Ash's Story (Part 6: Unova)

Chapter 78: Truth and Ideals

Fusion Flare split the frozen storm before it could swallow Zekrom.

Reshiram's white fire poured across the Giant Chasm, not as wild destruction, but as an answer. Glaciate broke apart beneath the flame, turning into steam that rolled over the ice-covered ground and wrapped the battlefield in silver light.

I landed beside Reshiram in my N form, breathing hard from the rush from Dragonspiral Tower. Reshiram had been waiting there, not asleep, not distant, but listening. The moment I reached it and spoke Kyurem's pain aloud, it understood why truth had to move.

Reshiram had looked through my N form, through Ash, through the king Ghetsis had tried to build, and asked whether I wanted truth for myself or truth to protect others. I had answered with Kyurem's cry still hurting inside me.

Ghetsis stared through the steam, and his mouth twisted with disgust. "So you came... the freak without a human heart... N!"

The name struck the air, but it did not make me flinch.

I had worn that name as a cage once. I had worn it as a crown someone else built for me. Now I stood there by choice, with Reshiram behind me and Zekrom struggling to rise across the frozen ground.

"Reshiram told me Kyurem is suffering," I said. "I cannot allow selfish humans to make Pokémon suffer. And I like Unova."

The words came from the part of me that had grown after the castle, after leaving, after seeing more than the world Ghetsis once wanted me to believe.

"It is the place that taught me how to live as a human," I continued. "It is the place that made me notice the harmony between Pokémon and humans living together. I will protect the Pokémon and humans who live here."

Reisa's voice came softly from behind the steam. "So this is what Ash looks like as N."

Alice looked at me, and even through the crisis her eyes softened with dangerous timing. "He is still handsome for sure."

I sighed before I could stop myself. "Alice."

For one small breath, she smiled. Then Kyurem growled, and the battlefield remembered what waited in front of us.

Ghetsis laughed. "Excellent! That was a moving expression of your determination! So the education I provided to make you king was not a complete waste, then!"

His cane struck the ice.

"But I still have not forgotten that even though I was kind enough to find you when you were living in the forest with Pokémon, and take you in, and care for you, in the end, you were selfish and disrupted my plans."

Ghetsis's eyes sharpened with ownership. "I was supposed to use your abilities to rule Unova!"

I looked at him and felt no surprise, only the old cold clarity. He had never wanted a son. He had wanted a voice Pokémon would trust, a mask people would follow, and a king he could hold by invisible chains.

Ghetsis spread his arms. "But I will forgive you for that as well. Zekrom and Reshiram, which you were kind enough to bring with you, can shatter and melt ice. Now you have saved me the work of searching for them!"

His smile grew uglier. "Actually, I knew you would appear if we fired ice missiles into Opelucid City and you noticed the change."

"That is an ugly formula," I said. "It will not work."

"Oh, but it will!" Ghetsis raised the DNA Splicers into the frozen air. "If I use these!"

The DNA Splicers twisted in his hand, changing shape like a blade remembering an older wound. Kyurem roared as the device answered it.