I think most people expect Nintendo’s next release to be a R/S/E remake for the 3DS. Your thoughts? I, for one, would be dancing in the streets if this came true!

I wouldn’t know about ‘most people,’ but the games could certainly do with being brought up to date – it would be nice to play through those old stories with the mechanical changes from generations 4 through 6.  As long as they didn’t just redo the stories without any new content, it could be good.  I don’t think I’d be ‘dancing in the streets’; remakes are kinda neat but they’re all about the execution.  I’d probably buy it, though.

Winter is Coming

As the Americans in the audience may have surmised, leaving Chicago after the end of that conference I mentioned was rather more difficult than anticipated, as a result of the somewhat melodramatically named ‘polar vortex’ that swallowed the northern half of the country this week (y’know, Polar Vortex would be a neat name for a Pokémon move… Ice-type equivalent to Heatran’s Magma Storm, maybe?).  Still, despite the cancellations of three buses, a rented car, and a train, I have managed at last to escape the benighted place and am back in the much more reasonable winter of Cincinnati, so at long last, the show… and the snow… must go on.

Although the land around it is warm and pleasant enough, Snowbelle City itself is constantly blanketed in snow, far more so than Dendemille Town further north.  Much of this is probably due to the presence of at least two Abomasnow who seem to live in the town, their freezing auras filling the sky with perennial snow-clouds, but the inhabitants give just as much credit to the local Pokémon Gym.  “Thanks to the cold air that seeps out of the Gym, no-one in this town needs air conditioning!”  Well, sure, random Snowbelle resident, but I think that without the Gym you might be able to cut down a little on the hypothermia, so unless heatstroke used to be a major problem around here I think you might be better off letting me demolish the place.  Snowbelle City’s Gym is run by a man named Wulfric, whom I can only assume is an Ice Pokémon specialist, but he isn’t here – he has apparently gone for a walk in the nearby Winding Woods.  Since there’s not much else to do in the town other than learn the ‘ultimate’ Grass, Fire and Water moves (the decidedly underwhelming Frenzy Plant, Blast Burn and Hydro Cannon), I suppose it’s my job to go and get him.  The Winding Woods, like everything else outside the city limits, are unaffected by the aura of cold emanating from the Gym, but there’s something else not quite right about them… the paths don’t quite match up with each other, and sometimes turning right around and walking back the way you came will send you to a different place entirely.  The reason for this soon becomes clear: the forest is inhabited by Zoroark, who doubtless use their powers to obscure the true routes through the Winding Woods and befuddle travellers for their amusement and the protection of their nests.  Cunning Noctowl and Gothorita deploy their own psychic abilities to enhance the effect, and the whole forest hums gently with the soporific song of Jigglypuff (who is now a Normal/Fairy dual-type).  I confront the Pokémon who control the place and demand safe passage, catching one of each species and defeating several more, but they remain intent on twisting my path until the very end – when I finally find what it is that the Winding Woods are protecting.

In a wide, flower-filled meadow, a heavyset bearded man with a voluminous blue winter coat is standing at the end of the forest trail talking to a group of Furfrou, Fletchling and Espurr.  They flee when they see me, but the man holds his ground.  This, of course, is Wulfric.  The meadow, which he calls the Pokémon Village, is a place for Pokémon who were abandoned by their trainers and have nowhere else to go, as well as a few who have grown too powerful to have a place in the outside world anymore.  Wulfric agrees to return to his Gym immediately to meet my challenge, but advises me to look around the hidden village first.  My curiosity piqued, I agree.  Most of the Pokémon here are ones I’ve met before, including a number of the same species that inhabit the Winding Woods (although I do meet and capture a Ditto as well).  Far more interesting is just what the place is like.  The Pokémon here seem to have a fascination with human items, having gathered a large number of rubbish bins to root through, as well as a couple of car tyres set up on a knoll like some sort of decoration.  Many of them proudly offer items to me as gifts when addressed with courtesy.  There are also a number of ramshackle bivouacs scattered around the clearing, one occupied by a deeply sleeping Snorlax – as architecture goes, creatures like ants and termites can manage far more complicated structures, but these ones seem like the kind of thing humans would build.  I get the distinct impression that the Pokémon who live here (who all have personal history with humans) have a certain fondness for collecting things from human civilisation, purely because they think it’s neat – like souvenirs.  For the most part, they want nothing to do with humanity, but still find us interesting, much more so than most other Pokémon do.  At the back of the clearing, though, set into a cliff face, I find something more interesting than any of it, though – a cave entrance, guarded by a single human who names it “the Unknown Dungeon.”  The phrase “Unknown Dungeon” in Pokémon can only mean one thing, and suddenly what Wulfric was saying about Pokémon too powerful to have a place in the outside world makes an awful lot of sense.  Only a Champion-level trainer can enter the dungeon, of course – so I’ll just have to come back later.  Off to get that last badge!

Wulfric’s Gym is literally a gigantic freezer.  In contrast to the sliding-floor puzzles of previous Ice-type Gyms (because, let’s be fair here, those were getting a little old), the path through the Snowbelle Gym is made up of a series of huge multi-coloured ring-shaped platforms that rotate to reveal different patterns of pathways and holes.  Matching up the pathways in the different rings allows challengers to progress – it seems complicated at first but it’s not difficult once you get your bearings.  I march through the Gym with my Grass Pokémon, Pan and Ilex, taking point, just to revel in their superiority, but elect for a little more caution when I reach the Ice-type Gym Leader himself, and go for Orion the Lucario.  Wulfric, predictably, opens with an Abomasnow to take control of the weather, and just as predictably Abomasnow falls to Orion’s Aura Sphere.  His second Pokémon, a Cryogonal, lasts a little longer thanks to its epic special defence, but can’t do much itself to hurt Orion either and ultimately fails.  Finally, Wulfric brings out his signature Pokémon – Avalugg, a huge four-legged, flat-topped slab of ice with a vaguely reptilian triangular head, who must be the evolved form of Bergmite.  Presumably he is, like Bergmite, a physical tank of some kind, but I never get to find out because Aura Sphere one-shots the poor beast.  Well… that was anticlimactic.  Wulfric rewards my victory with the Iceberg Badge, a hexagonal glass locket with a gold back and frame, a metallic blue mountain symbol set into the front and six brilliant sapphires at its corners, filled with shimmering blue Mystic Water.  As a bonus, he even throws in the Ice Beam TM.  Score!  And now, of course, with eight badges, I am at long last eligible to enter the domain of the Pokémon League, northwest of Snowbelle City, and challenge the Elite Four for dominance of the Kalos region!

Well… in a little bit.  I still need to catch the Pokémon available on the road to the Pokémon League – Spinda, Scyther, Ursaring and Altaria – as well as give a little bit of love to the last four of my Kalosian Pokémon who have yet to evolve.  Bergmite, as I have already learned, evolves into Avalugg, quite promptly at level 41, and is indeed an extremely focussed physical tank (because defensive Ice-types have worked so well in the past).  Upon reaching level 48, Noibat transforms into the more pterosaur-like Noivern, his draconic heritage finally shining through.  Presented with a recently acquired Dusk Stone, where all my other offerings have failed, Doublade becomes a mighty Aegislash, a sword-and shield Pokémon (so, one of the swords… turns into a shield?  That’s… weird; I would have made that a split evolution from Honedge) with two ‘stances,’ high-defence and high-attack, that it can shift between as it uses different moves.  Finally, when little Skrelp finally reaches level 48, he evolves into the sinister Dragalge, shedding his Water type to gain Dragon abilities instead (hey, neat – Dragon/Poison makes him a Dragon-type that can beat Fairy Pokémon).  So I was right all along – he’s a diseased Horsea who evolves into a diseased Kingdra!  Pretty badass for all that, though.  I must be close to the end now; I feel like the game is running out of new Pokémon to throw at me.  Of course, the auxiliary legendary Pokémon are bound to be lurking out there somewhere, and there are presumably a bunch more mega forms I haven’t discovered yet…

At the gates to Victory Road, an Ace Trainer with a Carbink, a Kingdra and a Raichu calls me to account for my crimes.  Carbink defies me long enough to smack Pan with a Moonblast, so that Kingdra can finish him off with Ice Beam, but Ilex ploughs through the rest with Sunny Day-boosted Solarbeams, and  I am permitted to enter the inner sanctum, where the great stone gates to the Victory Road ruins slide open, responding to the presence of my badges.  I pause for a moment at the entrance to the cave to take stock of the wild Pokémon – it takes me a while to find all the new additions to my Pokédex, but they’re there; Lickitung, Zweilous and Druddigon.  More interestingly, though, keeping my Exp. Share off all this time seems to have finally caught up with me, and the wild Pokémon here are at even higher levels than my hardened veterans – to say nothing of the trainers I’ll likely face.  Well, it makes sense that the citadel of the Pokémon League would be defended by the most powerful trainers in the land, and no-one said conquering France would be easy…

Ridiculous quote log:

“Try using Ice Beam on some Berry Juice for a delicious frappé!  Hey!  You gotta know your Pokémon and their moves outside of battles, right?”
Absolutely.  Some of my favourite moves for out-of-battle use include Torment, Thief, Curse, Leech Life, Nightmare, Explosion, Fissure, Eruption and Roar of Time.  Their utility applications never cease to amaze!

Reunion

As soon as I land in Anistar City, I receive a call from Professor Sycamore.  He wants to meet in Couriway Town, the next settlement on my route, to discuss recent events.  Understandable.  I’m curious to know his thoughts myself.  The road to Couriway Town features a diverse ecosystem of mountain Pokkemon for me to capture, including Torkoal, Graveler, Durant, Heatmor and Lairon, as well as Ariados in the abandoned mine that stretches beneath much of the area.  The mine is also inhabited by Noibat, a small, weak, purple bat Pokémon who seems utterly unremarkable aside from the fact that he is apparently a Dragon-type.  I’m… you know, I’m honestly not even sure what a dragon is anymore.  The mine, which is known as Terminus Cave, has a very deep and complicated structure, not all of which is open to me yet – only a Champion-level trainer can access all the tunnels.  I try bringing out Xerneas and telling the story of that one time when I, y’know, saved the Kalos region from the annihilation of all Pokémon and most humans all out of the ‘goodness’ of my ‘heart’, but the guard seems unimpressed, so I give up and return to the surface for now.  Goodness only knows what else is down there.  Probably awesome treasure.  The other notable feature of this part of Kalos is the home of a human Psychic named Inver, who practices a strange form of battle which he has named after himself (or possibly the other way around) – the inverse battle.  Thanks to Inver’s vaguely specified mystical powers, resisted moves become super-effective (finally, being a Grass Pokémon specialist pays off!) and super-effective moves are resisted instead.  The fact that these relationships can all be uniformly reversed by a single application of psychic power might go some way to suggesting that Pokémon types are meant to be regarded as fundamental forces, rather than just a descriptive framework created by humans (one of the debates I have with myself from time to time), but then again, since the whole thing is clearly just an excuse for a fun new battle format, I’d be cautious about reading too much into it.  The real question is… can Inver learn to make his powers apply only to some Pokémon, some of the time, and if so, can I recruit him for my imperial army…?

Dominated by a massive waterfall from which the locals collect and bottle crystal clear water, Couriway Town is a comparatively small settlement with a few houses, a Pokémon Centre, a railway station, and not much else.  After spending a little time gazing at the waterfall, I go to find Professor Sycamore, who has some interesting things to say about Lysandre.  He seems to think that Lysandre’s actions are at least partially his own fault for not taking action long before now to put his friend back on a somewhat saner path, and reiterates his belief that Lysandre could have been a great leader and done a lot of good for the world.  Apparently, by stopping his plans, I “saved” not only Kalos, but Lysandre himself – wait, wait, so he’s alive?  Have you actually seen him?  Or do you mean “saved” in more of vague, spiritual, “well, at least he died without the deaths of billions on his conscience” kind of sense?  Sycamore, to my irritation, declines to comment further.  I will have to look into this.  For now, though, he wants a battle!  Professor Sycamore has been practicing – his Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle have increased dramatically in level since my last battle with him, and have all reached their final evolutions, but he’s still not much of a trainer himself, and is unable to lead them to victory.  Ever gracious in defeat, Sycamore claims he left a ‘treasure’ in this town a long time ago, and invites me to search for it.  He then leaves to work on a ‘surprise’ for me and my rivals to reward us for our efforts against Team Flare.  I sweep the town with my dowsing rods, but the most valuable thing I find is a Prism Scale, and something tells me that isn’t what he’s talking about (I mean, it’s neat, but I already have one, and I feel like I should expect something more unique).  He might be talking about a more metaphorical ‘treasure’ – like an old friend, or a place he has fond memories of – but what, I have no clue.  Maybe something to come back to.  I have more important things to do, like get my last badge so I can conquer Kalos at last.

To get to Snowbelle City, I have to cross a deep valley with a murky swamp at the bottom.  I encounter only one Pokémon I haven’t met before here – Gligar – which may well be a first for my travels in Kalos, so I very quickly move on to the rope bridge that spans the chasm, where I am met by Shauna.  To my immense surpise, Shauna wants to battle!  I haven’t fought her since she started out with her Froakie – hell, I wasn’t even aware she was capable of battling, but she has three Pokémon now, and at a respectable level too.  She opens with a Delcatty, who survives Pan’s Seed Bomb and slows his assault with Charm – and then switches out.  Shauna sends in a new Pokémon I haven’t seen before: Goodra, apparently the evolved form of Sliggoo, who is at last recognisable through her slimy coating as a true Dragon, if a soft-edged and friendly one in the tradition of Dragonite.  Goodra intercepts my next Seed Bomb and absorbs the attack with Sap Sipper.  What?  Shauna is competent!?  What is this sorcery!?  I briefly consider summoning Xerneas to blow her dragon away, but feel that wouldn’t be sporting under the circumstances and instead send in Orion… who gets crushed by a Sap Sipper-boosted Earthquake.  Okay.  Now she’s asking for it.  I have Xerneas hit Goodra with a Moonblast, then go to Ilex to finish off her Delcatty.  Her final Pokémon is her starter, who was a Froakie when we last met – now a swift, sleek warrior frog called a Greninja (Gren- presumably from the French word for frog, grenouille)… but still a Water-type, and still vulnerable to Petal Dance.

Our battle over, Shauna is keen to reminisce, but we have company – Tierno and Trevor, who are also, it seems, in a fighting mood.  Wait, you guys know how to battle too!?  Has Serena been giving you lessons in secret?  Tierno challenges me first, and I open with Pan – right up against a Talonflame.  Clearly this isn’t going to work, so I switch to Odysseus, who suffers some nasty Acrobatics hits before bringing it down.  Tierno’s next Pokémon is a Roserade, so I switch in Ilex to soak up the incoming Petal Dance and hit back with Sludge Bomb.  That leaves Tierno’s partner, Crawdaunt, who, again, is still a Water-type.  Trevor kindly heals my Pokémon before our battle, sabotaging his only real chance at losing with dignity, then opens with his Raichu, who seems to have no better option than Thunderbolt against Pan and doesn’t last long.  Then, out comes… wha- where the hell did you get an Aerodactyl!?  I know Trevor’s good with obscure stuff, but wow.  Kid’s actually made me jealous!  I won’t willingly leave Pan in against a Flying-type, so I switch to Odysseus, who takes a Sky Drop relatively unscathed and blasts back with Surf.  Finally, Trevor sends out his partner Pokémon, Florges.  Odysseus does heavy damage with a well-placed Crabhammer, but can’t handle the Energy Ball that Florges sends back.  Florges is now in no shape to defeat Orion, though, and falls to a Shadow Ball.  In the aftermath of our battles, my rivals feed me some of the standard lines about how wonderful it is to travel with Pokémon.  I can’t help but feel a little swell of pride; they’ve managed to acquire some pretty strong partners (hell, I don’t even have a Goodra yet; I’ve been clued in on Sliggoo’s unorthodox evolution method – rain in the overworld, and at least level 50 – but the moment Pytho hit level 49, Kalos was swept by an annoyingly mysterious drought) and might even make decent lieutenants in my new regime.  Tierno and Trevor mention that Serena is in Shalour City training at the Tower of Mastery (perhaps the next time I see her one of her Pokémon will be able to Digivolve… her Absol, maybe?), make their excuses, and leave.  Shauna also has a parting gift for me: the Waterfall HM.  It’s no good to me until I have the Snowbelle Gym Badge, though, so let’s get on with it!

Ridiculous quote log:

“Do you see that hiker running back and forth across the bridge?  He’s been doing that for the last few days.  I wonder if he’s okay.”
“Come to think of it, I’ve been standing in the same spot for the last couple of days too!”
The drones are becoming self-aware!  Quickly, initiate quarantine protocol six-three-eight-alpha!  The contagion must not be allowed to spread!

What would your moveset look like if you were a Pokemon? Would you set up spikes? Try to sweep? Stall with toxic and protect? Would you want a moveset based on competitive functionality or for theme and flavor? You could talk about which 4 moves would you like or possibly what you would learn as you leveled up

Rest because f#$% mornings

Teleport because f#$% walking

Hypnosis because f#$% social interaction

Hyper Beam because f#$% everything

What if Dialga has a less control oriented relationship with time? In Mystery Dungeon Time and Darkness, the games sorta explore the different relationships the Legendary Pokemon have with the world. *Spoilers* we see later in the game a world where Dialga has reverted to a “primal” state and “time has stopped.” Yet time in certain senses continues, things can happen, nature, the planet, falling rocks, are frozen. Furthermore, time being disrupted caused Dialga to go bad not Dialga ruining time.

Okay.  So.  Time supposedly flows with the beat of Dialga’s heart.  No word on the direction of causality involved there, though.  Does Dialga’s heartbeat cause time to flow, or does the flow of time cause Dialga’s heart to beat?  It’s a trick question, of course, because human conceptions of cause and effect function within a ‘normal’ time stream (whatever that means) – if neither one can possibly come ‘first,’ then neither one can be the ‘cause’ of the other in the sense that we understand the word, so it seems that they just happen together.  If Dialga is alive, time flows, and vice versa.  Any action taken that hurts Dialga is, by its very nature, harmful to the natural passage of time, and anything capable of altering the flow of time is, again by its very nature, harmful to Dialga.

Time, from a human perspective, is basically a way that we have of measuring change.  We invented ways of measuring time in order to keep track of the movement of the earth around the sun.  If time ‘stopped,’ though, every means we could possibly have of measuring time would stop with it, including our thoughts, so realistically, how would we ever know?  It very well could have happened sixteen times before I had breakfast this morning!  Unless there’s some objective way of keeping time which is standard throughout the universe, doesn’t rely on local frames of reference, and keeps changing regardless of any disruptions, the idea of time ‘stopping’ is meaningless anyway.  Dialga’s heartbeat could be that perfectly objective timepiece.  Of course, that would mean that Dialga never really ‘travels’ through time at all, because time itself is defined by Dialga’s lifespan – he’s just aware of, and experiences, every moment of his own existence simultaneously.  Nor does he ‘control’ time, any more than humans can ‘control’ the beating of our hearts – it’s just what he is.

Anonymous asks:

Which came first, the creator or the ancestor? I would appreciate your thoughts on both the question and my theory. My theory is that long before there was stardust and the like there was pure energy, this energy was concentrated on two particular points in this Dimension? These points were constantly traveling and trying to take a physical shape. Eventually the points collided and the result was dormant energy being activated and creating the foundations of what will be our world arceus and mew

Well, my position on this whole mess is tricky because I actually refuse to believe that Mew is the ancestor of all Pokémon.  Scientists in the Pokémon world believe that Mew is the ancestor of all Pokémon because she has the DNA of all known Pokémon species.  They are wrong, however, because that is not how genetics and evolution (of the real-world Darwinian/Mendelian kind) work.  The whole point of evolution is that species change over time and acquire new traits through random mutation, some of which spread because they are useful and allow individuals which possess them to reproduce more effectively.  Things change.  If Mew is the common ancestor of all Pokémon and has the DNA of all modern Pokémon, then that would mean that no viable mutant traits have ever arisen in the history of Pokémon evolution, which is just nuts.  A “common ancestor” of all Pokémon ought to have most of the traits shared by all Pokémon, but none of the traits that make each individual species unique.  Basically I think that, in-universe, the scientists who discovered and described Mew are just completely off-base.  I can’t claim to know what she really is, but I think she’s actually a living genetic library, whose power is to absorb and preserve the DNA of other species, created by Arceus with the purpose of recording the evolutionary history of all Pokémon.

So that’s why I think the whole Arceus/Mew debate is irrelevant anyway.

I think speculating on what the beginning of existence was like in the Pokémon world is likely to be even less productive than speculating on what it was like in the real world, but I will note that your version presupposes the existence of both space (“particular points,” “travelling”) and time (“constantly,” “eventually”), which is a problem because this is all happening before Dialga and Palkia, who are supposed to have been created by Arceus (if the word “before” can even be thought to have any meaning without Dialga).  That, and I’m not sure what this is supposed to tell us.  There was energy, and then there was Arceus.  So what?  What consequences does this have for the way we see Arceus, Mew, or the universe?

Do you think making water pokemon weak to poison type attacks would both improve game balance and be thematically sound? I believe it makes sense since pollution tends to muck up a water’s flow and is a great danger to sea creatures (which most water type pokemon are). And for that matter, why isn’t steel weak to electric? It’s conductive just like water, and it would give electric types more uses and balance out steel’s massive defenses.

On Water/Poison, I agree that it would make at least as much thematic sense as any of the other type matchups in Pokémon, and if you had asked me this a year ago I would have said yes without a second’s thought because Poison-types needed more love (I think I may actually have suggested this change myself at one point).  Today, though… well, Poison has already gotten a boost from being strong against Fairy.  Likewise for Electric/Steel, it would have made sense, but Steel’s just been nerfed by losing its resistances to Dark and Ghost attacks, while Electric-types have just been given immunity to all forms of paralysis.  I’m not prepared to say that these are bad ideas by any stretch of the imagination, but I want to let the new changes settle and rethink my priorities here before I start commenting on more adjustments.

Life and Death

I have Tereus drop me off in Geosenge Town and take a look around.  The ultimate weapon is really quite spectacular: a glassy blue-green flower, several stories high, with three long triangular petals that seem to have knocked over several buildings as it bloomed.  I head for the megalithic structure to the northwest of town, which is almost certainly the entrance to Team Flare’s secret base, and enter the building with Serena to confront Lysandre.  The elevator drops us in a sort of control room, where there are a few Team Flare members standing around, apparently uninterested in fighting, and some scientists performing last-minute calculations.  We overhear some of their discussion – the weapon is powering up, drawing energy from the hundreds of Pokémon they captured using stolen Pokéballs, but most of its power is coming from inside the facility itself.  We approach the front of the control room, where Lysandre is staring intently through a plate glass window at a chamber several levels below us.  At the bottom is… a tree.  An old, dead, white tree, hooked up to a complicated machine.  Xerneas’ tree.

Lysandre greets us as we approach him.  Serena defiantly proclaims our opposition to him, to which he restates his position: there are too many people in the world, and not enough resources; the only way for everyone to be happy is if there are fewer people.  People don’t share, Lysandre says – even Serena and I couldn’t share my Digivice.  “When there is only one of something, it can’t be shared.  When something can’t be shared, it will be fought over.  And when something is fought over, some must survive without it.”
“What about Pokémon?” Serena cries.  Wait, that’s a good point, actually.  Lysandre pauses.  He seems to be struggling to speak.  Finally, a tear rolls down his cheek and splashes on the floor.
“Pokémon… shall no longer exist.”

Wait WHAT!?

As long as there are Pokémon, Lysandre explains sorrowfully, people who can control them will use them to conquer and steal from others.  It’s better if they all go now.  He shakes his head briskly, as if to clear it, and walks towards us.  If it’ll take another battle to keep me and Serena from interfering with the ultimate weapon, so be it.  Lysandre’s Mienfoo and Murkrow have evolved now, into Mienshao and Honchkrow, which complicates things.  Odysseus and Pan have to tag-team Mienshao, and Pan is knocked out by its Acrobatics (I admittedly have… something of a blind spot for Flying attacks), but I manage to heal Odysseus and finish Mienshao, as well as Honchkrow.  Gyarados flattens Odysseus with its Outrage, and I switch to Orion, but this Gyarados isn’t falling for the same trick twice; he fights through his confusion and defeats Orion with a powerful Earthquake.  I have Photia turn his incredible strength against him with Foul Play, which brings Gyarados down in a couple of turns, and out comes Pyroar, who finishes Photia with a mighty Fire Blast.  Finally, I send in Pytho, dampen Pyroar with a Rain Dance, and drown it in Muddy Water.  Lysandre sighs heavily and asks why I bother.  “What are you really protecting?” he asks.  “A tomorrow that will only end up being worse than today?”  I glare at him, and something inside me snaps.

“You just don’t get it do you?  You think you’re some great visionary who’s seen the only way to peace and prosperity with your ‘how can I possibly save everyone?’ fallen hero bull$#!t, but you’re just taking the easy way out!   Any barbarian can unleash death to destroy a civilisation; it takes true greatness to build an empire of new life!  You think that as long as Pokémon exist, people will use them for war and theft?  Well, you ain’t seen nothing yet, bub!  So I’ll tell you what’s going to happen.  I am going to go down there.  Your ridiculous little paprika-flavoured goon squad are going to try to stop me, and they are going to fail.  I am going to attune to this precious legendary Pokémon of yours.  Then I am going to take a large, rough, jagged object the size and approximate shape of a Farfetch’d and his leek, and wedge it deep within your most private crevice, and when I have done that my Pokémon and I are going to conquer this silly backwards little region and rule it together, because that is what trainers and Pokémon do.  We destroy our enemies, protect our friends, and enslave our inferiors to build glorious monuments to our own greatness!  Now what is wrong with that?”

Lysandre and Serena are both staring at me, jaws hanging open.  In fact, so is practically everyone else in the control room.  I look around, shrug, and lunge at Lysandre.  He flinches, and I seize the moment to run for the stairs to the lower levels, cackling maniacally as I go.  Serena looks toward the stairs, then at Lysandre, then back to the stairs, then at Lysandre again, throws up her arms in defeat, and follows me.  Together, we fight our way through several Team Flare grunts and admins defending the stairwells and passages leading down to Xerneas’ chamber.  About halfway down, we are joined by Shauna, who… wants to cheer for us, I guess?  I grudgingly agree to let her tag along; she’s made it this far without being killed, after all – and she even manages to help out.  When we last saw Clemont, the Lumiose City Gym Leader, he gave Shauna a machine for solving puzzles, which she uses to hack into the security door at the bottom of the last stairwell and get us inside.  That… is an incredibly powerful and potentially mischievous piece of technology she’s been toting around all this time.  Too bad it breaks after one use.  As we step through the door and behold the ultimate weapon’s power system, pulsing gently as it leeches energy from Xerneas’ tree, a group of six Team Flare admins materialise from nowhere and attack us.  Shauna panics and flees, chased by two of them, and Serena runs to help her, leaving me to deal with the other four.  Photia hardly breaks a sweat turning their minds inside out, and they flee to gather reinforcements, leaving me alone with the tree.  I call to Xerneas, and it cries out in response.  The tree glows with a brilliant light, and the rainbow stag bursts forth in all its glory, shattering the machine binding it.  It doesn’t want to be enslaved to Lysandre.  It wants my help – but first, as always, we have to battle.

Xerneas, the embodiment of life, is an extremely powerful Fairy-type mixed attacker with an ability, Fairy Aura, that gives Fairy-type techniques like Moonblast additional power.  Like many legendary Pokémon, he comes with a signature move: Geomancy, a two-turn boosting technique that raises special attack, special defence and speed by two levels (slap on a Power Herb and this thing is Quiver Dance on steroids!).  I command Ilex to wear him down with Nature Power and disable him with Sleep Powder, then start throwing Pokéballs.  It doesn’t take long for one to stick.  I walk over to the Pokéball lying on the ground, dismissing Photia back to the PC network, and pick it up… and everything changes.

I’m… alive.  Xerneas’ power is intoxicating; his presence makes me feel like a veil has been lifted from my eyes, almost like I’m seeing colour for the first time.  Xerneas can see and feel life itself, vibrant and glorious, and his supernatural senses are flooding my mind.  Although my back is turned, I know that Serena and Shauna are back in the room – I can feel their lives, radiant amongst the glimmering pinpricks of the microbes in the air.  I feel like if I focussed I could feel every living thing in Kalos.  I decide to try.  Dimly, I hear a voice.  “What a startling development!  I never would’ve thought you were really a chosen one!”  It’s Lysandre.  He has built his own Digivice in the form of a finger ring, powered by some monstrous contraption – three buzzing metal insects, tethered to a brass gauntlet, all wired up to an electronic visor.  None of it is breathing, none of it is alive; I quickly lose interest and return to my attempts to expand my mind.  Lysandre continues talking – he is disgusted with Xerneas for wanting help from a mere human, and seems to be unwilling to admit defeat yet.  I pay little attention, still curiously testing the limits of Xerneas’ senses, trying to touch the lives of absent friends… until he says one thing: “I’ll be taking the Legendary Pokémon back now!”  Wait… what?  My mind snaps back to the room we’re in, focussing once more on my physical senses.  He wants to take Xerneas away from me?  Oh, dear… what a stupid man.

I thought I knew what it was like to work together with a Pokémon, but the sheer joy of fighting with Xerneas is something else.  He seems to respond as much to my thoughts as to my words, striking down Lysandre’s Mienshao with Moonblast before it can take a single step.  As he calls on his Honchkrow, I command Xerneas to tap into a nearby ley line with Geomancy.  I feel the sting of Honchkrow’s Steel Wing as it slices at Xerneas’ hide, threatening his concentration, but he fights through it and blows the bird Pokémon away with another Moonblast.  Pyroar’s fire repels the lunar onslaught for only a moment before he suffers the same fate.  Finally Lysandre calls upon his Pokémon partner, Gyarados, using his technology and their bond to let it Digivolve into an even more monstrous and terrible version of its former self – to no avail.  One final Moonblast finishes it.  I walk forward to stand by Xerneas and rest my hand on his flank as we return to dreaming of the life of Kalos.  Somewhere in the background, I am aware of Serena and Shauna’s voices.  They are encouraging Lysandre not to give up on his old life, to go back to helping people and build a better future for everyone.  I’m no longer sure it matters.  Joy, suffering… it’s all still life, isn’t it?  Isn’t life all that’s important?  Or… is that Xerneas talking?  I shake my head, trying to clear it.  Lysandre is still speaking.  He wants to use the trickle of Xerneas’ energy left in the weapon.  “Let us live forever… that’s right!  I shall grant you eternal life!  I’ll give you the pain of endlessly waiting for a beautiful world to finally be built!”  That… that doesn’t sound so bad, actually… An eternity basking in the radiance of life with Xerneas, my mind floating amongst all the living things in the entire world… I ignore Serena and Shauna’s protests and let myself drift off.

Hands, dragging me… pulling me onto Xerneas’ back… carrying me away… up and out…

Some hours later, I wake up in Geosenge Town.  There is a huge crater where the ultimate weapon used to be.  Left and Right are standing over me in their superhero masks, along with Shauna, Tierno, Trevor and Serena.  While Serena, Shauna and I were below, the others had been fighting to free the Pokémon connected to the Geosenge menhirs.  Lysandre is nowhere to be seen.  Did he succeed in making himself immortal?  Or did he die in the collapse of the hideout?  Is he down there, buried beneath the rubble, broken but unable to die?  I can’t feel his life anymore; Xerneas’ magical perception has left me.  Once the others are satisfied that I am once again relatively sane and in no immediate danger, they disperse, suggesting that we all pick up where we left off in Anistar City.  Once I am the only one left, AZ approaches me.  He’s free at last, and means to return to his search for his missing partner.  I wish him luck as he trudges away.  Will the poor guy ever find his Pokémon?  Will we ever find out what happened to Lysandre?  And what the hell is this ‘intriguing stone’ Tierno gave me back in Shalour City?

As for me, the dizzying high of my first exposure to Xerneas has left me, but the world somehow seems brighter, more magnificent than ever before – making me more determined than ever before to conquer it, with my new legendary partner Pokémon by my side!

Ridiculous quote log:

“You fools!  You don’t even have suits!”
…yeah, because those white Team Flare suits make you look so classy.

“Not having a ton of money is really stressful, you know…”
Oh, I feel your pain, dude; it must be really hard to be a leader in an organisation with a ¥ 5,000,000 membership fee…