Chaser and the Faraway Island

Chaser and Unexpected Trouble

 After leaving the museum chamber, Goh felt his heart sink as he was confronted with more stairs. His legs were already burning, but it wasn't like he could complain.

"Really? More stairs?" Chloe asked, the annoyance in her voice thick. Goh chuckled to himself. At least they were on the same wavelength about this.

"C'mon guys," Ash said, taking the lead here. "We've gotta keep goin'."

Goh resigned himself to having to climb yet another flight of stairs and nodded. "Yeah, if we don't make it to the top, then Quillon and Danika's work will be for nothing. We have our own roles to play here."

"Grooki," the chimp agreed.

Thankfully, this stairwell was much more well-lit, and it was furnished with an opulent red carpet, so at least it wouldn't be as dull as the stairs from before. But as he followed Ash up the stairs, Goh was practically stunned when it seemed that there were really only three flights of stairs this time before being confronted with another door.

"Figures that since this room's so small he'd put his money here while cheaping out on the other parts," Chloe quipped as Eevee's tail swished.

"Pyri," Porygon noted, continuing to float near Goh, though now they had turned their entire body upside-down.

"At least there's less stairs," Goh said, stepping past Ash and opening the door. But as he looked into the room he was entering, his eyes went wide.

"What... is this?"

It was another sparsely decorated chamber, much like the stairwell leading from the port, but this was a wide open room, reminding Goh of the inside of a warehouse, though rather than a featureless box, the room was rounded in shape. Looking up, Goh could see scaffolding and more stairs that headed to the higher levels, but they seemed to be connected with the outside with a walkway that snaked its path outside and then upwards from the outside before coming back inside, giving the room a shape like an upside down funnel.

If only the room's shape was its most notable feature and not the device it housed.

In the middle of the room was a large machine, the likes of which Goh had never seen before, but still somehow felt familiar. In a strange way, it reminded him of Eternatus' true form, being a large, twisted metal body with a long, flexible looking arm, only instead of the 'hand' shape at the end of Eternatus' body, it looked like a large flowerbud at the end. The entire machine seemed to be off for now, but as much as it reminded Goh of the gigantic Pokémon, there was nothing in this device that hinted that it could be a Pokémon.

Chloe shuddered. "Now this gives me the creeps."

Ash frowned at it, grabbing the bill of his cap.

"Chuu..."

"Ash, does this look familiar?" Goh asked.

Ash looked over his shoulder at Goh and nodded. "Yeah. There was this guy in Azoth Kingdom, in the Kalos Region, who used a giant weapon powered using a Magearna. It was a crazy strong weapon that fired energy blasts, and it looked kinda like this."

Goh frowned, wondering if the Magearna he saw with Lillie and her family wasn't the only one in the world. According to Ash, it definitely wasn't.

"That would make this," Goh supposed, "how he plans on firing the blast he'll be making using the Mewnium-Z. The same power that destroyed Pokélantis."

The three teens and their Pokémon all fell silent.

"I saw it first hand, through the vision Tapu Fini gave me," Goh said. "It was unlike anything I'd ever seen. It was a flash of light, brighter than the sun, and then the entire kingdom was covered in fire after that. It was... horrifying. All those lives, human and Pokémon alike, snuffed out in an instant."