The world did not end in that blinding white.
It ended in a shuddering thud, a shadow that blotted out the light at the last possible instant. It planted its feet wide in front of Elias, its sagging skin pulled taut, and raised its massive fists.
White light splashed and shattered against Alpha Scraggy's crossed arms, engulfing it and Elias in a corona of destruction. The ground for ten feet behind Scraggy vaporized instantly.
Elias felt himself leave the ground, hurled backward like a leaf in a hurricane. He tumbled end over end, the world a dizzying blur of rock and searing afterimages. He hit the ground hard, skidding to a stop.
He gasped, pushing himself up on trembling arms. His vision swam, but it cleared enough to see.
Twenty feet away, Alpha Scraggy still stood.
Its arms were smoking, the skin on its forearms charred. But it was upright, its legs locked, its eyes fixed on Mega Tyranitar with a sharp look that it seemed to cut through the haze. It took one staggering step forward, as if to renew its challenge.
Then, with a final, soft sigh of released tension, its knees buckled. It settled, ending in a kneeling position, its head still held high, facing its foe.
The silence was deafening.
Elias scrambled to his feet. He fumbled for the pokeball on his belt. A beam of red light lanced out, enveloping the fallen Alpha Scraggy, drawing it inside.
Across the plain, Archer's jaw hung open. His face cycled from shock, to disbelief, to a rage so pure it seemed to bleach the color from his skin.
"How the hell—!"
He hadn't finished speaking when the ground he was standing on suddenly collapsed. Something grabbed his leg, dragging him below the ground. His head was only left visible when the dust cleared.
"What the hell is this?!" He sneered.
Mega Tyranitar looked at him, and as it turned, ready to help its master, the ground beneath its feet collapsed. A massive sinkhole opened, swallowing Mega Tyranitar up to its chest. It roared in startled confusion, trapped and immobilized.
From the newly formed pit, from the deep, dark earth, the ground erupted.
A geyser of stone and dust shot into the air. And within it, a figure rose.
Elias's breath caught. For a disorienting second, he thought it was Krokorok, grown massive. But no.
It was larger, far larger. Its body was a deeper, more vicious crimson, standing upright on powerful legs. Black stripes ran across its back and tail. The rows of sharp teeth in its elongated snout were visible even from a distance.
Krookodile.
It landed with a ground-shaking impact, not looking at Elias, not looking at Archer. Its burning gaze was fixed solely on the struggling Mega Tyranitar in the pit. It opened its maw, and roared a challenge.
Elias stood frozen, his hand still gripping the pokeball he'd used to recall Alpha Scraggy. Even through his blurred vision, he noticed a strange, shimmering brown aura emanating from Krookodile's scales.
Then he realized, his mind racing to piece together the miracle. When Mega Tyranitar slammed its power into the earth, Krokorok didn't just hide—it was trapped in the epicenter of that tectonic energy. It must have absorbed the pressure of the Mega Evolution's attack, and had acted as a catalyst, forcing the evolution through a literal baptism of rock and sand.
"Hey, Tyranitar! Help me!" Archer's voice was high and thin, barely audible from where his body was pinned in the earth.
"Krookodile." Elias said, his voice dropping into a low tone. "Let me try something. Use Earthquake."
Krookodile didn't need to be told twice. It reared back on its powerful hind legs and slammed its tail into the ground with incredible force.
The seismic waves rippled through the earth, turning the solid ground into a churning sea of stone. Mega Tyranitar, already chest-deep in the sinkhole, shrieked as the pressure of the earth intensified, crushing against its armor.
"Tyranitar! Get out of there! Brutal Swing! Break the ground!" Archer screamed.
Mega Tyranitar lashed out, its massive arms shattering the nearby rock to create leverage, but it was too late. The sand Krookodile had churned up acted like quicksand. Every move it made only sank it deeper.
"Anne!" Elias shouted.
"On it! Decidueye, Spirit Shackle!"
Decidueye fired a ghostly, translucent arrow that pierced the very shadow of the struggling titan. Mega Tyranitar froze, its movements suddenly locked by the spectral tether.
"Now, Krookodile! Use Stone Edge!"
Krookodile let out a low, vibrating growl. It slammed its front claws into the dirt, and the brown aura around its body flared with sudden intensity.
From the depths of the sinkhole, pillars of dark, crystalline rock erupted upward. Unlike Mega Tyranitar's messy, destructive spikes, these were precise, rising in a circle around the immobilized Mega Tyranitar. They slammed into Mega Tyranitar's underside, lifting the massive beast further into the air before pinning it against the walls of the pit.
"No... this can't be happening!" Archer shrieked, his head thrashing as he remained buried to his neck.
Under the immense pressure of the combined assault, the Mega Evolution's connection finally hit its breaking point. A shockwave of prismatic light exploded outward as the Mega Stone's energy overloaded and snapped.
The towering spikes retracted. The magma-like glow faded. In a blur of receding light, Tyranitar reverted to its base form, its eyes rolling back in exhaustion. It slumped against the Stone Edge pillars, unconscious.
The sandstorm vanished instantly. The oppressive weight in the air lifted, leaving only the sound of settling dust and Archer's heavy, panicked breathing.
Elias walked forward, his blurred vision slowly steadying as the adrenaline leveled out. He stopped a few feet from the head sticking out of the ground. Through the haze, he could see Archer's teal hair was now a matted mess of grey dust, his pristine white uniform buried and ruined.
Archer glared up at him, his teeth bared in a snarl of pure hatred.
"This isn't over, Elias! You've made an enemy of Team Rocket. We will burn this region to the ground to find that pokemon... and when we do, I'll make sure you're the first thing it erases."
Elias stared at him for a long moment, then turned his back.
"Anne. Can you connect to the International Police?"
"International Police? Yeah... wait, what?!" Anne froze, her hand halfway to her communication device. "Why do you..."
"I'm sure it's the correct way to handle. I'm Elias, the Novice Clash Champion after all." He turned around and smiled at Anne. A warm, genuine smile.
Anne was like she'd been hit by a hurricane. The force of that smile—so rare, so genuine, and so completely out of character for the usually stoic boy—sent a physical jolt through her. Her cheeks reddened instantly, the heat rising to the tips of her ears.
"I... yeah, fine! Whatever! Don't look at me like that, it's weird!" She stammered, frantically turning her back to him so he wouldn't see just how flustered she was.
Archer, still buried to his chin, could only stare in a mix of horror and utter confusion.
"You're handing me over to the feds? There's no way I would let you do that!"
His defiant scream died in his throat as the earth around his neck tighten. Krookodile hadn't moved, but the ground itself seemed to respond to its will. The soil packed more firmly around Archer's chin, muffling his next shout into a strained grunt.
Elias's smile faded into blankness.
"You won't be able to do anything." Elias corrected, his voice quiet but clear.
He knelt down, bringing his face closer to Archer's, his blurry vision still able to make out the wild panic in the man's eyes.
"Let me tell you something..." He grabbed Archer's hair, pulling it up. "It was a mistake going to this region. Now, I won't rest until I hunt down all of you."
He stood up, turning back to Anne, who was already speaking in a low, urgent voice into her communicator, giving coordinates and a situation report to the encrypted channel that would reach the proper authorities. He walked over to the unconscious Tyranitar. He carefully removed the now-dull Mega Stone band from its neck, then approached Archer. With a firm tug, he unclasped the matching bracelet from the man's wrist, ignoring his muffled protests.
"I'll be taking this." Elias said, holding the two inert stones.
He pocketed them, then look at Krookodile. It had finally settled, the last of the brown aura dissipating into the air.
Elias reached out a hand.
After a moment, Krookodile lowered its massive head, allowing Elias's fingers to brush against the rough scales of its snout.
In the distance, the distinct whine of high-speed aerial vehicles began to pierce the quiet. The International Police were efficient.
Anne finished her call and joined him, looking at the approaching specks in the sky.
"They're fast. They'll handle the clean-up, the press, everything. Maybe we should go."
Elias nodded, looking from the buried Archer to his evolved Krookodile, to his Staravia circling in the air, to the pokeball containing his unconscious Alpha Scraggy, and finally to Anne, who was studiously avoiding his gaze again.
He had set out to understand emotion. Today, he had felt terror, desperation, hollow certainty, the searing pain of loss, the fierce warmth of a bond, and the cold satisfaction of justice.
***
Forest of Dignity...
The unnatural silence persisted. Shan and Feraligatr stood by the ruined fountain, statues of themselves. The profound, placid calm that had flooded their minds still held them in its gentle, suffocating grip.
From the deep green cacophony of the forest, a figure stepped into the clearing. He moved with a strange, fluid grace, as if the roots and ferns parted for him willingly. He wore a suit and pants of immaculate white, and a wide-brimmed white hat shadowed his face. But as he raised his right hand, the skin of it was marred. Thick, woody veins of deep brown, like the bark of a tree, spread from his wrist to his knuckles.
His glowing green eye fixed on the inert shard of the Medal of Grace, still resting on the fountain's lip where Martin had left it. A flicker of something like pain crossed his half-wooden features.
"This is not the way." He murmured.
He turned his gaze to Shan and Feraligatr. He saw a victims of a resonance they could not comprehend. The calm they experienced was a lie, a silence that preceded not peace, but a deeper kind of death—the death of will.
Myles raised his right hand towards them. A pulse emanated from him. Then, it washed over Shan and Feraligatr.
Shan gasped, finally breaking free of the spell. His mind cleared with a sudden, violent jolt. The anger, the determination, the burning need to fight for what he believed in came roaring back, amplified by the sudden contrast. He stumbled, his hands flying to his head.
Beside him, Feraligatr shook its massive head with a snort. Its eyes sharpened instantly. It recognized the foreign influence that had been imposed upon it, and a deep, offended growl built in its chest. It took a protective step closer to Shan, its claws digging into the soft earth with renewed purpose.
Shan looked around, disoriented, then his eyes landed on Myles. The man in white stood silently, his hand lowering. The woody markings on his skin seemed to dim.
"Who... Who are you?"
Myles's gaze regarded him.
"I am... a wanderer... from the land of peace." His gaze drifted to the medal shard. "You need to stop him."
He turned his eerie green eye back to Shan.
"You are not alone. The prophecy speak of someone from the dark. His roots are tangled in the same soil as yours, though he does not yet know it."
With that, Myles turned and began to walk back into the forest.
"Wait!" Shan called after him. "Who are you really? Why are you telling me this?"
"I am the consequence of desire."