"CRASH!"
A massive crystal immune cell lunged straight at Kidd.
"Kidd!" Brock shoved her aside, and was swallowed whole by the immune cell in her place.
"Brock!" Max screamed.
"Brock!" Ash's eyes went red.
But worse things followed in rapid succession. More and more immune cells appeared, growing fiercer by the moment. Kidd, May, and Max were swallowed one after another. Their bodies became cold, gleaming crystals, suspended in midair.
"Kidd!" May called out to Kidd in her final moment.
Outside the crystals, Ash stood frozen.
"Everyone!"
Just then, the entire tree began to shudder violently. In a purer crystal region further away...
The comment stream had already exploded.
[Holy crap, the whole party's wiped out?!]
[What's going to happen to Kidd and Brock?!]
[This movie actually went there, sending the main characters off one by one?]
[Please, no more deaths, my heart can't take it.]
On the other side, Ash attacked the red masses frantically, but it was completely useless. Just as he was about to be swallowed too, Lucario and Pikachu threw themselves in front of him.
In that moment of despair, Ash's body struck an enormous red flower.
This Time Flower was a hundred times larger than any outside. When it bloomed, the entire core area was engulfed in blinding light. The reversal of time began.
This time, the images it projected were something no one had ever seen: Aaron's complete memories, unabridged.
The scene showed the final stage of a war fought a thousand years ago.
Aaron stood before the Tree of Beginning, his face white as paper. His body had been pushed to the edge by hours of using aura, and blood flowed steadily from the corner of his mouth.
Mew floated before him, its long tail hanging limp. Its body was so weak it was nearly translucent.
Aaron reached out and gently stroked Mew.
"Mew... thank you." His voice was soft and exhausted. "This war, if it doesn't end now, everyone will die. But only your power combined with my aura can extinguish the rage in the hearts of both sides, humans and Pokemon alike."
"The price is... I will die."
Mew let out a mournful cry, as if trying to stop him.
Aaron shook his head and smiled, a smile of extraordinary tenderness.
"It's all right. I am the Aura Guardian. This is what I was meant to do."
Then his gaze slowly dimmed. He thought of the partner he had sealed away.
"There is only one thing... I'm sorry."
"Lucario, my dearest partner..."
"I can't let you die with me."
"If I told you I was going to my death, knowing you, you would follow me without hesitation."
"So I had no choice but to make you hate me."
"I sealed you inside the staff, in the way that would hurt you most. That way, you wouldn't come after me. That way, you would live."
"Someday, someone will tell you the truth."
"Forgive me, Lucario..."
In the memory, Aaron cast one last look toward the tree, then turned and walked toward Mew without hesitation.
"Mew, let's go."
Blue-white light intertwined. Aaron's silhouette slowly dissolved in the radiance, scattering into countless tiny motes of light that merged into the Tree of Beginning.
The fires of war were extinguished.
The memory ended there.
The light of the Time Flower slowly faded.
The entire space fell into a silence like death.
And at the center of it all stood Lucario.
Its whole body had gone rigid.
Its arms hung limp at its sides. Its red eyes were stretched wide open, staring unblinking at the place where the Time Flower had vanished.
Its entire body was trembling.
Then, from those eyes that had never once shed a tear, two scalding streams came pouring out.
"Sir Aaron..."
Its voice reached out through telepathy, fractured with grief.
"Sir Aaron..."
"I misunderstood you all along..."
"I thought you abandoned me to save yourself... I thought you were a coward... I thought you threw away everything between us for the sake of that castle..."
"I hated you for a thousand years."
"Sealed inside that staff, I hated you for a full thousand years."
"But..."
"You did it so I could live..."
"You already knew you weren't coming back..."
"And your last words, 'forgive me,' they weren't because you had wronged me. They were because you couldn't take me with you..."
Lucario sank to its knees. Its claws drove deep into the crystal floor, and from somewhere in the depths of its soul came a sound, suppressed and raw, like something tearing free.
"Sir Aaron!"
In the stream, the comments went silent.
For three full seconds, not a single new message appeared.
Cynthia sat before her computer. She hadn't even noticed when she had straightened up in her seat. She didn't know when her eyes had grown wet. Then the comments began to move again.
But differently from before.
Before, the stream had been raucous and jubilant, full of jokes flying every direction. Now what drifted past were line after line of short, halting words, words with no punctuation, as if typed through tears.
[I'm crying.]
[I'm actually crying.]
[Aaron... Aaron I'm sorry, I had you all wrong.]
[Lucario, a thousand years, a thousand years.]
[The person it spent a thousand years hating inside that staff was the one who died for it.]
[I can't hold it together.]
[I thought this was just a lighthearted movie.]
[Wind, have you lost your mind? How could you make something like this?]
[Why did it have to learn the truth, why did it have to know, why did it have to know.]
Cynthia drew a long, slow breath. She wanted to say something to comfort the viewers, but her throat had closed, and no words came.
She gave up trying to speak, and simply kept watching the screen in silence.
She knew the hardest part was still ahead.
The film gave its audience no time to breathe.
The entire Tree of Beginning began to collapse in earnest. Countless crystal columns shattered and fell from above, crashing against the floor with tremendous impact.
The figures of Kidd, Brock, May, and Max, trapped inside their crystals, began to grow more and more transparent.
And Mew, who had been cradling Pikachu with quiet tenderness all this time, was now too weak even to float. It lay in Pikachu's arms, its long tail resting lifelessly on the ground, its breathing barely a whisper.
"Mew..." Kidd, who had just recovered from the shock, went pale. She read the situation rapidly. "Mew's life is bound to this tree. It brought Pikachu back here wanting some small comfort, but it can't hold on any longer. If this continues, both Mew and the tree will vanish."
"Then what happens to everyone?!" Ash cried.
"Someone has to," Kidd said through clenched teeth, her eyes full of anguish, "someone has to offer their aura and channel it into the tree. Only that can restore Mew, only that can make the tree accept everyone again..."
"Offer their aura?" Ash understood immediately.
"The cost is... whoever does it will die." Kidd closed her eyes.
Ash didn't hesitate for a single moment.
He gently set down Pikachu and the weakened Mew together, and walked toward the crystal dais at the very center of the tree.
"I'll do it!" Ash's voice was quiet but absolute. "I'm the Aura Guardian this time. I carry Sir Aaron's aura. I'll be the one to offer it."
"No!" Kidd seized his arm. "You'll die if you do that!"
"But everyone will die because of me!" Ash stared at her. "Kidd, Brock, May, Pikachu, they're all waiting for me. They're my friends. I can't let anything happen to them."
The comment stream broke apart once more.
[Ash, you big-hearted idiot, how are you so...]
[Don't go, please don't go.]
[Why is everyone in this movie so willing to die for someone else?!]
[Does that actually happen, a ten-year-old boy just going like that?]
Cynthia kept her eyes fixed on the screen.
And just as Ash was about to step up onto the crystal dais, a blue-black paw reached out from behind him, and with the most extraordinary gentleness, settled on his shoulder.
It was Lucario.
Without anyone noticing, it had moved to stand behind him. Its face still bore the traces of tears, but its eyes had shifted from collapse into something entirely unfamiliar: calm.
A calm that held release, and resolve, and the lightness of someone finally setting down a burden carried for a thousand years.
With quiet care, it pushed Ash to one side.
"No." Lucario's voice came through telepathy. "You cannot die."
"Lucario..." Ash turned, eyes wide.
"I will carry on Sir Aaron's will." Lucario's eyes curved into something like a smile. "This is my purpose."
"I spent a thousand years consumed by hatred."
"Now it is time to spend a thousand years loving this world on his behalf."
It turned and stepped up onto the crystal dais.
Its claws pressed against the center of the platform. The blue light surrounding its body flared to an intensity it had never reached before, tender as spring sunlight, filling the crumbling space with radiance.
It closed its eyes softly.
"Sir Aaron..."
"I'm coming."
It was smiling.
"Ash, thank you."
"You are the one who showed me what aura truly means."
"Aura is not for hating."
"Aura is for loving."
The blue light detonated.
Lucario's body began to dissolve, from the feet upward, piece by piece, into countless tiny points of soft light.
Those points of light drifted slowly upward, flowing into the crystal dais, spreading into every branch and leaf of the Tree of Beginning.
"Lucario!" Ash rushed forward, reaching out to catch the light. "Lucario, don't!"
"Lucario!" The muffled voices of Kidd, Brock, and May carried through their crystals.
But no one could stop it.
In the final second before it vanished entirely, Lucario turned its head and looked at Ash one last time.
Its lips moved without sound.
"Goodbye."
Then the light scattered and was gone.
Cynthia lost all control of her tears.
She leaned back in her chair, and they fell, one after another, without stopping.
But no one mocked her.
Because the comment stream had become a vast wall, built entirely of grief.
[Lucario!]
[It was smiling when it went, it was smiling when it went, it was smiling when it went.]
[I'm done.]
[It spent a thousand years hating its trainer. In its very last moment it finally learned the truth, and then it just smiled and walked away.]
[Aaron waited a thousand years for it, and it searched for Aaron a thousand years.]
[Wind, you absolute madman, why would you make something like this.]
[I can't stop crying.]
[All Lucario had to do was keep hating Ash and it could have walked away from all of it. But it went and died in his place.]
[It said with its life everything Aaron couldn't say out loud.]
[In that moment it was Aaron.]
[It and Aaron are finally together.]
[I'm sorry, I had Aaron all wrong from the beginning. I'm the worst.]
[Goodbye, Lucario.]
[Aura never disappears.]
[I have never watched a sadder film.]
The comments kept flowing.
Cynthia wiped her eyes, drew a breath as steadily as she could, and spoke into the microphone.
"What a thing to carry with you."
"I always thought aura was simply a special kind of power."
"I never imagined... that a film would explain aura to me like this."
"Aura is not power."
"Aura is the words Aaron couldn't say to Lucario in his final moment: 'I love you.'"
"And it is what Lucario gave back to him, through a thousand years of hate and one single second of a smile: 'I love you too.'"
"It is... the bond between a Pokemon and their trainer. The bond itself."
The comments went quiet for one beat, then surged back, filling the screen completely.
[That was perfectly said.]
[That is aura.]
[I'll remember that. That is what aura is.]
On screen, the Tree of Beginning blazed back to life with warm green light. All the crystal immune cells dissolved and vanished. Kidd, Brock, May, and Max emerged from their crystals, each face streaked with tears.
In Pikachu's arms, Mew slowly regained its strength. It opened its wide, round eyes and looked at the reborn tree, letting out one soft, grateful cry.
Ash stood where he was and let the tears come.
He clenched his fists, tilted his face toward the highest point of the tree, and said quietly:
"Lucario, I won't forget you."
"Sir Aaron, I won't forget you either."
The camera pulled slowly back.
The Tree of Beginning became once again what it had always been, a sacred and ancient giant bathed in morning light.
Countless pink, green, and blue motes of light drifted through the air.
Anyone with the gift of aura would have seen them — moving among those points of light, a man in a blue cloak and a blue-black Pokemon, side by side.
They were both smiling.
۞۞۞۞
~ Push the story forward with your Power Stones