This blog is a collection of fragments from Ghetsis’s life — as I imagined it.
Not a justification.
Not a redemption.
Songs of Ghetsis explores the past, the present, and the end of one of the darkest characters in the Pokémon universe.
Each chapter stands alone, inspired by a different song — but together, they shape a disturbing and intimate portrait of a corrupted soul — or one that was never truly born.
My vision of Ghetsis is partly inspired by the figure of Felice Maniero, boss of the Mala del Brenta, also known as “Faccia d’angelo” (“Angel Face”) or “the gentleman boss.”
Ghetsis is not a direct transposition —
but the way he shapes his identity, his relationship with power, and his ability to manipulate — and self-destruct — owe much to that figure and his story.
In particular, I drew inspiration from the 2012 Italian miniseries Faccia d’angelo, which tells his life in a fictionalized form.
Of course, this all remains firmly within the realm of fiction.
If you prefer to read on AO3, here's a link,
Otherwise:
Here's the INDEX
Below, the first chapter ⬇️
DR SUNSHINE IS DEAD
The title is inspired by the song with the same name by Will Wood and the Tapeworms.
The day Happy died was a foggy one.
Just like many others in the small town of Rivermanor, nestled in the southeastern countryside of the Valdena region, near its border with Unova.
The fields around the house were swallowed by a thick mist, a milky veil that barely revealed the outline of the nearby town, twisted like a fever dream.
The gray Cromoròn, local mutated versions of Cramorant, hunted for prey with seemingly dul,l yet ever-watchful eyes, among the rice paddies and the river that flowed slow and lazy not far away.
The fog rose from the river and the canals, dense and oily like a Grimer, and soaked into the soil like an infection.
The same soil that had once been green, alive. Now it was gray, caked with rust and herbicides.
The pesticides had driven away even the hardiest Grass-type Pokémon and the delicate Water-types that once danced through crops and streams. In their place, only deformed survivors: a few Stunkfish camouflaged in the mud, nervous Patrats darting through weeds, Trubbish bloated with plastic and broken glass, and misty Grimers, creeping and silent like sentient mold.
And of course, the gray Cromoròn, kings and undertakers of that sick land.
Some feared them. Others worshipped them.
No one dared get too close.
And yet, there were still those who stubbornly called this land “mother.”
Perhaps out of habit.
Or perhaps because no other would have them.
The boy was twelve, maybe thirteen.
Even he wasn’t sure anymore, no one had reminded him in years. No celebrations, no cake, no gifts.
Not since that whore, as his father called her, had left him alone with this big man. A man grown, but small. Violent, yet servile.
He was imposing only in appearances: tall, broad, with hands like dirty shovels.
Strong like a Bouffalant, but his strength was used only to strike those who couldn’t strike back.
Strong with the weak, weak with the strong.
He walked with the slow steps of a landowner and bore the gaze of a coward, the kind that weighs others like meat at a market, always looking for someone he can trample without consequences.
His voice croaked in his throat, rough and graceless like that of an old Seismitoad.
Sometimes he used it to threaten, sometimes to beg, often to strike shady deals with small-time criminals from nearby towns.
Businessmen, he called them, wearing his one “good” black suit, now shiny and threadbare, as if that alone could earn him the title of gentleman.
That day the house was full of voices, despite the fog-drenched silence wrapping the building.
His father was laughing in the living room, surrounded by guests who laughed even louder.
“This wine tastes like mold,” he croaked. “But at least it’s ours, eh? Like the land. Like the blood.”They toasted, probably to a new deal, built on bought silences and well-paid betrayals.
Felice listened from the next room. He didn’t hear every word, but he didn’t need to.
He could see those handshakes, slick and clammy like dead Alomomola.
He already knew they'd turn into broken fingers, maybe from those same hands, maybe others.
Happy listened to them from the next room.
To make sure he wouldn't be heard.
And no one heard him.
Inaudible.
Invisible.
Useless.
Nonexistent.
The boy rubbed his forehead, ignoring the sharp pain caused by touching the dark bruise above his eye. The one that man had left him the night before.
Sometimes the man missed the mark a little, left a trace. Not usually, not on purpose. But when it happened, the bastard always let him stay home from school for a few days.
“To make up for it,” he said.
“To cover it up,” the boy would’ve liked to reply.
He’d been preparing his escape for months.
The room was perfectly tidy. Aseptic. Impersonal.
A chipped window overlooked a tiny backyard, where yellowish plants grew wild, twisted, dying.
Maybe someone who once loved flowers had planted them. Or maybe they liked Bug-type Pokémon that used to nest among the leaves.
But it was clear that no one had taken care of them in years.
Inside, beneath the window, a faded, empty desk seemed to watch the room with melancholy.
Next to it, a half-empty bookshelf held wrinkled schoolbooks and a few volumes borrowed from the library without leaving a name.
In a corner stood a bare bed, with sheets stretched and neatly arranged.
No plushies, no toys. No children. Everything perfectly in place.
But under the bed was a backpack, ready for the getaway.
Inside were clothes, stolen food, a crumpled topographic map and... a name.
A new name meant to kill the one others had given him.
Happy.
As if happiness could really exist in this filthy world.
No, his name would be something else.
Ghetsis.
This, unlike his given name, was one he had created himself.
It was his.
Some time ago, or maybe a long time, he wasn’t sure, something from a boring music lesson had struck him more than usual.
The teacher looked like a sickly Muk, with a slow, droning voice and the expression of a caged Patrat. He talked about chords. Like the ones his father made with the local mafia. There were “dominant,” “subdominant,” and those who simply served.
And when he spoke of a chord he called “the chord of evil”, a combination of perfect, icy dissonance, the boy paid attention.
Sol - Do#.
Or G - Cis, according to the note naming system used in the nearby region of Unova.
G - Cis.
Ghetsis.
That was what he wanted to become. Dissonant. Evil. Because goodness didn’t exist in the world. Only the weak, the ones who succumbed, the ones at the bottom of society’s food chain, believed in it. And they were always the first to bleed, to kneel, to die.
And the petty neighborhood villains, the ones like his father? They were even worse. They knelt for seconds, and their heads were pushed even deeper into the mud.
Only those who were truly evil, who clashed in just the right way, who inspired fear and respect, could rise from that mud. Not just survive, but rule. Dominate.
He walked past the living room door, left slightly ajar. No one noticed.
The photo on the wall stared at him, more yellowed than usual. A tall man with his chest puffed out smiled, seemingly happy, his hands gripping the shoulders of a child with a wide smile and tired eyes.
He smiled as if he were the man who had raised him.
On the left, the photo was torn, but a woman’s hand could be seen resting on the boy’s pale green hair. Maybe one of the last times she would ever touch it.
Below them, a small Deino with a playful, innocent air added unexpected movement to the scene.
Almost cheerful.
But all you had to do was look closer.
Happy slowly opened the front door.
The sun was still high outside, but it wouldn’t be for long. He had to hurry if he wanted to meet Ruben by the railway and reach the abandoned Pokémon Center where they would spend the night before truly beginning their journey. He knew they wouldn’t be searched for there. That place was taboo, even for the bravest adults. Certainly not the kind of place his father belonged to.
After a moment, he looked away from the sun and lowered his gaze. The house’s stairs stared back at him, as if in judgment. So he went down. In silence, with his backpack on his shoulders, without touching the chipped doorknob.
“Happy?” a distant voice called.
He froze for a moment. Maybe he hadn’t noticed him, maybe it was just said out of habit, like a burp slipping out.
Then more laughter, more toasts.
The agreements carried on with their fleeting success. Their macabre and off-key harmony.
Ghetsis smiled. A sharp smile. A fierce gaze.
He whispered softly,
Among waves and Wingull begins the story of Ryoku, former Sage of Team Plasma.
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🔗 SONGS OF GHETSIS - INDEX
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🔗 VIVA LA VIDA
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NEVER AN HONEST WORD
BUT THAT WAS WHEN I RULED THE WORLD
VIVA LA VIDA
The title is inspired by the song Viva la Vida by Coldplay
Visit Volcaria, the Island of the Sun!
Hello there! I’m Volcaria, the dazzling Island of the Sun and home of the Volcaronas!
I’m a volcanic jewel set in the calm, tropical waters of the ocean southwest of Unova!
Come play with me, it will be a true paradise!
Looking for a relaxing vacation for both body and spirit?
You can stretch out on my pitch-black sand while admiring breathtaking landscapes and sunsets!
Or maybe you’re craving adventure and don’t mind getting your hands a little dirty?
No worries, Mount Lumos has you covered! Among its volcanic rocks you’ll find hiking trails suited to every level of experience… and the view from the top is simply stunning!
The locals also call me Lumosca, but what truly makes me unique is my bond with the mysterious Volcaronas.
These majestic Fire–Bug Pokémon have flown alongside me since time immemorial. They are my unmistakable symbol and the heart of countless fascinating myths and legends.
In recent years, the friendly people who live with me haven’t been so lucky as to see them fluttering through the little village streets, but I know they still hide among the molten lava streams of mighty Mount Lumos.
I never doubt that my beloved Volcarona will return when my people truly need them!
And that’s exactly why I invite you to the Festival of Fire!
During Midsummer Week, the devoted citizens pray and dance in honor of their cherished butterfly Pokémon.
Come join the singing and dancing! Or, if you prefer, simply enjoy the celebration, taste my exquisite local cuisine, and immerse yourself in my rich and ancient culture.
And while you’re at it, how about a souvenir from my unforgettable markets?
Hey, wait just a second! I know you can’t wait to set off, but I’ve still got a little tip for you: don’t forget your camera!
My Wingulls, just as curious as they are mischievous, will gift you with plenty of funny and wild shots.
And speaking of friends… have you met my Primarinas up on the northern beaches? You’ll love the amazing guided excursions, it’s such fun to play with them!
But take care: don’t leave food unattended and avoid wearing overly shiny items, because my flying Pokémon just can’t resist snacks and sparkly things!
I can’t wait to meet you!
I’ll be waiting here, between the fiery red heat of my volcano’s lava and the cool blue-green waves of my sea!
See you very soon!
Volcaria, the Island of the Sun.
—
A crumpled tourist brochure of Volcaria Island lay abandoned in a corner of a cold prison cell in Wintersong. The acrid stench of piss and mold smothered the cheerful invitations to enjoy the beauty of the sea and the volcano.
The section about the Wingulls, in particular, had been slashed through with a violent stroke of black ink, pressed so hard it pierced the paper in one spot and bled out in another. Just beneath it, a comment scrawled in cursive, hurried and brimming with rage, read:
“All bullshit! Useless stupid beasts!”
On the opposite wall stood the shabby, uncomfortable bed where an old man lay stretched out. He stared at the ceiling, dripping with dampness, with gray, lifeless eyes, perhaps by nature, perhaps clouded by advancing cataracts. A slimy, fungus-like substance grew along the walls, climbing like so many slender, porous fingers up to where his gaze rested, filled with disgust and resignation. The whitish color of the fungus, if that’s what it really was, reminded him of the droppings left behind by the Wingulls of his native island. The world seemed to mock him with every breath he took.
Outside the cell, the watch Probopass greeted a guard with weary enthusiasm. As every evening, he made his rounds of the cells before turning off the lights for the coming night.
“Ryoku, always on the move, I see.”
The old man lying down did not turn his head to look at his interlocutor.
“Well, with all the fantastic activities you folks offer us… I just can’t keep still.”
The guard chuckled, perhaps at his answer, perhaps at him. It no longer mattered. Then he moved on, to harass other prisoners.
The lights went out. Nothing changed.
—
About sixty years earlier, little Forrest had been born during an unusually warm spring, in the largest village in all of Volcaria. The Silva family, who had long worked in the newspaper trade, could later boast of having given birth to the one-thousandth resident of Luma. They even won a fine ribbon and the official congratulations of the island’s mayor. What an honor!
From then on, the child with golden eyes, bright as the sun, grew up knowing he could only be destined for greatness. He attended the local schools, earning good but not outstanding grades. He spent his free time with perfectly ordinary friends, dated a girl he thought rather pretty, and enjoyed catching the common Pokémon that lived on the beach outside his home. The local Wingulls were his favorites, especially Mark, who was his companion in many happy summers of adventure.
Then, one early spring day, Mark evolved into a great Pelipper and migrated far away with his kin. Forrest bade him farewell with a small tear, then finished high school. From that moment on, he devoted himself entirely to his true passion: journalism. While his family had always been content to sell newspapers, he wanted to write the news himself…and it came to him rather naturally!
In a short time, Forrest Silva became a fairly well-known name in local reporting. Nothing big, not yet.
It wasn’t enough: barely an adult, he looked at the world around him and knew he could, he must, do more. The island where he lived, his home, was idyllic on the covers of tourist guides and in the snapshots of the ever-growing stream of visitors. But now that he was no longer a boy chasing Wingulls along the shore, he realized more and more that the reality beneath the surface was falling apart. The dirt, instead of being cleaned up, was simply swept under the rug.
If only people were more willing to make informed choices, he told himself, it would be child’s play to fix everything. Or at least most of what afflicted his homeland. He believed this deeply.
And the louder his voice grew, the bigger his articles became, and the more they were heard. He realized people seemed ready to listen to him. Not only that, perhaps even to follow him.
So, together with some colleagues and friends, he entered the world that more and more seemed to be calling to him: politics.
Many would have chosen without hesitation to leave behind the small, insular island where they were born. Forrest, instead, made a bold choice: he stayed. And he did so with the intent of never letting go. He would not become great by abandoning his homeland: he would make his homeland great with him.
When the time finally came for the election of Volcaria’s new mayor, the people already acclaimed him for his rousing speeches.
He promised to work for a less invasive kind of tourism: the island would not become a playground for foreigners.
He promised ambitious plans to restore the environment, ever more devastated by pollution and waste: the Volcaronas, absent now for nearly a decade, would once again soar over Mount Lumos as in the old stories.
And he promised, at last, to bring the problems of his home to the attention of all of greater Unova. They would obtain the funding they so desperately needed to finance their projects, and never again would they be relegated to a footnote in a travel guide. Volcaria, Lumosca, as they called it, deserved respect.
The victory was already foretold by every poll.
And the polls did not lie: Forrest Silva ascended to the mayor’s seat, his new throne.
It was time to put his grand project into practice and heal the island.
Yet things did not go as planned.
While he focused so intently on finding a way to be heard by the “great ones” beyond the island, his party had to grapple with the problems of daily life… and with its own corruption, the rust eating it from within.
Yes, it was noble to dream of the great revolution that would let the island breathe after decades of neglect. But what about the organization of the Fire Festival? That celebration brought in huge profits every year, all promptly pocketed by those who had sat in the chairs beneath the mayor’s for far too long.
And what of the Wingulls problem, leaving droppings everywhere and frightening tourists on the beaches? A logistical nightmare no one knew (or wanted) to address. Those very tourists, despised by so many locals, still brought life and stirred the otherwise stagnant economy of Volcaria. They could not be dispensed with, nor could their numbers be risked, at least not in the short term.
And that was all that mattered. No one, except Forrest, wanted to look further ahead. Forrest, for his part, seemed blind to the small, everyday realities, the very ones that had brought him to where he was. His eyes were fixed only upward; he no longer saw what lay beneath his feet.
Perhaps it was for this very reason that he ended up signing, without much thought, documents he ought to have examined more closely. That he allowed collaborators he did not yet truly trust to act unchecked. Collaborators he perhaps should never have trusted so readily at all.
The Wingulls issue was addressed, but clumsily and in haste. No one truly sought a solution to the mounting piles of trash along the villages and overcrowded beaches. Instead, traps were placed where those pesky, invasive Pokémon were known to nest, along the cliffs and rooftops. The party promised they would be driven off quietly, leaving citizens and tourists in peace.
It did not happen.
When the day of the Fire Festival inauguration arrived, the stages, rides, and stalls were all set to delight young and old folks alike. The mayor, as every year, was called to give the opening speech. Forrest came in his best suit, certain that the words he had prepared would flow naturally and captivatingly from his now-seasoned tongue.
Everything seemed to proceed as usual. The tourists were many, the shopkeepers ready to sell trinkets of every sort, and the ride operators eager to pocket the profits from their attractions, erected with forged or nonexistent permits.
Then a Wingull alighted lightly on a scaffold. Another followed. And another still. A few children looked up, intrigued by the new arrivals.
“Mom, look!”
On the horizon, a gigantic flock darkened the sky in a vast cloud of white and blue feathers. Within minutes, the festival was in chaos.
The slender birds, overwhelming in their multitude and deprived of their natural refuges, had been moving into the island’s villages more and more in recent days. No one had done anything to stop the troubling trend. Everyone, after all, had been focused on the upcoming festival.
And it was at the very celebration they held so dear that disaster struck without mercy.
Tourists and villagers, terrified by the massive flock, rushed for shelter, but the absence of an effective evacuation plan turned the narrow town streets into a deadly trap of panic and trampling. Many slammed into shoddy structures that soon gave way, collapsing onto the heads of those unlucky enough to pass beneath. One ride even caught fire, fueling the screams of fear. Ambulances and firefighters did their best to contain the delirious situation, but they struggled greatly in the narrow alleys, blocked by stalls that flouted every safety regulation.
Thankfully, there were no deaths, but many were injured.
In the days that followed, amid the smoke and wreckage of the failed festival, the newspapers were eager to point their scandal-hungry fingers at the one responsible for the catastrophe. And who better fit the role than the fledgling mayor, still naïve about how his world truly worked?
Even his collaborators, accomplices if not the main culprits of the disaster, did not miss the chance to perform the usual about-face that awaited every scapegoat in local politics.
They accused Forrest of every possible misdeed. From the simple and truthful “he signed the documents” to outright absurdities, both small and grand. They cast him in a bad light for every kind of political and moral wrongdoing.
Some accused him of vandalizing buses with the droppings of his beloved Wingull, or of talking to them like a madman while stealing sand from the beaches.
Others, less creative, drew from the classic repertoire of secret lovers and strange sexual games. Some even dared to push into lurid rumors of harassment, ending with a reckless mention of pedophilia. There were those who called him a subversive, and others who branded him a sellout to central power. In short, there was something for every taste. Words like Truth and Ideals lost all meaning, leaving only shame and gossip. And an immense sense of helplessness.
—
A few years later, Forrest Silva was sitting in the study of his new apartment, small but cozy, in the heart of Castelia City. He was fervently writing a speech about an alleged hidden truth, one supposedly silenced by corrupt politicians and denied to honest citizens. He took a sip of Lemonade and conjured up yet another piece of damning evidence, ready to spark heated debate.
The rhythmic sound of waves and boats in the harbor below mixed with the daily chatter of people along the bustling main street. A shadow passed before the window to the right of Forrest’s desk. The man, no longer a boy, lifted his gaze. Not a Wingull, just a Pidove, typical of the metropolitan sprawl.
The following day, he arrived at a slightly tacky conference room on the second floor of a mediocre hotel. The smell of the port clung to the walls despite the staff’s efforts, who had gone overboard spraying wild Lilligant perfume onto the yellowing curtains and the red-upholstered chairs, stained with dubious substances. The end result was far from pleasant. “Professor Silva,” as he now called himself, adjusted himself with a grimace behind the microphone perched on a raised platform and cleared his throat.
Before him, an audience of conspiracy theorists and the desperate hushed their chatter, eager to hear his shocking revelations. Off to the side, several journalists had gathered. Some, waiting for the Q&A, could barely contain their anticipation to dismantle his elaborate yet flimsy castles of air. Others were ready to scribble notes that would become scandalous headlines for their fluff-ridden newspapers.
Many would later say the conference was a small disaster. A heated argument broke out between journalists and attendees, nearly escalating into a brawl. Someone had even brought rotten fruit to hurl at anyone who failed to promptly agree with the beloved Professor. A hotel handyman, tasked with refilling an empty water carafe, was dragged into the quarrel. The poor fellow narrowly dodged a fist meant for his nose, while the pitcher slipped, its contents cascading dramatically onto the fighters’ heads, soaking the smoke-colored carpet already stained with berry juice.
At that point, the hotel manager felt compelled to intervene, firmly asking the participants of this media circus to leave the premises for good.
Forrest apologized to the receptionists and their none-too-pleased boss, but inside he was fully satisfied: he had achieved the intended outcome. His notoriety, fame or infamy, depending on who was speaking, was once again confirmed. Now it was only a matter of days, perhaps even hours, before the chaos he had deliberately unleashed would spread across social media and newspapers, shocking decent folk and feeding the ever-hungry keyboard lions.
Just outside the commotion of the hotel, Forrest offered a few vague, openly interpretable statements before slipping away with his usual skill from the grasp of both fans and skeptics. He disentangled himself with cordial ease from those who sought to challenge him with words or even Pokémon battles, official or otherwise, and made his way to the nearby docks.
Once free of the turmoil, he wondered where he might grab a decent drink to celebrate the success of the confusion he had, this time, caused intentionally. As he pondered and walked, watching the restless sea to his left, a figure he hadn’t noticed approached from behind. A calm greeting in a deep masculine voice, belonging to someone who, like him, knew the art of speaking, caught him off guard and sent the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. He spun around.
Before him stood a tall man in an elegant suit, smiling as he extended his right hand in an implicit request for introduction. Long green hair, tied back but with neat strands left loose despite the sea breeze, framed an asymmetrical, lycanrokish face: on the right, a ruby-red lens, extravagantly expensive, concealed the eye beneath; on the left, an eye of the same unsettling crimson color fixed the Professor with a gaze of piercing intensity. For a moment, Forrest couldn’t help but feel like a Patrat under the hungry stare of a Braviary.
After a few seconds of tension, the reinvented conspiracy orator snapped out of his trance. He noticed the hand suspended before him. The two men shook hands.
—
Forrest should have spent the following days tending to the ripple effect of his storm-bringing speech at the harbor hotel. He even forgot to check the pages of his social media channels, too absorbed in replaying his encounter with that mysterious figure.
The tall one-eyed man with green hair and a crimson gaze had introduced himself as Ghetsis Harmonia Gropius. He said he had a proposal to make, and invited Forrest to share a Lemonade in order to speak with more calm and discretion. Normally, Forrest would have refused: too many desperate souls thought they could push their theories into the spotlight through the Professor’s voice, while many rising “faces of reason” sought to expose him publicly to make a name for themselves. But there was something different about this strange presence. His manner carried neither desperation nor a hunger for fame.
So Forrest listened.
Ghetsis spoke.
At first glance, he seemed to speak to persuade. He employed rhetorical techniques that Forrest knew all too well. He made him feel understood, flattered him, criticized him, then flattered him again, delivering a textbook oratory performance. Then he stopped. Forrest understood. Understood that Ghetsis was not using these weapons, so familiar to him, against him, as one normally would. He was offering them, in a subtle chess game between two players who knew they stood on equal ground.
Forrest replied, letting him know he had caught the meaning. Ghetsis continued. He spoke of him, of Forrest Silva, of his past. He described his rise and his fall with words that cut beyond the crude, sensationalist varnish of the newspapers. He neither diminished him nor exalted him. With simple, elegant phrasing, he told him: “I know who you are.”
The chatter of other patrons seeped into the charged silence that hung between the two for a few brief moments. The clamor of the harbor and its people, blissfully ignorant in their mediocrity, clashed against the still-untouched glasses of Lemonade before them. Then Ghetsis concluded the move he had prepared in this match of eloquence and strategy he had set in motion.
He did not ask for mere collaboration in sowing scandals and attacks on the establishment, as the Professor might have expected. Nor for help in spreading some alleged hidden truth. What he presented was something far larger, and terrifyingly ambitious: Team Plasma. He said nothing outright, but Forrest understood that if the movement unfolded as intended, they could conquer. Unova, perhaps even the entire world.
In the days that followed, Forrest searched for everything he could on this extraordinary man and his absurd yet enticing idea. The latter, still evidently in its embryonic stage, yielded little, and what he uncovered on “Harmonia Gropius,” as he styled himself, was equally shallow. A few mentions of an “Association of Unovan Myth-Cosmic Studies” in Nacrene City, along with a minor academic debate over the authenticity of a recently unearthed text. Clearly, it was the faint scaffolding of what was to come, but, as he had been told, they needed someone who could spread information, truth or falsehood alike. As Forrest liked to twist the saying: it would be his task to cast pearls before the Swineubs.
Then he dug deeper. Not into the pompous surname, obviously fabricated, but into the given name: Ghetsis. And what he found chilled and exhilarated him in equal measure. This was no mere Unovan history scholar, as he had first assumed. He was a criminal, a major one. He had been arrested as the head of a Pokémon smuggling ring (so much for his “good intentions”) and sentenced to thirty years in prison. He had served only ten, not before the inspector who had arrested him was dragged through the mud for using controversial investigative methods. Because of this, and thanks to his good behavior, the sentence had been heavily reduced. Effectively erased, leaving him a free man. The policewoman, who should have testified even about her own ruin, had died before she could, victim of a sudden accident, never truly resolved.
Forrest broke into a cold sweat. Adrenaline rushed to his head, his thoughts whirled. The idea that such a man had sought him out for his oratory skills frightened him, but at the same time deeply flattered him, making him feel important, recognized, even in circles he had never dreamed of approaching.
It was now painfully clear that the lofty goodness of Ghetsis’s ideals was not merely tainted by ill intent, but very likely nonexistent. A cardboard cutout of rainbows and smiling Pokémon, nothing more than bait for unsuspecting Starlies. Behind it: a man ravenous for power. Not that Forrest hadn’t known already, but now he saw with sharp clarity that Ghetsis was not the type to trouble himself with scruples. The inspector’s tragic death was, in all probability, proof enough that it was better not to stand in his way.
Forrest wondered if Ghetsis had even calculated what he was now thinking of him, his research, his doubts, his emotions. Suddenly, he felt watched. Yet he was alone, hunched over the computer in his study, in the new apartment by the Castelia harbor.
Now he had to decide.
He could step back, remain in his life of small and grand lies, spun for an audience of the desperate and the conspiratorial.
Or he could take the risk.
Forrest chose to leap.
And thus, he became Ryoku, the Sage of Team Plasma.
—
In the darkness of his cell in Wintersong Prison, Forrest, Ryoku, pretended to be trying to sleep. Above him, the fungus gave off a faint glow. It was probably poisonous. Not that anyone cared.
Staring at that strange living mass, he thought back to the brochure from Volcaria the guard had brought him a few days before. A little reminder of home, the man had said. More likely, just to mock him.
Visit Volcaria, the Island of the Sun!
Sure—if you want to be covered in Wingull droppings, it’s the perfect destination. By now those winged bastards were the only true rulers of his homeland.
Hello there! I’m Volcaria, the dazzling Island of the Sun and home of the Volcaronas!
Volcaronas? Where? The only Volcarona he had ever seen was the one he’d found while playing puppet for Team Plasma, miles away from his island. Only to hand it over as a gift to that bastard Ghetsis. Poor beast.
Come play with me, it will be a true paradise!
Tourists had to be completely braindead to fall for such idiotic ads. He wondered if his own people felt resentful, or if they too had turned into imbeciles.
And that’s exactly why I invite you to the Festival of Fire!
During Midsummer Week, the devoted citizens pray and dance in honor of their cherished butterfly Pokémon.
If by pray and dance they meant set up deadly traps to profit off the stupidity of others…
Hey, wait just a second! I know you can’t wait to set off, but I’ve still got a little tip for you: don’t forget your camera!
Yes, stupid, useless beasts that frightened children and adults alike. Spreaders of disease and filth. Maybe those words applied to the Wingulls. Maybe to the humans who couldn’t manage them. Innocent Pokémon in their utter brainlessness.
I can’t wait to meet you!
I’ll be waiting here, between the fiery red heat of my volcano’s lava and the cool blue-green waves of my sea!
Layla, Sol makes a decision.
Perhaps the only one she has ever truly made in her entire life.
Ghetsis cannot let her go.
Anthea and Concordia watch over her, prisoners in the same gilded cage.
And yet, through it all, Sol, Layla finds someone.
A soul. An Echo.
Trigger warning!
This chapter talks, in a rather descriptive way, about an attempted suicide! Reader be advised!
📰Missed the other chapters?
🔗 SONGS OF GHETSIS - INDEX
✴️ Prefer AO3?
🔗 BLEEDING OUT
🇮🇹 Sei un lettore italiano?
🔗 BLEEDING OUT
Otherwise, read the chapter below ⬇️
THE LAST THING THAT I DO
BLEEDING OUT
The title is inspired by the song Bleeding Out by Imagine Dragons
Red.
The floor was red. Liquid. Dense. Dark.
Blood flowed quietly from the girl’s slit wrists as she lay on the ground. Her back resting against the frame of the great golden bed, Sol watched the long bedspread, once lilac, stain into burgundy and merge with the marble tiles beneath her. No longer white. No longer black. Red.
It almost looked as if she had just spilled a large glass of wine. But it wasn’t wine, was it? The smell was not the fruity or spicy one of the drink.
Intense. Metallic. It was the smell of her life slipping once more through her fingers. But this time, she had been the one to decide.
The floor beneath her bare arms and legs was cold. Cool. It offered a faint relief to the confused, swirling thoughts that refused to shut off. How much she longed to shut off. So why was her body still fighting, stubbornly?
The girl had been a prisoner in Team Plasma’s castle for several months, in the clutches of the one she had believed would be the love of her life. Ghetsis, the monster who said “I love you” and then beat her when things didn’t go exactly as he wished.
It felt like an eternity had passed. She hadn’t managed to escape on her own. After multiple failed attempts, followed by punishments that grew more painful each time, she had given up. And yet, despite appearances, it hadn’t been so long since she had disappeared from home. Surely someone was looking for her. They would find her. They would save her.
That’s what she had told herself, until the night before.
One day like so many others, perhaps a little lighter than the rest, Ghetsis introduced her to Anthea and Concordia. Two girls who must have been thirteen or fourteen, give or take. He called them his “daughters,” said he had adopted them. They were poor orphans whom he, with so much to give, wanting to do something good, had brought from the orphanage in Castelia City to live with him. They could become friends, Sol could help him give them a better life.
Maybe, Sol told herself, she hadn’t been completely wrong when she fell for him, believing she saw a generous man.
Maybe, she thought, he had a soul too. Something beyond sadism and madness.
Once again, she learned that thinking, with him, was always a grave mistake.
That evening, Concordia, who, together with her sister, had been tasked with “taking care” of Sol, of keeping an eye on her, chattered about everything and nothing, as she usually did. Anthea, the elder, often scolded her, calling her a chatterbox, but Concordia only shrugged and said that if she couldn’t talk outside, she’d at least talk with them. To Sol, the girls were a relief. They didn’t ask her uncomfortable questions, likely instructed by Ghetsis, and they kept her company. The younger one, in her flow of words, spoke of N, of Team Plasma, of their great ideals and truths. Sol never dared to contradict her. She had tried at the start. It hadn’t ended well when Ghetsis found out what she had said about him.
Then, between trivialities, Concordia mentioned what day it was. The date. Day. Month. Year.
Two years. It had been two years since Layla, now resigned to being called Sol, had left a farewell note for her parents on the kitchen table and run away with her jailer. Two years of agony. Two years of her life cast to the wind. Worse. Gifted to the beast.
And no one had found her. No one had come to save her.
The thought passed through her mind that, in the end, she was an adult. She had left of her own free will.
Were they still searching for her? Had they ever searched at all?
Now, on the floor stained red, her red, Sol watched the artificial light settle gently on the dark liquid around her. It filtered through the curtains from the inner garden her room overlooked. Too large, too beautiful, too closed-in.
That light, which should have been warm and comforting, which had so often felt cold and impersonal to her, reminded her of weekend mornings spent sleeping in. Her parents insisted that nine o’clock was late for waking. They had even argued about it more than once. What did it matter now? If only she could tell them what she was thinking… Perhaps she would have learned her lesson, or perhaps they would have argued many more times over the same trivial things.
But she would not have a second chance.
This was the end. This was her final choice.
Unconsciously, Sol moved a finger. A strand of hair, soaked and red with blood, shifted to the side. Some weeks ago, maybe months, maybe a year, she had let Ghetsis dye her hair. Her natural locks were dark, but he decided she would look better as a blonde. The golden color, he said, would suit her light eyes and pale skin. Suit her name, Sol. His sun.
She had thought of protesting. His stare, and the tighter grip on her wrist, changed her mind. So she let him choose her appearance too, her color.
She remembered the first time they dyed it. Anthea and Concordia had been called in to wash her hair and apply the product to lighten her brown strands. He had watched, commenting lightly, in a cheerful tone. From then on, it became a small ritual, repeated every time the roots showed. The brown mustn’t be seen.
Now the blonde was gone. It was red, it was blood. Take this, Ghetsis. Too bad she wouldn’t live to see his reaction. Or perhaps, thankfully.
This was the end. This was her final choice.
When was the last time she decided anything on her own? Had she ever truly done so? She had lived the life her parents chose for her. Home, a normal school, a few friends, an ordinary job… She had wished for something greater, more adventurous, but had always limited herself to daydreaming, watching Swablus fly away from the sill of her window.
And then, one late afternoon, she had left the table set for three, a note in her place, and had decided to leap too, running away with Ghetsis. And look where she was now, what a disaster she had made of things.
But had it really been her choice? Or had he made her walk, controlling her like a blind puppet? And yet, she had truly loved him… A small part of her still wanted to believe there was good in him, that she hadn’t just made a colossal mistake. It didn’t matter.
This was the end. This was her final choice.
Perhaps the only one she had ever made in her whole life.
And so time passed. Minutes, hours, days, years. Time. Blood flowed from her wrists onto the floor, and her thoughts grew weaker, more fragmented. If only she could live. She would have wanted so much to…
The door across from her opened. Someone entered. Stopped, a broken step.
Expensive shoes, the long cloak painted with eyes he had worn since they moved into the castle. Ghetsis.
Sol blinked slowly, then closed her weary eyes. She didn’t want to see him, didn’t want to risk meeting his gaze, not even by accident. What would he think now, seeing her like this? She wished she could look him in the eyes and tell him:
“Look what I’ve done. I did it for you.”
But she didn’t have the courage, even knowing she would die anyway, soon.
She didn’t have the strength, knowing she would die anyway, any moment now.
Then, Sol waited.
—
Ghetsis entered Sol’s room. It was a morning like any other, but this time, free from the duties of his growing, thriving organization, he had allowed himself the indulgence of seeing her earlier than usual.
He opened the door. Stopped on the threshold, his step broken. Struck still.
The sight before him was disgraceful.
Sol, his Sol, had slit her wrists. The torn veins let blood spill freely, staining everything it touched. The otherwise clean sheets of the canopy bed. The new nightgown he had gifted her only a month earlier. Her hair, carefully dyed the color of the shining sun and arranged into two neat braids. The same braids that now lay undone, scattered chaotically around their owner. His Sol. Now she was dying, defiled by her own vital essence.
What a horrible thing.
After a few seconds of hesitation, of reeling from the horror, he bent over her. Her body was warm, but for an instant it seemed to him she was no longer breathing. A pang struck his chest, forcing him to listen more carefully.
Dead? Truly? How could she do this to him? Wound him in such a way, after everything he had given her… after he had revealed himself to her as to no one else.
Yes, he had been violent at times, but only when provoked. Only because she was the one person allowed access to that side of him, to every shade of who he was.
Even those who had borne the consequences of crossing him had never truly witnessed his violence, least of all physical, from his own hands. His sadism, perhaps, his creativity in punishing without ever dirtying himself. But never his face twisted with rage.
And he had apologized, every time. If only she had behaved, if only she hadn’t angered him, hadn’t tried to escape. Why did she insist on rejecting him, insist on closing her eyes to the reality of things? She was his, she only had to accept it.
He thought she had accepted it. After all, it had been quite some time since her last rebellion. And now, look at this mess, what she had done.
A heartbeat. The faintest breath.
Ghetsis rose abruptly. For an instant, his heart hammered in his chest. He immediately pushed it back down, regaining his composure. He left the room with apparent calm, as though nothing had happened.
He walked slowly, measuredly, toward Anthea and Concordia’s quarters. His hands clasped behind his back to hide the tension in his fingers. His jaw tight, despite the mask of a neutral expression. His steps echoed through the corridor, empty as always. He did not quicken his pace. He could not risk drawing attention.
His woman, which he was already reluctant to show to others, had just attempted suicide.
An affront, a weakness no one must ever know. Except perhaps the girls who watched over her, and a doctor chosen with extreme care, whose silence he would secure. One way or another.
—
Anthea and Concordia had just dressed and prepared for a new day when their father appeared unexpectedly in their rooms: two chambers, elegantly and expensively decorated yet impersonal, connected by an antechamber that opened onto the main corridor of the floor.
When he entered, he was outwardly calm and serious, as they had always seen him, but something in his posture and voice suggested to Anthea, the more perceptive of the two, that the situation carried urgency. So when he asked them to follow him, the elder cast a glance at the younger, making it clear this was no time for questions, before obeying. The younger bit her lip, and her adoptive sister understood that she caught on.
Ghetsis had never been violent with them. He was cold and distant, but he had given them a grand home and an even grander purpose. They were the Goddesses of Love and Peace, handmaidens to the future King of Plasma, that strange boy who spoke to Pokémon. At the orphanage, everyone had feared him; now, everyone revered him. Yet he remained a mystery.
And then there was that young woman, Sol. When they were alone, Concordia would say she liked her, even if she was silent and always lost in thought. She smiled at her and listened. That was more than enough. Anthea merely tolerated her. Another person who, in their father’s eyes, came before them. N was special, Anthea could understand why he was handled with such care. But what did this girl have, more than them? Certainly, she was odd at times. She had told them strange things about Ghetsis, and later he had to explain that Sol had trouble controlling her mood and her words. Anthea harbored doubts about who was really telling the truth between the two of them.
But it wasn’t her place to question her father’s actions, so she held her tongue. At the orphanage, both had learned that it was unwise to be ungrateful toward someone who had given them a better life. If he had chosen to be their parent, then Anthea and Concordia were to be perfect daughters, or risk abandonment. Again. It had never been said aloud, but it hadn’t needed to be.
So the two Goddesses followed the Sage, carrying with them, as he had instructed, bandages and healing potions. He walked ahead of them, offering no explanation. Concordia glanced at Anthea, puzzled. She did not return the look, silently telling her to keep herself in check.
What had happened? If Pokémon had been injured, there would have been no need to trouble Ghetsis. Could it be that threatening Hydreigon they had once treated? It was the only Pokémon their father seemed particularly possessive of, so much so that even they, who often helped tend to the creatures exhausted from battles among the team’s members, had seen it only once.
But they weren’t heading toward the rest of the castle, where the underground Pokémon Center lay. They were walking toward the inner quarters.
Could it be Natural? Had he somehow hurt himself, despite his room being made safe even for the clumsiest of children? Perhaps he had quarreled with one of his Pokémon. How strange. They reached the room of the boy-king they were at once sisters and mothers to. Handmaidens. Goddesses. They passed it by. That left only…
When they arrived at Sol’s door, they stopped. Ghetsis opened it just enough for them to enter. Then he turned, gesturing for them to go ahead.
Anthea and Concordia exchanged a brief glance, then stepped inside.
“Sol!”
Concordia, her voice breaking with terror, rushed to the girl. She dropped to her knees beside her, heedless of the blood staining her freshly donned clothes, and tried desperately to rouse her. She wept and spoke all at once, asking her why, shaking her shoulders lightly. Perhaps with too much force, as though the gesture itself could return her to life.
Anthea remained standing, frozen in horror and dread. What had that fool done? What had gone through her mind to commit such a terrifying act? Did she want more attention, she, who already had so much? Was this another nervous breakdown? …Or had Ghetsis truly hurt her, once again? And what was she supposed to make of all this? How was she supposed to react, what was she supposed to do? She felt tears sting her eyes. One single drop escaped her iron control, sliding down her left cheek.
Ghetsis followed them into the room, closing the door.
“Calm yourselves! She’s still alive. Why else do you think I told you to bring bandages and potions?”
Anthea snapped out of the trance she had slipped into for a moment and set to work. She pulled bandages from the satchel slung over her shoulder and knelt beside Sol, next to her distraught sister.
“Concordia…”
Her voice was soft and delicate, warm and reassuring, as befitted the Muse of Love. The other girl could read behind the fragile façade: she felt the urgency, the fear, the enormity of a moment greater than them both. She stopped, trying to calm her sobs. She, the Goddess of Peace, still struggled to play her role. She had much yet to learn.
Just as the girl loosened her grip, Sol opened her eyes slightly.
The scene before her was muddled and senseless. Two shadows bent over her, while the lights around them danced in chaos. Those figures, so familiar and yet so strange, seemed relieved to see her stir, their limbs and mouths moving, uttering words she could not understand. Meanwhile, she felt weightless, suspended in the absence of consciousness and reason.
Suddenly, a sting. A burning pain at her wrists: they were now bound in something white, soaked red. Someone, one of the figures shifting near her, gently took her chin and gave her a strange liquid to drink. Sweet, bitter. Noisy. Blinding. Her senses bled together, lost meaning. Then the floor slipped away from her; two arms held her tight. Cradled her in a prisoning grip and carried her away. What a bizarre feeling.
—
A few days later, in a secluded room in the medical wing of Team Plasma, Sol drifted between sleep and wakefulness. The pale white-and-pink walls, feebly trying to seem reassuring, looked at her with suspicion. A service Audino, its colors blending almost seamlessly with the walls, brought her a glass of fresh water and a pill to swallow. A faint whimper, and it backed away, turning its back on her. But it did not leave her alone. She was never alone.
She didn’t remember much of that morning. The smell of iron, red, light filtering through the curtains. Pain. Not physical, her memory itself hurt. She didn’t linger on it, letting everything flow away with the water down her dry throat. And whatever it was that Pokémon had left on the nightstand.
Ghetsis had told her that she had tried to do something terrible, irreparable. Even for him, who could do so much. He spoke to her as one would speak to a child. He wasn’t angry, he said, worried. And a little disappointed. She must never do it again.
When she had woken, under those so-white blankets, Ghetsis wasn’t there. Instead, there were her small jailers, Anthea and Concordia, watching her as one would watch a sick daughter.
Concordia held her right hand and smiled, a trembling smile with a tear on her cheek. Anthea, as always more distant, stood beside her sister and observed the girl lying in bed, lost in her thoughts. Who knew what was running through her mind?
Sol looked around. Perhaps she understood a little of what had happened. Perhaps not. Then, she had apologized and cried, repeating the words “I’m sorry” like a broken mantra.
Ghetsis’ younger daughter had followed suit in this liberating weeping. The elder seemed to resist for a moment, then gave in alongside them. Now, no one was watching, they could allow themselves this. Or maybe the walls were listening. But she could no longer stop.
Now, alone with Audino, she desperately tried not to think. About herself, about the girls, about the man who would decide her fate. Every resistance had been useless. In fact, it had caused more pain, more suffering. She had risked hurting even those she did not want to hurt. The pills that were occasionally brought to her, which calmed her senses and thoughts, would help. They would be her refuge, from now on.
Then, suddenly, the sound of footsteps. Ghetsis entered the room, lowering his head slightly so as not to hit the doorframe, far too low for his towering two meters. He approached the hospital bed, opening his mouth to speak, when one of his Pokéballs suddenly lit up. Of all the Pokéballs, it was the oldest, the most ordinary, marked as a boy might mark it.
A flash of light, and a gigantic Hydreigon filled the room, bent on itself, cramped by the furniture and walls. Audino let out a frightened scream and ran off with the medicines it had been tidying.
Sol recognized the creature immediately. It was the same one she had seen Ghetsis mistreat not long ago. The Zweilous that had evolved in a twisted, painful way right before her eyes. But now she didn’t want to remember, not anymore.
The Pokémon’s living, purplish eyes looked at the girl startled by its appearance. There was a hint of concern in those irises without visible pupils. Instinctively, Sol raised a hand to bring it near the creature’s central muzzle. Hydreigon lowered its neck to let her touch it. Without thinking, she spoke:
“Like me…you’re like an Echo.”
But she didn’t continue. Ghetsis regained control of the situation, ordering the Pokémon back into its red-and-white sphere. His fiery gaze left no doubt: he was furious. But he could not take it out on the girl, not on her in that state.
“You!”
He pointed at her in accusation. Then he turned and left her alone, for the first time since the disaster had happened. Hydreigon would pay for both of them.
But Echo and Sol had found each other, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Hidden beneath the mountain, the Plasma Castle was built as a monument to power.
A prison disguised as a dream.
A garden. An arena.
A Zweilous. A Hydreigon.
Amid white marble and artificial light, Sol learns what it means to be transformed.
And how much it costs to rebel.
This chapter is the story of the forced evolution of Ghetsis' Hydreigon!
📰Missed the other chapters?
🔗 SONGS OF GHETSIS - INDEX
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🔗 BATTLE CRY
🇮🇹 Sei un lettore italiano?
🔗 BATTLE CRY
Otherwise, read the chapter below ⬇️
KING IS CROWNED
IT’S DO OR DIE
BATTLE CRY
The title is inspired by the song Battle Cry by Imagine Dragons
The Plasma Castle had been a difficult and grand project to accomplish. Physically, it was perhaps the best-executed work, the most powerful testament to the future Seventh Sage of Team Plasma. It was a project carried out entirely in the shadows, taking advantage of the functional blindness of Unova’s politics and the Pokémon League, more interested in being loved here and now by a population kept in ignorance than in enforcing laws, digging into the rot, and making everyone uncomfortable. Questioning the burden of ruling a country with such an ancient and layered culture.
When Layla first set foot in the castle, Ghetsis had already stopped calling her by her birth name.
Sol. That was her new name. She took it as a game.
The massive hidden structure had nothing to do with fairy tale castles. No white towers brushing a cloudless blue sky. The castle stood, or rather, sank, beneath the mountain. There was nothing grand on the outside. Just rocks and a hidden entrance.
Inside, the building was still unfinished: rough corridors, walls of metal and stone, dust everywhere. Large, menacing Excadrills and Conkeldurrs worked tirelessly under the supervision of laborers and staff well paid, whether in Pokédollars or in dreams and hopes for a better world.
What she was shown, however, was the already completed section. White marble and elegant staircases leading to the regal quarters already built for Ghetsis and his new, though not yet present, family.
Everything was so vast, so exhilarating. She would never have imagined being part of something so monumental, so far from her small, ordinary life. She had dreamed of it, eyes open and closed. Now it was real. Or so it seemed, at least. The illusion was as solid as the stone into which it was being meticulously carved.
Layla spent the days following her arrival exploring the completed parts of the castle. There was even an indoor garden, with rare and exotic Pokémon wandering freely.
As freely as one could wander in a well-lit room, yet still artificial, hidden beneath the mountain’s tunnels. Something felt off in that idyllic, curated environment, ancient and classical in appearance, yet freshly built. Now and then, the sounds of ongoing construction broke the illusion of perfection those vast, empty rooms tried to project. It was clear that other people were in the building, but Sol, aside from Ghetsis, hadn’t met anyone else yet.
Whenever Layla tried to bring up the matter, he would respond evasively. Team Plasma, he said, was still in its ideological and foundational stage. There were people working on the castle at that very moment, but it was best not to disturb such delicate operations. Others were busy out in the world, recruiting new members. One day, Sol would also be part of the great project. But Ghetsis didn’t want her to be treated like just another pawn. She was special. She deserved a special place, a different kind of introduction. Flattered, she let herself be swayed by the honeyed words and the promise of making a difference.
Layla had begun to feel the weight of dissatisfaction. That fascinating man seemed determined to remain a mystery to her. After yet another protest, Ghetsis expressed regret for not having lived up to her expectations.
Sol was right: he couldn’t treat her like a stranger. She was his sun, and it was only fair that she knew him better. So he decided to show her something he rarely shared outside the battlefield. Only his enemies had seen it. For them, it had meant defeat, sometimes even death. He left that last detail out.
In the indoor garden, among cornflowers and the light of the false sun filtering through the tree branches, Ghetsis took one of his Pokéballs from his belt. It was red and white, like the simplest Pokéballs, but he had marked it with symbols only he could understand. It was clear that it wasn’t new, yet it had been kept with a care that Layla mistook for love.
When he released it, with a gesture almost languid, a glow escaped from the small sphere as it dropped gently to the ground. The Pokéball landed with a muffled sound, and in front of them appeared a blue-and-black dragon that stepped onto the grass and looked at them with an unnatural calm. Two heads, four white eyes hidden beneath a thick dark mane.
A Zweilous.
The girl looked at it in awe. Afraid, but deeply drawn to the almost mythical creature.
You didn’t see many of its kind in Castelia City. In fact, she had never seen one.
Maybe a Deino once, downtown, in the hands of a tourist who clearly couldn’t control it.This Zweilous, however, was calm. It looked at her with a mix of curiosity and caution,
mirroring the emotions she was showing, like in a game of reflections.
Behind her, Ghetsis was swelling with pride. That was his creature, his creation.
He shared a few anecdotes with Sol. Battle stories, victories won through sheer mastery as a trainer. No games, no tenderness.
She slowly extended a hand, giving him a questioning look, as if asking permission. Ghetsis tensed for a moment, then gave her a look of calculated softness. As she turned her head toward the dragon, he directed a glance of stern command at the creature, which lowered one of its two heads in submission. She took it as a sign of acceptance, and gently stroked it, satisfied. The other head kept its eyes on its master, confused, yet obedient.
“Thank you for letting me pet you, Zweilous.”
—
Weeks had passed, maybe months. The girl no longer knew how long she had been inside the castle. She wasn’t even sure she remembered her own name.
She had tried to leave. That was when the dream turned into a nightmare. She could no longer wake up. Ghetsis, who had told her he loved her, had become possessive, obsessed with control. She was no longer there because she had chosen to run away from home with the love of her life. She was there because she was a prisoner of a terrifying man who insisted on calling her by a name that didn’t belong to her.
Sol. His sun, he said.
Yet all she saw were black storm clouds. There was nothing bright in what it was becoming. Only a cage, dark and terrible. Just like the change in his voice, his gaze, and his behavior—he who called himself her companion. Her jailer.
She had gone from being free to wander the completed rooms of the castle to being confined to one room, beautiful, elegant, and far too large for one person, or even two.
The change hadn’t been sudden. It began when she expressed the wish to go home, or at least to contact her parents to let them know she was okay. That was when things started taking a strange turn. He showed disappointment, hurt by the betrayal she hadn’t realized she was committing. He was giving her everything, and she rejected it like that?
Then came the anger. The stubborn refusal to use her birth name became more and more evident. He called her Sol. She told him her real name was Layla, that Sol was a nice nickname, but she wanted to be taken seriously, once in a while. He got angry. And while at first he just raised his voice, soon his fury turned physical. Objects thrown against walls. Then came the slaps, the dark bruises on her skin. At first, she really excused him. Over time, forgiveness became an empty word, said mechanically. Only to avoid making the pain worse.
Layla wanted to go home. To her family, her friends, her school, the promise of a boring—less painful—future. She hoped so much to see Mimí again and tell her she had always been right. That she shouldn’t have trusted, that she should have kept her feet on the ground.
Ghetsis hated hope. He did everything to trample it, manipulate it, bend it, and turn it into obedience. Sol had to be his perfect and devoted puppet. He was shaping her, patiently and with all the love he knew how to give.
That morning, very early by the clocks, which were necessary where natural sunlight could never reach, Layla decided it was finally time to escape for real. This time she would succeed. It didn’t matter that she didn’t have comfortable transportation or a map. She would go on foot, find her way home somehow, ask people and Pokémon for help.
Like every other time she had told herself this, she tried. She didn’t even get to the castle entrance.
Three boys, just a little older than her, blocked her way. She had been quiet, left a false trail, but those three seemed like damn ninjas out of a movie. Trained shadows, more soldiers than human beings. They brought her back to her room without saying a word. She hardly even noticed she had left.
But she knew a punishment was coming. And there was nothing she could do but wait.
When Ghetsis arrived, a few hours later, he was calm. Disappointed by Sol’s actions, but not angry. His voice was cold, his gaze calculating. Layla barely managed to hold back a sigh of relief. Maybe if she talked to him… gently, with all the calm and kindness in the world, who knows… maybe she could open his eyes. Deep down, somewhere, the man she had once known must still be hiding. The Prince Charming with whom she had shared so many beautiful moments, before he turned into a Bluebeard-like monster.
Ghetsis ordered Sol to follow him. She didn’t dare disobey and complied.
While Layla thought about how to soften him, how to make him take off the ogre’s mask he seemed to wear like his own skin, Sol walked silently beside the man who, at last, wore no mask at all.
They walked for a long time through the castle’s corridors, now populated by curious recruits. In another context, Layla would have been glad to see people bringing life to those halls she had once known as empty and silent. But now, they looked like ghostly presences, judging her in groups she would never truly be a part of.
They arrived at their destination. A large battle arena, apparently used for training. With a booming voice, Ghetsis ordered the room to be cleared. They had to be alone. Everyone rushed to give him the space he requested, like good little soldiers. It was clear that, beyond commanding respect, he also knew how to instill fear.
The room was vast, and voices echoed theatrically along the walls. Once emptied of human presence, Ghetsis slowly advanced to the center of the arena, on the sandy floor. His steps crunched on the scattered grains, followed by the faint echo of Layla’s uncertain feet. With a calm gesture and steady voice, he ordered Sol to sit in the stands. She wasn’t the only one deserving punishment today. A chill ran down the girl’s spine. Maybe he was angry after all, but what could he possibly have in mind, something so Machiavellian? Who else had awakened his wrath?
“Ghetsis, I know I made a mistake, I’m sorry, maybe we could talk about it before—”
He looked down at her with deep contempt. She fell silent, intimidated. She no longer knew how to behave around him without provoking his rage, and its consequences. She was starting to fear that maybe… she would never go home. It was a thought that terrified her immensely.
Without voicing her concerns, Sol walked to a seat with her head low. Ghetsis scolded her posture; she looked him in the eye, fear evident in her pale, trembling irises.
Momentarily satisfied, the man reached into his cloak, adorned with large painted eyes. He looked so regal, so noble, so out of scale compared to the outside world, the world Sol hadn’t seen in who knows how long.
He pulled out several Pokéballs. Some dark, expensive-looking Ultraballs and one standard Pokéball, decorated with strange symbols. The girl recognized those markings immediately: the same ones she had noticed on the Pokéball of the Zweilous she had seen only a few times, back when she still blindly believed the fairy tales its master used to tell.
That creature had seemed so well cared for. So loved.
With a fluid gesture, Zweilous was out. Majestic as always, two heads with a lively and intelligent air. Noticing the girl’s presence, the Pokémon prepared to appear docile, as he had silently been instructed to do the few times his fierce trainer had summoned him in her company.
“Zweilous.”
Ghetsis admonished him in a sharp tone. The dragon turned to look at him, lowering his heads, ready to obey. They were in the arena—it meant training.
“You failed your task the other day, remember? Did you think I’d forgotten?”
Zweilous didn’t move. He made no sound, remaining silent as he watched his master. He awaited his fate.
“You’re lucky. I’ll give you a chance to redeem yourself with a special training session. Today you have an audience. You’ve got something to prove. Let’s go.”
The Pokémon lifted one of its heads, hopeful. The other didn’t dare do the same: it knew its master too well. The two muzzles exchanged a puzzled glance, then returned to position, ready for action.
Ghetsis passed the two Ultraballs through his fingers and let them drop. Two Liepards with sly expressions emerged from their elegant shells.
“Two nobodies compared to you, right, Zweilous? I want you to give them an advantage: don’t defend yourself yet.”
The dragon remained still, frustrated by the command, but thoroughly disciplined. The two felines began to circle him with predatory gazes, the soft rustle of their padded paws the only sound echoing in the vast arena.
In the stands, Layla shifted slightly, transferring her weight from one side to the other. She watched the scene without blinking, worried about what might happen, but also curious to see that majestic creature in action. Maybe Ghetsis really was giving him a chance to improve? A voice inside her told her she knew that wasn’t true, that the situation could only get worse.
“Liepard, the sand!”
At the sudden command, the two Pokémons moved with such speed and precision that, even if he’d wanted to, Zweilous couldn’t have done anything. A wave of white and grey dust overwhelmed the dragon’s semi-blind gaze, and he let out a cry of pain, choked off by the effort to appear strong and resilient, despite being forbidden from defending himself.
The black mane covering his small white eyes, still in their pre-evolutionary state, wasn’t enough to keep him from tearing up profusely. Even his sense of smell, sharp to compensate for his poor eyesight, was overwhelmed by the miniature storm stirred up by the two Liepards. One of his heads sneezed loudly. The two felines looked at each other with satisfaction. It almost seemed like they were laughing at him, their high-pitched cries irritating his sensitive hearing.
Layla, uncomfortable at the sight of the suffering, looked at Ghetsis as if pleading with him to do something. He stood to the side of the pit, watching the scene with cold detachment and indifference.
“Good,” he declared after a few seconds thick with tension.
“You may act now, Zweilous. You have two moves to take them down. Don’t disappoint me.”
He didn’t need to be told twice. The Pokémon lunged at his two tormentors with both heads, trying to bite them. He missed his targets completely. Letting out a frustrated cry, he launched into a second attempt. Blinded, deafened, and overwhelmed by the stinging scent of sand and dust, he had little hope of catching agile and elusive opponents like the Liepard. But he didn’t get the chance to find out. Ghetsis cut him off with a firm, booming voice, doubled by the echo in the arena.
“I said two attacks. Seems to me you tried to bite twice. You failed. Again.”
Layla wanted to protest. What was happening was mistreatment, pure and simple, with no apparent justification. And even if there had been a reason, this was an excessive, deeply unfair punishment. If Zweilous had made some mistake, he should be scolded, not tortured.
Then she remembered what that man had done to her. The violence. And yet, nothing until now had felt so deliberately sadistic. Layla wanted to protest. Sol was afraid. She said nothing, but the illusion that the Pokémon had a real chance to redeem himself was quickly falling apart. This wasn’t an opportunity. It was abuse.
Ghetsis withdrew the two Liepards from battle, shaking his head. Then he pulled out two worn Duskballs. Layla was too far away to notice, but on the dark green shell of the tools was a name, just not that of the man currently holding them.
One of the spheres opened at Ghetsis’ release gesture, placing a small, helpless-looking Roggenrola on the ground in front of him. Not what the girl had expected to see.
What happened next froze her blood.
“You’re frustrated. Let it out.”
It was a simple command, spoken in an almost bored tone.
Zweilous, still agitated and disoriented from the sand, took a few seconds to process what Ghetsis was suggesting. Then, without truly understanding what stood in front of him, he hurled himself at the target.
It all happened in an instant. The Roggenrola was nothing more than a barely trained baby, and the dragon bit down with a force it could never withstand. Then he slammed it into the ground and stomped with all his strength. With a dry, cracking sound, the small rock creature shattered and stopped moving. It hadn’t fainted.
The dragon’s heads sniffed the air, then lowered themselves toward the lifeless being at their feet. Why wasn’t the opponent reacting to the attack? Was it already over?
It wasn’t the first time Zweilous had killed his target, whether from excessive enthusiasm during battle or by a deliberate command from his master. But it usually didn’t happen this quickly. Usually, those who opposed him had at least a chance to fight back.
The scent of shattered stone, the warmth of extinguished life slowly dissipating, filled his sensitive nostrils.
Long ago, he had been a Deino. Boisterous, he would bite everything, as young ones of his kind do. And yet, he had never hurt a Cutiefly, as the saying went, and had been loved and cuddled by a presence he could now barely remember. Unable to battle, he had been kept as a companion pet. Over time, Ghetsis had repeated endlessly that the woman—that whore—had abandoned them. He had followed the boy who had played with him in the early years of his still-short life. Now that she was gone, that boy was all he had left. And she, as he had been told, had abandoned them. Only the two of them remained, in a world that didn’t want them. If the price of not being abandoned by Ghetsis too was the loss of innocence, he would pay it. More than thirty years had passed since then.
“No!”
The sound of a voice behind him and light footsteps on the sandy floor interrupted his moment of memory. The girl, witness to the tragedy, had instinctively rushed onto the scene, running toward the shattered little Roggenrola. Before she could reach him, Ghetsis stepped in her way.
“Stay out of this.”
His voice was as hard and cold as the marble walls of the castle.
“But…”
Without another word, and with a look that promised fire and thunder, the man in the long cloak grabbed her by the arm and dragged her back to the place from which she had stood. He forced her back down into her seat.
“It’s just a Pokémon. And you need to understand what happens to those who go against me.”
Sol kept her eyes down, frightened. Layla couldn’t hold back her tears. A sharp slap cracked through the air, thick with dust and violence. Ghetsis, who was leaning over her, straightened up and looked down on her from above.
“Stay in your place.”
And he returned to the center of the arena.
“Good. You crushed your enemy. Now let’s continue.”
Ghetsis took the second Duskball he had pulled out earlier. This time, his release gesture was firm.
A massive Gigalith appeared on the battlefield. The Roggenrola, whose fragile innocence had nothing in common with the imposing presence of its replacement, still lay abandoned at its feet. Upon seeing it, the Pokémon let out a cry of rage and pain. It was clear the two creatures were somehow connected. With a leap that caused a minor earthquake around it, the Gigalith launched itself at Zweilous. It struck him full force with the shockwave created by its landing, catching him off guard.
The dragon shook both heads violently and recovered, ready for a battle that promised to be brutal. He awaited his trainer’s orders, which came, as always. At first, it seemed like a fair fight: the opposing Pokémon was strong, but so was Zweilous, and the two danced across the arena for several intense minutes. But Ghetsis’s instructions became increasingly vague and contradictory. Even dodging blows was becoming difficult. The strikes Zweilous did manage to land clearly weren’t enough to seriously damage the tough rock skin of the Gigalith.
The strength and resilience of those living boulders were well known. But they were nothing compared to the determination of a mother avenging the brutal death of her child, right before her eyes.
So Zweilous began to falter under the blows and fatigue, nearing collapse. Ghetsis, who knew that moment would come, gave him a healing potion and forced him back to his feet.
“It’s not time to rest. You must fight!”
Just a few blows, and the dragon was already exhausted, again. Another potion, and he was back in the fight, though never for long.
"I won’t allow you to quit, you useless beast. Fight, I said!"
This carousel of cruelty and sadism went on for what felt like an eternity. When would it end, the pain, the exhaustion, the fear?
Layla wanted to scream. She wanted to run. She wanted to beg Ghetsis to stop, to leave the Pokémon alone.
Terror.
She was paralyzed by the fear that he would turn on her instead. That he would beat her again. The memory of the physical pain, the dull blows against her body, was stronger than empathy, stronger than her impulse to help.
She felt like a coward. A complicit observer in the suffering of these creatures. She should have stepped in, paid the price for doing the right thing, and felt like a heroine. That’s what she believed she would do when faced with injustice. That’s the person she told herself she was. But she wasn’t capable. She didn’t have the courage. So Sol remained silent, watching, crying quietly, hoping not to be noticed. When she realized she couldn’t look away, she felt like a monster.
"Go, Zweilous! Attack!"
But this time, something went wrong. The two heads, exhausted and confused by the situation, looked at each other. One of them bit the other, while the second, driven by desperation and instinct, turned toward the source of its torment. Not Gigalith. Ghetsis.
There was a tremendous roar. Despite the right head’s attempt to restrain it, the left one let out an exasperated roar and launched, in a blinding flash of light, the most powerful Dragon Pulse it had in its body, aimed at its trainer. It didn’t land a direct hit, thanks to the self-inflicted bite, but Ghetsis’s right arm and the section of the arena behind it were engulfed in the shockwave of draconic energy.
One step back. That was the only movement from the sadistic torturer. A single step back, and an expression twisted in surprise and pain. Part of his body was in flames, but he didn’t fall, his knees didn’t buckle, he didn’t make a sound.
He refused to show weakness. He was not weak. No one would see him fall.
Behind him, the arena lay in ruins. Small white flames flickered here and there, then slowly faded. So did Ghetsis’s arm, leaving behind a limb that went in seconds from a brilliant, vivid red to dark, scorched gray etched with glowing cracks, pulsing like molten veins.
Sol’s mouth opened during the violent attack. She couldn’t tell if a scream had come out, maybe it had choked in her burning throat. The dragon’s roar and the shockwave of Dragon Pulse echoed through the arena walls and through the inside of her skull. Any other sound was drowned out. Sol’s ears could hear nothing anymore.
Faced with the scene he himself had caused, Zweilous lost all control. Confused, exhausted, and desperate, he couldn’t comprehend what he had done: he had attacked his master. The only pillar of certainty in his entire life.
It wasn’t the first time.
Long ago, when Ghetsis had still been a boy and he a Deino pup, the trainer had tried to make him attack another Pokémon for the first time. When he failed, unable to understand the command, Ghetsis beat him, frustrated by the disobedience, treating him the same way his father had treated him. Not that Deino, now Zweilous, had known.
Back then, he had bitten him hard, on the eye. The same eye Ghetsis no longer had, now hidden beneath a red lens. Red like blood, like his burning iris.
It was the mark of his original sin. And now… he had committed it again.
While the right head bit the neck of the left, guilty of the crime, the latter coughed, roared, and tried to defend itself, injuring itself on the other's sharp jaws.
The Gigalith on the opposite side had stopped attacking, not understanding what was happening and frightened by the enemy’s powerful outburst. The rock creature merely tried to shield the already shattered body of its child, tragically lost in a hopeless battle.
Meanwhile, Zweilous thrashed and twisted with cries distorted by pain. Psychological pain, from guilt and trauma. Physical pain, from the self-inflicted wounds and the beatings already received from his stone opponent.
Something began to stir beneath the skin of the agonizing Pokémon. His blue scales started expanding and contracting, as if another creature were trying to force its way out of the dragon’s twisted body. The dark mane covering the top of his head stood upright and puffed up, trembling and pulsing in a rhythmically unstable, horrifying, and terrifying dance. Zweilous’s body was slowly but steadily expanding.
After several minutes of this macabre spectacle, the skin on his back finally tore open, releasing a gush of thick, dark blood. Four black, magnificent wings emerged, joining the original two already on the creature’s back. The two heads stopped fighting and split apart, becoming smaller. Their eyes, now exposed, were black and empty—lifeless.
Meanwhile, between them, a new head began to grow like a sprout of flesh, larger than the previous two and with vision finally sharp and fully developed. The mane had parted, revealing two violet eyes. Vibrant, alive, and piercing.
This evolution was the most monstrous thing Layla had ever seen. It wasn’t natural. A Pokémon shouldn’t have to suffer that kind of horrific torment to grow, to become an adult. She had witnessed evolutions before. It was a shared moment of joy, a bubble of happiness spreading between a creature and the humans who had loved it enough to help it become stronger, more complete. Evolution wasn’t just a show of power. It was an act of love. And it was beautiful, a dance of lights and colors. Sure, she’d heard that for some Pokémon it could be a little painful, but it was always brief, with a reward so overwhelming that any discomfort was quickly forgotten.
No one had ever seen what lay beneath the light. Was this the truth? And yet, the joy of evolving Pokémon was real, she’d seen it with her own eyes.
But there was no joy here. Only terror. Only suffering.
On the other side of the arena, Ghetsis watched his Pokémon writhe and convulse. This evolution was the most fascinating thing he had ever witnessed. It shouldn’t have happened, not yet. Zweilous wasn’t ready. He knew him well and knew there was still a lot of training to be done before he could expect him to become a Hydreigon. And yet, there he was. Right before his eyes, in all his terrible majesty. A Pokémon that mirrored his own ferocity. That reflected his pain. When he had been a Deino, he’d told him to stop following him, but he stayed. And he was still here, finally worthy of his trainer. Of course, he had struck him. He had disobeyed an order. Challenged him. He wouldn’t forgive him. He hated that Pokémon. And for that very reason, he would keep him. Letting him go would mean letting him win. Deino had chosen to follow him. Now he would face the consequences.
Look at them now. They had become a force of nature. No one could stand against them without paying the highest price. Not even themselves. This was the grand and theatrical proof of it.
He wouldn’t forgive him, that Pokémon hated him. But he couldn’t live without him, and he knew it. He would use every ounce of that hatred to ensure they would despise each other until the day they died. He needed him to remember. The world had crushed him once. It would never happen again.
—
Hurried footsteps and voices muffled by the arena’s thick walls drew closer and closer to the room where the horror had taken place.
Within minutes, the hall filled with people, Team Plasma followers alarmed by the sounds of destruction that had reached the other wings of the castle.
The three Shadow boys slipped out of the small crowd and reached their master, their adoptive father, before anyone else. They observed the scene for a moment. As always, they remained impassive, seemingly apathetic. Gently, they took Ghetsis by his uninjured arm and escorted him out, toward the infirmary. He allowed them to approach, but only after recalling his new Hydreigon into the old, scuffed Pokéball. The Pokémon obeyed his command. Everything was back to normal.
Some recruits approached the trembling girl still seated in the stands.
“What happened? And who are you? I’ve never seen you around…”
She didn’t reply. Perhaps she didn’t even hear the question. The Plasma members exchanged puzzled looks, then reached out to help her up and bring her to the castle’s medical wing. Her state of shock was obvious.
Mimí and Third are on the run.
The mountains: refuge or prison?
A new name can open the door to a different life,
or bind him forever to an inevitable fate.
The past resurfaces: Team Plasma, perhaps something even darker.
Wounds of the soul and of the body intertwine, threatening never to heal.
This is the path of Mimí and Fabian,
between life and death, between truth and deception.
---
This is the last part of Radioactive... but not the end of their story!
I’m thinking of continuing Mimí and Fabian’s story. If I do, though, it will be another fanfiction: it’s too long and complex to fit in a short story. I’m not yet sure what structure it will take, and I don’t even know if it will ever see the light of day… But in my head, there’s already a semi-complete draft. We’ll see.
If it happens, I’d like it to be a sort of sequel to Songs of Ghetsis, also including the continuation of Layla’s story.
Would you like to read an adventure like that?
Full of shadowy schemes, trauma recovery, and — of course — love?
📰Missed the other chapters?
🔗 SONGS OF GHETSIS - INDEX
✴️ Prefer AO3?
🔗 RADIOACTIVE - part III
🇮🇹 Sei un lettore italiano?
🔗 RADIOACTIVE - parte III
Otherwise, read the chapter below ⬇️
THIS IS IT, THE APOCALYPSE
RADIOACTIVE - part III
The title is inspired by the song Radioactive by Imagine Dragons.
Fabian slipped quietly through the trapdoor leading out of the small hidden refuge in Driftveil. The damp air of the cave near the old quarry welcomed him. A Drilbur poked its head out from a crack in the ground, its sleep disturbed by the faint, silent presence of a human. A pair of Woobat flitted past nearby, carrying prey in their paws under the moonlight.
Mimí was asleep in one of the two rooms below him, probably built long ago by some trainer obsessed with cave Pokémon. More recently, the place had been used as a Team Plasma hideout. Rood, who still knew a trick or two, had brought them there when they showed up looking for help about three weeks earlier.
Slipping out without waking the girl had been no challenge. Living without making noise had been his entire life. He made his way toward the crisp night air, toward the cave’s exit. He moved in the shadows between shadows, just as he had always been taught. His thoughts wandered back to the conversations he had shared with Mimí in the abandoned mountain cabin, the place he himself had taken her to. The place he had ended up in without fully understanding what was happening. What he was doing. They had spent three nights there. Two days. And yet, that brief, fleeting time had meant more to him than thirty years of silence and rigid discipline.
—
"If you want, I can give you a name."
The sentence had come out of nowhere, like all the others. As with all the others, Third had tried not to answer. It wasn’t necessary. He didn’t know what he could have said.
A few minutes passed. Maybe he had dodged it.
"Fabian."
A log cracked in the fireplace, as if laughing at the absurdity of it.
"...Fabian?"
The boy had been staring at the snowy mountain horizon through a slit in the shutters of the cabin’s only window. At that word, spoken with such disarming simplicity, he turned toward the woman he had kidnapped as if she were a Legendary Pokémon that had just appeared in the garden.
"Yeah, Fabian. What, you don’t like it? Would you prefer… uh… Joey? No, Arceus forbid, that’s a name for some wannabe street punk. You’d have to own a Rattata and wear a backwards cap, bare minimum."
Third looked at her blankly. What was that bizarre description of a hypothetical “Joey” supposed to mean? Was it someone Mimí knew? The more he tried to understand this girl, the more she felt like a mystery. She was clearly in mortal danger. He had seen people in that situation before, people he or his brothers had put there. But he had never seen anyone joke or say nonsense like her. Then again, most of their jobs were over far more quickly. In any case, he doubted this was a normal reaction.
Mimí seemed lost in thought. Was she seriously considering giving him a name? Like a pet Pokémon?
"So, what do you say, Fabian?"
Third didn’t answer. He was confused. He needed to focus on survival. On what to do with the girl. What excuse to come up with when his brothers arrived. Because they would arrive. It was only a matter of time. And yet here he was, distracted by strange questions like a kid.
"...Yeah, sure” The girl kept going. “It sounds good. Fabian is normal enough. Fabian doesn’t kidnap people in the middle of the night. Fabian isn’t a trained assassin raised by a crime boss. Fabian only manages to kill balcony plants by forgetting to water them even though it’s the middle of summer. Fabian’s orders are whatever the office manager says, he only rebels by refusing to make all the photocopies. You could use a little Fabian in your life."
From then on, Mimí had called him that. Fabian. Somehow, he had gotten used to it. Even if he didn’t always respond when she called. Maybe because he still didn’t recognize himself in it. Maybe by choice. Like a kid with headphones on to block out the world.
It wasn’t so bad, really, having a real name. He felt like by giving him that strange label, that strange collar, so ordinary to her, so colorful to him, she had somehow set him free. No longer Third, who came after First, after Second. Part of the group, a slave to the one who had bought them long ago. Just Fabian, a man who could decide what to do with his life, even if that meant throwing it to the wind.
After three nights and two days spent in the cabin nestled in the rocky basin, Fabian was preparing to flee again, this time with Mimí, leaving Third behind. He knew the twins were coming, but now he also knew what he wanted to do. He didn’t want to obey. He wanted to save. But First and Second arrived before he was ready. They found them still in the cabin. Not yet gone. Not yet prepared.
Mimí called out to him, scared. Not Third. Fabian. The two older brothers looked at him, puzzled. They didn’t fully understand, but they understood enough to know he had betrayed them. He was no longer one of them.
In a different situation, in a different life, different people might have readied their Pokémon for battle. That was how most conflicts were resolved, after all. But they weren’t people. They were assassins.
It happened quickly. Second attacked him. First went for the girl. Fabian assessed his options in a fraction of a second: defend her and leave himself open, or protect himself and leave her exposed. He threw himself at First. Not enough to hurt him, but enough to distract him for a moment. A second later, Second had struck him.
Blood ran from Fabian’s right side, thick and red over the wooden planks warmed by the fireplace and chilled by the snow blowing in through the open door. Fabian didn’t move. He used his body as a shield for the frightened girl behind him. One of his Pokéballs slipped from his belt, acting with a will of its own. A pitch-black Banette emerged, ready to defend its partner. On the other side, one of the twins’ Bisharp leapt from its red-and-white shell in response.
First and Second paused for a moment. The situation had grown chaotic, their younger brother’s reactions more incomprehensible than ever. What in the world was happening?
It was thanks to that confusion that Fabian found a way out. For the first time in their lives, the twins were too slow. Their perfect reflexes blunted by emotional terrain they had no map for. The youngest, normally the least prepared, this time outmaneuvered them.
He grabbed Mimí under one arm. With the other, he recalled Banette. Then he vanished, too quick for untrained eyes. How he hadn’t been caught immediately or shortly after by his brothers remained a mystery even to him.
The following days were a slow slide through caves and tunnels carved into the mountainside like veins in stone. He insisted they keep moving, changing hiding places constantly. Staying still was the best way to get caught. Avoiding Beartic dens was another challenge altogether, but somehow they managed not to run into any large wild Pokémon.
Mimí did what she could to treat his wound. She had no bandages, no disinfectant. She used a torn piece of shirt and fresh snow to clean it. Luckily, the cut had missed any vital organs. Or maybe that had been intentional. Maybe they had chosen not to kill him. Who knew.
The girl seemed to have lost the gift of speech. She no longer talked like before. All her defenses had collapsed, abandoned under the weight of trauma and an increasingly precarious situation.
Until, a few suns risen and set later, she took control.
At first, she tried to convince Fabian to go ask Aria for help. But it would have been too dangerous, too obvious a hideout, which would have put the owner of the guesthouse at risk too, not to mention Sol. Then something else came to her mind, a gamble. Driftveil City, Rood. The old Sage had helped her find her lost friend, he no longer seemed to dance to Ghetsis’ tune. She wasn’t sure if he would help them, or if he was still in cahoots with the criminal after all, but it was worth a try. They were walking on the edge of a cliff, living in constant instability. They couldn’t afford for the situation to drag on any longer. And Fabian knew it too.
Third wouldn’t have acted like this, he would have found a way to fix things on his own. Third wouldn’t have saved Mimí or disobeyed an order. Third had died in that mountain cabin, in the basin, a few days earlier. So they left.
—
It had been three weeks since they had arrived in Driftveil. Despite Rood’s initial insistence, Mimí had refused to run any further. For many, in their situation, that would have meant Ghetsis had won. Mimí, forcibly taken away, would no longer be a problem. But that woman, hair dark as a Corviknight and the endurance of a Stoutland that has caught a scent, wouldn’t give up. If she couldn’t be a minor annoyance to the bastard who had stolen her friend, she’d be his thorn in the side. Fabian followed her in silence. He no longer had any reference points, his internal compass completely lost.
If there was one thing Mimí was good at, besides digging where she shouldn’t, it was telling stories. No wonder she’d become a journalist, even if she’d only ever gotten small gigs up until then. So she decided she would write it all down and make herself heard. It was a dangerous game, but the situation was so absurd that she might as well go all in. Unexpectedly, Rood agreed to help her with that project too. And his help was crucial.
The organization he led, the “Heirs of Plasma,” was what remained of the infamous “Team Plasma” founded by Ghetsis. It was also how many former members tried to atone for their past mistakes. After the Seventh Sage was arrested and the “Neo Team Plasma” officially dismantled, Rood was determined not to let it all go, convinced he could still do some good. Or at least patch up the tears of a life spent in the shadow of someone who, with false promises, wanted nothing but power for himself, indifferent, if not even pleased, to cause pain and suffering.
So he kept the position of leader of the new organization, a role he had never had the courage to take on before, but now deemed necessary.
Buried in a political system that liked to hide inconvenient pasts, Rood’s good intentions became fertile ground for the infection that would become what insiders called the “Black Plasma.” This new cult within the cult was nothing more than Ghetsis’ still-active network. The Team Plasma that thrived not on justice and love for Pokémon, but on crime, pure and simple. Among themselves, they spoke of bringing Truth, of being the True Plasma, black as Zekrom, wanting Freedom from a system that did nothing but oppress, steal, and lie. The new doctrine declared that Pokémon, more than being free, should belong only to the chosen few. Not those in power, but those who deserved it by divine right. If N had been the failed king, Ghetsis was the one who had never betrayed the cause, imprisoned by a tyrannical and unjust system.
Rood wasn’t completely blind to the rot festering in his association. Still, for far too long, he had pretended not to see, maybe naïvely hoping the problem would resolve itself. He knew that wasn’t going to happen.
He had already spent his whole life letting Ghetsis devour him from within, a massive, burdensome parasite he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, get rid of. Uncomfortable to carry, but how does one live without it? He no longer knew, maybe he never had. He had already told himself “enough” when he founded the Heirs, and look where that had led.
This time, things would be different. He would hand the weapons to someone who knew how to fight. He would help, without holding back. He didn’t care about coming out clean, not even partially. He didn’t even care about coming out of it at all. What mattered was killing the parasite, even if it meant sacrificing the host.
—
Mimí wrote an article. She spent two weeks of relentless, intense work on it. One week just to find a paper willing to publish it, however small or local. Three weeks. A record time, but outrunning the enemy was the only way not to get caught. It was already strange that the twins hadn’t shown up yet, after all that time.
She told her story, Sol’s story. But not just that. That had become just the background to something much bigger. The story she wrote was the inconvenient truth about Team Plasma, the one the authorities didn’t want to acknowledge, out of shame or convenience. Thanks to Rood’s collaboration, who let his name be dragged through the mud, where, as he put it, it rightfully belonged. Mimí appreciated his confession and promised she wouldn’t let his repentance be in vain.
While she wrote, Fabian stayed by her side.
Slowly, he began to open up, to tell bits and pieces. About his past, his brothers, Ghetsis, the military facility outside the world, so far removed from lives like Mimí’s, where he grew up. Where he had been sold. The girl was shocked by the little he dared to say, in a low voice, as if speaking were a forbidden act. The journalist wrote it down, forgetting to ask for permission. Not everything, since she had no proof. Just enough to give his story a voice too. For Mimí, it was an act of love.
However, when Fabian read the article, prompted by the girl, he had a strange reaction, one even he didn’t fully understand. No one noticed. His heart pounded harder than it should, his head spun, and his hands began to sweat. Was he losing control of his body too? He felt like throwing up, but he hadn’t eaten anything. His senses, already usually heightened, were even sharper. He had forgotten how to move.
Then, just as it came, that strange feeling went away. It left behind a familiar sense of emptiness. For a few minutes, Mimí was once again just a civilian, not the girl who he had given everything to save.
That terrible moment passed, and Fabian said nothing. Mimí looked at him, puzzled, waiting for a reaction that didn’t seem to come. She teased him with her usual sarcasm, her usual wit. As always, he didn’t get it and looked at her oddly. He gave a slight nod that could mean anything or nothing at all, and walked away into the cave. He needed to slip away on his own for a while, to breathe without being watched.
He didn’t expect her to follow, sitting a short distance away, as if afraid to disturb him. Maybe she had sensed something. What? Even he didn’t know what had happened. And yet she stayed there like a worried Lillipup. Where had the Stoutland gone, ready to bite the world to fight injustice?
He didn’t expect her to follow him, into his torment. He didn’t expect her to write about it. She shouldn’t have. He didn’t expect to still feel something for her. Maybe even something stronger than before. He had no idea what was going on. Why did his heart clench like that, what did it mean?
—
Backpack on his shoulders and solitude in his pocket, Fabian stepped out of the cave. He looked like a determined child sneaking off to catch new Pokémon. The moonlight was strong, blinding in its pale imitation of the sun. Like a silent Venomoth, he headed toward the dirty white disc in the sky, but he wasn’t enchanted by it: he knew where he was going.
He had decided long ago: he would save Mimí. He would see it through to the end.
She had screamed that article to the world. Now the music would change, whether they liked it or not. Someone had to dance. But it wouldn’t be Mimí. She, who had voice, who had life, deserved to live. Fabian, on the other hand, who was born in darkness, who had grown up in shadows, could face the dark without fear.
He followed the rocky path down, heading toward the sea in the east.
The wound he had inflicted on himself throbbed with every light step, reminding him he wasn’t dead yet. It had been a calculated risk, that clean cut across his side. It had bled a lot, which made him slower and more likely to lose his breath quickly. He had no intention of fighting, but it wasn’t guaranteed he wouldn’t have to, if his brothers didn’t buy the story he was about to sell them—at least for a few minutes. Just long enough to let a day pass before they found the hideout. Just long enough to give Mimí time to read his note and understand she had to run, this time for real, this time forever. Rood would help her, Fabian was sure of it. He only hoped that girl, more stubborn than a Mudbray, wouldn’t let his sacrifice be in vain.
After a little over an hour, he reached the cliff. He climbed down the rocks, a path only he could see among the jagged edges that plunged into the sea. To his right, not far off, was the bridge leading toward Nimbasa City. Reaching a cove of black and white stones hidden beneath the heavy beams of the metal structure, he entered a crack in the stone, but not before switching on a flashlight he had tucked in the side pocket of his backpack.
When he reached the center of the cave, the moonlight greeted him again through the wide circular opening above, allowing the outside to spill in from above. The rocks brushed by the seawater barely revealed the camouflaged shadows of the twins. They were waiting, as promised.
What happened in that cave was a strange sort of miracle.
Fabian, no longer Third, showed the bloodstained notebook to those he had always been so attached to, though he had never called them “family.” Few words were needed; the message was clear. The notebook’s owner, the one who had written it, was dead. Or so he wanted them to believe. He could tell the two assassins weren’t fully convinced. He showed them the wound on his side: a clean cut, designed to look like the result of a struggle. He confessed to being weak, to letting her strike him while trying to defend himself, before finishing the job. He declared himself remorseful, dishonored by his betrayal. He didn’t ask outright, but it was clear what he expected. Not forgiveness, not punishment. Just death. That was their language, that was what they knew how to do, to think, to be.
Second looked at him with apparent apathy, but anyone who knew how to read the expressions of the trio would have seen a poorly hidden rage, a deep contempt. Almost envy.
First, as always, had the steady gaze of one in command. He stepped forward. He didn’t even reach for his Poké Balls, it wasn’t time to play at fighting.
He drew his blade.
He paused for a moment. That was odd. Hesitation wasn’t like him. He lunged at what should have been Third with more force than necessary. Excess wasn’t like him. Letting go wasn’t like him.
Fabian didn’t react. And maybe that was the last drop that overflowed the invisible vase of doubt that his older brother had become.
The slash First left across Fabian’s throat was thin, almost imperceptible. It should have slit it open. It didn’t even draw a drop of blood. Just a bit of skin, lightly grazed.
First stood up, staggering. Second watched him as if he were witnessing Arceus fall under the clumsy blows of an Eevee barely able to use Tackle. Then, with a lunge more wobbly than usual, the eldest vanished, leaving the other two staring at each other in disbelief.
After a few seconds of silence, heavy with unspoken, increasingly confused feelings, Second followed his twin out of the wonder-cave.
—
When he returned to the Heirs of Plasma hideout, it was already late morning.
Fabian had spent hours staring into the void, in the cave now emptied of shadowy presences, accompanied only by a few curious Woobats and Swoobats. Once he was alone, the Pokémons had peeked at the human lying on the ground, no longer frightened by the death that had haunted the cave until just moments before.
After what felt like a few minutes, after many hours, the sunlight was shining through the opening high in the ceiling of stone and stalactites. The seawater brushing against the boy’s body shimmered with a living light, so different from that of the moon.
Fabian got up slowly, so as not to scare the Pokémon, or maybe himself. He walked back through the fissure he had entered. He climbed the cliffside rocks. He crossed the city, stained with blood and salt. Even though he felt terribly visible, no one really noticed him.
He didn’t know what had become of his older brothers. But something deep down told him he would never see them again. That they, too, had let them go. Traitors now. They wouldn’t come back.
He reached the cave that had been his shelter for three weeks. He ventured into the tunnels that led to the hatch. He lightly stumbled over a poor Roggenrola as distracted as he was, then resumed crawling toward “home.” Toward Mimí. What else did he have? And yet he didn’t feel like he had little. For the first time, in fact, he had something.
He rounded a rock corner, followed a narrow passage. He stopped in front of the hatch. He hoped and feared to still find her there, or to find the rooms empty. He wanted her to be free, he wanted to stay together. He gripped the heavy handle embedded in the ground and pulled with steady, trembling hands.
He climbed down the metal rung ladder fixed to the ceiling. No one was there. From the other room came an old man’s voice and a delicate sob. When Fabian entered, the scene before him was unexpected.
Mimí was crying, and Rood was searching for words, maybe to comfort her, maybe to say what to do now, how to really escape. Mimí was crying. She, who had held everything together. Why was it heartbreaking?
Fabian stood in the doorway. Rood looked up and saw him first. Mimí, noticing the old man’s movement, turned.
Their eyes met, as if for the first time in decades. She stopped crying, as if she’d been caught with her hands in a jar of Cheri Berries.
A few seconds of silence and astonishment passed, then the girl let go of every restraint and threw herself into his arms.
Fabian, who didn’t even know what a hug was, returned the gesture, wrapping his arms around her back, resting his face against her hair, dark blue like the night that had just passed.
Mimì wakes up.
Where is she?
How can she escape?
Who is her mysterious captor?
Third doesn’t know how to answer her questions.
In a secluded cabin, among snow and mountains, each must face their own shadow.
---
Here is the second part out of three of Mimì and Fabian's story.
I wanted to post this yesterday but couldn't find any image to go with it. So I drew it myself (I hope you like it haha)
📰Missed the other chapters?
🔗 SONGS OF GHETSIS - INDEX
✴️ Prefer AO3?
🔗 RADIOACTIVE - part II
🇮🇹 Sei un lettore italiano?
🔗 RADIOACTIVE - parte II
Otherwise, read the chapter below ⬇️
WELCOME TO THE NEW AGE
RADIOACTIVE - part II
The title is inspired by the song Radioactive by Imagine Dragons.
When Mimí woke up, everything was a blur. It was supposed to be morning, on the usual worn-out mattress in the room above the village bar. And yet, she wasn’t sinking into the springs barely held up by the bed’s broken frame. No morning light was filtering through the cracked shutters. There was no mattress, no shutters.
She closed her eyes like people do when the alarm goes off, as if pretending it’s not time to get up could somehow change things. Her whole body ached. Every muscle resisted wakefulness, trying to pull her back into the oblivion of unconsciousness. And yet, deep down, she knew she couldn’t afford to give in. Something was terribly wrong with her situation. Like the missing mattress. The missing shutters. She fell asleep…where?
She tried to move an arm. Nothing. Her elbow was numb and tingling, like it had been crushed too long. Her wrist was burning. Rope on skin? Was she tied up? No, she was free. She inhaled slowly. The scent of mold, dust, and damp wood filled her nostrils. Something clicked in her memory. That sweet smell. A cloth pressed against her mouth and nose by someone else’s hands. Oh my Arceus. She had been kidnapped?
She cracked her eyes open, slowly. She was lying on a bench, a rough, heavy blanket draped over her clumsily but with care. The arm she had tried to move was indeed pinned beneath her. On the floor next to her, some loose ropes. As if someone really had tied her up at some point, then changed their mind and left her there, resting on cold wood beneath a worn-out plaid blanket. Everything was really strange.
If someone wanted to harm her, it had to be Ghetsis. And kidnapping was certainly his style. But if he wanted her dead, why was she still alive? Maybe he wanted to torture her… but why? What could she possibly have that would interest him? And in any case, why bother giving her something to keep warm, why tie her up and then untie her? It made no sense.
She opened her eyes fully, careful not to move a muscle. In front of her, a partially rotting wooden table. In the back, beneath the table legs, she saw a lit fireplace. The crackling of the fire gently filled the air, but the flames’ warmth was too faint to fight off the chill of what looked like an abandoned mountain cabin. Within her field of vision, there was no one else, neither human nor Pokémon.
She waited and listened. Her alert eyes scanned for the slightest change in her surroundings. Everything was still. The only sound, the only source of light, came from the fireplace. A voice, deep inside her mind, whispered that it was far from guaranteed she’d make it out alive. She had never thought of herself as someone built for extreme situations, but adrenaline was unexpectedly stronger than panic. She was focused, ready to strike. Fight or flee. React to the first sign of…anything. But nothing moved. Only flames and cold.
An eternity passed. Or maybe just a few seconds. Mimí propped herself up on her elbows. Her numb arm was no longer numb. All she felt now was the urgent need to understand, to restore the situation to something manageable. Something under control.
The room was indeed empty, aside from her and a few worn-down pieces of furniture. A window revealed the dark outline of the mountain. Snow covered the sill, but it was impossible to tell whether flakes were still falling or if the sky outside was clear. The night was too dark. The wide streak of stars above, half visible, half covered by dark gray clouds, was not enough to pierce the blackness clinging to the ground like a massive Alolan Grimer. What was the point? Had they kidnapped her just to drop her in the middle of nowhere, like some forgotten package?
She sat up. Slowly stood. The room ignored her movement, offered no response to her racing thoughts. Every breath, every muscle contraction, was deliberate. She felt like she had to activate every part of her body consciously, as if all autopilot functions had been turned off. Even her heartbeat felt like it happened on command.
She moved one leg. Then the other. The floorboards creaked beneath her, as if a Snorlax were stomping around on a floor lined with broken, out-of-tune instruments. Every sound was amplified. Every sensation was extremely strong and intense.
A rustle. She froze. Turned her head slowly. Nothing. Just a broken chair and its shadow dancing with the firelight. She turned her head back. Took another step. Then one more. Step by step, she reached the closed door. She expected it to be locked, and yet there it was, opening with a blast of icy night air against her stunned face.
Snow was falling thick in the dark. Two pine trees stood tall among the rocks. A little farther off, the mountain loomed over the clearing, cloaked in night. It wasn’t clear whether there was a path leading to the cabin or if the building was simply stranded in the wall of darkness and black shadows covering everything. To the right, a barely perceptible movement caught Mimí’s eye. A human-like figure crouched on what was probably a rock.
The figure was almost perfectly still, so much so that Mimí doubted it was even alive. Long hair caught the faint light of the stars, suggesting it was light-colored, maybe even white. Then the figure stood up, erasing any doubt. She wasn’t alone, after all.
—
Third needed to think. It was something he had never done in his life. Thinking about his actions, their consequences, the future. But now it was necessary.
Beneath the snow, in the dark, he stared ahead and balanced on the tips of his toes. In his left hand, a Pokéball, as if ready to throw it and fight. In his right hand, a fistful of questions with no answers. What had he done?
He was sitting on a cold rock covered in snow. The flakes fell slowly but relentlessly, trying to cover him and hide him from the rest of the world. Maybe he could let them. Maybe if he stayed still long enough, everything else would stop too, and the planet would stop spinning so violently.
The door of the abandoned cabin where he had brought his target opened, letting out the light from the fire he had lit inside to keep her from freezing to death. The girl stood in the doorway, unmoving. He watched her for a few seconds, then stood up. But he didn’t move from his spot. He wasn’t worried she might run away: there was no viable escape route, not in the dead of night, not for an untrained woman like her. She stayed in the doorway too, perhaps unsure what to do in such a situation. They were both frozen, but it wasn’t the snow.
A Swoobat suddenly flew between them, breaking the spell with its shadowy shape. When Mimí finished jumping from fright, Third was no longer on the rock. He was standing in front of her. He wanted to look at her, but kept his gaze lowered. He didn’t know what to do.
Mimí stepped back a few paces, frightened. He took the opportunity to walk in and close the door. He also closed the shutters on the only window. It was unlikely they were already being searched for, but that light in the darkness, that unmistakable signal of someone’s presence, was a risk he preferred not to take if he could help it.
The woman turned slowly, resting her back against the wall. It was hard to tell whether she wanted to collapse to the floor and let the situation crush her, or use the wooden wall as a springboard to do something reckless. Like try to escape, or attack the Shadow boy. She did neither. She just stood there, watching him.
“What do you want?”
Her voice was sharp and thin, like someone who’s scared but trying to hide it. He didn’t answer. He sat cross-legged in front of the fire and stared into the flames, his pupils narrowing and widening with the flickering light. He felt hypnotized. A few minutes passed.
“If you’re an assassin, you’re not very good at it.”
Silence.
“I know.”
The boy’s voice was neither low nor high. It rasped slightly, like someone who hadn’t spoken in a long time. He only did it when absolutely necessary. That sentence, though short, could have gone unsaid. He said it anyways.
The woman cautiously stepped closer, then sat on the bench where she had been left unconscious not long before. She turned her gaze to the fire and its dance, the only sign of life and warmth besides the two of them in that cabin and in that forsaken land. She didn’t relax, didn’t give in. She was tense, and planned to stay that way. The danger wasn’t around the corner. It was right there, with her.
“So, what do you want?”
But despite repeating the question, they stayed silent, their eyes lost in the fireplace.
Hours passed. The fire had burned down. Only a few embers remained to prove it had ever existed. Mimí had lain back down, pretending to sleep. Third hadn’t moved an inch. He had spent the night thinking, brooding, trying to understand. The girl had probably done the same.
Had he kidnapped her to save her, or to kill her himself? He didn’t dare act, unsure which path to take now that, for the first time, he was standing at a crossroads. No order. Just the chaos of a decision he had to make on his own.
The real question, the core of it all: why did he seem to care so much about her? She was just another civilian. If it was for Sol, his painted veil…she would have survived without her. She had until now… but how? In that state, like a painted veil? And what if she was a person, not just a shadow? But what did it matter? That wasn’t his life. His life was with his brothers. Obeying. Completing missions. Disappearing. And yet… it didn’t feel right.
In the morning, he got up to fetch firewood. The fire couldn’t be allowed to die out completely, or they’d freeze.
While he was behind the cabin, he heard noise. Mimí. She was probably trying to run. He wasn’t too worried. There was no way out of the hollow where the cabin was wedged. Still, it was better to keep an eye on her. Make sure she didn’t hurt herself. Or that no one else came along to hurt her.
So he left the firewood in the main room and stepped outside.
—
Mimí didn’t manage to escape. She had taken advantage of the moment her captor stepped away for a few minutes and slipped out of the shack, trying to scout the area, looking for any path to salvation. She still had her coat on, but even so, the cold seeped into her bones. A narrow trail wound its way out of the basin, but a landslide, whether ancient or recent, it was impossible to say, blocked the way. Chunks of rock and frozen snow formed a wall no one could climb, unless they were born in the cracks of the mountain.
As she stopped to look around, searching for another way out, a small Banette approached her, wobbling like a broken toy and letting out a muffled sound from its stitched mouth. It seemed to say, “Got you!”
Not far behind came Third, who whistled and called the Banette back before returning it to its Pokéball.
He didn’t attack her. He didn’t force her to do anything. He just looked at her and spoke.
“It’s dangerous out here.”
Mimí let out a sharp, nervous laugh.
“Oh, and it’s not dangerous inside? With the guy who knocked me out and dragged me to some abandoned shack at the end of the world?”
Third stared at her for a few seconds.
“He wants you dead. Gone. Same thing.”
A few more seconds passed in silence. No need to clarify who “he” was. Then he continued.
“I saved you. I think.”
He lowered his gaze, then slowly raised it again. But he didn’t look at her. He looked at the snow.
“If I’d wanted to kill you, I would’ve done it already.”
It wasn’t clear if he was saying that to her or to himself. Mimí stared at him, bewildered.
“Comforting.”
In a kind of unspoken agreement, they returned to the cabin. He walked ahead, slowly. His steps made no sound, even where they should have. She followed behind, not too close, not too far. Every now and then she stopped to look around. He never failed to wait for her. She gave up on making a sudden dash to flee again. It was clear that even if he wasn’t watching her directly, he noticed her every move. And besides, she didn’t know where to go in that basin surrounded by cold stone.
Once inside the run-down house of wood and stone, Third closed the door and went to rekindle the fire. By now the embers were nearly dead, and it would take more effort than expected. Mimí watched him, studied him, trying to understand without asking. But her patience ran out quickly.
“You said you saved me.”
Silence.
“Why?”
Silence.
“From who? From yourself? From the other thugs?”
Third blew life into the newborn flames, which grew quickly, though still contained within the hearth.
“My brothers.”
As if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Oh great. Everybody knows them. The hangman’s brothers.”
He didn’t react to the jab.
“Are you hungry?”
Mimí hesitated. She looked down at her feet. She hadn’t expected him to be the one to ask questions, especially that kind of questions. She remembered she hadn’t had dinner the night before, nor breakfast that morning. And yet her stomach was shut tight.
“You really think I’ll accept food under these conditions?”
“I think if you don’t eat, you won’t last much longer. You didn’t sleep much either.”
“Neither did you.”
“It’s different for me.”
She glanced at him sideways. She wanted to ask what he meant by that, but didn’t. Instead, she asked a different question.
“Do you have a name? Or should I call you ‘hey you’?”
The boy looked at her, uncertain. He seemed unsure how to respond.
“What, don’t trust me? I’d introduce myself, but I guess you already know my name. Or did they give you my description without telling you who I was when they asked you to kill me?”
Silence.
“…Mimí,” he said finally.
The two eyed each other again. They looked like two frightened Purrloin, staring each other down, pretending to be Liepard: bigger, tougher than they really were. Ready to defend, to attack, to flee. Or to cry. Neither of them would ever admit it.
“Yes, Mimí is my name. It’d be a pleasure, I suppose, if you hadn’t kidnapped me.”
The crackle of the fire filled the room, the only living sound in that forgotten corner of the world.
“So? Do you have a name? Like people do?”
The boy looked away. His eyes drifted to the fireplace, then to his hands, then somewhere undefined.
“…No.”
“…No? They must call you something.”
That was obvious, he thought. And yet, even if he had never paid it much attention before, what he had wasn’t a name. It was a number. He had never needed anything else.
“Third.”
It wasn’t so much a word as a whisper. A confession, like revealing something one ought to be ashamed of. Mimí, tense and disoriented, didn’t know how to react. So she laughed nervously.
“Of course. And your brothers are First and Second, I guess? What about Fourth and Fifth? Maybe there are seven of you, like the Pokémons in that old fairytale. That would be fun. Seven ghosts. Seven numbers. Seven little killers.”
The flames danced in the fireplace, echoing her sarcasm through the snow-muffled walls of the cabin. The roles seemed reversed. He, the victim. She, the tormentor. Nothing made sense anymore, like in a strange dream.
Without a word, Third stood. From a corner of the room Mimí hadn’t noticed before, he pulled out a backpack. He took out some dry food and berries, then handed them to her. He did it the same way you’d offer food to a frightened animal. Mimí hesitated. She didn’t know what to do anymore. In the end, she took something: a strip of meat and two Oran Berries. She examined them closely, as if they might leap at her. Only when she saw him eating too did she take a bite. Then another. The flavor and texture exploded in her mouth. The meat was salty, fibrous. The berries were tangy and bittersweet. Her stomach opened up like a pit. She finished everything in seconds.
"You still haven’t told me why."
After a few minutes, Mimí resumed her questioning. Third looked exhausted. He had never talked or thought so much in his life. A full-on physical training session would have been much more relaxing than this.
"You told me who you saved me from. Not why."
He was sitting cross-legged near the fire. His eyes were closed, but only a fool would think he was actually asleep.
"Well?"
"What?"
"You didn’t answer."
"It wasn’t a question."
"Do you need me to rephrase it?"
Silence. Outside, the snow had started falling again. Mimí had curled up in the rough blanket he had used to cover her when he brought her there against her will.
"I don’t know."
"You don’t know? You disobeyed a direct order, didn’t you? Your name is a number. I doubt acting like this is normal for you."
Mimí is desperately searching for her friend Layla.
She will not back down from anything.
The Third puppet of the Shadow Triad is torn between obedience and an unfamiliar feeling.
For the first time, he wants something.
---
Three chapters, one story:
The tale of Mimí and Fabian, between the frost of Wintersong and the shadows of Driftveil.
Here is the first part.
At first, Fabian and Mimí’s story was meant to fit into a single chapter, but it grew too large to be contained. So I split it into two parts... which eventually became three.
I care a lot about these two, and I felt they deserved the space.
📰Missed the other chapters?
🔗 SONGS OF GHETSIS - INDEX
✴️ Prefer AO3?
🔗 RADIOACTIVE - part I
🇮🇹 Sei un lettore italiano?
🔗 RADIOACTIVE - parte I
Otherwise, read the chapter below ⬇️
I’M WAKING UP TO ASH AND DUST
RADIOACTIVE - part I
The title is inspired by the song Radioactive by Imagine Dragons.
It was night. The stars shone in the cloudless sky, and the people of Driftveil City slept peacefully. The full moon lit the streets as if it were daytime. The only difference in moonlight was that sense of distortion it gave to everything beneath it. Every building, every object it touched looked like part of the dream of a giant Musharna embracing the whole city.
And yet, not everyone in Driftveil was dreaming. In a hidden shelter not far from the new headquarters of the Plasma Heirs, a white-haired boy was wide awake. A notebook, now bleeding, was gripped in his hands. They trembled slightly. The words, once sharp and clear, that had stained the white pages with notes and ink, had turned unrecognizable, now painted in dark red. The Roserades of the Queen of Hearts.
The notebook’s previous owner was perhaps sleeping peacefully, or more realistically, plagued by doubts and misfortunes, in the room next door. Mimí, so composed and decisive by day, looked like a defenseless girl during the nighttime hours, at least in those rare moments when she managed to sleep. Fabian. Third. Or maybe neither of the two. The moon-haired boy was always by her side. He kept watch over her, resting only when he knew she was awake, never daring to leave her alone for even a second. She allowed it, but always reminded him that she would never be a prisoner. Neither his, nor fear’s. She would fight to the very end. To the last word, the last article, the last drop of ink. Whatever the cost.
The boy, the man, grown up too fast and never quite enough, stood up. He ignored the sharp pain in his ribs, where he had wounded himself to give the notebook, a book full of life, its color of death. He had the whole night ahead of him, but there was no more time to hesitate. He knew his brothers were waiting for him, outside the city. At the place they had agreed upon with a single word, understood only by the three of them, they were waiting.
On the table by the door, awaiting Mimí’s awakening, was a note. A goodbye, or perhaps a promise. And a simple request, but one that carried implicit desperation. It would have to be enough. For weeks now, Fabian had been acting without knowing whether anything would work. And for the first time, he was doing something that had to work. Not because it was an order, but because it was his choice.
He picked up his light backpack. A few Oran Berries, six empty Pokéballs. He didn’t need to defend himself. Just to pretend he could. A few seconds would be enough.
Now, all that was left was to face his fate.
His fate.
—
One month earlier, in Wintersong, Mimí was returning to the small room she had rented above the village’s only bar. For weeks, she had been sleeping in that tiny dump, the only place in that forgotten village that welcomed outsiders. It took courage to stay at the edge of the world.
A late Cryogonal floated past her with a sudden chime, startling her. What was a Pokémon doing out on the streets at night? The creature stopped for a moment, then ignored her and drifted away into the darkness.
Mimí had come to that remote, isolated place for a mission. She knew that the monster who had taken her friend years ago was imprisoned on the mountaintop, so she had decided to come and look him in the eye, to ask directly what he had done with her lost sister.
When she arrived, she had everything planned. She had prepared a list of “valid reasons” to give the prison in order to be granted a meeting with the famous inmate, relying also on the possibility that he would be curious enough to accept the visit. Nothing she had planned worked. They didn’t want journalists sticking their noses into matters meant to stay buried in the snow, especially for the established authorities. They didn’t care that she was aligned with a former public figure like a reformed Sage. If anything, that only made her more suspicious. They didn’t believe her claim to be a distant relative, nor that she was part of a prisoner rehabilitation association, not when there was nothing to rehabilitate. Rejected. That word haunted her even in the few hours of sleep she managed above the bar, lying on an uncomfortable mattress lit by moonlight filtering through broken shutters.
Everything changed the day she saw her. It was a Wednesday. She had long blonde braids, the top part hidden by a wool hat. Useful for the cold, or maybe to conceal the dark roots peeking through on the sides. Those hair, so different from Layla’s, instead matched the description Rood had given of a girl who looked like a ghost wandering the castle of Team Plasma. Except the roots. Those made it unmistakable.
Something stirred in Mimí’s gut. A feeling, a recognition. She waited in the cold for the girl to leave the prison, then followed her. Around them, Vanillishes and Vanilluxes played quietly in the snow. Two Deerlings darted from one grove of trees to another, never losing sight of each other. A Sawsbuck watched them from a distance, as if gently keeping guard.
The girl arrived at a house, a small inn just outside the village that Mimí hadn’t noticed when looking for a place to stay. Aria’s inn, a place she quickly learned was a shelter for lost souls, like the girl she had followed there.
Mimí didn’t knock right away. She waited until the following evening, unsure of how to introduce herself to that girl she felt was Layla, even if she looked so different, so… other.
When she finally raised her fists to knock on the wooden door, she did it decisively. She would tell everything. She would force her to recognize her. She would ask why she had never come back, now that the monster was inside and she was free. Why she visited him. Why she seemed to have forgotten everything. Why she had left her alone when she had a choice. Because Layla would never have abandoned her. That was the one thing Mimí could not, would not, and would never accept.
But when she knocked with all the resolve in the world, it wasn’t her who answered. It was Aria, the owner of the inn. Mimí asked to see the girl with the trembling presence and blonde braids, but the woman at the door wanted to know who she was first. She said she wouldn’t let her pass without an explanation. After a brief silence, Aria let her in and offered her a cup of warm Lemonsucco, as was customary in that frozen, godforsaken place. Mimí accepted. And, sensing the woman’s protective and kind nature, she spoke.
That night, Mimí returned to the shabby bar in the center of the village without having seen her lost friend. Aria had warned her: if she showed up full of fury, all she would get was rejection. She would do more harm than good. She could push Layla, now Sol, to hurt herself. Or worse, send her running back to him, her tormentor, the false protector. And he could hurt her again.
Mimí paused, then said that the truth couldn’t stay hidden forever. In the end, she agreed to meet Sol, Layla, without forcing her to remember. She would let her recall, if and when she was ready. In her own time. To be safe, she would use a false name. Maybe cover her head. She would speak with her, if the girl wanted it, but without saying anything. Not yet. The time for Truth would come. One day. But not now. Not all at once.
And so Mimí met Sol, the girl living in Aria’s inn for desperate souls. The girl who went to the prison every Wednesday, though she never spoke about it. She was gentle, kept her gaze low, and spoke softly. She wasn’t Layla. And yet, sometimes, when she lifted her pale eyes, Mimí could see it. She could see that even if the fire had gone out, beneath the layers of ash and snow, a coal still burned, stubborn and alive.
Always by her side was a Hydreigon she called Echo. He watched over her like a silent guardian. At first, Mimí was afraid of him as he growled quietly whenever she got too close. But one day, he stopped. He had decided she wasn’t a threat, at least for now. And Mimí, in her own way, made the same decision about him. They accepted each other. It was Sol who bridged the gap between the two, without even realizing it.
—
One month after her arrival in Wintersong, and one month before Fabian left her sleeping in the shelter in Driftveil, Mimí was heading back to the small room she rented above the village’s only bar.
She had spent the morning writing something to try and earn the little money she needed to stay in that faraway place. In the afternoon, as usual, she had gone to the inn, under the pretense of helping Aria, but with the real purpose of seeing Layla, of helping her remember. Slowly, gently, even if that wasn’t her usual way.
Every time she saw her, a fierce anger rose in her chest. For how she had ended up. For the things Mimí could only imagine had been done to her. And yet she let the snow fall on herself too, if that meant protecting her. From herself, and from him. But she didn’t know how long she would be able to hold back. That bastard deserved to pay. Even if he was already in prison.
For some time, Mimí had felt watched. It wasn’t Aria, who never really left them alone. It wasn’t Echo, who protected Sol the way you protect a wounded cub. It wasn’t the villagers of Wintersong, who saw the stranger girl as a disruption. Nor was it the local Pokémon, who mimicked the expressions of the humans around them like mirrors. Something didn’t feel right, but Mimí couldn’t figure out what it was. She convinced herself that the whole situation was making her paranoid. She decided to ignore the signs.
That evening, as she walked through the village’s small, dark streets, she pulled her heavy coat tighter around herself, ready to react at the first hint of danger. But the only thing that made her jump was a lone Cryogonal gliding past her with a chime. It was odd to see it there, along the road: those creatures preferred snowy woods and caves. But in its silent floating, there was no threat. Only a Trainer would bother to attack it, to catch it or use it for training.
When she finally reached the bar, she let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. She took the large, old-fashioned key from her bag, stuck it in the lock, and turned it: a sharp click, the rusty mechanism giving way with difficulty. The door creaked open to reveal a small, dark room: a bed too short and unmade, shutters closed with cracked slats that let in slivers of moonlight and the flicker of a failing neon sign, a narrow, not-so-clean bathroom squeezed into a few square meters.
But that fragile sense of home, of safety, however uncomfortable and temporary, didn’t last. A long shadow rose behind her. A wet cloth covered her mouth. A sickly-sweet smell flooded her nostrils. She tried to fight off the stranger holding her down, stopping her from screaming. Despite her efforts, no one noticed what was happening. No one came to save her. Weakness spread through her limbs, heavier with every second, and her vision blurred, giving way to a darkness that wasn’t just the night.
—
For a couple of weeks now, Third, the Shadow boy, had been assigned to keep an eye on the dark-haired woman who had arrived in Wintersong with a thousand excuses to get into the prison. His brothers were busy with other affairs, so it would be up to him to watch over both her and Sol. Once it became clear that the stranger was there because of the girl tied to his father, his master, the two missions became one. A new order, a renewed invitation from Ghetsis. Who was she? What did she really want? Was she worth doing something about, or was she just a false alarm, a harmless figure?
In any case, Third didn’t care about motives. He followed orders. No questions asked. Like his brothers. Like Ghetsis’ little soldier. A Shadow among shadows.
And yet, there was something, something he couldn’t deny he liked, about being tasked with watching the quiet, blonde girl who occupied his thoughts like a beautiful, unreachable dream. A painted veil. He watched her from afar, knowing that if he reached out, the spell would break, the image distorted by the folds he’d create with his hand. So he remained apart, as his fate dictated.
Mimí was the disruptive element. Ever since she had entered Sol’s life, the girl had become more agitated, more distracted. It was almost as if another person was awakening inside her, or perhaps resurfacing. Then there was her story, which he had overheard in bits and pieces during conversations with Aria. Who was Layla, the hidden identity of Sol? Was he truly ready to meet her, behind the fragile veil that this dark-haired girl was starting to lift, gently as she could? But it didn’t matter. That wasn’t his job. So he simply reported back to Ghetsis what he had found out. As always.
Ghetsis didn’t give any further orders. Not right away. Only when they were all together. The three brothers, the three Shadows, in the abandoned hideout near Wintersong. They were eating quickly, in silence, as if relaxing were a forbidden act. The old radio crackled suddenly. It was their channel to communicate with Ghetsis, to receive instructions and send information. The message, though in code, was unmistakably clear. The nosy girl under Third’s watch had to be neutralized. It didn’t matter which of them did it, or how. The only thing that mattered was that she disappeared.
It was a basic mission. The only thing to keep in mind was to leave no trace, to make sure no one found out what had happened. But that wasn’t a problem for them. And yet, at those few shrill words from the little device lying on the wooden floor beside them, Third stiffened as if it had spoken of something huge.
First looked down at the bottom of his bowl, then set it aside. Second raised his eyes at the same time as his older twin. Third pretended nothing was out of the ordinary and got up, starting to clear away what little they had in front of them. As he picked up the dishes to wash them, a utensil slipped from his fingers. It didn’t fall. The three of them were faster than a fork. But it was clear something was wrong.
A brief moment of emptiness, then silence resumed its place. The afternoon went on like any other. No need to exchange orders, no need for complicated plans. That night they would take care of the job. They already knew what to do in these situations.
But that night never came.
Not for Third, who, silent as an Umbreon hiding in the dark and swift as a Liepard striking its prey, left the shack where he and his brothers survived, earlier than expected. Before they could notice his absence.
Outside, in the snow, he asked himself, for a second, what he was doing. None of this made sense. Did he want to deal with the woman who kept visiting Sol on his own? The one he also found annoying, with her desperate, quiet attempts to bring to light something that shouldn’t be there? What difference would it make if they did it together, like all the other missions?
And what if he didn’t want to eliminate that girl? What if he wanted to… save her? Wanted? Him? He was a Shadow. He had no will. And yet…
For that instant, panic took him. He thought about going back, but his brothers would ask where he had been, even if only for a short while. He wanted to run. But where? And for what? Not to mention that if he ran, the woman, Mimí, would die. Sol would be alone again. So what? What choices did he have left?
It lasted only a moment. Then he began to move again.
How was Plasma’s ideology born?
Where does the legend come from, where does the myth begin?
This is the story of Sage Giallo, and of how he was swept away into a Dream greater than himself:
Team Plasma, caught between constructed Ideals and false Truths.
I inserted an "ancient text" in this chapter.
The whole thing is a rework of the beginning of the Voluspa, the norse cosmogony, part of the Poetic Edda.
It's how Vikings described the birth of the whole universe.
Norse legends are cool man 🩵
📰Missed the other chapters?
🔗 SONGS OF GHETSIS - INDEX
✴️ Prefer AO3?
🔗 TEMPUS TRANSIT
🇮🇹 Sei un lettore italiano?
🔗 TEMPUS TRANSIT
Otherwise, read the chapter below ⬇️
ET ITERUM PER PUERUM
SUM VENERI PROSTRATUS
TEMPUS TRANSIT
The title is inspired by the song Tempus Transit by Faun
Hearing I ask from all
the holy races,
both high and low,
children of Kyurem.
Thou wilt that I, Harmonia Gropius
may fully recount
the ancient deeds of men and dragons,
those which I first remember.
Harmonia Gropius.
That was how the sender of the letter had signed himself. Not, according to him, to claim a bloodline, but as a choice: to safeguard the memory of the ancient and the sacred. Ghetsis “Harmonia Gropius”, head of the Association for Myth-Cosmic Studies of Nacrene City, based in the museum of that same renowned town, had addressed a lengthy letter to Professor Mimir Ashwood, a retired scholar still active in specialist circles of the University of Driftveil.
The professor had taken early retirement when his course on Mythology Applied to the History and Prehistory of the Unova Region (or, more informally, Unovan Mythological Studies) was canceled due to “resource rationalization.” Since then, he had tried to remain within the margins of the academic scene, not for the admiration of his colleagues, whom he described as “corrupted and flattened by a modern society that has lost the roots of a culture as deep as ours”, but out of pure passion for his field. He refused to give up, in a stubborn and perhaps desperate attempt to find kindred spirits who could truly understand the value of myth, of legend, of sacred memory.
I recall the Pokémon
born in the beginning,
those who once
gave rise to me.
Many worlds I remember,
many foundations,
and the measuring Dragon, the exalted,
who pierces the earth.
Ashwood read in his study, small but well-furnished, filled with trinkets, of inestimable value only to those who understood what they were looking at. The text claimed to be ancient, a discovery of great significance if authentic. However, the professor was naturally skeptical. Realistically, few would have the interest to forge such a document: it was more likely to get a piece of lowbrow fiction passed off as a “fantasy book inspired by ancient legends,” when in fact it tasted more of trash than tradition.
The language could be imitated, albeit with great skill. The content, vague and overly ceremonial in tone, could have been cleverly fabricated, grounded in solid knowledge of foundational mythology and the flavor of oral tradition that had always accompanied Unovan legends: an ancient, sung culture, scarcely written.
And yet it was precisely the musicality and intonation, so rhythmic and vertical, masterful in their invocation of the ancients and their dragons, that captivated the professor.
He found himself facing something that perhaps wasn’t the work of a clumsy imitator. Perhaps not an imitator at all, which both unsettled and thrilled him at the same time.
In the beginning there was Time,
and Kyurem dwelled there.
There was no sand nor sea,
nor freezing waves.
There was no earth,
nor sky above:
a void lay open,
and nowhere was there grass.
This was a myth of Unova’s origin, where Unova was a word signifying the world entirely.
Just as in ancient tradition, where “Unova” invoked all the Earth, meant as the union of humans and Pokémon “united” beneath a single sky. The fact that Kyurem was named as the one that existed in the beginning, and not merely as what remained after the Twin Dragons were divided, echoed slightly controversial studies published by Ashwood himself in the past. They had gone mostly ignored by the academic community, but he still believed in them, with the stubborn pride of a wounded father.
It could have been adulation, certainly. But it would have required such precision in sourcing that it was enviable regardless, at least professionally.
And somewhat flattering, if he were honest.
The letter, besides the presumed ancient text, contained a direct invitation: the professor was to travel in person to examine the original copy of the relic, kept at the Nacrene City Museum. It promised change, a rekindling in people’s hearts. A collaboration with the Association for Myth-Cosmic Studies, now housed inside the city museum, could restore light to his life’s work: long misunderstood, but never betrayed.
He could have ignored it. Perhaps he should have.
And yet something in those words made his heart beat like a boy’s at first love. Like when, long ago, he first encountered the Great Stories of Men and Dragons. They had called his name, with the sweetness and seduction of a Primarina’s song.
Until the children of the Void
raised the lands,
they who gave shape
to vast Unova.
From the south the sun shone
on stony cliffs;
then the soil was covered
with green sprouts.
Yet it was precisely for this reason that the professor replied to the letter with a firm refusal.
It was perhaps too good to be true, and he knew all too well that this was exactly the trap used by the most flattering deceivers, skilled masters of fraud and forgery.
He wrote a long, detailed response, in which he politely but firmly explained why he would not further examine the text in question.
But it was the very length of the reply that betrayed his true sentiment: a deep interest, which the sender quickly recognized, and skillfully exploited.
Eight days passed, and Mimir Ashwood returned to his routine, to his studies. His mind still wandered to that new ancient chant, sent to his home like a bolt of Zekrom from a clear sky.
On the ninth day, more mail arrived. No long letter this time: just a postcard from the Nacrene City Museum, and a renewed invitation. The handwriting was elegant yet restrained. The message asked, once again, to give a chance to a text that, according to the sender, could reignite academic interest in ancient legends. Perhaps not just academic, perhaps even the people would finally see, if only someone like the professor were willing to bring it to light.
The two brothers convened,
mirrors of the Dragon,
they who raised
altars and temples high;
they lit hearths,
forged wealth,
crafted tongs,
engineered tools.
The next morning, a Friday, Professor Ashwood was on the 9:30 A.M. train bound for Nacrene City.
Tympole and Palpitoad croaked peacefully in the grass near the tracks. Once off the electric train, the professor took his bag, brimming with papers, books, and instruments to examine the self-proclaimed jewel. He walked away from the station, headed for the famed museum. It would be a thirty-minute walk. He had decided to go on foot, despite the weight of his bag: he enjoyed walking, listening to the sounds of Pokémon and people. He told himself he was sharing in the breath of the World, refusing to surrender to the speed of modern society. He strove to move beyond utility, the only metric, these days, by which most measured every inch of the universe.
The museum’s façade towered over the town, solemn as ever. A few Pidoves, grey sentinels, cooed innocently on the ledges of the building. Some would say those flying Rattatas were good for nothing but droppings. Others, Pokémon lovers, appreciated the presence of such unmonumental figures on such an important structure.
The professor paused before approaching the entrance. He adjusted the strap of his bag on his right shoulder, observing the little Flying-types with neither annoyance nor admiration. They ignored him, save perhaps for one, who rose into the air and drew a circle above his head.
Ashwood approached with more reverence than usual. His eyes caught the city’s heraldic symbol, waving on a flag beside that of Unova. Below it, a crack spread along the building, reaching the great door. He didn’t remember that detail, and yet it seemed to have plagued the building for centuries.
In the courtyard they played chess;
they were rich:
they felt no lack
of gold nor peace.
Until they arrived,
discord and dissension,
from their soul
hungry for creation.
Mimir stepped across the threshold.
In the grand hall before him, a few rare visitors looked at the exhibits. Perhaps understanding them, perhaps not. A small reception desk blocked his path. The attendant looked at him, waiting either for him to pay admission or to state his eligibility for free entry, be that for his age or a different reason.
Everything was so damned ordinary.
When he introduced himself, ready to ask for the Association’s office, the girl welcomed him with immediate recognition and the enthusiastic voice of someone new to the job.
“Oh, Professor Ashwood! Yes, I was told to let you through: they’re waiting for you in the Memory Room. You need to go upstairs, or you can take the elevator if you prefer. It’s to the right, after the temporary exhibit. Once you’re on the first floor, you can’t miss it, the name is written large. Have a great day, professor!”
As promised, the Memory Room was easily recognizable. The wooden door was open; beside it, a plaque bore the name of the association and a ceremonial quote that smelled of citation. Through the doorway, one could glimpse a room not too large but well-kept. Dark wood paneling lent it an academic air and a reverence for the old. On the sides, sacred original writings and reconstructed translations were on careful display. The center was broken by a table, partly covered with papers and books on subjects dear to the professor. On the walls, works of famous and obscure colleagues. Among them, treated with a solemnity he hadn’t known in years, a paper signed: Mimir Ashwood.
The professor stepped inside.
The room was empty, but he heard movement behind the far wall. He waited a few seconds, glancing around. To his left, an engraved object bore no label or explanation. Only itself. And its mysterious runes. He wondered what it was.
Then, suddenly, one of the wooden panels opposite the table opened. Mimir jumped. Now that was a dramatic entrance.
A tall man in his thirties, with long green hair and a strange red lens over his right eye, stepped into the room. He introduced himself with elegance. Said his name was Ghetsis, and added the titles Harmonia Gropius, as promised in the letter. Something in his voice promised glory and war. He was undeniably charismatic, but Mimir remained unconvinced.
Reshiram was awakened,
white with great Truth.
Zekrom rose,
black with immense Ideals.
Kyurem was thus shattered,
and empty remained,
in the desolate lands
of eternal Ice.
Ghetsis spoke like a man in love with the sound of his own voice. He spoke of his association, created, so he said, for love of ancient memory. Legends that he feared would vanish or be disfigured by ignorant eyes. Like those of many museum visitors, who laughed at the skulls of ancient dragons. He spoke of the professor’s work: it did not deserve to be forgotten just because it had been published yesterday and not today. The modern world, at times, seemed too focused on looking ahead, pruning the branches of a tree while its roots rotted from neglect.
Then, with a gesture, he invited Ashwood to follow him behind the hidden panel into the inner study. Mimir cast a final glance at the unlabeled runic tablet and followed the man who styled himself as the keeper of Unova’s memories. He dared not ask what the object was, not yet.
They walked a short, dim hallway. The hidden room they reached was larger than its public twin. And yet the dim lighting, rough stone floor, and dark wooden walls created an intimate atmosphere that made it seem smaller. It was a strange illusion.
The walls were lined with bookshelves, brimming with old and new volumes. Not at the center but well visible on the right, a lectern held like a treasure what the professor quickly recognized as the very text he had been sent in copy: The Canticle of the Dragon’s Breath. That’s what it had been called.
The spear raised the first brother,
the second rose,
terrible in his wrath.
The tongue of flame
swallowed all the lands,
thunderous lightning
destroyed the sprouts.
And destroyed the world was:
no more Unova.
Without further words, as if by implicit promise, the professor approached the bound scrolls and began to examine them. The first thing he noticed was that the binding was clearly modern. When he asked, Ghetsis claimed the text had to be gathered into a single book for conservation. He also hinted, with well-placed phrases, that beyond the restorations made by his collaborators, the text might contain more recent voices, perhaps inserted over time for clarity or preservation. He asked Ashwood’s help for this as well: to identify discrepancies in style and language. He, after all, had once translated myths of great cultural value.
Mimir, cynical and detached until then, suddenly found himself overtaken by emotion.
Before him was a truly ancient support, written in a language so refined that, even if not original, was at least of extraordinary quality. He let the emotion carry him. He continued his meticulous examination, finding small inconsistencies, as promised.
He hadn’t even noticed how far he had leaned over the text until he straightened his back, sore from travel and from the weight of feeling. He declared himself willing to continue the analysis, either there, if given the proper tools, or in his own lab. He preferred the latter, but the former was safer for the evidently fragile scrolls. He did not wish to risk contamination or damage from unnecessary travel.
Ghetsis, a good Pokér player, did not show that his already sizeable ego was swelling. He felt as satisfied as a fat Cheshire Purrloin. Instead, in a calm and calculated tone, he gave the professor full access to all the instruments required to examine, with the highest degree of scholarly accuracy, the text he himself had commissioned and assembled. With the assistance of a well-paid expert forger, naturally, who had been carefully made to disappear.
His new association, a cover for new dealings, this time more “clean,” if by that word we mean less traceable, needed legitimacy. Only thus could it achieve the next level required to create something grand. Something the former convict, now reborn as a myth expert, had been planning since the days of prison.
—
As the months passed, the forgery was completed. A patina that resembled Truth, that echoed ancient Ideals, began to settle over many hearts.
The time of ice had passed; now the world was renewing.
Professor Mimir Ashwood was now an official collaborator of the Association for Myth-Cosmic Studies, convinced of the New Text’s authenticity, or perhaps merely blinded by hope. That boy, that man with great vision, would restore the ancient legends and lead society toward a glorious new Spring.
Thanks to the professor’s work and genuine admiration, the Sage Harmonia Gropius could now give his new creation an ancient, sacred, respected face: Plasma.
So he chose to name the new Team, after the fourth state of matter. The one less visible from our low vantage point, yet omnipresent, composing most of the universe. The state in which existence itself separates. Just as, according to him, humans and Pokémon must be separated again, as they were in the beginning. For the good of both. The one that can be created with fire and lightning. The one the world must have entered after the passing of the great legendary Dragons, when the two brothers, children of the Void, returned to preach peace and rebuild the Unova they themselves had broken.
He thus recruited new and old faces, experts and novices. New believers, new tools. He chose not to take the title of Leader, of King. That would belong to another. An innocent face, a chosen one, who would have the honor of knowing the True World from the tender age of a stolen childhood.
Meanwhile, Ghetsis would be a Sage, flanked by six others, masks of consensus, mirrors of his mind, who would govern equally until the true king was ready to take the reins of the movement. And one day, perhaps, the whole world. As was only right.
Mimir Ashwood had the honor of being one of the Seven Regents, with a new name.
He was called Giallo: yellow, like the color of thresholds. Not Gold yet, not White. He was he who stood between myth and reality, between Truth and Ideals.
And so, thanks to what to him was but a boy, Giallo believed again.
Before the Beauty of that construction so Real, he fell to his knees.
One day, a girl knocked three times at Aria’s door.
Her little Sunkern mirrored her fragility, her delicate nature.
Years later, in the snow of Wintersong, Aria’s inn becomes a refuge for broken souls:
Sol, marked by the past.
Mimi, searching for a vanished truth.
Different stories knock at the same door, and each time Aria must choose whether to listen, to welcome, to protect.
GIF di nsboyfriend
I’m considering reorganizing the collection to make the thematic threads clearer, and maybe rewriting the first chapters: my style is changing as I write, and I’m curious to see how I might improve them.
I already have several chapters ready (I’ve finished up to chapter 23!) and my priority is to bring the story to its conclusion. After that, I’ll focus on revisions and refinements.
A little note for the chapter ahead: I translated litterally an (although not at all common) existing Italian name: Amata, that means Loved.
Just like for "Happy" (Felice), the meaning is rather important to the story.
📰Missed the other chapters?
🔗 SONGS OF GHETSIS - INDEX
✴️ Prefer AO3?
🔗 THE SONG OF LOVED
🇮🇹 Sei un lettore italiano?
🔗 THE SONG OF LOVED
Otherwise, read the chapter below ⬇️
SHE KNOCKED THREE TIMES ONE DAY
THE SONG OF LOVED
The title is inspired to the song La canzone di Marinella by Fabrizio De André
(Here's the lyrics' translation)
The girl Aria loved had a Sunkern.
It was small, fragile, with that faint, feeble look about it, but she insisted on caring for it as one tends to a daughter prone to frequent illness.
Aria had met her on a cooler evening than most, when she knocked three times on her door. She was her new neighbor. She asked if she had any milk. She’d forgotten to go shopping and feared her partner would get angry if he woke up the next morning to find nothing for breakfast.
Back then, Aria hadn’t seen the truth hidden behind that small request. But she didn’t hesitate to gift her a jug of milk, and a pastry, as a small welcome to the western district of Aspertia City.
From then on, they began to see each other often: in the garden, while watering flowers and showering affection on their Pokémons; at the supermarket, among the shelves of essentials; at the park, where the tiny Sunkern and Aria’s young Munna would chase each other through the tufts of grass.
She was beautiful. Her eyes were silver, her hair smelled of sea and forest. Her slight build did not take away from her delicate, melancholic grace.
And the more they talked, the more they laughed, the more they shared their daily worries, the more Aria noticed something twisted, weary, fragile in her.
Sometimes she’d say she couldn’t make it to their meetups. Sometimes she showed up hurt in strange, yet all-too-normal ways. She claimed to have fallen down the stairs, scratched herself on rose thorns, bumped into a cupboard. Explanations far too simple for bruises that deep.
One day, that cursed day, her neighbor, her friend, her beloved, showed up at Aria’s door with yet another dark mark around her eye and neck.
This time, though, she wasn’t hiding. No makeup, no dark glasses. Her gaze was low, like someone carrying too much shame and nowhere to put it.
Aria let her in. And then she raised her eyes, for the first time in what felt like an eternity of silence. And she spoke.
Aria listened. She confessed. And when Aria kissed her back, she decided she would be her knight in shining armor. She would save her from the ogre, from the monster, and together they would ride a Galarian Rapidash toward a future of sweetness and love.
—
Many years later, in the small village tucked between mountains and glaciers called Wintersong, Aria ran a little guesthouse for lost souls.
Snow fell, as always, covering the tormented bodies of the few people who still dared live in that forgotten corner of the world.
In the warm little wooden house, an old Sunflora stood in a crate of soil near the stove, waiting for the sun, weakened by the cold, to peek through the mountain peaks.
Aria had tried to let her go, long ago, as she had let go of everything else, but the sunflower Pokémon had refused to leave. So she made room in the car and brought her along, to the edge of the world.
Then, one morning, freezing and full of snow, someone knocked three times at her door.
She said her name was Sol, and beside her stood a massive Hydreigon, dark, menacing. And yet, there was something twisted, weary, fragile about her that Aria knew all too well.
She said nothing and let her in, as she did with everyone who asked for shelter. Usually, she requested something in return for the stay, whatever guests could afford. But Sol had nothing. Aria wasn’t even sure if she’d survived on the streets or in some cave for who knows how long. Together, or perhaps thanks to, her Pokémon. So she asked for nothing. She gave her work, something to keep her busy, a bit of money if there was any left over; enough to start regaining independence.
When, thanks to some local contacts, Aria managed to get her valid identity papers, the girl began visiting the prison.
Every Wednesday, like clockwork, she’d rise and head toward the building looming over the village like a Mandibuzz searching for carrion.
Echo, her name for the Hydreigon, never followed her. He had tried to stop her, sometimes, and for that reason, she had been late a few Wednesdays. There had been consequences. But he never managed to make her give up.
So he simply watched her go, like those who know they cannot stop someone from hurting themselves.
Aria understood. Sol was going to her tormentor the way one reaches for a fountain in the middle of a desert. But she let her go. It was no longer the time for superheroes. Only Aria remained.
—
Another day, another knock. Three knocks, but these were not gentle. The first was strong, though a little hesitant. The second more firm, requesting an audience. The third didn’t ask anymore: it demanded.
As always, Aria opened the door. In front of her stood Mimì. Another girl, another story.
Mimì had hair as dark as night and eyes ablaze, like a Moltres soaring through the sky in search of Truth. Aria saw herself in those eyes; something she hadn’t felt in a long time, something she had tried to forget.
She let her in, because the door closed to no one, but she knew she’d need the big umbrella, the one for big storms.
The girl spoke of her mission.
Barely eighteen, her friend Layla had vanished into thin air. She left a goodbye note, and after a routine investigation, the police had filed the case as a voluntary disappearance.
Mimì knew there was more. She probably knew her better than her own family, and held onto a secret. Just before leaving behind her heavy absence in the outskirts where they had grown up together, Layla had confessed to seeing a much older man. Mimì had tried to warn her. Maybe that’s why, in the final months, the two had drifted apart. Layla was rarely seen anymore.
Then, one late afternoon, nearly evening, Mimì knocked on her door. She wanted to talk, to make up, to be friends again. But Layla didn’t answer.
Just around the corner, Mimì saw her. She was getting into a luxury car. Behind the wheel, a man she barely glimpsed through the glare of the glass. Long hair, indescribable color, maybe something covering one eye. Or was it just the reflection?
But she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at Layla.
Mimì tried to tell the police, later, but the answers were vague, formal. Yes, they’d look into it. But if the girl was of age and wanted to leave, who could stop her?
Mimì grew up, slowly, suddenly, without Layla and with Layla forever on her mind.
She couldn’t find peace. Sometimes life seemed to take a different turn, but she always ended up in front of her friend’s old house. She asked the parents, tired, resigned, if they knew anything. They didn’t.
Eventually, they stopped listening altogether.
No one listened anymore. So she made them listen.
She became a journalist, just like she’d dreamed as a child. But now her dream had a purpose: seek truth and tell it to those who refused to hear it.
Despite her persistence, Mimì found nothing truly solid. Until one day, at last, a clue knocked on her door. Layla’s parents were moving. They donated her untouched things to charity. But first, they called Mimì. Asked if she wanted something. They knew how much she had cared.
Among all the familiar objects of the almost-sister, she found something new: a journal. Half torn, but still full of Layla.
That journal had been mutilated. Every time she seemed to write about the man, Layla had torn out the pages. Crossed out the words violently. Erased all traces.
Why?
And yet, something remained. A barely visible scribble in the bottom corner of a forgotten page: Plasma. Mimì saw it and felt it burn. Her mind went straight to the movement that had swallowed the region for years, that the government now wished forgotten. But it still existed, even if under a seemingly nobler, idealistic form.
So the new journalist went to the new leader. The Guilty Saint. He who sought redemption by helping those who had been abused in his former cult. Former Sage Ross, an old man with a mild demeanor and a shadowy past, received her like any guest, out of courtesy, out of moral obligation. But Mimì wasn’t looking for a missing Pokémon like most visitors. Mimì was looking for a person. And when she poured her story out, something sparked in his memory. Could it really be her, that ghost he’d once seen at Ghetsis’ side, locked in the castle like a princess in a tower? The hair, the manners didn’t match. But people change, under the reign of that sick and enchanting man. He knew it well.
So Mimì had found the monster. Wintersong. The prison. The village. And, in all that snow, a guesthouse for lost souls.
What burned most in her already flaming thoughts was the fact that she had never recognized him. She had seen him on TV, even in person at a Team Plasma rally in downtown Castelia, but never linked that face, so unmistakable, to the man who had stolen her almost-sister. He’d been right in front of her. And she had done nothing.
But now she was here. And that had to be enough.
Aria listened to the whole story. She never closed her door to those who chose to open up. But she didn’t force those who weren’t ready. And Sol, the girl with long blonde braids, the one who visited the prison every Wednesday, the one who once confessed she dreamt of the name “Layla”, was not ready.
The keeper of the guesthouse had already sensed that the young woman’s story was heavier than a Snorlax no Poké Flute could wake. But now she understood it was perhaps even worse than she imagined. And just like with a sleeping Snorlax, Sol must not be woken suddenly. The reaction could be violent. She could run to him. And it could end very, very badly.
—
Many years before, the girl Aria had loved had finally woken up.
After an eternity of her soul lulled into silence and the sleep of awareness, she opened her eyes and rose. She said it had been Aria who made her feel alive again. She felt as if she’d fallen into a roaring river long ago. As if she’d spent years drowning, without ever really dying. But then her prince had arrived. Her Aria came, to fill her lungs.
The two women loved each other. They loved with a true, sweet, powerful love, a love that filled the voids and did not break bones.
It was during those days that the little Sunkern evolved into a bright and beautiful Sunflora. No need for a magical stone, just the joy reborn in her trainer’s heart. And yet, she still called her Sunkern, whether in jest or by habit.
They both knew the barbed wire linking her to the monster had not yet broken. So Aria planned the escape, patiently, detail by detail.
They would sail across the sea, to central Unova, and then who knows, maybe even beyond the country. Where didn’t matter. As long as it was together.
But she, her eyes still swollen with sleep, hesitated. She was tired. She was scared. And, cruel irony, she felt guilty. Maybe she had found her way to the surface. But she was still at the mercy of the waves.
And one day, that cursed day, she went home with her heart full of hope and fear.
Aria never saw her again.
They said she fell down the stairs. Again. That she hit her head. That she died instantly. There was nothing to be done.
Aria refused to believe it. She thought maybe it was a lie, a cruel trick from the ogre who now kept her hidden, far from sunlight. The funeral must have been a well-orchestrated ruse.
There could be no other explanation.
So she knocked on her door. Again and again. But she never answered. Only he did, threatening to kill her, just as he had killed her girl.
Desperate, Aria ran to the police. Told them everything. Every last detail, with urgency, with resolve. But she hadn’t accounted for reality. He, the monster, the ogre, was one of them.
A police officer. And who would the authorities believe? A lone woman, a random civilian? Or one of their best men, maybe even someone’s nephew?
Fear. Now she felt it too. Deafening, real, screaming in her ears.
She didn’t want to give up, but it had grown bigger than her. So big it filled every space, every room where she tried to find refuge, so present it left no air to breathe. Day or night, morning or evening, she felt eyes on her.
She wanted to scream, and she had, but no one listened. Only he had heard her. And now he hunted her, like a furious Arcanine.
He couldn’t possibly harm her too, she told herself, not after what had happened. But that didn’t comfort her in the dark, didn’t dispel the ghosts staring at her from every corner of her new world, suddenly both tiny and enormous.
Now everything had changed. There was nothing left to save.
The princess was dead, devoured by the ogre. The monster had won. And the spotless, fearless prince now felt filthy and afraid.
What was the point in staying in that broken fairytale?
So Aria packed her bags; already half-prepared for an adventure that would never happen. She left everything behind. The house. The job. The family, far away, but with whom she had weekly chats through Interpoké.
She left her Pokémon, or tried to. Her Munna refused to stay. And then there was Sunflora.
The Pokémon’s delicate stem had been trembling for weeks. She remained isolated, silent, in the room where her now-vanished trainer had left her, like a precious treasure in a safe chest. But that house had never been safe, or a chest. Aria understood that now.
When she tried to make her leave, Sunflora looked at her with her eyes, bright, beautiful, fragile. Aria couldn’t close the door.
She also brought with her a photo, carefully folded into the pocket of her heavy coat, useful in the snow where she wanted to stay buried. Two girls smiled ahead, one with strength, the other with gentleness.
On the back, a name.
Loved.
💛 To those who read until the end: Thank you so much!💜
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Hello there, SONGS OF GHETSIS is at chapter 14 now!
Anthea and Concordia, the Goddesses raised in Ghetsis’ shadow, now live among wounded Pokémon and the former followers of Plasma.
But the world keeps demanding answers, roles, symbols from them.
Love, Peace
Hatred, War
While the weight of the past suffocates them and the name of their “father” resurfaces on the lips of the naïve, Anthea feels within herself a poison that no noble ideal can soothe.
A chance encounter, one word too many, and the illusion of the Goddess of Love shatters.
This chapter took a different path that it was supposed to have... but I still want to let you know of the fic that inspired me to write about Anthea specifically:
➡️ A VISIT TO THE POUND on AO3
🎨 Art from the Tumbrl blog of the author
📰Missed the other chapters?
🔗 SONGS OF GHETSIS - INDEX
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🔗 RATTLEKANS
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🔗 RATTLEKANS
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LOVE YOU LIKE A RATTLEKANS
The title is inspired by the song Rattlesnake by Kabaret Sybarit
Ever since the article came out, written by that girl who had arrived in Driftveil City with one of Ghetsis’ Shadows, people hadn’t left them alone.
Anthea and Concordia had been living for a few years in that Pokémon care facility north of Driftveil. They helped Rood look after abused Pokémon and traumatized ex-members of Team Plasma. Like themselves.
Heirs of Plasma; that’s what the old Sage had called the new movement. To say they were salvaging what little good remained from the original Team’s ideals.
But no matter how much they worked, Ghetsis’s shadow clung to them, stretching long and low, with claws like a cursed Honchkrow’s, that scratched everything they touched.
Once again, people’s eyes were on them. Some called them victims, others accomplices. Most just looked at them with suspicion.
They asked her, “What was Ghetsis like, up close? What did you think, as the Goddess of Love?” She simply answered that her “father,” as he liked to be called, did not love.
He possessed.
She’d say something vague and distant, hollow words heavy with meaning only for those desperate to find one. And when people walked away, thinking they’d received a real answer, she would think: It was him who taught me the very concept of Love that everyone expects from me.
Love.
Peace.
Ideals so strong, so pure, rammed down their throats by a bastard with a hole in place of a heart. He, who only knew hate and war.
People didn’t care that Anthea and Concordia were human beings. They only wanted their roles. They wanted Goddesses. They wanted muses, nymphs, oracles, personifications of concepts; even now, when they were, or at least seemed, free from the dreadful cult that had been Team Plasma.
Love.
Peace.
When they were transferred from that orphanage that stank of abandonment and mold to the new castle under construction, hidden like an Excadrill burrowing in the heart of the mountain, they were given new names and a new destiny.
Angela, chosen by the Institute after Amelia and arrived and before Annie—became Anthea.
Charlotte, who came after Charline and before Caroline, became Concordia.
Ghetsis taught them those new names and scripts to recite with elegance and precision. He gave them purpose. He entrusted them with the nameless child, N., as a younger brother to watch over from up close, but always at a distance. He was the future King. They were handmaidens.
Later, he also assigned them the care of the silent girl. A mother who, to the two little girls, ended up seeming more like a daughter: fragile, mute, someone to protect.
Now N. was gone, flown away with his beloved Pokémons, to who knows where. Sol however, the girl, had stayed, but locked in the wrong cage.
Antea hated Ghetsis.
Hated.
Even as she cared for the Pokémon, for the people. She watered the plants and, without meaning to, mixed her poison into the water she poured onto those green, vibrant creatures before her. How dare they. Live. Bloom. In front of her; beautiful on the outside, rotten within. Pure words, and thoughts darker than Darkrai.
She wanted to destroy everything. Burn that house to the ground; everything inside, everything outside. And then she thought of her sister. Concordia.
Her younger sister, not by blood but by bond, had always been her inner strength, her Achilles’ heel. Ghetsis knew it. Used it to push her. Used her as leverage.
Concordia, the Goddess of Peace, was peaceful only in name and in the manners forced upon her by her official role. Inside, Anthea knew she would’ve been talkative, chaotic, maybe even a warrior. She would’ve spoken for hours about uncomfortable truths, unconcerned by the conflicts her irreverent words might spark. She would’ve taken up six Poké Balls like a true Trainer and challenged the Leagues of all the regions. But she didn’t. Maybe for Anthea, her own inner strength. Her own Achilles’ heel.
But there was no space for their truth in Team Plasma. There never had been. There never would be.
—
The sun had beaten down relentlessly for weeks. The wind blew from the southeast, bringing with it the desert’s sand and air. Tympole and Palpitoads hid in whatever damp hole they could find. Deerlings and Karrablasts blinked in irritation, disturbed by the dry, sharp dust slicing through the air. A few tame Scrafty and Sandile poked their heads into town, finally feeling at home.
Anthea was watering flowers as usual, careful not to startle the few Lilligant who liked to hide among the bushes.
A boy, maybe twenty years old, was chatting casually with the failed Goddess.
He said he was there because his mother had “suggested” he do something socially useful, so he chose that place. After all, being around Pokémon wasn’t so bad. He talked the way one does to a sister, he thought he knew her, even if only through the stories he’d heard. He told her about himself, his family, his friends, his pet Pokémon.
Anthea had never had any of that.
A broken, fake family. No friends to speak of. Her Pokémon were those of the Team members she cared for with top-down, imposed love.
The boy laughed awkwardly. He talked too much and blushed, as if each word spawned another ones to cover up the feeling of having said something right, or terribly wrong.
Like everyone, he was seeking a Goddess’ approval.
A mirror, a bandage of Love and Peace over the bruised ego of his comfortable life.
Antea listened, as she always did, and kept poisoning her plants with care.
He kept talking, gesturing with hands dirty with sand and innocence. At some point, he asked if she’d like to go have a Lemonade with him sometime. But he didn’t wait for her answer.
Then he started talking about him. About Ghetsis.
He babbled things he must’ve picked up in some sunny corner of Sage Rood’s new movement.
He said maybe, deep down, her father hadn’t only done harm.
He said it in a low voice, but that underground river of words seemed unwilling to stop until it would reach the sea.
After all, Ghetsis had created the ideals they all still followed. Love, Peace, Nature, Freedom. He’d tried to unite the region, even if the methods left something to be desired, of course. Or maybe using force wasn’t always wrong, given the poor results of systems like the one they lived in.
Anthea stopped. She stopped watering. Stopped listening. Stopped breathing.
Something in her broke. Straightened. Turned. She looked at him with cold eyes. Blazing.
And before either of them realized it, she punched him. Square in the face.
The boy, stunned by the sudden, physical gesture, fell backward into a bush behind him. The Lilligant who had been hiding near the girl scattered in fear.
Concordia, not far away, ran over to see what had happened.
The boy, the victim, looked to her, seeking connection, hoping for resolution to a conflict he hadn’t realized he’d sparked.
But what he found were the eyes of Concordia: eyes of a girl who was ready to declare war on the world.
💛 To those who read until the end: Thank you so much!💜
❤️ You liked? Why not leaving a sign, a heart, a comment?
But even if you're just passing by, I am very grateful you were patient enough to read until this point. Thank you again!
On the border between Unova and Valdena, a city turns into a chessboard.
Inspector Vera Drilbur faces the rising crime boss Ghetsis.
It’s a duel made of interrogations and razor-sharp words...
...and she's the winner?
Beneath the sand, the Garchomps swim.
Aand with this post, we're back to normal.
I will keep you updated with the story and publish a chapter once a week!
I chose Sunday morning for my chapters on AO3, I will post on Tumbrl after that.
In the mean time...
📰Missed the other chapters?
🔗 SONGS OF GHETSIS - INDEX
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🔗 GARCHOMPS
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🔗 GARCHOMPS
Otherwise, read the chapter below ⬇️
GARCHOMPS
The title is inspired by the song Sharks by Imagine Dragons.
The town of Bordercrag was a small gem nestled right at the border between the Unova region and Valdena. It bore traces of both cultures, merged in a living, deep-rooted blend that enriched its small but fiercely connected population.
Even physically, Bordercrag stood on a sharp divide: perched on a hilly plateau, it lay just above the permanent fog veiling the plains to the west, but not quite high enough to truly belong to the imposing mountain range that rose to the east.
Despite its beauty and cultural wealth, Bordercrag was far from pure.
Its strategic location, not far from a mountain pass that carried much of the overland trade between Unova and the northwestern lands, made it a tempting prize for the region’s criminal networks. Here, profit was made primarily through Pokémon smuggling and illicit substances, taking advantage of the plain’s fog and the mountain folk’s code of silence.
It was in this soil, made of wildflowers and Miltank manure, that the Border King’s empire had once risen. But that reign had long been in decline. Another figure had emerged from the mist, like a grey Cromoròn from Valdena stretching its beak to hunt.
They called him The Blind One.
They said that despite his youth, he already commanded respect. A prodigy of organized crime. But despite that, or perhaps because of that, his star was burning fast.
So thought Vera, sitting across from him in the interrogation room, eyeing that near-mythical figure: a young man barely twenty, staring back at her like one would a Feebas; unsure whether to grill it or batter-fry it. And maybe she, only a few years older, was looking at him just the same.
“Vera Drilbur. Inspector for the Interregional Anti-Smuggling Division.”
It wasn’t an introduction, more like a reality he’d soon have to deal with, like it or not.
Ghetsis looked at her with sly amusement, a crooked smile tugging at his face, warped by the absence of an eye, concealed behind a sleek, expensive dark lens.
“But of course, Vera Drilbur. What a name, what a statement, am I right?”
The room hummed with the old fan’s futile effort to push back the oncoming summer heat.
Ghetsis adjusted himself in the uncomfortable chair without breaking eye contact. Vera held his gaze, unmoving.
The game had begun. Like the dance of a hungry Liepard and a slightly smarter-than-average Rattata, though it was unclear who was who.
Vera laid out data, spun theories as truths, hoping to see which bait would snag the Basculin before her. He responded to questions with more questions. He spoke of her life. He had studied it thoroughly: her Pokémon, the one that had died when she was a girl; her family; even cases she’d worked on, in uncanny, confidential detail. He declared himself impressed.
That interrogation ended in a stalemate. The Blind One played the game for a while, then grew bored and walked away, leaving Vera and her partner behind the fake mirror with nothing but failure.
But that was only the first battle. The war was just beginning.
Time passed. Investigations continued.
Ghetsis remained elusive. His operations were theatrical, seemingly disconnected from his name. Unlike his predecessor, he left little bloodshed. Yet people talk, if you know when and where to listen. And folk tales always carry a seed of truth, if you know how to follow the thread from myth to fact. Vera knew that thread led to him, the boy with one eye and the smirk of a Gabite on the verge of evolution.
But no crime is flawless. Ghetsis, for all his brilliance, was a puzzle like any other, maybe just a harder one. And puzzles all come undone from somewhere. Vera found him, the one they called “Chesto Berry.” One of the Blind One’s closest. Some said he was a puppet. Others, second-in-command. What was certain was that he was close, and he’d made a mistake.
A botched delivery had left a trail leading to the treasure cave: evidence. Now all she needed was the key. And who better than him; the one who’d just failed, who, as Vera quickly uncovered, was nothing but a weak boy hiding in the shadow of his younger, yet far greater, brother?
She interrogated him.
And he talked.
—
In the interrogation room, Vera watched Ghetsis from across the table. He wore his usual disfigured face, his usual crooked grin, but this time, there was something more impatient in his expression. The young woman was about to state her name again, out of habit perhaps, then caught herself.
“No need to introduce myself, right? You already know who I am.”
He looked at her, as if searching for a way to peel her out of her uniform. Not physically, not yet, but the way he had before. To strip her back to that girl whose favorite Pokémon had just died. The one who didn’t know where to look, what to say, how to stay standing.
“Vera Drilbur, my beautiful thorn in the side. The little mole who digs even through steel just to get to me. I’d ask you out for a Lemonade, but we’re already here. A curious choice for a date, don’t you think? I would’ve picked something a bit more romantic.”
Vera didn’t flinch.
“Sorry, Pokémon and drug traffickers aren’t really my type.”
Ghetsis kept dancing. He did everything to keep the conversation personal: he spoke of her, not of himself. Dodged the charges. Became the accuser of intimate crimes, ones beyond the law. Vera played along, for a while, until she grew bored. She let him speak. Didn’t try to resist the game.
The Blind One noticed it right away; the shift in their melody.
“What’s the matter, Vera? No longer interested in my misdeeds? You're making me think you're giving up. But that’s not like you…and I don’t want a weak woman.”
Vera stared at him for a long moment. The silence tightened, about to strike its next note.
“You know, I don’t care much about what you think, Ghetsis.”
He met her gaze, pretending to be wounded.
“Are you saying I misunderstood the nature of our relationship, my dear? How cruel of you.”
The inspector ignored him. She was leading the game now.
“…What I care more about is what Happy thinks. You know, the boy from Fiumanero. The one without a mother, with a father who fancies himself a great criminal, but would lose a Pokémon battle to a toddler in nursery school.”
Time stopped in the room. The clock on the wall kept ticking, empty, meaningless.
Ghetsis didn’t reply right away. The smile stuck to his face like a misprint. Then, slowly, he stood up. He spoke with a clear, surgical voice, the kind he used to decide who lived and who didn’t.
“You know what, Vera?” The poison in that name was deadlier than a Scolipede’s sting.
“I like smart women. I like them even when they think they’ve won.”
Ghetsis moved toward the door on his right.
“But remember, you may be the queen of our little chess game, just…don’t get eaten by a pawn.”
He thought he’d walk away once again, untouched. But she stopped him.
“Not so fast, Happy. You’re under arrest.”
“And with what evidence?”
“I’ll show you now.”
—
Ghetsis sat in prison like a Kakuna nestled in the hollow of a rotten tree.
Despite his courtroom efforts, he was sentenced to thirty years. For his network. His dealings. His victories.
Rood was there too, but his sentence had been far lighter, thanks to his cooperation in bringing down his boss. Ghetsis had glanced at him once, then turned away, as one does with things no longer worth acknowledging. Still, Chesto had followed him around like the loyal Herdier he’d become. After brushing him off with a lazy threat or two, Ghetsis let him be. He wasn’t angry at Rood. He knew the boy was weak, that he needed a leader. He was stupid, yes, but had been useful.
And maybe one day, he’d be useful again.
Ghetsis wasn’t angry at Rood. He was angry at himself, for having lost control. And at that cop. Vera. Not only had that bitch dared challenge him, she thought she’d won. But while the world saw the war as over, Ghetsis knew it had only been a battle. He had lost, for now. But he would rise again, from this filthier water, stronger than before.
And this time, not just the border, the entire world would tremble at his feet. All he needed was time.
So he resumed his studies, the ones he’d abandoned when he was just a boy. Now he studied alone: in his cell, in the prison library, anywhere he could find a book and silence. In court, he had learned a bitter lesson: intelligence alone was no longer enough.
The problem wasn’t math. It was the heart of people. He already had a nose for the rot inside others; but knowing their little culture, their legends, the dreams and fears with which they built their stories…that would give him the ultimate edge. He no longer wanted to understand the individual. He wanted to master the masses. What crack ran through all of them? What would let him rise above them all, once and for all?
Then there was the prison. And the matter of Vera. A delicate matter, to be handled with care and patience.
He had no intention of rotting in a cell for all those years, letting her walk around treating him as her brightest trophy. Things had to be set straight.
He’d already dug into her past when he was still free: now it was time to act.
So he wrote letters. Anonymous ones, to a few independent newspapers, “exposing” the corruption of the system that had framed him. To a curious law student who had written to him, intrigued by the case. To Rood, once he was out of prison, presenting himself as understanding, ready to start over, this time “clean.” To his lawyer, claiming repentance: after all, he had been a peaceful trafficker, almost a philanthropist, just trying to help those who couldn’t afford the “rich people’s Pokémon.” A man treated like a monster by the system.
There was one common thread in all the letters: Vera.
The inspector who had formally accused him. Who, according to him, had seduced him, and others. Who had used unorthodox methods, and then retaliated against him when he dared slip from her grasp. Grasping hands, dirty, he claimed, with seduction, revenge, and ambition.
The Second Step Was to Wait. Things would begin to move on their own.
The newspapers, catching the scent of a scandal, published little notes about the cop who, perhaps, had a particularly greasy stain on her pristine badge. The student posted the letters; elegant, philosophical, on a blog that gained more attention than expected. Rood, increasingly doubtful and wanting to believe in his own redemption, showed the letters to his lawyer and to other lost men. Those seeking forgiveness or revenge. It didn’t matter. He used the chance to become a martyr himself, in the crusade against the corrupt, seductive cop. Ghetsis’ lawyer, climbing aboard the revenge train, did everything to kick up dust.
At the top, a file was opened on Vera. Had she really been thorough in her investigation? Or had she used improper methods, applied pressure where she shouldn’t have?
She, perhaps making her final great mistake, went to see him in prison. She was furious. Rage had been knotting her stomach for days. She wanted to see the bastard’s face, the one ruining her.
He welcomed her like an old friend. Asked how she was doing back there, as if the glass in the visitation room separated her from him, not the other way around. Vera looked at him. She’d told herself she was just going to study him, to understand how to dismantle him again, how to respond to the defamation.
Outside, no one looked at her the same. Suddenly, from champion of the law, cold but fair, she had become the rotten face of the police. The one who crushed the weak, took bribes, embodied all the evils of the system, without exception.
Even at work, her safe harbor, things had changed. Since the “Blind One” case had been reopened, her colleagues avoided her, as if afraid of catching something. Superiors eyed her with suspicion. Subordinates obeyed coldly and whispered behind her back. Even her partner had distanced himself, maybe hoping to escape the mudslide closing in.
She’d told herself she’d just observe him, like a dangerous lab specimen. But she was lying. She wanted to play. She wanted to win, again. She wanted the thrill of knocking him to the ground and pressing her heel into his mangled face. So she moved her pieces, showed her cards. Too fast. And he was ready. He collected every word, every breath. Chewed them like tobacco, and spat them back in her face, twisted.
Vera was no longer leading the game. She had become part of his story.
“The truth, my dear, is that we are the same, whether you like it or not. We’re both Garchomps. We love the smell of blood. We can’t resist it. And your colleagues, the ones you called friends…they’re Gibles. They’re Gabites. Ready to bite anything that moves too fast in their sand. You see it too now, don’t you? Now that I’ve shown you.”
The chief inspector, though many said not for much longer, couldn’t get those words out of her head. It’s just venom, the retch of an overgrown Venipede, she kept telling herself. But still, the echo of those sick words, almost as sick as the man who spoke them, rang in her mind like a bell that had forgotten the hour.
And now it was time to go to court. They had summoned her to testify. The case had been reopened, re-examined from every angle. Procedural errors had been found. They wanted to overturn the Blind One’s sentence. Maybe even apologize for keeping him chained for a third of his sentence, and offer him a Lemonade. Fools. Bastards.
She stepped out to get her car and drive downtown.
Maybe it was all those thoughts clouding her focus.
Maybe it was something else.
A truck.
A narrow road, carved into the hillside.
Her car, flipped, at the bottom of the ravine.
It was a tragic accident.
💛 To those who read until the end: Thank you so much!💜
❤️ You liked? Why not leaving a sign, a heart, a comment?
But even if you're just passing by, I am very grateful you were patient enough to read until this point. Thank you again!
The three Shadows of Ghetsis never had an opportunity to... names, a personal story, characteristics of their own. An identity.
So I gave them somenthing.
This is the tragic story of three children of Ghetsis that grew up as human weapons, with no name, with no life of their own.
First
Second
Third
Treated as objects, how will they react to human behavior?
I should have posted yesterdey but I was out with friends for national holidays...and I bought too many Pokémon cards, I am addicted, send help.
My sorry life asides,
📰Missed the other chapters?
🔗 SONGS OF GHETSIS - INDEX
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🔗 BELIEVER
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🔗 BELIEVER
Otherwise, read the chapter below ⬇️
FIRST THING FIRST
SECOND THING SECOND
THIRD THING THIRD
BELIEVER
The title is inspired by the song Believer by Imagine Dragons.
“If you go into the forest, there’s this old abandoned building. Some say they used to run experiments on people there. Or on Pokémon. Or maybe it was an asylum where they kept the craziest of the crazies. I even heard they raised child soldiers there. No one really knows the truth.”
Joey remembered what his schoolmate had told him a few days earlier. Everyone knew the legend of the madman in the woods.
“You shouldn’t go there. That place has ghosts. And not just ghosts.”
Now, in the heart of the forest, or maybe just near his home, Joey was lost.
He had followed his rather rebellious Butterfree between the trees, calling softly. At first, he laughed. Then he stopped.
He walked, and walked. And then he saw it. The old asylum. Or the old school. Whatever it was.
“They say there’s a madman there. One with white hair, but he’s not old. His eyes burn like a Volcarona’s fire. He talks to himself all the time, screams names that don’t exist, and if he finds you… he tears you to pieces and eats you all up.
And at night, in the end, he screams your name too.”
A rustle among the trees made Joey jump, letting out a small gasp of fear.
He saw a shadow… and finally… his Butterfree popped out from behind a bush. The boy laughed, relieved.
But then a chilling laugh echoed through the dirty walls and broken windows.
Nonsensical words, half whispered and half shouted, crept into the forest's gloom.
Joey recalled Butterfree into his Poké Ball.
Then he ran, faster than he had ever run before.
Meanwhile, in the old building, a lean man, thin but still wiry, sat talking to himself on a moldy, filthy chair. A Venipede watched him from afar, motionless, while a few Woobat flitted away in fear, flying through the glassless window frames.
He had never spoken so much in his life.
—
Three boys stood upright, backs straight, gazes fixed forward.
The room was bare, except for the three of them.
Through the window, half-covered with wooden boards, the early afternoon light filtered in.
Behind a pane of glass, three shadowed figures observed and whispered among themselves.
The first man wore a white coat like those of researchers in Pokémon labs.
The second wore a military uniform, though it belonged to no known army.
The third wore elegant but civilian clothes, his right eye hidden behind a thick red lens. Or perhaps there was nothing to hide.
“The two older ones are well-conditioned. Deadly. They follow orders and leave no trace,” said the supposed scientist. His tone was flat, almost bored, as if this were just another routine day at the office. The man in uniform looked at him with irritation. A Persian lay sprawled at his feet, relaxed but with sharp, alert eyes.
The man with the lens watched in silence.
“And the third?” he finally asked.
“More volatile. But more observant. Doesn’t sleep much. Slower to react, but doesn’t miss even the tiniest detail.”
The Persian stretched and let out a yowl far too high-pitched for such a gloomy place.
“If you’re interested,” the uniformed man added, “I suggest not separating the two twins. The youngest can be removed from the group more easily.”
Ghetsis stared at them for a long time. He studied their hands, calves, scars, posture, face. Not their expressions. Several minutes of silence passed. The boys behind the glass didn’t flinch. The two sellers waited patiently for the verdict.
A slight crease formed at the bottom of Ghetsis’ face: a calculated smile, joyless.
“I’ll take them.”
The scientist shifted his weight from one foot to the other. The soldier seemed relieved.
“All three?”
“Of course. If one fails, the other two will eliminate him.”
—
The madman in the woods spoke. He called the shadows, called his brothers. Asked if they, too, remembered where they came from.
“First,” the oldest, so nicknamed by the one who called himself “Father,” was the deadliest. He was the group’s leader, the perfect tool. The most skilled, the quietest, the most obedient. Not that the others disobeyed, but First did it with ease, and always ensured the other two followed, without question.
“Third,” the youngest, though now he went by a different name, was the sharpest. But also the most fragile, disorganized, and chaotic. The other two had always protected him, kept him under their older brothers’ wings. Yet, he had ended up betraying them.
And for what? For a civilian. A girl with a name and a life to be broken.
Then there was him: “Second.”
He was nothing.
—
Three young men sat cross-legged, silently eating a meal that looked modest, but was nourishing.
The room was bare, except for the three of them.
The wooden walls let through the bite of the mountain air, but none of them seemed to care. A small radio lay silent in a corner.
Then it spoke.
The words crackling from the device would have made little sense to anyone else, but to them it was different. They understood.
It wasn’t a special mission. Just the removal of a nosy girl who had gotten too close to things best left alone. She had to disappear.
First didn’t give orders. Second knew what to do.
And yet, Third vanished before the other two could act. As always, together.
At first, they assumed he’d taken care of the target himself, though no reason was evident. The girl had vanished, but he hadn’t returned. They looked for him.
When they found him, they didn’t find Third.
The girl, now hidden in an old cabin among snowy rocks and sparse pine, called him Fabian. As if she knew him.
He had his face, his body, his hair, so like the other two. But not his eyes. There was something different in his irises: light or dark, depending on the moment.
She called him Fabian. A random name. A name, like real people have.
The twins understood.
There was a fight. Brief. The girl may have noticed little.
But Third, Fabian, somehow managed to take her and vanish into the snow. The two remaining followed the blood trail. He was wounded. Yet, he escaped. Since when had he grown stronger than his older brothers?
Later, an article came out. Third had spoken. About Team Plasma, about them, their numbers, everything. It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense anymore to Ghetsis’ little soldiers. Now their master wanted his head, openly. As well as that of the girl who had given him a name and published information that should’ve stayed buried.
He also wanted Ross, the former sage of Team Plasma, now official head of the Heirs of Plasma, an unaware puppet of the Black Plasma, still controlled by Ghetsis.
Now, alongside Third and other defectors, he had dared raise his head, despite the blades that could have cut it clean off.
But Ross wasn’t the priority. Not after what had happened. Not now that the triad was broken into two.
They didn’t have to look hard to find him. He let himself be found.
He claimed he’d killed her. Brought her bloodstained notebook. But he no longer smelled of death.
Then the unthinkable happened, again.
First, the perfect soldier, couldn’t kill him.
Not because he was outmatched: he wasn’t even defending himself. And perhaps that was precisely what stopped the eldest from acting like usual. He looked at him in silence, shoved him to the ground, pressed the blade to his throat. Then he disappeared into the mist, leaving Second and Third staring at each other, confused.
Second, or what was left of him, laughed alone in the heart of the forest.
He was looking for Third, but he knew he’d let him go. Couldn’t unleash his rage, not without an order.
He was looking for First, but he knew he’d killed him. With his own hands. Couldn’t stand him walking away, leaving without giving that one, last order.
He had found him in that decrepit building where they had once grown up. Three boys. Three deadly, sharpened weapons.
And look at them now: broken, scattered, incapable of harm.
First had apparently ignored him. He was sitting on that filthy, mold-covered chair. Silent. Staring forward.
Second remembered screaming. But not what he screamed. Then he hit him. Once. Then again. And again. First didn’t fight back. But Second kept hitting. Like a maddened Zweilous, one head trying to devour the other to become just one again, and survive the doubled self he had become.
First’s corpse stared blankly at the ceiling. A few days later, Second buried him in the old training field, now swallowed by the forest. Let his body become food for the Pokémon of the woods. No tombstone. No mark on the ground.
An old weapon doesn’t need a grave.
—
Years later, Second was still there. In his childhood home. In the former facility that raised child soldiers and sold them to the highest bidder.
He spoke.
He, who had lived a lifetime in silence, now had only words to throw into the wind. No one listened. No one ever had.
He spoke to First. Asked him for new orders. Then asked where he had gone. Why he’d left him alone. Where were the orders now?
He spoke to Third, the traitor. Asked if he was happy now, with that useless girl, that demonic temptress. Did he think he had meaning now? Purpose? Now that he had a name?
Now that he had feelings? A life?
He never spoke to himself.
He didn’t exist.
And he wondered:
If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, did it ever really fall?
💛 To those who read until the end: Thank you so much!💜
❤️ You liked? Why not leaving a sign, a heart, a comment?
But even if you're just passing by, I am very grateful you were patient enough to read until this point. Thank you again!
As I was on vacation (loved Croatia's sea) I am a bit behind on publication... so I will post today and the next few days as well!
This chapter is dedicated to N. and his new companion.
They are living a nobody's life in the outskirts of Laverre City.
But the past will come knocking on their door.
Is their love strong enough to face the ghosts of a missed King?
Who is N.?
📰Missed the other chapters?
🔗 SONGS OF GHETSIS - INDEX
✴️ Prefer AO3?
🔗 BASTARD
🇮🇹 Sei un lettore italiano?
🔗 BASTARDO
Otherwise, read the chapter below ⬇️
💛 If you're reading, thank you. If you like this I encourage you to leave a sign - a heart, a reblog, a comment, anything goes. But even if you're just passing by, I appreciate your presence. 💜
NEITHER ONE NOR THE OTHER I AM, I WAS, AND I SHALL REMAIN MYSELF
BASTARD
The title is inspired by the song Bâtard by Stromae
[...]Unlike the well-known N. (Natural Harmonia Gropius), they weren’t even granted the fortune of names or faces of their own.[...]
Fortune.
That’s how it was described in that article from a minor Driftveil newspaper, an article now quoted by foreign press and television networks.
It had reached that far, all the way to Laverre City.
All the way to Nemo.
All the way to N.
But it wasn’t N., now known to the community as Nemo, the mysterious young man with messy green hair and eyes as innocent and deep as a summer Deerling’s, who found the article first.
It was Paul, that fateful morning, just like any other, yet completely different, who picked up the paper at the newsstand around the corner and read it while having breakfast in the small but cozy kitchen before heading to work.
There was the name. There was the photo.
Natural Harmonia Gropius, known as N., former charismatic leader of Team Plasma, now missing.
That caption burned hotter than a Pyroar’s mane.
He looked at the open door to his right, the narrow hallway leading to the bedroom where the boy from nowhere was still sleeping.
They had met a few years earlier, when Nemo, that’s what he had said his name was, had just moved into town and started working as a janitor at the school where Paul had recently begun teaching. Their eyes had met in the corridors, shiny with wax and half-erased doodles. Green eyes, roughly cut short hair, a polite and distant voice.
And Paul knew that wouldn’t be the last time he would look at them.
For some months now, they had lived in that run-down apartment belonging to the young teacher. One bedroom, a kitchen that doubled as a living room, a bathroom, and a small study. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to start a life together.
Paul had looked at him so many times; others had ignored him. No one had recognized him.
—
A few hours later, Nemo went to school as usual to start his shift.
That morning, Paul hadn’t woken him with a kiss like he usually did before leaving. It was their little secret ritual, at least on the weeks when Nemo worked the afternoon shift and could sleep in. But he didn’t mind being woken up, not if it was Paul. In fact, he’d go back to sleep with sweeter dreams.
At school, he stopped by the classroom where his partner taught to say hello, but found him distant. Distracted. He didn’t understand what had happened.
Then it began. Or began again, depending on your point of view.
In the days that followed, people in the hallways started staring a bit longer than usual. They whispered when he passed. One child confided, almost apologetically, that his mother had told him to stay away from him. Another asked, innocently, why he looked so much like the boy he’d seen on TV.
They didn’t even own a TV.
Paul no longer met his eyes. But he hadn’t said anything.
And he said everything.
It was as if Thundurus had burst through their home, slamming doors and windows in a whispered storm, never once raising its voice.
He showed him the newspaper, asked him if it was true. If it was him.
Nemo looked at the photo. It looked exactly like him, and yet not at all. That boy had never looked like him. And yet there he was, staring back like a mirror.
He sat down, collapsed into the kitchen chair. He felt like throwing up, like fainting, like running, like shrinking down to nothing. Again.
And he said everything.
Everything he had never said to Paul. Everything Paul had never asked, whether out of respect for his ghosts or fear of what he might find.
He told him how, once, he could speak with Pokémon.
Not anymore.
He still loved them. Still cared for them every day.
But he no longer heard their voices, thin, alien, so different from those of humans.
He wondered if it had all been a dream. A lonely child’s invention.
A story told by a father too present and too absent, who wanted to make him a legend instead of a person.
He told him how he had once been a king, or hailed as one.
The titles of Team Plasma weighed like a crown made of lead and death. They had placed them on his head like a precious diadem to wear with grace and pride, and so he had, for many years.
He had believed in the cause, in his role, had fought for the ideals someone had spoon-fed him. Someone who only cared about the power hidden behind them.
They had called him savior and freak, chosen hero and broken boy.
Then, they called him a puppet.
The man who was supposed to be his father had been the first to call him that.
His puppet, a tool to climb the throne and become more god than man.
N., Natural, Nemo was none of those things.
But the world wouldn’t let him figure out what he was, behind all the masks.
When he fought that young trainer, the one who defeated him first and then his puppeteer, he had Zekrom by his side, the legend. With Zekrom, he decided to set out on a journey, to discover who he truly was. And for a couple of years, it had worked, despite the eyes of the world following him even in sleep.
Then came another girl, and only at the last moment did he, N., manage to save her from the giant everyone thought defeated, hidden, perhaps repentant.
But he wasn’t repentant.
After that, there was no escape. Trials, arrests, acquittals. And even though he came out officially clean, people looked at him with suspicion, and he felt dirty, like he’d rolled around in the mud with the Stunfisks.
Natural was tired.
So he chose not to be Natural anymore.
It wasn’t until the end of the story that Nemo realized he was crying.
Paul looked at him with the eyes of someone who has seen too much, and still doesn’t want to look away.
The silence that followed was both heavy and healing.
They looked at each other.
They hugged.
They kissed.
They started over.
This time, for real.
This time, the boy with leaf-colored hair and Sawsbuck eyes would face the world.
But this time, he wasn’t alone.
—
The following months weren’t easy for Natural and Paul.
The news that even the new movement, meant to reclaim the original ideals of Team Plasma, had been corrupted and manipulated by Ghetsis, despite his imprisonment, didn’t make much noise in Kalos.
In Unova, however, it stirred waters that many in power had left stagnant on purpose.
And down below, in the world of ordinary people, the whispers spread.
There were those who spoke out, those who defended, those who remained silent.
The faithful. The curious.
It was the latter who found him, who “unearthed” him, as they later said, in his refuge.
A small, fragile, imperfect paradise built slowly with Paul. A humble job. A quiet home. Everything many called “unworthy.” But to him, it was finally home.
They came from afar to ask questions, film him, beg him to return or to vanish forever, depending on who was speaking. N. didn’t answer the way they wanted, but he didn’t hide either.
He might not have had Zekrom to protect him anymore, but he had Paul.
And his other Pokémon, always by his side, silent now, but no less devoted.
Zoroark would sometimes take his place to confuse the nosy.
Darmanitan wouldn’t let them through when the noise got too loud.
Joltik and Klinklang simply stayed close.
They called him N., the boy with no name.
They called him Natural, the ideal of purity and freedom.
Some called him Nemo.
The truth is, he was a bit of all and none of them.
