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He had swayed from the grand design of fried food in the last round, and had paid for it deeply. For the final round, Alba needed to fry deeper than he had ever deep fried before… Deeper than the Giant Chasm that had yawned open, months ago.[break][break]

Okay well actually, churros were more of a ‘normal amounts of frying’ dish, but spiritually he would be frying them in the fires of Hell. In the… fires of Hell that cooked food well. In the— okay this analogy was terrible, and he needed to focus up on beating everyone in this contest.[break][break]

“Musharna, can you focus on shaping these?” They needed to get fancy with these churros; the perfect crunch with the perfect sugar dusting, twisted into 3d spirals… You had to get ambitious with the final course, right? As long as everything could hold under the weight…

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Deep fried Kalosian food… No, his mind was coming up a total blank. Time to branch out into something else, then…[break][break]

The first thing that came to mind was ratatouille, after the Lumiose film that was based around the dish… Confit byaldi, the fancy variant that actually showed up in it, just for good measure.[break][break]

“I just need you to fetch the ingredients this time. Oh, you could lay them out on the tray as well, actually…” He’d slice the vegetables himself, aiming for thin, light cuts. Then there was the sauce, and the actual cooking… With all the work he was doing in the kitchen, surely he had earned at least a week’s worth of ordering take out after this.

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“Yeah, right.”[break][break]

Devoid of any other option, Alba’s voice collapses into vitriol, crackling along with the electric static as he tries to escape the inescapable. He’s familiar with this familiar Fairy trick; knows how fast it moves, the kind of power behind it, even just from a weaker Pokémon than this. The road before him is straight for just a few more steps; a few too many for him to swerve out of the way.[break][break]

And so, nameless, faceless, that light rushes to meet him—[break][break]

Carried on the breeze comes the scent of life. The light notes of wooden boughs, carried in by a sea salt wind. The heady hints of a lost king emerging from a dream, clawing up the nostrils and looking for any kind of purchase. It was faint, like a fading perfume, but there it was in the changing wind.[break][break]

And then the world blooms into a brilliant flower, a lance of light with petals unfurling, to clash against the hound’s moonlight. When it finally dims to nothing, there is a small thing, a few inches tall, floating in the air.[break][break]

That, and a Team Rocket scientist cackling as the rush of adrenaline hits him full force. It fills his lungs and leaves him breathless, wordlessly motioning for the Floette to run with him as he dashes round a corner, desperate to seize this chance to live.

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“You’re sorry?” For a single instant, all the tension in Alba’s body dissipates, as if he had forgotten he stood on a battlefield. There’s incredulity in his voice, because surely this man has not opened his mouth only to apologise.[break][break]

“I don't need pity from the likes of you, got that?” As Greyson marches forward, his target backs away, watching onwards as the Indomitable cuts through their Power Spot with a thought.[break][break]

“Don’t talk about forgetting, or ‘what it’s like’, when we’re two completely different people. When you have no idea who I even am.” Alba spits his words, hissing from both pain and indignation. Venom to hide that slowly tightening feeling in his chest.[break][break]

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t have news from the dream, or a way back to it, and the mutt with the pyrite shield can’t have any interest in revisiting a rotting memory. From beginning to end, this has been a waste of time.[break][break]

Alba’s role in the Rocket war machine had been to take as much data from Mossdeep as he could get his grimy hands on, then flee the scene. Having broken from that routine, he’d been rewarded with a fight he couldn’t win, having thrown away his escape plan in the name of a fruitless endeavour.[break][break]

The ground ruptures, Heatran summoning an Earth Power to form a rickety defence — a distraction more than anything — against Zamazenta’s assault, then Pokémon and trainer turn on their heels and run.[break][break]

He knows these streets. He walks them wearing a different face. So maybe, just maybe—

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Wouldn’t that be nice? To die in so inglorious a manner, with all the world watching with such indignation. There must be a kind of freedom, in casting aside the mask and confessing your sins, drowning in them.[break][break]

“Would you, now? Am I that interesting to you, Admin Slayte?” Alba’s gaze turns to Admin Fox in the same way he might have looked at a test subject; searching, analysing, as if he was about to quantify all the subtle inflections in his voice into data.[break][break]

“I remember mine well.” The branch of himself that had become fire, refracted a hundred times over. The empty paradise he’d forged for himself, all smoke and glass that shattered and drifted away.[break][break]

There is something heavy in his expression, for a moment; the weight of himself bubbling just under the surface, never quite breaking through.[break][break]

And then he sweeps it away, and becomes as light as the wind passing through the leaves of that wretched tree.[break][break]

“But I think telling you about the manifestation of my inner psyche is more of a second date thing, don’t you think?” All is quiet around the Dyna Tree. Even bugs weren’t completely brainless; show a little force and they’d scatter, until they inevitably forget and try their luck once more.[break][break]

That peace is a sign that it’s time to keep moving; to find a new space to keep turning the gears under the watchful eye of Rocket.[break][break]

“Let me know if you decide to pay us a visit. I’ve got a nice bottle of Kantonian wine we can crack open beside the microscopes.”

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Oh, they loved it.[break][break]

Wait, they loved it? Maybe he was in the wrong kind of career… Though he couldn’t really march up to declan walsh, hand in his notice and say “I’m off to become a professional chef.”[break][break]

But thoughts of that dissipate at the mention of their next theme, his eyes lighting up as he listens on. Alba himself was from Unova, so surely he had an advantage in this round, right?[break][break]

Deep frying had served him so well in the last round… but that had been a showcase of savoury food. This round, he’d show off the power of sweet deep-fried food; the tooth-rotting childhood memory of eating doughnuts during one of Nimbasa City’s fireworks displays. He didn’t really miss home, but Hoenn couldn’t really live up to the glitz and glamour that place had to offer.[break][break]

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“You can get the jam into the dough, right?” With a normal pipe, there was the risk of having a doughnut where one bite had too much filling, and another bite had no filling; with a Pokémon using psychic powers, though, maybe he could get a more even distribution. And with any leftovers, he could make some quick doughnut holes as a side…

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For the smallest moment, he allows himself to breathe in the lie that his gambit has done anything worthwhile. That his efforts have not simply brushed across the hound’s gilded sheen.[break][break]

And then his world is swallowed up in violent electricity, that slams into Beheeyem with divine power,, knocking it out with ease. The excess force crackles up the grunt’s body, making him grit his teeth and dig into the inch of ground he has.[break][break]

The smell of ozone fills the air.[break][break]

“Say something, at least. Or can’t you say anything from behind the League’s muzzle?” In front of him are two impregnable walls in every sense of the word. A shield that outstrips whatever sword he could bring to bear. A silence that refuses to heed any words.[break][break]

A Poké Ball flies from Alba’s grip, the motion pained and jerky. And from the molten beast that escapes, a Magma Storm whips into a frenzy.

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Nothing, huh.[break][break]

“What, not in the mood to chat? Or maybe you don’t even know what that thing is? Either way, I’m not going anywhere. I asked you a question, remember?” Had the mutt arrived on a petal, like the High King? Had a way out of a dying dream that had not been afforded to the common people?[break][break]

Or did it still march on somewhere, far beyond his reach? Either way was torture.[break][break]

“Break his shield, Beheeyem. Guard Split.” Strange lights flicker across his Pokémon’s form as it stretches out its fingers, with a reluctance that slowly fades into resigned determination.[break][break]

Even a god could be dragged down to the realm of mortals. That’s what he had to believe. Even if the pit of his soul was saying to let his partner spirit them away, he had to drag the truth out of this man’s snarling mouth.

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“Nothing? The League’s secrets at our fingertips, and there’s nothing?” Files upon files unfold before Alba Evovae’s eyes as his Porygon-Z sets to work, absorbing whatever classified information it can like a gluttonous, digital banquet. All very good, very interesting, he was sure. But there was something he needed to know more desperately, something beyond simply curiosity.[break][break]

His hands grip the edge of a desk, turning white-knuckle just as his vision goes white. Up becomes right, and he falls down, down…[break][break]

“Beheeyem! Teleport!” He disappears for an instance, and arrives in the waiting arms of the enemy.[break][break]

Now firmly on the ground, he ‘hurtling form’ was clearly part of Rocket’s science division; a flowing white lab coat would have made him look right at home in the Space Center, were it not for the distinctive red R that gave away his allegiance. A featureless, jade-coloured mask hid his face, and from the light electronic crackle whenever he spoke, there was something disguising his true voice as well.[break][break]

“It’s you…” The grunt says in a quiet voice as the vertigo clears. The hero-dog of the shield. Beneath that crackle is the sound of something haunting in Alba’s. Something else that was part of that dead and dying dream and had left it to rot; another thing that didn’t belong here in the slightest.[break][break]

At its beck and call is someone who outmatches him in every way. A shining beacon of the region who made his name through his battle prowess. No, he doesn’t have a hope in Hell of fending off Greyson Connors and his pet dog; perhaps he has just enough time to get Beheeyem to Teleport them away.[break][break]

But he stays where he is, not willing to turn and run just yet. He needs to know something first.[break][break]

“You’re one of the Elite Four, right? That’s some fancy lapdog you’ve got there. How’d you get your paws on it?” Like a spring, slowly winding tighter and tighter. There was no overt aggression from the Rocket scientist, but he seemed almost like a cornered animal, ready to throw his Pokémon at this iron wall, or ready to run for his life.

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Cooking was a science, and Alba was nothing if not a scientist.[break][break]

…No, wait. Baking was a science, cooking was an art… And Alba was nothing if not, uh… someone who could keep himself alive with his homemade food? He wasn’t a professional chef by any stretch of the imagination, but goddamnit, he was going to cook like his life depended on it.[break][break]

For his Kantonian dish, he’d decided on tempura, not out of confidence in his own abilities, but more in the hopes that his weakness for deep-fried food would carry him where his lack of culinary degree couldn’t. And hey, he’d managed to make it edible once at home, so surely he could make it again here?[break][break]

“Hey, can you quit staring into space like a Clefable? Pass me the rice, if you would.” Grains float across Alba’s workstation as he prepares his batter, dropping down neatly in the waiting bowl. Mix it, but not too much, then dip the seafood in and deep fry, but not for too long… After that, he had to make the dipping sauce, but that came after making sure the tempura didn’t burn, or the pot didn’t start flinging boiling hot oil at him.

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“Huh, really? Never been to the Kingdom before, but I could go grab a souvenir.” God, his brain is switching to awkward small talk mode, as if there weren’t a pair of cultists trying to take… uh…[break][break]

What the hell were they talking about, actually? Something they wanted, and if both of these people were part of the guys destroying the world, then what they wanted had to be something powerful.[break][break]

“You think we’d just be carrying around something as important as the Prison Bottle? We hid it at Mount Chimney.” If there was anything Head Scientist Sato could do, better to stall for the time she needed. Both Kyle and Melody had been Top Champions in their version of Hoenn; would that kind of battle prowess transfer into this simulation?

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“Be nice if we actually had a Gogoat…” Or something like the horse Hideo Kino had used to gallop across Galar. Instead, they were stuck trudging across the apocalypse on their own two aching feet.[break][break]

Though perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise that they weren’t trotting around like cowboys (...goatboys? Wait Parker wasnt a boy— ), from the way their poor mounts would have burst into flames from that attack they’d barely dodged. Or, well, the attack that Parker had dragged Alba out of.[break][break]

“I mean probably not? But it’s still gonna suck.” And this whole thing was an unknown; maybe they would die, maybe they’d respawn but too late to fix the impending doom…[break][break]

“To your left!” Alba calls out to Parker, his Musharna’s Forewarn pinging off a Rock Throw sailing towards the pair of them. Across the way is someone and their Magcargo, wearing the kind of get-up you’d expect from someone thoughtlessly trying to alter the world’s ecosystem.

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