Chapter Text
“Signal Beam, now, Acacia!”
Ghetsis barely had time to register the command before the opposing Galvantula loosed a searing beam of fractured light. It struck his Eelektross cleanly between the eyes, the impact snapping its massive body backwards. The sound it made – high, shrill, and wrong – cut through the throne room, and then it hit the ground with a heavy thud.
For a moment, he couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing.
Then the fury came, sudden and blinding.
“Get up!” He barked, the order tearing itself from his throat, as though sheer force of will could drag the creature back to its feet. “Eelektross, move! Strike back, you useless-”
But it didn’t move. It writhed instead, convulsing helplessly at Galvantula’s feet, its body twisting in erratic, desperate spasms that only made the stillness that followed more unbearable. The thrashing slowed, stuttered, and then ceased entirely.
Silence, save for the distant crumble of the ruined castle.
Ghetsis returned the Pokémon with rigid, mechanical precision, the Pokéball snapping shut in his hand. His jaw ached from how tightly he held it, a dull, grounding pain against the surge of something far less controlled threatening to spill over.
How?
The question rang through him, hollow and disbelieving.
How could this have happened?
Across from him, the girl – Amaya – had collapsed into herself, clutching at her remaining Pokémon as though it were the only thing tethering her to the ground. She was crying, shoulders shaking, face buried in its fur in a display so openly fragile it bordered on absurd.
“What,” Ghetsis heard himself say, his voice low and strained, “is this?”
He took a step forward, eye fixed on her with something that hovered between fury and incomprehension.
“I built Team Plasma with my own hands…” His lip curled, the words sour in his mouth, “How did some pathetic, no-name trainer defeat me?”
He was only dimly aware of her moving, of the Pokéball in her hand, of the burst of light that followed as Zekrom took form. The legendary dragon’s arrival pressed into the room like a stormfront, its rumbling growl reverberating through stone and bone alike as it fixed him with a burning, crimson stare.
Amaya had already turned away from him.
She drifted towards the fractured edge of the throne room, where the wall had been torn open, the drop beyond yawning wide and merciless. There, she sank down onto the jagged precipice as though her strength had finally abandoned her altogether.
Ghetsis’ gaze shifted as another figure approached – N, hesitating only briefly before lowering himself beside her.
For a fleeting, vicious instant, hope flared.
Push her.
The thought came sharp and immediate, cutting through the chaos in his mind with startling clarity. All those years of careful cultivation, of discipline and instruction – surely for once, the boy could prove himself useful. One push, one simple act, and-
Nothing.
N merely sat beside her, close but not touching, his presence quiet and utterly infuriating in its restraint.
Of course.
Of course he would fail.
Ghetsis’ hand curled into a fist at his side, nails biting into his palm hard enough to draw blood, the sting barely registering beneath the swell of his anger. For a moment, he considered it himself – crossing the distance, finishing what should never have been left unfinished. He had no Pokémon left, but she was small, exhausted, unguarded…
It was achievable. And if he moved quickly enough, if he acted before anyone else arrived-
A low, resonant growl interrupted his train of thought.
Ghetsis’ gaze snapped back to Zekrom, and in that instant, the fragile scaffolding of his rage gave way to something colder, older – something he had spent years refusing to name.
The dragon advanced, slow and deliberate, each step measured, each exhale a warning.
Fear. It settled into his chest with suffocating weight.
Zekrom lowered its head, and the gleam of its teeth caught the light. White, sharp, impossibly familiar.
For a heartbeat, the throne room vanished. He was younger, so much younger, and on the ground. Pinned.
The cold bit through his back as a dragon bore down on him, all fury and violence, its jaws closing with crushing force. He could feel it again – the tearing, the searing agony lacing through his right arm, the sickening pressure of jaws at his ribs; he could hear the scrape of teeth against the bony socket of his eye…
Ghetsis staggered back, the present slamming into him as his shoulders struck the wall. The impact jarred him, but he barely felt it, sinking down against the stone without ever breaking eye contact.
Zekrom stopped, then. It did not need to come any closer.
Ghetsis’ gaze flickered, almost instinctually, to the belt at his waist, still partially concealed by the folds of his robe – the six Pokéballs that had, until mere moments ago, represented absolute control.
Now, they were nothing.
With a sharp, furious motion, he tore the belt free and hurled it across the room. It struck the wall with a hollow crack, before falling uselessly to the ground. Ghetsis dragged a hand over his face, fingers pressing hard against his brow as though he could force the world to rearrange itself into something that made sense.
But there was no escaping the reality of it - not with the dragon watching. Not with the girl still breathing. And not with everything he had built lying in ruins around him.
It had been the culmination of over a decade of work, of planning, of sacrifice, of unwavering purpose. His life’s work.
And it had unravelled in the hands of someone who should never have mattered at all.
How had it gone so wrong?