Did we… fail?
To this point, Ho-Oh, Lugia, and Yveltal had yet to return. Zekrom, Palkia, and Dialga were still gasping for breath, exhausted.
For Pokémon of mythic stature, it had been ages since they'd exerted themselves to this degree. The battle had drained them deeply, perhaps more than any in memory.
And for what? Despite the deployment of so many Legendary Pokémon, their efforts had only laid waste to a few human cities. The virus remained untouched at its core.
Worse than returning empty-handed, they'd also lost some of their most vital champions. The defeat was devastating, complete and undeniable.
The Elite Four and the regional officials exchanged glances. On each face was the same expression: despair… and fear.
If even the full might of the Legendaries had been turned back… what now?
Yet while this was undoubtedly a failure for the League, it didn't seem to be one for everyone.
Suddenly, Hero's Summit began to shake.
No, not just Hero's Summit. The entire Unova region was trembling.
Millions of square kilometers—hills, rivers, cities, forests—every last inch of land was quaking violently.
What's going on? Has the New Empire launched an assault?
The sudden earthquake sent all of Unova into a panic. With their continent rumbling beneath them, humans instantly leapt to the most primal conclusion: war had arrived.
Beyond the cities, the vast forests came alive with chaos. Wild Pokémon scattered in every direction, some taking flight, others bolting into the underbrush—each one driven by pure instinct, pure terror.
"Quick, prepare defenses!"
Just like the others, Goodshow sprang into action. Acting swiftly, they ordered the Elite Four and other combat-ready personnel to fall into formation.
Battle-hardened units had already taken their positions. Everyone was on high alert, expecting a catastrophic strike at any moment, but none came.
The tremors continued. But the attack never arrived.
Crack—crack—crack—
The ground kept trembling, and fissures began to snake across the land like a shattered web.
Some of the cracks were as wide as mountain ravines. Others were as fine as strands of hair. They split and rejoined, crossing each other in a chaotic lattice.
Hero's Summit began to crumble. Stones rolled off its flanks. Even the statues in the square shattered and collapsed.
The mythic Pokémon and trainers stationed atop the mountain took to the skies. From above, they could see it clearly: all of Unova had fractured like the shell of a cracked egg.
But bizarrely, the cracks were evenly distributed across the region—so uniform, in fact, that there was no discernible epicenter.
From some of the larger fissures, radiant golden light began to seep out, faint but unmistakable. And even in the thinnest of cracks, the mythic Pokémon could feel it—that deep, ancient power surging beneath.
What… is this?
The sight left even the most seasoned fighters speechless. Something in the air shifted, somewhere between awe and unease.
But the mythic Pokémon felt something else. A memory. A recognition.
That presence… it had awakened.
Without warning, the golden light surged, flooding upward from the earth and covering all of Unova in a brilliant glow.
From orbit, the continent itself would've appeared bathed in gold.
But this transformation wasn't the true threat.
From beneath the surface, beams of golden light, like chains forged from light itself, shot up into the sky, converging straight toward Hero's Summit.
"Evade, now!"
Someone shouted, and in an instant, the trainers and Pokémon scattered like a meteor shower across the air.
When they finally looked back, breathless, they realized the chains hadn't been trying to strike them all.
They were chasing just two targets: Dialga and Palkia.
The gods of time and space twisted and dodged through the air, but the golden chains danced like living serpents, swarming from every angle, relentless.
No matter how many they evaded, more kept coming; countless, inexhaustible.
One chain lashed toward Dialga, but the gem in its chest pulsed with azure light. The chain froze midair, then recoiled as if time itself had reversed.
But Palkia, cutting down dozens of chains with its Spacial Rend, was struck from behind. A chain slipped through its defenses, then another, and another, until they bound the deity head to toe.
The pearls on Palkia's shoulders flared desperately, casting a purple glow, but no matter how it struggled, the chains held tight.
And in a flash, the golden chains yanked Palkia down toward the earth.
Mewtwo raised a hand, conjuring a psychic blade nearly fifty meters long and slashed downward, but more golden chains rose to meet it, parrying it midair.
Unlike Mewtwo, the other Legendaries remained still. Even Primal Groudon, the Lord of the Land, stayed silent. Something had changed. It was as if they knew.
Dialga, still free, bent time in a desperate attempt to escape. But the golden chains began to dissolve into glittering dust, golden particles that filled the space around them.
Whenever Dialga opened a time-rift, the particles would swarm it, twist it, and collapse it.
Again and again Dialga tried, four, five times, but the results were the same. The golden dust smothered every exit.
"Dialga! Help me! If I go down, you're next!" Palkia screamed as it was dragged down, helpless.
Dialga hesitated, but only for a second.
Its tail-fin glowed, the diamond on its chest pulsed with stellar light, and it unleashed a beam of compressed chronology: Roar of Time.
Its target… was Palkia.
The beam hit directly.
Palkia was unharmed, but the golden chains binding it were not. The light splintered them, setting Palkia free.
But in the split-second that followed, while Dialga was focused on freeing its counterpart, the golden particles spun together, condensing into a massive cross-shaped sigil of light.
It clamped onto Dialga's waist.
The sigil acted like a limiter, instantly severing Dialga's connection to time itself.
Stripped of its temporal power, Dialga could no longer help. The chains recoiled toward Palkia, snapping around it again in an instant.
"No!" Palkia roared as the chains dragged it downward, slamming it into the golden ground below.
Where it struck, the earth rippled like a golden lake, and Palkia, god of space, was pulled beneath the surface.
And then, the chains swarmed Dialga.
Without its power, it stood no chance. The chains wrapped it tight and yanked it down, into the gleaming abyss below.
The god of time… was taken.
"President, what is this…?" Shauntal turned, stunned.
Even among the Elite Four, few had ever seen anything like this. Watching the gods of time and space captured, it was enough to freeze the blood in anyone's veins.
Goodshow shook his head slowly, his face contorted in disbelief.
Mewtwo scanned the other Legendaries, eyes narrowing. Why hadn't they intervened?
Then—
ROOOOAAAAARRR!!
Primal Groudon's roar split the skies, shaking what remained of the mountain range.
"Come out!" it bellowed. "Come out already!"
Groudon thrashed wildly, its massive tail demolishing a mountain in a single swing.
"Mewtwo, help me! I've been infected by the virus!"
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