It's the same sinking feeling she's become used to, these long, hard nights on this submarine. A feeling everyone seems to share in waking glances every morning, sleep-encrusted eyes filled with foreboding. There is a foulness in the air, a miasma that fills the unconscious mind, the feeling of drowning here beneath the sea...

She breathes in, desperate for air, and she chokes on the smoke. Eyes raise to the skies, filled with pillars of ash and flames. They obscure the gods that descend upon the city, the place where legends begin.

She spits, and her hands reach for her blades.

"Not like we've got a choice. Looks like it's them, or us."

She can see it on the far edge of the crater, flares of ice, fire, and lightning, as the League presses its agenda, its own form of 'diplomacy'. She has all she needs to negotiate right here in her hands. The swords buzz angrily, hungry for blood. They do not seem cowed by the dread in her chest.

"By all means, Inoue -- lead the way."

And lead he does. He leads them into the fray. He leads them until before them stands a legend that looks down upon them. Electricity cracks behind the black dragon. It looks upon them with contempt, her especially. It sees within the beautiful white swordswoman anathema, an enemy to be destroyed. The dog is beneath its notice, a side-effect. Readings outside this dream, where their bodies sleep, show that both of their brains spike with stress at precisely the same moment. It is not natural, no more than the sun setting in the east would be natural.[break]
It calls down destruction upon them. It surges with anger. It surges with ideals it means to bring forth into reality. It calls down thunder upon them with all the wrath a dragon god can muster. The dog plays a favorite trick of his. Taking to a knee, he raises his sword. Shadows cover them, spreading like cancer across the air between the bolt and the humans.[break]
"I'm on the defense!" He growls. "You strike out, I'll cover ya!" Zekrom roars, daring her to come.

A boundless azure sea meets the deep red of hell. She gazes straight into the eyes of the onyx giant, hair standing on end. She can feel the static energy in the air. It gives her the same feeling as the sheriff's cold steel gaze, cutting straight through her like a blade.

"Got it."

She takes a step.

--In that moment, a tremendous bolt of lightning is called down. Swords in her grasp meet it, swift enough to deflect it as if it were a sword fashioned from the god itself, a blade of heaven. She scarcely feels the pain ripple down her arms, into her chest, striking her heart...

She takes a breath, and she's back on the ground.

The portent of death come and gone, her kirlia's future sight gives her pause. Hand falls to her hip, and her Excadrill explodes from its ball as the bolt of lightning is summoned from the heavens. It spins like a drill, aimed straight at the god's heart.

A clash of steel and claw splits the sky. Around them, the waterfront rumbles. Every step of a distant beast brings with it a promise of death. Groudon looks down upon the crater. It is a colossus, a beast that moves mountains. Nothing, no beast of air or land can contend with that titan. All his shadows can do is shroud them from its sight.[break]
"I got ya. Keep up the good work!" He exhales a sharp breath of air, turning and swinging his sword at the sound of someone intruding upon the battle. Melody Miro stands behind Cobalion. She says nothing. The dog does not remember her voice, nor does he in this infernal nightmare feel the need to give her one. Faces don't matter. The blade in her hand matters. Cobalion swings, and it swings quick. It clashes with Kusanagi, flying free from its pokeball.[break]
"We've gotta endure. Fight. Tatakai! Tatakai!" And he does, his two sacred swords clashing against Cobalion's one while the heavens cry with the fury of clashing Yin and Yang.

The drake's lightning flickers off of the drill's claws. She emerges from her spin at the apex of her climb, raking claws against the air as the god pulls back. It opens its gigantic maw wide, blue energy congealing within its gullet.

"GO!! Spin down its throat if you have to!!"

Hana screams, her voice raw as she watches the pokemon tear at the sky.

Blue flames cover it like a veil, burning ire against that which is. They seek to unmake, to recreate in their image. All will be ash in their wake, destruction all that is left of the League's ambition. Their ideal world is dead. Those who oppose them will burn. And what is built in the ashes, that is below the drake's concern.

The flames cover the excadrill entirely, but she spins white-hot down its throat, rejecting all the ideals of a murderous prince.

The dragon reaches down its own throat. Any true creature born of ideals would do the same. To reach for an ideal is to destroy oneself, it is to invite destruction to see an electrified world realized. It rips out the drill in a swelling of blood that sparks like distant thunderclouds. It bleeds, and its eyes set across the bay. It throws the drill far, far away, like a baseball pitcher winding up a perfect pitch.[break]
Just behind her, a dog deals with its own battle and its own demons. She is Hoenn's champion, though the dog does not know she wears that title. All he knows is that she is an enemy, someone he has fought, one who must die. The money he'd earn for really, truly killing her would allow him to buy his suit. He'd have power enough to keep Yumi safe from anything that would challenge her. His dog heart would beat with renewed vigor.[break]
So, he strikes. The blades clash time and time again, but it takes more than brute force to beat a legendary. Kusanagi is cleaved in two. Sheer steel is melted, cast out of the dream.[break]
Think, dog. A ghost whispers. Use your mind. Play chess.[break]
As two of his Pokemon die, as a sword melts in his hand, he whistles and the sole survivor of his original team emerges.[break]
Jubei's bitter blade scorches Cobalion, even as he himself is melted.

Black blood falls freely onto the stone below. It sizzles, turns rock molten, burns away everything in its path. The ichor flows and erases, as the embodiment of ideals should, to make way for that-which-should-be.

Hana leaps into the air, swords singing as the cut through the sky. The maimed throat of the dragon is a shower of sparks, and black blood, and glistening, wet flesh. She longs to sever it completely, to abort the desolate world it longs to bring forth.

"FUCK, your mug's ugly as SIN!"

Blue sparks give way to a wicked, blue lightning bolt. A rattling cry that reached down to her bones. She looses her blades to contest it, feeling her flesh begin to disintegrate.

Blood sizzles. Blackens. The world around them cracks and tears away. People howl. Screams tear the night. Distant fires signal the end of all things. Here, everywhere and nowhere in time's precarious balance, they fight legends as mere mortals. Nothing does, or ever will, look upon them. Yet still, they scream defiance. They challenge destiny.[break]
He wakes, and he screams his anger at the world. He screams in time with the hum of a monitor. He huffs in the dreamy mist of another world, and he is simply in Lulu Flint's lab once more. Perhaps declan walsh, Darkrai's chosen, is somewhere close by, or perhaps the nightmare mist was kept in a jar. Either way, they are in the waking world again. He trembles, and feels something decidedly human: relief. Relief that the nightmare is over. Relief, that it was all just a dream.[break]
"You uh...you fight legends pretty good, new girl." He grins. "Sorry, didn't think that dream would get so intense."

She is wreathed in the burning blue of ideals. Every atom in her body screams as if they are falling apart. She opens her mouth to cry out, but no noise comes out. All she can hear is a constant drone, the buzzing of an engine as the hadron accelerator in its tail screams to life.

And then, there is nothing but black.

She wakes with a start. The droning, it fills her with dread. She furrows her brow, and recognizes it suddenly as the submarine's engine a floor away. She pushes herself up, suddenly dizzy.

"... Just a dream," she responds. "Can do whatever you want in a dream."

She holds her head. The ache grows worse the more she moves.

"But a dream's just a dream. Don't worry 'bout it."

The mangled throat of the dragon, glowing blue as a star, still burns bright in her vision when she closes her eyes.