Caesar gave a curt nod. He recalled his exhausted Noivern and moved towards the bulky, portable healing unit the Xycle operatives had already set up on a flatter section of the ridge. Viktor gave him a gruff nod and began administering a potent Max Potion and other treatment.
Beside Caesar, a line formed. Rein stepped up, a fierce, eager light in his eyes.
"I'll be a front man too. I want to test if that beast is really worth the alliance."
Ellen followed, cradling her Pikachu with worry.
"I should've stayed in Kanto..." She said, stopping beside Rein.
Faith approached with calmness.
"I didn't expect to fight an ancient history. But I guess this will test the limits of my brain."
Robert, however, took a slow, careful step back. Then another. The sight of the healing station, the grim determination on the faces around him, the looming specter of Corodity—it was all too much. He was a grunt, a low-level cog. He'd led them here, that was his part. Survival was now the only mission he had left. He melted into the shadows of a rock formation, his form quickly lost in the chaotic backdrop, unnoticed by everyone.
Anne recalled her injured Decidueye with a gentle touch, whispering a quiet promise to the pokeball before placing it in the healing unit's slot. The machine hummed, its lights flickering as it worked. She turned to Krookodile, patting its head.
"Krookodile, stay with me."
Krookodile gave a low, rumbling growl of affirmation, planting itself at her side, its eyes never leaving the distant form of its trainer.
Makarell let out a yawn. He slumped against his Charizard, which had lain down and appeared to be taking a nap.
"Wake me… when it's time to fly… or die… whichever."
John watched the preparations, his smile returning—wider and more unhinged than ever. He unclipped a pokeball from his belt; a Dynamax Band glinted on his wrist as he pressed its button.
The sphere immediately began to swell in his palm, expanding from its usual compact size to nearly the diameter of a dinner plate, its surface glowing with faint crimson light.
"Alright, my sleepy friend..." John said, patting the enlarged pokeball. "Time to make an entrance. Let's give our oversized housecat something to think about!"
He reared back and hurled the massive ball into the sky above the ridge. It burst open with a sound like shattering glass, and a torrent of swirling crimson energy erupted outward.
The energy coalesced into a form that climbed higher and higher, towering over the ridge. When the light faded, an Exploud stood before them—but it was no normal Exploud. It was Dynamaxed, its body pulsing with red energy, its massive mouth a cavern leading to vocal cords capable of flattening cities.
The very air pressure shifted around them. The Dynamaxed Exploud let out a low, subsonic hum that vibrated in their teeth and set the ground rubble dancing.
John threw his head back and laughed, the sound almost lost beneath the building sonic pressure.
"That's more like it!" He bellowed, pointing a dramatic finger at Corodity. "Exploud, we're going to party, babbyy!"
The Dynamaxed Exploud inhaled, its massive chest swelling. The air around its maw distorted violently. Then, it unleashed a visible, concentric shockwave of pure, concussive sound from its mouth. It ripped through the air, tearing through the smoke, a physical wall of noise that slammed into the side of Corodity that made it skidded.
On the ridge, the healing unit chimed. Caesar's Noivern emerged, wings healed, eyes sharp.
Anne retrieved Decidueye's ball, feeling its steady, restored pulse. She looked at Makarell, who had somehow managed to fall asleep standing up against his sleeping Charizard. She nudged him hard.
"Makarell. It's time."
His eyes snapped open, bleary but focused.
"Right..."
He hauled himself onto Charizard, who awoke with a snort of smoke. Anne climbed up behind him, Krookodile leaping to cling onto Charizard's back with its claws.
Caesar mounted his Noivern. Rein released his healed Magmortar. Ellen and Faith stood ready.
John, standing in the shadow of his roaring Dynamax Exploud, gave them a final, wild grin and a thumbs up.
"The stage is yours! Don't blow it!"
With a coordinated surge, the rescue team launched into the chaos—Caesar and Rein angling to draw Corodity's wrath, Anne and Makarell streaking on Charizard on a desperate line towards the beast's back, towards the boy with fire in his eyes.
Corodity's massive head snapped towards the ridge. The Dynamax Exploud's sonic assault hadn't harmed it, but the sheer, grating noise was an affront. The purple fire in its eyes flared, burning brighter than the surrounding infernos.
It opened its maw, a void lined with shifting thorns. Deep within, a sphere of concentrated purple energy coalesced. It grew, humming with a power that made the air itself scream in protest, before lancing out in a beam.
VWOOOOOOM!
The beam struck the Dynamax Exploud squarely in the chest. The red Dynamax energy around it flickered violently as corrosive purple power washed over it, scouring its form. It stumbled back, one massive foot crashing down and carving a new ravine in the mountainside, before falling to one knee with an impact that sent a shockwave through the ground.
"Exploud!" John's grin vanished, replaced by a snarl. "Shake it off! Keep its attention!"
Dynamax Exploud pushed itself back up. It opened its mouth again, unleashing a deafening Hyper Voice, a continuous sonic barrage aimed at Corodity's face.
High above, Caesar on Noivern banked hard to the right, avoiding a lashing vine that sought to swat them from the sky.
"Now!" He yelled.
On the ground, Rein was already in motion.
"Magmortar, use Flamethrower!"
Magmortar braced, its cannons glowing with fire. It fired, a searing orange beam lancing upward.
Ellen sprinted beside him, her Haunter now materialized from its ball.
"Haunter, use Shadow Ball! Pikachu, use Thunderbolt!"
Pikachu unleashed a bolt of lightning. Haunter cackled, forming a sphere of spectral darkness and hurling it into the path of the lightning. The two attacks merged mid-air into a crackling, volatile projectile of ghostly electricity.
Faith, calculating angles even in the chaos, commanded with precision.
"Glaceon,use Freeze-dry! Meowscarda, use Flower Trick!!"
Glaceon fired a beam of ultimate cold to create a brittle, super-chilled path in the air. Meowscarada followed, its flower spinning along that icy channel, guided and accelerated to impossible speeds.
Three beams converged in a timed, concentrated volley, all aiming for the same vulnerable point: the underside of Corodity's massive, thorn-armored jaw.
KA-BOOM!
A multicolored explosion of energy bloomed against Corodity's chin. The titan's head jerked back slightly from the force. For the first time, it showed a reaction beyond annoyance—a flinch of genuine surprise. A few of the smaller thorns around the impact point blackened and shattered.
Corodity's gaze, previously fixed on the noisy Exploud, swept downwards.
And it was the opening Anne and Makarell needed.
Charizard, carrying its three passengers, had used the sonic cover and the flashy attack as a screen. It shot like a bullet from the smoke, flying low and fast, straight for the plateau of Corodity's back where Elias stood.
They were close now. Anne could see the individual thorns rising from the beast's hide like a forest of spears. She could see the unstable purple aura clinging to Alpha Scraggy and Staravia. And she could see Elias.
He hadn't moved. The wind tore at his white hair and the tattered remains of his clothes. One hand was outstretched slightly, as if feeling the pulse of the chaotic energy radiating from the beast beneath him.
"ELIAS!" Anne screamed, the word ripped away by the wind.
Charizard roared, pulling up to land on the broad, treacherous expanse of Corodity's back. The beast itself seemed to notice the new weight, a low, subsonic growl vibrating up through its body.
Makarell slid off Charizard, looking even more tired now that they were standing on a living weapon.
"Okay. We're here. Now what?"
Anne jumped down, Krookodile landing beside her with a heavy thud that made the ground beneath them tremble. She took a step forward, then another, her heart hammering against her ribs.
"Elias!" She called again, her voice softer now, pleading.
Slowly, he began to turn.
His right eye was still his own, but it was clouded, distant. The left was a maelstrom of purple fire, identical to Corodity's own gaze. It fixed on her, and there was no recognition. Only a vast, echoing emptiness, and the flicker of that ancient, resentful fury.
Alpha Scraggy took a heavy step forward, placing itself between Anne and Elias. It growled, the sound distorted by the purple aura around it, its own eyes glowing with the same dangerous light. Staravia let out a sharp, warning cry, electricity and purple energy crackling around its feathers.
Anne's breath caught. She looked past the hostile pokemon, into Elias's fractured eyes.
"Elias, it's me. It's Anne. You have to fight this. You have to come back."
He stared at her, his head tilting slightly, as if listening to a voice only he could hear.
"Anne..." He said, his voice was soft and empty. Then, he closed his eyes. "Destruction...!"
The purple fire in his left eye blazed, and veins of the same corrosive light pulsed violently beneath his skin, crawling from his neck down across his collarbone like sinister roots.
Alpha Scraggy and Staravia moved as one.
Scraggy lunged, its fist aimed at Anne. Staravia became a purple-tinged blur aiming straight for her head.
Krookodile was already moving. It stepped into the space between Anne and the attacks, becoming a wall of scales and wrath.
THWUMP!
Scraggy's fist slammed into Krookodile's crossed forearms, the impact ringing out. At the same moment, Krookodile snapped its head to the side, its jaws closing with a crunch on the air where Staravia had been, forcing the bird to pull up sharply or lose a wing.
"Decidueye! Amaura! Help it!" Anne didn't look back, her eyes locked on Elias as she threw the two pokeballs.
Her partners materialized in flashes of light. Decidueye nocked a Spirit Shackle arrow, aiming to pin Staravia's shadow. Amaura, sensing the overwhelming chaotic energy, let out a chiming cry and unleashed a blizzard to coat the area around Krookodike and Scraggy in slick, treacherous ice, hindering the brawler's footing.
Anne saw her opening and took it. She ducked under a wild swipe from Scraggy that Krookodile barely deflected and ran.
The ground beneath her was alive, thrumming with the legendary pokemon's power. Each thorn was a potential spear, each shift of Corodity's muscles threatened to throw her off. But she ran, her gaze fixed on the solitary figure ahead.
"Elias!"
He stood frozen, his body trembling. The command for destruction had torn from him, but he wasn't moving to attack. He was fighting it. And the cost was written on his face in trails of silent, clean tears that cut through the dust and blood.
As she closed the final distance, she saw it clearly. The purple veins weren't just on his neck. They spread like a web from his left eye, down his cheek, across his jaw, and into his chest, where they glowed with a sickly light beneath his torn shirt. They pulsed in time with Corodity's low, hateful heartbeat.
Anne skidded to a stop in front of him, just out of arm's reach. The psychic pressure here was immense, a wall of ancient malice that made her skull ache.
"Elias, look at me!" She screamed over the wind and the sounds of battle. "It's Anne! We're friends!"
His head lifted. The purple eye burned into her, but the gray one focused.
Anne reached out, pressing her hand against the center of his chest, over the nexus of the glowing veins. The heat was searing, unnatural.
"I'm here, Elias."
His gray eye widened, a flicker of desperate hope within the storm. His lips parted as if to form her name again.
VWOOOOSH-KABOOOOOM!
A searing, concentrated Solar Beam, amplified to terrifying intensity, slammed into the side of Corodity's head from above.
Giovanni's Charizard, having climbed to a point directly above the titan during the chaos, had unleashed its stored sunlight in one devastating blast. The green-white energy exploded against Corodity's temple, scorching a patch of thorns into blackened ash and staggering the beast.
The impact was like a continent shifting beneath them. Corodity's entire body lurched violently to the side. The ground of its back became a steep, tilting cliff.
Anne was thrown off her feet, her hand torn from Elias's chest. She tumbled backwards, scrambling for purchase on the suddenly vertical landscape of thorns and hide.
Elias, still rooted by whatever connection held him, didn't fall. But the sudden, violent motion seemed to shatter the fragile moment of clarity. The purple fire in his left eye erupted, swallowing the gray in its furious glow. The veins on his chest pulsed like angry lightning.
"Hahaha! Don't you dare ruin my plan, little girl." Giovanni said, standing on the back of his Charizard.
A deafening roar of pure hatred erupted from the beast, a wave of distortion that flattened Anne against the thorns and made Makarell's Charizard cry out in the distance.
The window had slammed shut. The distraction from below had been hijacked, turned into a catalyst for the very chaos they were trying to prevent.