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As ruinous light floods the battlefield, MATIAS SILPH’s teeth rupture. Skewered as he is, Alba has no defence against the volatile fury of the land. Next thing he knows, he is on his back, trails of red snaking through the rapidly rising water. The foot that had been impaled resembles a slab of meat more than a part of the human body. Having burst like a ripe egg, it is beyond the reach of Hitoshi Inoue’s healing waters, even as the gash in his shoulder slowly fuses shut.[break][break]

“And the rest, Floette! We need every… last… drop.” The grunt yells in a voice heady with pain and adrenaline, hand outstretched to that patchwork sky; twin suns, endless rain, a dying black hole… a god and his dragon plummeting to earth.[break][break]

His Relicanth is not a Pokémon built for a hasty retreat; he cannot stand to flee on foot. In the wake of @shred’s divine intervention, Alba can simply pray his hateful fires do not consume him entirely.[break][break]

He has no target in mind as Floette prepares to unleash its Light of Ruin once more. MATIAS SILPH, illeana reyes, annalise henderson: each of them bleeds into the other like an amateur watercolour. In his head, he knows that the region will drown if that ancient god escapes. In his heart, he does not care. The world of Alba Evovae is the heartbeat in his chest, the blood rush through his veins, and the pieces on the board that dwarf him in scale and magnitude.[break][break]

Once again, the flower blooms. And the shell it leaves behind drifts gently down, withered but never dead.

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Alba’s hand trembles by his side as Galar appears; he clenches it into a fist to still the tremors, but the weight does not leave his chest. His eyes do not once stray from that dense forest to the northwest: Glimwood Tangle, and the town that lay beyond.[break][break]

His wish is also to return. Back to a dream that has long slipped from his grasp, no matter how he tries to reach out to it. Turning back the clock thirty years, reaching a world that was never real… Which impossible dream was easier to fulfill?[break][break]

“I’m not surprised; it took a lot of people,” the scientist says, something wistful in his voice. “Plenty of people forget their dreams as soon as they wake up, but that doesn’t mean they never had them, right? Though I’m the type to remember my dreams, so maybe I’m a little biased.”[break][break]

“Have you had much luck with your Musharna’s power, then? Anything exciting?” If it still existed out there, in the Dream Mist… If they had a physical remnant of the dream, and a dreamer… if the bastard Hare King could pluck itself from the dying embers…

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“Mmm… I see your point.” Technology and a strong bond could bridge the gap between people and Pokémon, and then there were surely trainers not good enough to take charge. But a Sygna Suit for himself…[break][break]

His Whimsicott and his Musharna were the only Pokémon Alba felt he could properly sync with. They were the only Pokémon who had been by his side from the very beginning, and yet the changes Hoenn had brought to them had made such a thing impossible. An Illumina, and a Shadow… Anomalies that could never be touched by a Crystabloom Heart.[break][break]

Well, that was fine. He didn’t need the world to approve of him in the first place.[break][break]

It seemed more prudent to not acknowledge the plummeting temperature, or the cloying malevolence that hung in the air. With another quick, uncontrolled shiver from the cold, the scientist opened his mouth to speak:[break][break]

“I’m afraid there really isn’t much to say. I ran into him by chance in the Ultra Deep Sea and briefly fought; I wasn’t strong enough to beat him,” Not least thanks to his supernatural powers, “So I had to retreat.”

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One day, this world will devour all others, if certain voices are to be believed. The chaos at Sootopolis seems like a brief taste of what that collapse might look like.[break][break]

To Alba’s right, a great whale frees itself, seawater rushing in to flood the crater, the skies raging with a deeper fury. To his left, something akin to a black hole yawns open: hungry, but friendly. Much and more rages in the spaces between, all burning trees and righteous dragons.[break][break]

He places a foot wrong, and one of MATIAS SILPH’s earth spikes drives straight through it. And as annalise henderson’s Mew tears space itself, he can do nothing but watch as the arc plunged deep into his shoulder.[break][break]

The number of times Alba has felt such pain could be counted on a single hand. Blood mixes with stormwater and spreads across his clothes, a pale imitation of the flower fairy floating a few feet away. But the pain sharpens him, reminds him he’s alive.[break][break]

The air is thick with petals. They carry the scent of something sharp and sweet as they scatter and litter the water.[break][break]

“That’s enough, Floette.” His good hand motions, gently, for her to cease her assault. Caught in the throes of her unending dance, it takes great effort for her to stop; she looks more similar to someone swinging around a greatsword than a flower.[break][break]

“I need you to do that thing you did in Mossdeep, okay? Aim for that woman and dragon that just appeared.” Like asking a child to go and fetch their ball. If only he could click his fingers and have them all disappear together.[break][break]

The flower blooms, and brilliant light escapes, looking to tear into Palkia and its Alchemist. He has no biting words to throw her way, no voice to cry out ‘For Rocket’ alongside Hitoshi Inoue. He only wishes to see his enemies crumble away, like leaves come the end of autumn.

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Something lurks underneath Alba as he listens to Ameena speak. Clear interest in this dream talk, but it’s a lure for a hungrier, more desperate beast, hiding just out of view.[break][break]

“I’ve experienced it a few times, yeah. Partly through my Musharna, partly through places like the Ultra Deep Sea…” A flicker of something older, more personal. “Through the Rusted Shield as well, I suppose.” The old dream of Galar, over a year old by now.[break][break]

“I guess Dream Mist is slightly different, though, and some encounters revolved more about Terastal energy… but no need to split hairs, right?” Alba drops into a quick lull, silence yawning open until he’s ready to ask:[break][break]

“Now, what ‘work’ would this be, exactly?” The researcher has barely taken note of his surroundings, in sharp contrast to the Virtual Pokémon whirring to and fro.

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“Well, I guess ‘almost’ saw Arceus is a little closer…” On the spiralling staircase to the heavens, each step on the way a note feeding into a purposed melody…[break][break]

“Esse est percipi,” Alba says, as if trying to sound out some hidden, divine truth in the words. To be is to be perceived.[break][break]

But whatever he’s looking for, he seems to come up short, mind wandering back down to matters more mortal.[break][break]

“It’s quite the scene, either way.” The chase has intensified. More and more law enforcement arrives on the scene, blinking sirens drowning out the neon cityscape. “Worth seeing for yours— holy shit?”[break][break]

Putting a quick pin in that, some giant fucking robot was firing at them— at everything, an iron-clad berserker. He taps the shoulder of his Cyclizar and it leaps after Ameena, just as a laser singes the end of its tail.

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There’s a kind of comforting familiarity in being chased down by the law. You didn’t last long in Rocket if you couldn’t stay out of their clutches. There were a thousand ways to do it; Alba Evovae hid, and when he couldn’t hide, he ran.[break][break]

“Sure thing.” There were no wrong answers in the RKS Simulation, just different branching points to gather data. His Porygon-Z does just that, its free-floating head on a swivel like poorly rendered CGI. Undoubtedly some other virtual intrepid had observed this path before, but testing needed more than one round of data to be reliable. Besides, it was nice to have his own personal experience to draw from.[break][break]

Or in less scientific terms, racing at breakneck speeds in a futuristic cop chase was sick as hell.[break][break]

“Just the once. I did manage to catch a glimpse of Arceus though, if that nets me any bonus points.” Always something else to do, to keep him away from fully exploring the universe… Another false world he pursued in its place.

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If he was going to write a project report on this (he wasn’t), Alba would probably put something along the lines of…[break][break]

…Along the lines of…[break][break]

Uhh…[break][break]

“I don’t know, Shred.” The scientist’s voice is as grave as the place they find themselves in.[break][break]

“I don’t know if that was meant for us.” It had been like a glimpse into a world completely separate from theirs, some unknown frontier that had never been crossed by humanity… and perhaps should not have been.[break][break]

“Unless you want to blow off work and go hunt down some treasure? Some cheese-reasure. Some.. brie-ces of eight. Some—”[break][break]

For the first time since the terrible revelation, Dusknoir moves. Its red eye swivels to stare at its trainer, and the cursed weight of the dead weighs down Alba’s tongue. Truly, he did not own a more noble Pokémon.

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Sootopolis is drowning. Slowly being swallowed up by a rising tide, by a raging god.[break][break]

Alba does not have the strength to challenge this fate. If his encounter with Greyson Connors has reminded him of anything, it is that he is a small thing in the great machine on the world, ever chasing, never changing.[break][break]

But there, on the shoreline, is another pawn on the board, charging forth to attack pieces worth magnitude more.[break][break]

“Need some help?” His entrance is not as cool and casual as his cheery greeting to Hitoshi Inoue seems to believe. He arrives on the back of a Relicanth, dripping water onto the sand as he returns it to its Poké Ball.[break][break]

“Petal Dance, if you would.” It's a request, not a command: the words of someone swinging a sword not because they pulled it from the stone, but because it lay next to them in the lake. It's a strange feeling to the scientist, commanding a Pokémon he has not molded into his own, but it was the sharpest weapon he could bring to bear.[break][break]

The Eternal Floette was not a sword by nature; it had merely been saddled with power far beyond its fragile form. It swings its flower in a fevered waltz — moving almost like a puppet on a string — scattering petals that regrow over and over. They hurry towards where annalise henderson and MATIAS SILPH stand, unfocused, like the wild slashes of a knight who had never seen battle.

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Well, this seemed to be going fairly well. The natural distance between man and Beast made it hard to discern where exactly Alba fell on Zev Harcourt’s inscrutable scale, but it was at the very least going, which had to meant the other man didn’t think of it as a complete waste of time.[break][break]

“Right…” Simple enough instructions, right? He wasn’t a fighter (well, wasn’t a fighter yet), but putting his limbs in all the right places had to be easy. Feet, legs, arms, shoulders: getting into position, step by step… After the gauntlet of physical testing, something more technical sounded more up the scientist’s alley. What was this, if not following a process, if not testing the hypothesis of ‘can a lab-bound rat fight like a dog’?[break][break]

As he raised his arms, Alba’s hands slipped into some half-forgotten motion, curling around thin air as if vaguely wielding a weapon. An oddity in what would otherwise be decent form for someone’s first introduction to the art.[break][break]

“How’s this?”

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Wow, a mecha made of Stakataka! Anyways.[break]break]

Alba dives into the summery Hoenn waters, oblivious to the War Games and War Preludes happening around him. Instantaneously, he shrivels up like a prune in the salty sea, his fingers adapting perfectly to the art of Clamperl Diving, the creases in his fingertips providing the perfect amount of grip to steal unsuspecting Pokémon for the sake of ambiguous rewards meant not for him, but for the shadowy gods dictating his every move.

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