me. I wish I could have told them not to, kept them out of harm's way, but the pair were well-capable of taking care of themselves, and also well-capable of ignoring anything I had to say if they thought it was for my own good.

"Thanks for putting a word in with Fe for me," Bert's words broke me out of my reverie, and I turned to face the other teenager.

"I know you didn't have to, so I appreciate your trying."

"Even if it didn't work out?" I asked, one eyebrow raised. The boy shrugged.

"All I can do is offer. If she thinks she's better off never seeing me again, that's her right." The boy said it with a blasé tone, but his face didn't look nearly so unbothered.

"Why the focus on Fe, anyway?" I asked him.

"You two bullied plenty of other kids over the years." That got a wince from the pair.

"We've actually been reaching out to everyone we can find," Gretchen supplied.

"It's not just Fe, I promise. We've been trying to make amends with– well, basically everyone we went to school with, actually." That tracked with what I remembered from the trio's track record. Speaking of whom, "And what about Will?" That earned me yet another wince. The two teenagers hesitated, shooting unsure looks at one another, before some rumbling from the ball on Bert's waist elicited a sigh from the boy.

"We had a falling out, just a few days after what happened with Fe. He told us that we were out of control, and that he didn't want to have anything to do with us anymore." I felt my eyebrows climbing into my hairline.

"Will did? That Will?" Gretchen barked a laugh.

"Yeah, that's sort of what knocked some sense into us. We figured if Will was making a stand, we really were at rock bottom." That– wasn't a particularly unfair characterization of the other boy, at least from my memory of him.

"And you haven't heard from him since?"

"We reached out to ask if he wanted to do the rounds and apologize with us, but I think he's just washed his hands of everything. Dropped out of the circuit, gone full no-communication. No idea what he's up to now." That was dramatic, and I said as much, to which I got only shrugs.

"It's his prerogative," Gretchen told me.

"Guardians know, we dragged him into more than enough nonsense already. Not our place to force anything else on him." And really, what else was there to say about that? We made other minor bits of small talk on the way to the stadium, mostly comments on the weather, or on the uneasy feeling suffusing the city's streets, but we'd lost our appetites for any actual substantial conversations.

A certain someone also slipped me a note at some point letting me know that they were tagging along (and by proxy that they'd fared dodged yet more of Techne's public transit), and I managed to surreptitiously pass back a question on whether or not said someone had any information on my best friend's whereabouts. My response was a no and a frowny face. I had to fight very hard to keep an exasperated sigh out of my lips as I tucked the note away where my former classmates wouldn't notice it.

- My hopes that the tournament itself would be more interesting than the journey out here were quickly dashed when I arrived. No sign of anyone higher than top five-hundred anywhere on the bracket. Worse, my personal route to the finals only started getting even mildly interesting at the semifinals, where the favorite to meet me had a rank in the upper six-hundreds. At least the points were likely as free as I'd been expecting, not that I was counting my Torchic.

Just because the competition wasn't at their fiercest didn't mean I shouldn't be. Even if Pikachu and I blasted through our first two opponents before either could get off more than a single move per round. My performance was expected. What wasn't was how well Bert did for himself, pushing Champ and himself to the limit and breaking through into the quarterfinals after a grueling, three-round slog against a girl two years older than either of us and her Blaziken.

Unfortunately for them, that meant they had to face me right after the noon intermission. Even worse (for them), a certain (invisible) someone passed me some good news. Fe was here and in the audience, and the relief from that revelation made even her cryptic warning feel like a minor concern. Just another couple of hours and I'd be able to take my best friend to task about where she'd been. And the first obstacle in the way of that were Bert and Champ.

"Nothing personal, Bertrand. Need these points, you get it," I engaged in the time-honored tradition of trash talk as we emerged from the tunnel out onto the pitch.

"You had a good run though."

"Pika, Pikachu!" my partner backed me up from her place on my shoulder.

"It's gonna be so embarrassing when you lose to someone a whole league below you Alyssa. You'll have a hard time showing your face for weeks," Bert retorted, as Champ flexed in our direction. In spite of any prior strain in our relations, neither of us really meant anything by the words (except maybe Pikachu). You just had to talk shit to whoever you were facing on the day. Especially if you knew each other. Doing any less would be telling them you didn't actually see them as competition.

And that would be a real insult. We each crossed to our sides of the arena. All of the other battlefields were powered down now that we'd reach top eight, there'd only be one fight happening at a time from here on. I slipped the bulky AR visor over my head, feeling its familiar weight settle on my brow.

"Welcome ladies and gentleman, to the first match of the quarterfinals at the Teenage Titans Tourney!" The crowd was nowhere near as overpowering as some I'd experienced in my time, but the shouting and cheering was still loud enough to make me wince.

"We've got a great match lined up for our first battle of the afternoon. On the east side, you know her, you fear her, it's Alyssa Madaka! A Techne Dojo graduate and the youngest-ever competitor to make it into the Green League, she and her partner Pikachu have been taking names and battling all challengers all winter! The commentator's introduction tore more cheers from the crowd, riling them up for the match ahead.

"Meeting her across the field is Bertrand Crall! A fellow alumni from the Techne Dojo, he and his Machoke Champ are rising stars in Ferrum's Junior League!" the shuffling of papers was faintly audible, the announcer no-doubt checking her notes, "and as it turns out, these two actually competed together as a tag-team in the last tournament they both attended. That was the annual Dojo Challenge, which they won-handily. I can't wait to see what they have in-store for us today!"

Our partners paced in front of us, both Pokémon clearly restless to get started. I watched Pikachu through the barrier for a few moments as the announcer continued to vamp, before pulling the sepia-tinted visor down, over my eyes. The device was already synced up with the stadium's systems from my earlier matches, and a countdown was flashing in front of my eyes, telling me how long I had until the battle began. Thirty seconds became twenty. At ten, at the announcer's prompting, I pressed the button on my AR visor.

Like a circuit connecting, sparks ran between Pikachu and I. A live wire, carrying our full beings back and forth in a galvanic cycle. She became me, and I became her, and for a brief while, two were one. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. At five, the barriers began flashing and showing the countdown in-time with the display worn by the trainer, and the announcer started counting down. Four. Three.

We resisted the impulse to turn our head, to look for a familiar tanned face in the crowd. Two. One. The lights flickered, just for a brief moment. We almost didn't notice, and we didn't have time to care. Because the battle had begun, and sixty-five kilos of angry Champion were heading right for us. The bulky Fighting-type moved with surprising speed, crossing the field in mere moments with fists raised for a massive hammer blow.

We could have juked back, taken distance and sprayed our opponent with peals of electricity, but that wasn't really our style. Instead, we met The Champion halfway across the field, dodging his swung arm by inches and retaliating with a Brick Break of our own. We made impact with the taller fighter's shin, and the impact made grotesquely swollen muscles there ripple. The Champion kept their footing though, and started a flurry of crushing blows that would have planted us in the ground had they connected squarely.

We couldn't dodge every single attack, but what we couldn't avoid, we deflected off of brief Protects, and what we couldn't block, we retaliated through. A brutal Low Kick was stopped by an Iron Tail, a savage Bulldoze earned a crackling Thunder. The Champion was standing up to our hits better than we'd been expecting, and even more impressively, we couldn't find an opening to launch into a combo. Our standard openers were read, and avoided, even at the cost of some chip.

An upswung Iron Tail met arm, instead of the chin, a Quick Attack onto our opponent's back saw the Fighting-type hitting themself with a Knockoff to dislodge us. Clearly, someone had been doing their research. Unfortunately for them, in spite of their ability to keep the fight in neutral, they were losing the battle of attrition. And we had more tricks in our fur than what we showed on the regular.

We got our chance as we barely sidestepped a Drain Punch, the hissing, sucking energy from the move still sapping some of our strength just for passing near us. We latched onto the outstretched limb, gritting through the drain of energy as we pulled with all our might, using our opponent's own strength and weight against them. It took leveraging our tail against the taller Pokémon's arm, but we were able to throw them, our Reversal hauling the Fighting-type off their feet using their arm as a lever.

Their back hit the ground in front of us, cratering the pitch and knocking the wind out of them, surprise at being hurled stunning them as much as the impact. That was the opening we needed, and we took off into the air, charging power at the end of our tail. We whipped it out, sending the Electro Ball hurtling at our downed opponent. The projectile took The Champion in the chest, right before they were able to regain their feet, pushing them back into their crater.

And instead of petering out, the overcharged attack bounced, the condensed pall of energy ricocheting off our opponent and heading back to us. A small jolt of Agility gave us the maneuverability necessary to spin in the air again and hit the attack with our tail, resetting its trajectory once more. This time, our opponent was ready enough for the incoming attack to block it with a Protect, earning them just enough time to stagger to their feet.

What they weren't ready for was us, descending like a meteor, tail aglow. The Iron Tail put The Champion right back onto the pitch, with us standing atop them. We raised our paws to our cheeks and ran the fur along them up and down the sparking pouches, charge filling suffusing our arms. The Champion fought through the first Thunder Punch. And the second. Not the third. - The round took just over a minute, which was longer than most of our opponents had stood up to us this tourney.

It felt bad to say, but we hadn't really been pushed. We didn't even need to show off any of the combos or tech we'd been working on with Mr. Gima. I could see Bert and Champ conversing on the other side of the field. The pair had their heads together as the former showed the latter something on a notebook, going over some last-minute plan or strategy.

Pikachu sat calmly on my lap as I ran a brush through her fur and we both waited for the next round to start as the screens overhead showed replays from the fight that'd just ended. - The delay required for the officials to reset the field reset took longer than the actual fight had. Not an uncommon occurrence, but an annoying one nonetheless. It was finally time for the second round though, and we were both ready.

The barrier sprung up around Pikachu and Champ, blocking them off from us, and Bert and I both donned our AR visors. For some reason, the display showing the countdown looked fuzzy, as if static were creeping in around the edges of it. WIth a frown, I turned one of the dials on the device, trying to tune its connection to the Great Synergy Stone. If anything, the strange artifacts in my vision only intensified.

With a frown, I lifted the visor up, and turned to look at the stone suspended near the stadium's south wall. The massive polyhedron rotated slowly in the air, giving off prismatic light as it ever did.

"Competitors! It's time to synergize!" the announcer's voice broke me out of my reverie. Pikachu was looking at me with uncertainty, and I quickly turned back to the battle and shuddered the visor down. I clicked the button on the side of the device that enhanced our connection, and like usual, our minds sped towards one another, colliding like charged electromagnets. Normally, the impact fused our psyche, combined two into one, like two hydrogen atoms combining to form helium. This time, the impact was deadened.

It felt like a film was separating us, a third-party in our union clinging to both of us, inhibiting our ability to connect. With the interloper came pain, a sharp headache that saw me clutching futilely at my forehead. Distantly, much further than she should have been, I felt Pikachu recoiling, experiencing the same agony as me. We both looked up, our actions disconnected and stilted, to find Bert and Champ experiencing something similar.

The former was hunched over, head in his hands, and the latter had fallen to one knee, barely able to keep his bulging muscles from flexing out of control. Something was wrong, very obviously so, but the countdown continued ticking down, even as the barriers flickered, before stabilizing. The yellow lattice solidified into a solid sheet of ochre, indicating that the protective walls had been strengthened to their maximum capacity.

I slammed the emergency release button on the side of the visor, and Pikachu's already faint connection vanished from my mind. I ripped the AR device free from my head and turned to the nearest official. Whatever I'd been about to say died in my throat, however, as I found the staff member keeled over, vomiting onto the bare stone beneath her. The poor woman's reaction was extreme, but everywhere I turned, I saw spectators and workers alike similarly afflicted.

Most retained control of their stomachs, but almost everyone had a hand held up to their head, like the same migraine that'd crept up on me was impacting the entire stadium. If anything, I was one of the least affected people I could see. Most people seemed completely impaired by whatever was happening. Well, the humans were. The majority of the Pokémon were holding up better, mere winces and infrequent headshakes compared to groans of pain and blank eyes. Majority didn't mean all, though.

The nearest camera-Magnemite had collapsed, and lay fritzing on the ground, shooting off random sparks. It wasn't the only one. I could make out more nonhuman forms in the crowd, eyes glazed and bodies catatonic. A few Pokémon had collapsed but weren't yet unconscious, and from their number I saw wisps of shadow, small clouds of darkness that wafted away from their trembling forms. The latter count included both Pikachu and Champ, the two of them swaying inside of the barrier as if they were drunk.

The pressure in my skull intensified, and I staggered, barely able to stand upright. Sparks shot off of my skull, as I took a moment to focus. My mind flashed back to what I'd been learning from Mr. Gima, the myriad of ways I could channel the syn in my body to various effects. I hated doing this, mostly because it made me look ridiculous, but now was hardly the time to be worrying about appearances. I squeezed my eyes shut in concentration, and the undirected sparks coalesced, pulled in instead of directed out.

My hair started standing on end, and I knew that if I looked in a mirror, I'd see my auburn locks splayed about as if I was holding onto an electrostatic generator. The malaise suffusing me immediately eased, and I opened my eyes again to check on the rest of the stadium. If anything, things had only gotten worse in the brief moments I'd spent collecting myself. This didn't make any sense. There wasn't any kind of move or attack I could think of that would cause this sort of reaction, at this sort of scale.

And that wasn't to mention the great synergy stone! Its presence should bolster and protect everyone contained within its aegis, helping them fight off any sort of weakness or malaise. That thought brought clarity to my mind, and my eyes went again to the hovering crystal. The great synergy stone was massive, as they all were. Eight meters in any direction from point to point, the ten-tonne polyhedron looked the same as ever to my eyes, its scintillating light washing over the entire stadium.

Except, now that I peered closer, something seemed off about that illumination. Normally, a synergy stone shed its inner light in a dizzying array of colors and hues, seemingly at random (though scientists would insist that there is in fact a predictable pattern somewhere in the noise). The glow coming off the great synergy stone was too– regular. Like a pattern playing on repeat. I hesitated for only a moment, thinking through the best way to get my message out.

My eyes alighted on the downed camera-Magnemite, and then flickered to one of the overhead screen showing it's face-planted perspective of the dirt. I grabbed my bag and scrambled over to the insensate Pokémon, pulling out my notes as I went. I tore out a fresh page, and scribbled some words hastily over it before sticking the piece of paper right in front of the camera lens. Something is wrong with the great synergy stone! I surely wasn't the only one who'd figured out what was wrong, but crucially, Mr.

Gima didn't have the background to realize what was happening. Hopefully he'd glance at the screen at some point and see my explanation. Before I could work through what my next step should be, a cry of agony came from the nearby battlefield, jolting my attention back to Pikachu and Champ. Neither had moved, but both had keeled over, unable to support their own weights.

The pair sported identical expressions of misery, and the puffs of shadow flowing off of them had coalesced into full-on coronas of malign energy blazing around the two Pokémon. My eyes widened. The great synergy stone could influence an entire arena, but its effects were magnified intensely for anyone actually inside the arena's barriers. Pikachu cried out, her voice a scream of agony, and I sprinted over to my discarded AR visor, hauling it up off the ground and slamming it onto my head.

Whatever Pikachu was going through right now, there was no way I was letting her experience it alone. Except, when I slammed the 'connect' button on the side of the device, nothing happened.

"No, no, no," I muttered as I ripped the device off and looked at it. An LED indicator on the front panel was blinking red, confirming what I already knew. Whatever was happening in the stadium had rendered my AR gear unusable.

"Fuck!" I slammed a fist futilely into the ochre barrier. It didn't so much as flicker at the impact. I sprinted away again, sliding to a stop by the insensate official and tearing her radio off her belt.

"Hello? Is anyone there?" I shouted into the receiver. I got nothing but static on the line, and clicked through several channels repeating myself until someone finally responded.

"This is Ranna, with security," a woman's voice finally responded to me.

"Who is this? Check-in!"

"I'm one of the competitors on the field!" I explained.

"You need to shut the barriers down! Whatever's happening is magnified for the Pokémon inside them!"

"Shit. We're locked out of the control room, and the staff inside isn't responding!" Ranna grunted back, her voice laced with pain.

"Please, you have to get them out. I don't– I don't know how much longer they can hold on." The radio was silent for a moment, before the voice came through again.

"I'm sorry. We'll get into the control room as soon as we can. And I've already got people checking on the stone. Just– just hold tight. Everything's going to be okay," and with that final lie, the woman closed the connection. A flare of anger welled up in me, wrath hot and heavy in my throat. I would have screamed, and shouted, and raged, but none of that would help my partner.

The radio crackled in my hand, as electricity ran off my hair and coursed through the device, causing it to let out an electronic screech before falling silent, inert. Distantly, as if I were moving in a dream, I turned away from the collapsed staffer. I staggered back to the ochre barrier separating me from my partner, slamming against it and sliding down the crackling wall of energy. I felt a buzzing at the edge of my mind, a terrible thought worming its way into my skull.

Through the yellow haze, I could see Pikachu. She'd hauled herself to the edge of the arena, and she lay less than a meter away from me, her eyes glazed and unseeing. I could see an orange sheen in them, creeping in around the edges, and her whole body was shuddering. Sweat matted her fur as if she'd just been pulled from a river, and electricity fired off of her in random spurts that scorched the ground and flickered harmlessly off the strengthened barrier.

The sight of her suffering coalesced my idea into resolve. I reached out, grabbing my dropped AR visor and shattering it against the barrier. The device came to pieces after two impacts, and from its twisted, plastic remains I plucked a gleaming, prismatic stone. The small polyhedron paled in comparison to the one rotating in the arena's southern corner, and it was completely drained of its normal, inner light. I reached a hand up, feeling the sparks scattering off my hair and scalp. I focused on the energy there.

I was tired from battling all morning, malaised from whatever was afflicting the stadium, and angry beyond all reasonable measure that no one was able to free my partner from her suffering. And I set all of it aside, because the only thing that mattered was getting to her. My empty hand felt hot, as if instead of empty space I was clutching a ball of plasma. I reached out, pushing both my own energy, and the inert synergy stone clasped in my other hand into the barrier in front of me.

An arena's barrier is a funny thing. Powered by the earth's energy, the yellow walls of energy are excellent at dispersing elemental energy. They're less good at dealing with heavy impacts, but still more than sufficient for repulsing stray projectiles or launched competitors. What they're bad at, is holding up under sustained pressure. A barrier has to cover a lot of space, and when continuous force is applied to one portion of the construct, it has to pull energy from elsewhere to maintain its cohesion.

Remove enough power entirely, and the thing might collapse altogether. Not usually a problem in a stadium, when there's a great synergy stone present to supply the barrier with power. And even still. Battlers get frequent warnings to not direct attacks straight at a barrier, and to avoid holding a move against it for too long. That warning had become a guide. A ramshackle solution to an impossible problem. Sparks cascaded off of me, and the wall of light I was trying to drill my hands through.

The synergy stone in my hand began growing warmer, and then glowing, light erupting off the worn crystal once more. My hands ached, one from the heat suffusing it and the other from the sharp edges of the crystal I was slamming into the barrier. My arms were screaming, and my skull felt as if it might split open at any moment. I opened my mouth, and a howl tore out of me, as my hair flew wildly in every conceivable direction. And yet the thought of stopping never once crossed my mind. Something had to give.

The stone slipped out of my hand. Like I'd hoped, it had siphoned enough energy to weaken the barrier to the point where I could push it through the wall of light. And then my hands were in, fingers caught against the edges of the hole I'd carved in the veil separating my partner and I. One last thing about barriers. They had fail-safes. They had to. Imagine if a competitor got punched halfway through one, but the system didn't collapse. Imagine if the barrier tried to reform through said competitors.

Suffice to say, once was enough, and all future arena barriers in Ferrum would simply shatter entirely after a hole was pierced through one. With a sound like glass shattering, the wall of light separating me from my partner came to pieces. Motes of energy and illumination that swiftly dissolved into nothing. Pikachu's brown eyes looked up at me, and I could see flecks of orange creeping in around their edges.

In spite of my screaming arms, in spite of my inability to feel either of my palms, in spite of the headache that made me want to vomit, I reached out. One hand touched my partner, and the other closed around the gleaming synergy stone, shining up from the turf. Something in my brain was white-hot. Burning, short-circuiting, blazing like a bolt of lightning. My partner, bright and quick and endlessly driven, had been fighting something, warring with it.

It was the same force suffusing the entire stadium, but concentrated, enhanced within the confines of the barrier. Will the last bit of energy I could muster, I grabbed my partner by the scruff of her neck, and hauled us both backwards, out of the arena. Immediately the pressure weakened, though it still assaulted us both. Voices I could barely hear, rage and pain and fear without source and without end.

My partner and I huddled together, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see Bert doing the same for Champ, the boy having somehow managed to drag the Machoke away from the battlefield. A minute passed, two, as we clung to one another, physically and mentally. There was no beating whatever was bearing down on our mind, only survival, bare and tenuous. I could almost see it, a malevolent force circling us, searching for ways in.

It already had claws dug into my partner, but trying to dislodge them just increased the bleeding, so I drained myself in her stead, filling her with what she lacked and leaking my own spirit into the void. Halfway through the third minute, I didn't think either of us would ever rise again. And then, with a sigh, a familiar, comforting aura suffused the stadium once more. A wave of energy poured off the great synergy stone, bright and real and true.

The earth's power, Gaia, suffused the arena, and with it, all shadows were banished, and all truths laid bare. A camera-Magnemite caught it first, hovering up near the stone and causing its close-up view to project on one of the stadium's screens. The stone itself was trapped between two opposing forces, a wave of pustulant orange corruption struggling on its top side, warring against a prismatic welling of energy erupting from below.

The top faces of the stone cracked and ruptured under the strain, and crystalline overgrowths flaked and sharded off of it, still lit with a malevolent inner light. A man stood by the hovering crystal, his hand pressed up against it. He was tall, over two meters and change, and clothed in a black jumpsuit. His face wasn't visible, obscured as it was by a military-style gas mask, but his short-cropped hair was dark green, and the edges of a beard were visible on the periphery of his face.

Next to him were two slumped, writhing bodies, held up against the great synergy stone by a Hitmonchan and a Hitmonlee. And standing behind all of them, was a distinct, vulpine form. Black fur tipped with drips of red. Blue eyes, and crimson claws. A Zoroak, just like Ink. Except this Pokémon was lither, and had an expression drawn in a rictus snarl. She turned, yelping something at the man, and as she did so, she revealed her other eye, one wholly colored in swirls of orange.

With a snarl of his own, the man stepped away from the stone, his hands flashing out. The two Fighting-types vanished, dropping their shuddering cargo to the ground, the two men in security uniforms insensate. As the three humans lost contact with the hovering crystal, the gleaming, prismatic energy welling up on its bottom exploded out, pushing away the swollen orange corruption that'd been festering on the great synergy stone's upper edges.

Man and Dark-type whirled, only to be confronted by another masked figure, this one wearing a dapper suit and a facial covering fit for a masquerade. He too was accompanied by a Zoroark, and Mr. Gima was quick to release his other Pokémon as well. The stranger matched him, sending out the same two Fighting-types, as well as a Golbat and a Scyther. The two shouted words not audible through the screen, and then an explosion rang out, as an obscuring haze of smoke erupted around the pair and their warring teams.

And that was the last I saw of either of them, before the final remaining dregs of energy I'd been clutching ran dry, and my head collapsed onto the turf. My partner was already slumbering away in my arms, and she definitely had the right idea. A nap sounded really, really good right now.