Bonds of Eternity: Return to Kalos

Rocket Destiny

"Everyone, have you prepared yourselves to rush into the base?" Alain asked with a high voice to rouse everyone's spirit.

"Yeah, we're ready," Sawyer said.

"Alright, wear your space suits because you guys will have to jump into the space station soon," the spaceship's pilot said. By the time it reached Alain and his friends, the voice was distorted.

All six of them then scrambled to wear their spacesuits. Then, the floor beneath them opened up, and they floated out of the ship. They flew towards the space station at a slow pace, like a bug swimming through molasses.

After a while, Tierno opened one of the doors, and they entered it. After they were inside their station, they felt their weight return due to the artificial gravity. Unlike when Ash entered it, there were more guards, and they were armed. There were seven of them right in front of the door. Unlike during Ash's entry, the corridor was wide instead of narrow; it was the size of a four-lane street.

"Yo, how did you get those guns? I never saw one except in history books," Tierno exclaimed while dancing and pointing towards their weapons.

"Stop playing around, new intruder squads. Also, we know that guns are illegal, fatty. We operate outside the law," one of the armed guards said with an emotionless voice.

"Charizard, go!" Alain said.

Then, the orange, flaming flying lizard came out of the Pokeball. He had a blue Mega Stone strapped to his neck, but its shade was slightly different from the old one given by Lysandre.

"So it's time to use our Pokemon already, hm?" Sawyer said, "then go now, Sceptile!"

After a while, Tierno, Trevor, Astrid, and Korrina also let their Pokemon out. They were Blastoise, Charizard, Absol, and Lucario, respectively. All four of these Pokemon had Mega Stones, and Team Rocket noticed them. They started to fire their guns, but the Pokemon and their trainers evaded the bullets.

"Respond to my heart, Key Stone! Evolve beyond evolution... Mega Evolve!" Alain said while lying against a wall with his Charizard to avoid the bullets.

The two stones - one in Alain's wrist and the other in his Charizard's neck - started to emit light, and these lights combined at the middle. The dragon turned into a mass of blue light, then transformed its orange and beige body to a blue and black one. He also grew a spike on each pair of his wings, and his jaws were burning with a blue flame.

"Shoot again!" shouted what seemed to be the guards' commander.

They aimed at Alain and his group again, and Alain pointed at them as if he was a general on a battlefield commanding his soldiers to charge.

"Charizard, Flamethrower!" he shouted.

A beam of blue flame came out from Charizard's mouth, and as he turned his head, the flame turned as well and incinerated everything in its path, including the grunts' guns and their uniforms. Although it destroyed everything else, it only burned a few parts of their exposed skin.

"It's our chance, let's run deeper inside before more grunts come and the situation becomes unmanageable!" Trevor shouted.

"Alright, then, let's go!" Sawyer continued.

They charged towards them and passed by them while they lowered their guards. After realizing what had happened, the guards chased them down. Sawyer, who was the closest to the chasers turned his face towards them and told this to his Sceptile:

"Encase them using a Frenzy Plant!"

Then, Sceptile punched the floor, and layers upon layers of interlocking plants started to grow out of nowhere. It sealed them to the areas next to the door and became a thick barricade halting their advance. Alain's friend stopped as the grassy barricade was formed, but from beyond it, Korrina's Lucario heard voices from the Team Rocket guards and grunted in reaction to it.

"Lucario, what's wrong?" his trainer asked.

Lucario then grunted even louder, as the voices he heard from afar grew more discordant. He then sensed that a Pokemon was on the other side of the barricade, then he prepared to fight by clenching his fist and positioning his left foot in front of his right foot. The others around him then heard the sound of slashing. The guards were breaking the barricade.

"Lucario, use Aura Sphere on the approaching Pokemon!" Korrina said.

Then, Lucario put both of his hands in front of his abdomen. His aura started to form into a bluish sphere of pure energy, and when the barricades were slashed, the Pokemon from behind it revealed its identity as Bisharp. He was rushing towards Alain's friends with his arms gleaming in the light like an iron blade. As Lucario saw it break through the barricade, he threw the sphere.

The Aura Sphere threw the Bisharp into the air. He groaned as he fell to the floor, and fainted. Although he fell, the guards were still in a winning position, since they outnumbered Alain's group. After this, the rest of the guards sent out their Pokemon. There were two Skuntanks, two Crobats, a Honchkrow, a Toxicroak, and an Arbok.

The guards then told these Pokemon to use moves; most of them being Poison-type moves. The moves merged into a vile, toxic beam, composed of sludge and noxious gas. Tierno's Blastoise started to dance in sync with his trainer, and spun on its back, reflecting all of it. After a minute, it lost the strength to spin, and thus stopped. It also stopped reflecting the move, thus Blastoise absorbed an immense amount of damage.

To protect the turtle from further damage, Alain said this to his Charizard:

"Charizard, Blast Burn!"

Charizard punched the floor, and on his opponent's side, columns of flame started rising upwards. The fire that burned them shone as bright as the sun during cloudless noon, thus all six of Alain's group either squinted or looked away from the inferno. After the dust had settled, the guards' Pokemon had scattered and laid down on the ground, due to them having fainted. The fire had burned through their stamina.

After that, Blastoise was on his knees after enduring damage from the toxic concoction by Team Rocket's guards. Charizard offered him a hand to stand up, but he stood up on his own. Charizard growled, and Blastoise replied amicably with a similar but less deep growl. The guards then ran straight past them, through the barricade of plants.

"Just wait, our elite group will destroy you!" they threatened Alain.

They ignored the taunts and threats given to them by Team Rocket. They only marched forward, aiming towards the center of the space station. Meanwhile, Calem's group was between two gates. Both gates were open, yet two grunts stood on both sides. They were surrounded by Team Rocket. They had two Golbats, a Venomoth, and a Venonat. The Golbats used Air Slash, and the air turned into bluish razors. It almost struck one of Calem's men, but Calem shielded him. His clothes were torn, and the air slashed his chest. It cut deep into the flesh, and in pain, he held it.

"Sergeant Calem!" one of his men shouted in concern.

He rushed towards his sergeant. Yet, when he reached Calem, Calem pushed him away until he fell. He was perplexed as to why he did that, yet Calem answered as he threw his left hand away from his chest.

"Get away, you idiot!" he shouted, "Battle them first! We couldn't have both of us injured! So, go, and minimize the numbers of casualties here!"

"S-Sorry sir!" he apologized while bowing down.

"No need for such formalities in a battlefield, comrade!" he shouted, "Go, defeat them already!"

He proceeded to retreat to the wall, holding his injuries to reduce the pain. He was a mere spectator in the fight, and as he saw the clashes, with metallic arms scraping at each other and beams of different elements coming out from the mouth of every Pokemon. The room was then obscured with smoke; Calem and the others only saw blurry silhouettes of Pokemon and aimed at them.

"I'm really useless now, heh..." he thought to himself. "Only my comrades are fighting on the frontline, while I'm left on the sidelines..."

His mind flashed back to the battlefields of the New Laverre. The green fields there turned into a brown and grey barren wasteland, and artillery pounded the ears of the soldiers and the ground. He found himself in the muddy trenches, behind barbed wire. Rattatas and Spewpas crawled and rushed there, beneath the soldiers' feet.

Large Pokemon were used as living weapons, burning the enemies and destroying them in varied ways. They stood in front of the trenches, being a line of defense behind the barbed wire. Their mouths (from which beams appeared) and eyes faced towards the gray no-man's-land.While this was unfolding, Calem sat down in the trenches, laying down against the dirt on one end of it. A medic was tending to him after his left hand and shoulder were burned. His right leg bled, and the medic stopped the bleeding. He then fell unconscious soon after. The last words he heard before it was his commander telling his men to charge.

After a long while, he opened his eyes again. He found himself laying on a hospital bed. He was looking up, and he proceeded to glance all around him.

"W-where am I?! Where's this?! Where's my comrades, where's Mathieu, where's Pavlo, where's everyone else?!" he shouted and frantically moved.

"Calm down," the nurse gently said, "You're safe in here. You're in the Field Hospital of Yvonne's Hill."

"What about the counter-attack in New Laverre?" he asked.

"Don't worry. It was a resounding victory for the Kalosian forces," the nurse said while handing him a newspaper.

He took the paper, and read it with excitement. But, he was wondering where Pavlo and his other friends were, and where the commander was. When he was summoned back to his post, he saw the dark truth. All of his friends and the commander were dead, excluding Mathieu. He tried to cover up his grief and sadness.

"Turns out we're the only ones who survived, huh? Survival of the shittiest strikes back, I guess..." he whispered to his only comrade to cope with the condition.

"Maybe. But we have to continue on their legacy, no matter what," Mathieu replied.

The battle may have been a victory for Kalos, but it was a loss for the soldiers. They had lost too much of their comrades. It was a pyrrhic victory in its purest form. Calem screamed after this flashback, as he snapped back to reality. One of his friends decided to calm him down.

"Mathieu, thanks. You've been by my side for all these years," Calem said while standing back up.

"As you've said a lot before: 'No need to waste time in the battlefield! Defeat the opponents and do those stuff later!'" he replied.

"Yeah, we're gonna blast those Rockets away to space!"

"Calem... we're in space right now."

"Yeah... but anyways, go, Aegislash!"

The shield-and-sword Pokemon floated in the air, looking down towards Team Rocket's Pokemon. He taunted them by flaunting his sword and tickling them with it. As they tried to attack, he put the sword behind his shield once more, and that shield made another shield; composed of dozens of hexagons and blue. It was impenetrable and the Pokemon who got taunted charged right towards this wall and became weakened.

"Private Aegislash! Sacred Sword! Everyone else, attack the other side's ranks!" Calem said while pointing at Team Rocket's Pokemon on one side of the gate.

Aegislash vanished, then rushed and sliced the opponents until they fainted. He struck over and over again, and his movements were quick, supple, and unpredictable for the opponents. It could move a dozen meters after a single glance. Meanwhile, on the other side, beams battered the opponents on the other gate and they also fainted one by one. Calem and his men rushed out of the room from the latter gate, since they seemed to be less organized and weaker than the ones sliced by swords.

While they were running they bumped into Ash-Greninja. The frog was looking around and trying to see where his trainer was, but it yielded no results. Then, after bumping into the soldier, he stood up and asked him where Ash was. But, to Calem, he only heard croaks and didn't comprehend the message.

Then, they both went their own ways. Calem and his group were searching for the other groups as well as a way to breach the center, and Greninja searched for Ash. Calem continued their journey, and at an intersection, they met Alain's group, who ran perpendicular to them. Sawyer spotted them in his left eye's peripheral vision, and due to their uniforms, he thought that they were Team Rocket members.

"Sceptile, Leaf Storm!" he said.

Sceptile turned his back on the passing troops and from his tail, vortexes of leaves appeared. As Calem passed through, he put his right arm above his eyes to take cover from the leaves battering him. He then saw Alain and rushed at him. He almost told his Aegislash to attack them in rage, but he then realized that a friendly fire situation would only benefit Team Rocket.

"Alain! What's the meaning of this?!" Calem shouted.

He then glanced back and saw Calem and his men.

"Huh? You were Ash's friends, and not Team Rocket?!" he asked in surprise.

"Yeah, we aren't Team Rocket! We're your allies!"

Sawyer then stopped and faced Calem.

"Sorry for the misunderstanding," he bowed.

"No problem, Sawyer. But, where are you going?"

"We're going to the center. How about you?"

"My soldiers and I are going there as well."

Alain's group was surprised when they heard this, with Korrina and Tierno being especially surprised. Their faces showed bewilderment and curiosity, as they had never met a soldier before. They've heard of the old tales of the Kalosian wars, of the heroic exploits and tragedies there.

"Soldiers? Have you served in the Army?" Sawyer asked.

"Served? I'm still serving the Kalosian Army to this day," Calem said. "As for what I experienced there... it was hell. In war, you have to slaughter fellow humans who had the misfortune to be born under the other side... and you have to see either yourself or your friends die to those 'fellow humans', forced to act as a chess-piece. The upsides are the camaraderie you're gonna build with your fellow soldiers... and you'll be a hero among your neighbors back at home."

"Hm... alright, can you tell me more? I'd like to hear more from you," he continued to ask.

"Later, since we have to attack Team Rocket," Calem said, then he increased his volume and shouted with ferocity: "NOW, LET'S ALL CHARGE!"

They rushed through the corridors, heading towards the center. Behind them, Ash-Greninja was running because he had a hunch that Ash was somewhere in the center. The lights here were denser and shinier, and the route wasn't an incoherent, labyrinthine mess, and the runners were glad due to it.

They closed in towards the center. The entrance was wide, but it was covered in fences and swarmed with guards, making it impassable. They waited and waited, until they let down their guard or reinforcements came. As they waited for a hole in their defense, Greninja sneaked and crawled on the ceiling. What he saw was a swarm of guards in the front, but the area around the back was barren. He made no noise, and his infiltration was unnoticed.

Then, he returned to Calem's side without getting noticed by the grunts. As they waited for even longer, one of the grunts walked away from his post and turned towards their hiding place. They pointed at each other in shock, and after that, the grunt ran towards their comrades in the back to announce what he found.

Not long after, the Team Rocket guards chased Calem's soldiers. They were unarmed, thus the only way they could defend themselves was using their Pokemon. They were outnumbered four to one.

"Use Shadow Claw, Aegislash!" Calem shouted.

The sword turned dark and thick; and two claws grew next to the tip of the sword, tripling the number of tips. He then sped in the air and struck as many opponents as he can. This gave Calem and his men, as well as Alain's comrades to run away and hide from them. They were safe now, as the garrison in the center lost them.

But this was not to last. As they were resting next to the walls, grunts came out seemingly out of nowhere in front of them. They seemed different than the central garrison, as their Pokemon were mostly Poison-type, as opposed to the garrison's Dark-type. Either way, they were still outnumbered, so they ran to get to a better position. They were now even further from the center.

Behind the chasers from nowhere, there was Clemont's squad. They kept a distance of around fifty meters, and they were spying on the grunts. Clemont walked in front of his friends, accompanied by Vasyl who walked slowly and with an apprehensive look on his face, as well as Bonnie, clinging towards her brother's hand. Sophie and Cossette walked side to side behind Vasyl, and at the back were Calem's soldiers, determined and undeterred by the numbers.

They snuck behind the lines of the chasers, they even marched in unison with them. The chasers didn't notice, though; as they were focused on what was in front of them. Meanwhile, on the other side, beyond the grunts, Calem turned around and faced them. In turn, so did the others and their Pokemon.

"Charizard, use Flamethrower!" Alain shouted.

A beam of blue flame came out from his mouth and set the chasers ablaze. Some of them even passed through them, and cyan embers reached Clemont and Vasyl. They felt their heat momentarily, but as it struck their arms, the fire vanished. Due to its blue color, Clemont's friends knew Alain was close to them, for blue fire is a rarity in the world.

They stopped as they tried to decide whether to go to them, stay in place, or go their own way. They squatted in a circle, blocking the corridor. Bonnie raised her hand and stood up.