["Pay with your life?"]
Across the Withered Wood Forest, Zygarde rubbed his brow hard. His first reaction was that maybe some of his cells hadn't fully woken up yet.
Across all regions, even among all gods, his ranking was fairly high.
In Aurient, where the black Rayquaza had already become an issue, who could talk to him like that?
Who dared talk to him like that.
["I really am awake...",] Zygarde checked his cells and confirmed the problem wasn't himself.
He looked toward the distance, his gaze sharpening. Green cells gathered in his eyes as he prepared to look through the forest toward that direction.
But before he could activate the technique, a sky-shaking roar rang through his mind.
["Zygarde, you've crossed the line!"]
Hearing that voice, Zygarde froze. Then he saw a massive dragon silhouette rise from Xiapi's direction.
The dragon shadow was over a hundred meters long. Even the nearby Withered Wood Forest couldn't block his view of it.
["Crap!"], Seeing Rayquaza's massive figure, Zygarde's lips twitched. His mind shook, and he felt confused, his sense of order collapsing.
'Wasn't this guy dead?'
Now he wasn't just alive, he'd become this huge.
Rayquaza, still in full-power Dragon Dance mode, appeared above the Withered Wood Forest in an instant.
High in the sky, his dark-gold eyes glowed with killing intent, not giving Zygarde even a shred of respect.
So what if he was the God of Order?
The only thing Rayquaza knew was that after he died, when Aurient was about to fall, the ones standing on the coastline weren't this God of Order, but Gardevoir and Axel.
Zygarde stepped back half a step. He didn't recall ever provoking Rayquaza.
["Rayquaza, the ones who killed you last time came from outer space. Defending against them was part of your responsibility. Why are you looking at me?"]
["Do it!"], Rayquaza nodded. A violent storm rose around him, mixing with surging dragon energy and forming a giant dragon-god apparition.
The Withered Wood Forest's overlord Trevenant quietly pulled itself out of the soil and used its racial ability to move the forest one kilometer sideways.
'This goddamn world. Even wild Pokémon are this dangerous now...'
Zygarde: "???"
'How did this turn into a fight? Did this idiot never attend school?'
'Was his brain beaten stupid by those outer-space guys?'
He felt his luck had been terrible lately. He planned to go home, rest awhile, then find Jirachi to make a wish that he wouldn't keep running into these pointless battles.
First Giratina, now the aggressive berserker version of Rayquaza.
His heart couldn't take this chaos.
He should run. Rayquaza couldn't catch him anyway.
And with Rayquaza present, Aurient's issues weren't his responsibility anymore.
A white glow flashed on Zygarde's body. He used Extreme Speed to its very limits, turning into a phantom and slipping through a gap in Rayquaza's storm.
Clang!
Suddenly, pain struck Zygarde's skull.
A white Pokémon stood in front of him, blocking his path. She held a spoon, her eyes unwavering.
["If you covet my companions, you're not going anywhere!"]
Seeing Mewtwo, Zygarde frowned, 'Another one?'
He hadn't even noticed that another Pokémon had entered the divine domain without permission.
["And who are you?"]
["I am the hero who will protect the world!"]
Zygarde: "..."
'What the hell is this?'
'If you're the one saving the world, then who am I?'
Zygarde stopped his Extreme Speed. While guarding against Mewtwo, he turned back to Rayquaza.
By now he had constructed an entire dramatic misunderstanding in his mind. After Rayquaza died, Aurient must have been taken over by some mysterious force, which started running mass divinity-engineering programs.
Even Rayquaza himself was probably under their control.
["Rayquaza, you've failed your duty. Aurient is in chaos."]
["If you need help, I can assist you,"] Zygarde spoke sincerely, but Rayquaza heard something entirely different.
["Failed my duty?",] Rayquaza's aura grew even more violent, ["Gardevoir shed her blood in the sky for Aurient, yet you want to stop her from becoming stronger."]
["If I let you leave today, that would be failing my duty."]
With that, Rayquaza dived with the full might of a dragon god, charging straight at Zygarde.
Boosted by dragon power, Rayquaza looked several hundred meters long, energy raging across his body. The friction against the air created flames, making him look like a meteor falling from space.
Zygarde wanted to dodge, but he felt his aura completely crushed by Rayquaza's momentum, leaving him no way to avoid the strike.
He frowned. He felt he had been acting far too gentle today.
With that thought, Zygarde stopped dodging. Dense dragon energy gathered in his fist. The power of the earth surged endlessly into his body.
The Withered Wood overlord Trevenant felt itself getting drained again. Helplessly, it tore its roots from the ground once more and dragged the forest several kilometers farther away.
Halfway through the escape, a thunderous boom shook the world behind it. A terrifying explosion wave erupted out of nowhere, blasting the entire Withered Wood Forest into the air.
Trevenant held its aching head, vines shooting out to pull the trees back together as it stared in fear.
At the place where Rayquaza and Zygarde clashed, the old forest site had become complete ruins.
A crater a thousand meters wide lay beneath them. Only Rayquaza and Zygarde stood in its center.
All other Pokémon had been transported by Mewtwo to the crater's edge.
What stunned Trevenant even more was that Mewtwo seemed to have used some defensive move. Otherwise the fight between Zygarde and Rayquaza would have been even more devastating...
["You're not normal,"] After the strike, Zygarde frowned at Rayquaza.
He could feel Rayquaza wasn't fully restored, yet his body was unbelievably strong, even faintly suppressing him.
Not only Rayquaza, every Pokémon here seemed strange.
One of the two Gardevoir had mastered fairy power completely, even more thoroughly than Xerneas.
If she didn't lack the authority of life, he would have mistaken her for Xerneas transformed.
The other Gardevoir wasn't that extreme, but had one foot already in the divine domain, as if she would soon master "mind" itself.
The white Pokémon holding the spoon was even more absurd, blocking the aftermath of his and Rayquaza's clash with her own frail body.
Even more ridiculous, after the blow landed, he saw a Ho-Oh flying over in the distance, one he had never seen before.
Could someone explain what was happening?
No one told him he was coming into a battle of this tier.
When gods are speechless, they really want to summon Arceus...
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