FSE

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There was diamond-dust in the sky - slivers of ice that danced in the wind, as the Sun began its final descent in the west.

The view was incomparable - Mount Silver, holy mountain, the resting place of the gods of Kanto and Johto, where Hoenn and Sinnoh and Unova and Kalos looked to for guidance, the genesis and the exodus, complete and immaculate. It is, it was, it shall be - what more could be said of it that the poets of the elder ages, when Ho-Oh streaked its rainbow across the sky, had not already sang?

Ethan took a deep breath, his Typhlosion taking a well-deserved rest at his feet - the air up here was thin, but refreshing, a purity that he had found nowhere else in his travels - and looked about him.

To the west, across the thick forests around the perfect cornflower-mirror of the Lake of Rage, rose, lofty, the Bell Tower, its curved roof elegantly tasteful in the architectural idiom of Johto, as elegant as a Kimono Girl and just as timeless, torches lit on each of the four corners glowing faintly, beacons in the oncoming night. Beyond that shimmered, joyous and free, as though it was a great jewel that been flung from the heavens by some unseen titan hand, Goldenrod City, and beyond that, brilliant even at this distance, the great lighthouse of Olivine.

"Johto..." he murmured to himself as he cast a glance over his shoulder. "...and Kanto."

A sprawling chryselephantine light greeted him from an uncountable distance away - Saffron, the hub of eastern half of the super-region, its pulse of diamondiferous fluorescence dwarfing the lovely darkness of the floral lagoons in Cerulean, the green-blue riot of Celadon's department store, the crawling specks of the ships coming to the harbor at Vermillion, the bare glint of the radio tower in Lavender. It was both breathtaking and, perhaps, a little frightening...humans had done so much, accomplished so much, both with and without Pokémon, but all these thousands of years humanity had strutted about Mount Silver had loomed, disinterested and yet perpetual.

Up here, spanning two regions, the conqueror of the Pokémon League, the new Champion, victor of Team Rocket, restorer of peace, _The Hero of Two Worlds_Professor Oak and Professor Elm had declared him, hands clasped, in front of that cheering throng at Goldenrod Station - Ethan still felt very small. Even after that - all of that, all of his adventures and misadventures that he never really intended, everything he had learned and everything he had accomplished, he was still, or so he felt, the gawky lad from New Bark Town with the funny accent that Whitney and Misty had both teased him for.

And up here, none of that mattered.

He sat on the frost-covered ground, Typhlosion giving him a happy nuzzle. "This is it boy, ain't it? The last thing ta do afore we go home."

"Ty, Ty!"

Ethan chuckled, tickling Typhlosion under his chin. "Well I guess yer right. Maybe there is other stuff ta do somewhere--"

But he was interrupted, and indeed startled, violently, to his feet, by the sound of a slow clap - he jerked his head, trying to find the source of it, as his Typhlosion snarled in anticipation.

From a dim cloud of diamond dust emerged a shadow - a human-shaped shadow...pants, a scarlet jacket, a matching cap.

Ethan's eyes tried to focus as this figure drew nearer, materializing, more and more, until...

His eyes widened in absolute, flooring shock, as he breathed the name, immortal from his childhood, mythologized to the point where it was hard to believe he had ever been a person at all - but no, there he was:

"Red."

Red - the boy-wonder, the legend, who Ethan had spent hour upon hour pretending to be back home in New Bark with Lyra - made one last clap, before smiling at him with what seemed like a demure, quiet pride. He was rather older than the pictures Ethan had seen of him, but some years had passed, after all, and the boy-wonder was no longer a boy but, probably, nearing out of his teenage years. His hair, a blackish-brown that seemed to have the texture of Murkrow feathers, spilled shaggy out of his famous cap, and fluttered, slightly, in the icy breeze.

"Welcome to my mountain," said Red - his voice seemed oddly hollow, vaguely sinister, a quality of menace that would go almost undetected.

"Tyyy..." Typhlosion growled again, the flames on his back bristling afresh.

Ethan shook his head in bewilderment: "Red it's - it's really - yer Red!"

"That's my name, Ethan - it's nice to finally meet you in person."

Ethan's sudden wonder was torn into at the sound of his own name. "How - wait, how do you--?"

"To be honest with you I'm surprised it's taken you this long, but - I've been watching you, Ethan. This whole time - from the day you left New Bark, til now - I've been watching you."

"Watch - watching me?" Ethan repeated, numb from the revelation - everything was so abrupt, so sudden, he had bare seconds to process it all.

Red nodded, slowly. "Watching you."

Ethan's expression turned to fright, and he felt himself go pale. "How - how could you possibly--?"

Red smiled - it was partly knowing, partly false, and something about it gave Ethan an eerie feeling he could not place. He threw his arms as though to balance the whole of Johto to the west and Kanto to the east.

"All the things that Arceus made!" He dropped his arms to his sides. "All the little creatures, great and small, Bug and Rock and Fire and Water, they tell me..." The smiled faded. "Everything. Everything you did, every road you took, and every badge you earned, the little Pidgey and the mighty Pidgeot, they flew - up here - to tell me what you were doing."

The eerie feeling Ethan had sensed before grew into a fresh terror. "I dun - I dun understand--"

"What's not to understand? I've been up here--" Red lifted his hands, Kanto in one, Johto in the other. "--watching you."

"Ya - ya said that but why - would you - need to watch...me?"

Red did not answer, not at first - he took another step forward, casting a glance to, over the cliffs and the snowy forests, what Ethan knew to be Kanto...perhaps, Ethan thought idly, he was looking for where Pallet Town would be.

"The plan," Red said quietly, so quiet that the words were almost lost to the sudden gust of frigid wind that came with it that made Typhlosion, still guarding Ethan beside him, shiver. "The plan to--" He tilted his head back, seeming to look for the Sun that shone weakly through the masses of crawling clouds above them. "Beat back - Team Rocket, and bring a new champion into the world at last."

Ethan's mouth fell agape. "Wait - no - there's no way--"

"Ethan - Ethan...what a little hayseed you are. Did you not know? Did you really not know? I needed - some hick, some little redneck from some town that no one's ever heard of in their lives--" He smiled - slick, unkind. "I - needed you."

Ethan took several long seconds to try and understand what Red - who he had never, not tomorrow, not yesterday, not ten years before or hence, ever once expected to meet, and certainly never expected to meet here - was telling him.

"Ya - needed - someone - like me? Who was from a - a small town? Like - New Bark? To beat Team Rocket - and be a new champion." Even as he said it, it made little sense to him, he shook his head rapidly. "Nah - nah, I still dun understand..."

Red snickered - unkind, like his smile. "Let me try to explain it for your little redneck mind to comprehend." He gestured to himself. "I knew, more than anybody, that, even with Giovanni gone, and his son, Silver--"

"What?!" Ethan's mouth fell open again, and, self-conscious that he really was seeming like the bumpkin that he knew deep in his heart he still was, in front of Red, Red of all people, shut it, trying, and failing, to regain his composure.

Again Red snickered, even unkinder than before. "I'm afraid so, Ethan - Silver is Giovanni's son. Why do you think he worked against Team Rocket so hard? Why do you think he hated them so much?"

"I--" Ethan shook his head again. "I guess--"

"Doesn't matter," Red interrupted. "Doesn't matter. Just - understand. Even with him gone, and even with Silver totally uninterested in running the family business...I knew it would come back. I knew - I knew that they would come back. And it wouldn't be in Kanto...it'd be in Johto."

"Well - yeah, that's what happened..."

"I know. I was right - which was lucky, I guess. And it was lucky, too, that - you - began your journey..." His eyes trailed to Typhlosion, who let out a low, shuddering snarl of discomfort. "...with him."

"Lucky?"

Red's eyes snapped back to Ethan. "Very lucky. Because you were good - better than good."

Ethan opened his mouth to respond, but, once more, closed it. "Nah," he finally muttered. "Nah - I'm only as good as my team--"

"Sure, if you wanna say that," Red went on. "But getting back to it - someone like you - someone who nobody had ever heard of, from some_place_ nobody had ever heard of, could defeat Team Rocket for me - because--" He smiled - an obvious sense of cruel satisfaction. "Had I gone after them, had it been me- they would have fled - scattered. And the cycle would continue."

A dawn of realization flashed upon Ethan as he realized the gravity of Red's words. "So...you...had me do it instead..."

"And you well surpassed my expectations."

The same epiphany that had come to Ethan at once, with Red's self-satisfied smile, went dark - he realized, in that moment, the cold, thin, pure air of Mount Silver around them, that this boy, this teenager, this hero of his that he had looked up to and even idolized was, in fact, a monster - a selfish son of a bitch who had deceived the world, certain that the terrible ends would justify the means.

"What - Red - Red - what?"

Red's face gave nothing away - and so Ethan pressed.

"Ya were - growing up I - that's all I heard about! Ya were the one who defeated Team Rocket afore - why - why would ya wait? Fer someone - fer me? If ya had done it yerself--" He struggled with his words, he struggled with his worldview. "How could ya? People died afore - I could help em...if ya had just..." He shook his head, again, harder than before. "Where's the justice in that_--_?"

"Justice?" Red's eyebrow flicked, and for a moment the lifelessness behind his eyes were replaced by a sudden fire - a pain that did not have a name. "Justice for who? For Kanto? Johto? For the _people_living there?"

Ethan shake his head, realizing this argument he was failing at a debate he didn't even want to have. "Well - now hold on--"

"I saw a Rocket grunt beat a Marowak to death." Red's voice was cold - monstrously cold, colder than the air around them, the frost below them. "Before I could - before I could do anything, I heard her scream, and scream, and scream, and I saw her little Cubone try to caress her mangled corpse so that--" He stopped, shutting his eyes, taking a breath as Ethan held his, seeing the first real emotion Red had shown this entire time. "S-so that Mr. Fuji had to spend a full hour - bathing the blood off her--"

His eyes flew open - gone was the sadness, replaced wholly with a rage, a rage that could have only come from hatred in its purest form, the kind of hatred that warms the human heart when it should have frozen, the kind of hatred that could be used for food, water, shelter, and friendship in the absence of all of those. Not once, not even Silver's brutal, cruel eyes, had he seen such uniform malevolence, such throbbing, primal rage against humanity and the universe.

"Tell me, you little hayseed - tell me, where - where was the justice for her? And that little Cubone? For all the Pokémon that Team Rocket murdered in the name of money?!"

Ethan was gobsmacked, nearly cowering beside Typhlosion, who let out a long warning growl. "I - I--"

But he stopped, as he watched the emotion drain from Red's eyes once again, and a smirk - at once cruel, malicious, and bitter - spread across his face. "But - but. Do you know - you remember, don't you - the Rocket grunt that was blasted by Lance's Dragonite? Do you know what he used to be?"

Ethan shuddered, shaking his head. "N-no--"

"He was the lead lieutenant of the sector that oversaw the operations in Lavender - so in other words--" He snickered, and Ethan steeled himself against shuddering again at the memory. "He was the one who killed the Marowak. Now that--" He lifted a hand, as those he stood in a godlike reign over the world. "--is justice." The snicker became louder. "Tell me - I haven't checked recently, did they finally take him off life support?"

"He--" Ethan suppressed a very mild dry heave. "Yes. There was nothing they could do for him, he was at Goldenrod Medical--"

"Good," Red cut him off. "Good. Although I have to say I'm impressed, the human body shouldn't have withstood that much of a direct hit from a Hyper Beam. I'm sure they're studying his corpse right now, for science - just like how Team Rocket used to experiment on Pokémon..." A final snicker, darker than the others: "That - that is justice."

"Bad people do bad thangs, Red - ye can't paint all humans with the same brush--"

"Is that a crack, little boy? Because of where I'm from?"

Ethan shook his head vigorously, trying to remove the dreadful images out of his head. "Look - look here, if this - if this be yer mountain then there ain't n'use me being up here." He coughed, a single, nervous blast of air that came out like a puff of smoke in vapor. "C'mon Typhlosion, let's--"

"Where do you think you're going, Ethan?"

And then, at once, all expression left his face, and his hand came to his belt, where he grasped a single Poké Ball - a dread, rising, clenching, gripped Ethan's very heart as he realized what the other trainer meant.

"I can't let you leave. You've heard much - much too much."

"Phlosion!" Typhlosion bared his fangs, the flames shimmering up from his fur - Red snickered at the display.

"Little boy wants to fight? Fine - so it was in the beginning, so it shall be in the end."

"I ain't gonna fight ya, Red."

"Yes - yes you will."

"No," Ethan said, louder, his fortitude almost failing him. "I ain't."

"What I think is justice - and what you think is justice - they can't coexist. We have to fight..." For a just a moment, Red seemed sad. "To figure out who - who's right."

"Stop this!" Ethan cried. "You were the - the hero that everyone loved! Me, I - I looked up to ya! You saved Kanto, why - why, why did any of this - all of this - why did it have ta happen this way? Ya can't - ya can't give up on humans - ain't you human?! We can - we can change things, we can make things better!" He found himself nearly out of breath. "Can't - can't we?"

And again Red's face became expressionless - he never got an answer, and perhaps he should have never expected one.

A click of his Poké Ball, and in a blinding flash of golden light, the radiance of Goldenrod, the beacon of Saffron, light, brilliant light, that immortal aureate brilliance of Johto and Kanto - came his Pikachu, what Ethan had heard tell of as a kid, the Pikachu that singlehandedly brought down Team Rocket and elevated this wunderkind to meteoric fame and plunging psychosis, that joined him in this inscrutable exile and, like him, bore the same cold emptiness behind his eyes.

Even Typhlosion must have recognized the greatness, and the danger, before him - the flames rose just an inch higher, his back legs kicking out further in the same defensive stance that prefaced all his victories, this long journey together with Ethan, what had led him, perhaps fatally, here.

"Ty! Ty!"

"Pika--"

The Pikachu climbed to Red's shoulder, its jagged tail bristling - Ethan felt his heart pound so violently he was sure it was going to burst out of his chest.

"It always had to end this way, Ethan. From the first day you chose Typhlosion - it always had to end this way."

"Red - Red don't do this--"

"Tell me, Ethan - tell me..." Red took a step forward - Ethan retreated a step back. "Were you scared? When you battled Team Rocket, as I did, and when you saw Ho-Oh rise in front of you and ventured down to that abyss to summon Lugia?" He raised an eyebrow. "So much for a boy your age - and yet - were you ever scared? Even once?"

Ethan swallowed, squaring his jaw, lowering his head as he steadied himself for what was to come next, willing the courage that had driven him, after all, here, on a collision course.

"No."

His heart swelled in his chest - maybe, now, he really was afraid. But, even if he was, he was still...Ethan.

_ Hero of Two Worlds_, sixteen badges, his mother's son.

"Never."

Now he snapped his his fingers, and Typhlosion's fiery bristles erupted in pyrotechnics at the ready.

"Never was scared, Red." He swallowed hard. "Not even - not even o'you."

A breeze picked up, wafting the tuft of hair that stuck out of his cap - Red's own hair, a crown of feathers at his neck, moved with the wind.

The two stared at each other - until Red threw out his arms, his jacket fluttering in a fresh blast of cold wind

"Pity," Red answered - his Pikachu's little body sizzled like a downed wire, sparking and deadly. "Because now I will - make - you scared."

And snowthunder rent the sky, lightning dazzling the falling diamond-dust between them.