Chapter 213: Truth. Ideals. Strongest. Kyurem — You're the Most Pitiable of All.
"N, we have to run! Kyurem is coming!!"
Zekrom's voice was urgent.
"Kyurem?" N blinked.
Ghetsis blinked too.
Kyurem. The legendary Pokémon Ghetsis had wanted more than any other — had always wanted — and never been able to locate. The preparatory work had never come together. The plan had never launched.
And now Kyurem was coming to them.
Why?
Zekrom didn't wait to explain. It scooped N and Ghetsis up in its claws and launched into the air.
Of all the Pokémon in the world, only Reshiram knew Kyurem's terror as well as Zekrom did. They had all come from the same source — the Dragon of Unova, divided. That history made the knowledge intimate and impossible to deny.
"ROOOARR!!"
The cry in the distance was closer than it had been. Close enough now that even N and Ghetsis could hear it clearly, rising from somewhere not yet visible.
And the sky was wrong.
N felt something cold on his face. He touched it. A dampness on his fingertips.
Rain?
More fell. White. Light.
Snow.
It was summer. Opelucid City wasn't in any unusual geographical position — there was no reason for snowfall. N stared at the flakes drifting down around them.
"Zekrom. What's happening?"
"It's Kyurem. And it's—"
Zekrom's voice, already grave, went tense.
"It's coming for me!!"
"ROOOARR!!"
The sound filled the sky.
An ice-blue beam of light came screaming through the air — fast, precise, aimed directly at Zekrom's back.
Ice Beam.
"Zekrom — MOVE!!"
Zekrom was already moving. It twisted hard to the side, fighting the angle, trying to get clear—
Not enough.
The beam caught the right half of its body in a grazing sweep.
CrackcrackCRACK—
The sound of freezing was immediate and horrible — a rapid, crystalline crackling as ice spread across Zekrom's right flank and back in a single, breathtaking instant. The cold bite of it hit like a physical blow.
Zekrom let out a choked sound of pain. Its body stopped responding properly and it dropped, tumbling out of the sky and striking the side of a mountain with an impact that shook the stone.
BOOM.
The earth shuddered.
But even falling, even with ice spreading across a third of its body, Zekrom kept its right claw raised and rigid — held up and away from the ground.
Protecting N and Ghetsis until they were safely on the rock.
"Zekrom!!" N was on his feet immediately.
"N." Zekrom's voice was strained but present. "Take Ghetsis and go."
N started to say something—
A low growl rolled down from above.
He looked up.
A massive grey-black draconic form occupied the sky, motionless, looking down at them with eyes that held nothing but cold absolute certainty. The presence it projected was like a wall of pressure — the air around it heavier, colder, wrong in a way that reached down into the chest.
Black Kyurem.
Ghetsis stared at it with burning eyes, every line of his face lit with hunger.
The strongest dragon. Kyurem.
And then, a second later, the hunger curdled into something darker.
If Colress hadn't been taken — if Mammon hadn't stolen Colress — that dragon would eventually have been his.
Damn Mammon. Damn him entirely.
"Found you, black dragon."
Black Kyurem's gaze didn't waver as it looked down at Zekrom with something that might have been contempt.
Zekrom pushed itself upright, ice still spreading slowly across its flank, and placed itself between Kyurem and the two humans behind it.
"Why?"
Zekrom genuinely didn't understand. There was no precedent for this — since the Dragon of Unova had divided, Kyurem had been still. Sleeping. Absent. It had never moved against them, never appeared.
Nothing about this made sense.
"Two thousand years, black dragon. I've been patient enough. You know that."
Black Kyurem's voice carried no inflection. No anger, even. Just a flat, immovable certainty.
"You and the white dragon are part of me. It's time to come back."
Zekrom was silent for a moment.
"We are not."
It said it simply, without flinching.
"We are not your property, ice dragon. Reshiram and I — we've been separate beings, with our own wills, our own reasons to exist, for longer than most living things can comprehend. My name is Zekrom. Not 'a piece of the Dragon of Unova.' Not 'a piece of Kyurem.'"
"Oh?"
The golden eyes narrowed very slightly. The temperature dropped another degree.
Snow was falling again, thin and steady.
"Ice dragon." Zekrom kept going, even now. "You are far stronger than either of us. That will always be true. But even if you fuse with us — you will still only ever be Kyurem. You will never become it. You will never be what it was."
"Amusing."
Black Kyurem's expression didn't change. Nothing about it changed.
"Weak. Pathetic. You rely on humans to find your reason to exist — and you think that gives you the right to lecture me? Only the weak go searching for 'ideals.' I have no interest in listening to a broken thing like you."
"Black dragon. From now on, you'll watch from inside me. Don't worry — it won't be long. The white dragon will come to keep you company soon enough."
The wings spread.
From the DNA Splicers embedded in Kyurem's back, beams of light coalesced and launched downward — twisted, spiraling bolts aimed directly at Zekrom.
Kyurem was done with conversation.
"Zekrom!!"
N's heart lurched.
Zekrom launched upward, dodging — electricity crackling across its frame, Thunderbolts flying in rapid succession to intercept the incoming beams. They hit. They slowed the beams down.
They didn't stop them.
The beams were relentless, each one absorbing the impact and pressing forward, and Zekrom couldn't maintain enough distance from all of them at once. In the air above the mountainside, they closed in from every angle until there was nowhere left to go.
Zekrom's tail turbine roared to life—
Zzt.
The beams found their mark.
One by one, they drove into Zekrom's body. Zekrom's cry of pain was raw and uncontrolled — the tail turbine went dark, the lightning extinguishing — and the Splicers' beams kept pushing inward, deeper, finding something they were designed to reach.
"ZEKROM!!" N's voice broke.
"The DNA Splicers," Ghetsis breathed, understanding arriving a second too late to mean anything.
Black Kyurem let out a low, commanding growl. The beams already embedded in Zekrom continued pulling — and Zekrom, wrapped in blue-white light, began moving. Dragged through the air toward Kyurem against its will.
"LET GO OF ZEKROM!!"
N didn't understand what was happening in any technical sense, but his body understood. The terror was absolute and immediate. Zoroark materialized in front of him, black energy condensing into Dark Pulse.
The orb of light surrounding Zekrom compressed further, shrinking.
Black Kyurem's jaws opened.
"SHUT UP!!"
N was screaming. He couldn't stop himself. Zoroark's Dark Pulse hit Black Kyurem directly in the face.
Kyurem's claw came up and tore through it without changing expression.
"N—"
Zekrom's voice came from very far away.
"I'm sorry. I can't finish this with you."
"N…"
The orb disappeared into Black Kyurem's open mouth.
Electric blue light surged over Black Kyurem's entire body — flooding across it in crackling waves, flickering, intensifying, then sinking inward and going still.
N's mind went completely blank.
"Zekrom."
The word came out without intention.
"Zekrom — Zekrom—"
Black Kyurem paid no attention to the two humans below. It was occupied with something else — the sensation of fullness, spreading through it from the inside. Not just Zekrom's power. Something more than that. Something that had been absent for a very long time, returning now with the absorption.
A kind of interiority.
Force. Force and force and more force, welling up—
"ROOOARR!!!"
Black Kyurem threw its head back and roared. The sound was enormous — exultant in a way that Kyurem's voice had never been before. A shockwave of pure solid pressure burst outward in all directions, flattening the snow around it.
It was stronger.
Considerably stronger.
Black Kyurem scanned the horizon. Zekrom had returned. Now — the white dragon.
But it couldn't find the white dragon's signal. Reshiram was concealed.
No matter.
The dragon's eyes went cold and certain. It would find Reshiram eventually. The white dragon couldn't hide forever.
Come back into my body — that is what you and the black dragon were always meant to do.
Zekrom had said it couldn't become the Dragon of Unova.
Irrelevant. Kyurem had never wanted to become the Dragon of Unova. It was Kyurem. It had always been Kyurem and only Kyurem. Being the strongest version of that — that was enough.
Black Kyurem turned and began to fly.
"Give it back."
The voice was barely audible.
Black Kyurem paused.
It glanced back — down at the human standing below, the one who had spoken.
"GIVE ZEKROM BACK TO ME!!"
N was staring up at it. His hands were shaking. His eyes were red at the edges — and as Kyurem watched, something wet tracked down his face.
"Why. Why would you do this."
Black Kyurem looked at him for exactly one moment.
Then it looked away and flew.
The shape of it receded against the sky, growing smaller, then disappearing entirely into the grey clouds above.
N watched until there was nothing left to watch.
The world was very quiet.
His legs stopped working.
He went down slowly, crumpling to the ground, and pressed his eyes shut. Tears kept falling. He couldn't stop them. He wasn't trying to.
"Zekrom."
Just the name. Over and over.
Despair moved through him like cold water filling an empty space, and he let it, because there was nothing else he could do.
(End of Chapter)
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