Life is a Long Song

From the highest peak of Navel Rock I sat, pristine and proud, watching my subjects as they flew beneath me. They flew choppy, uneven -- like blundering Geodude with Pidgey wings grafted to their shoulders. The light grin that graced my golden beak grew like a smothering wildfire that I had vengefully spread.

Rays of luminescent sunlight rained down from behind me and I raised my wings high, watching with a gleam in my eyes as the light refracted and a powerful rainbow spread from my wings. I would have to bestow upon my flying subjects a gift of my beauty before I departed for the Hall of Origin for several torturous days were the God of life itself would overshadow me. If only just.

Peering up into the sky I saw that the sun was close to reaching its zenith, when Arceus had told us to arrive, and I refused to be late. Being late was for the imperfect. (I didn't believe in being fashionably late).

I stirred up detritus and grains of sand and my wings pumped instinctively to gain altitude while a rainbow radiated out from behind me in a shower of glittering golden particles.

I could feel a twang of something in the back of my mind as I flew, something wrong, something forgotten. My wings flared out in full as I stopped dead in my tracks, I had forgotten her. That unkempt, dingy, and purely disgusting dolt of a moon goddess.

Remembering the last time I had saw her, I quaked. Her now uninhabited cave at the Whirl Islands was filled with debris from her fights with trainers that she was too lazy to clear away, and it had smelled of dampness and mold. Her once white-edged-with-silver feathers were dun from dirt and grime that she was too lackadaisical to clean. I could have easily compared her to a Snorlax that had just eaten it's fill in food.

With a resigned frown plastered on my beak, I flew back to Navel Rock to retrieve her.

The gold stone walls of the almost unnaturally perfect cave soon melded into a silver tone; the path became steep and the air became damp. Soon enough, the sound of the gushing ocean reached my ears along with the pungent, but somehow still calming, smell of the sea.

Sand squeezed and squelched up in between my claws drawing me deeper into the muck as the constricting cave opened into a grand hall-like chamber. A raised silvern platform of land jutted out from the center drifted down to meet the churning ocean that came in through an underwater cave. Sounds of waves crashing against their stone barriers roared into my ears, the smells and sounds of the ocean were nearly overwhelming, almost like their minder.

She was there, curled into a tight spiral on the platform of silver-hued marble. I walked up to her with a deep, disapproving frown locked onto my beak. Her water-resistant feathers were coated in a filthy grime. Her breaths were deep, punctuated by the occasional rude snore.

I inhaled, and with the deepest breath I could muster, produced a sound that even Yvetal would have been proud of. I waited, but other then a light stirring, she gave no reaction.

Not wanting my wings to so much as graze her, I reared back my muck-drenched claw and slammed it into her ribcage.

I watched with a smug grin as she jolted up unceremoniously, her grimy feathers ruffled every which way. Her wide eyes narrowed into a malignant glare as they settled on me as I preened. She snorted,

"What the hell are you doing here, damn overgrown Pidgey."

"Lugia, my dear, what has become of your vocabulary? It seems to have come from a Castelia street-dweller instead of a legendary."

"What the fuck does my vocabulary have to do with you waking me up?"

"Nothing really, my counterpart. However, we do have a meeting today."

Her eyes widened,

"Well why didn't you fucking say so‽"

She attempted to run past me, almost slamming into my wing. I decided that it would be easy to wash off a bit of grime from my wing, should she slam into it, but my pride would be damaged beyond repair if I was seen with her in her present filthy state.

"I refuse to let you come with me while you are like that, Lugia."

She peered down at her form with a questioning gaze,

"Like what?"

"You are covered in dirt."

"Dirt?"

"Yes," I said with a sigh, "grime, filth."

"I don't see anything wrong."

"I suggest you clean yourself, as I doubt that you remember the way to the Hall of Origin with your horrid memory. I refuse to wait forever and be tardy because of your laziness."

Her light frown transformed into a grimace but she complied with little more than her trademark scowl and an annoyed grunt. I looked on with a victorious grin as she pivoted around to jump into the sea. I stepped closer as she launched herself eloquently off of the silvern platform with a spin and peering over the edge, I watched as the water barely even rippled as she penetrated its surface.

Her sleek form was distorted by the water's churning surface but I watched as she spun in detailed, hypnotizing patters, teasing the tides and water currents to converge about her. Her control over the tides was as absolute as mine was over the air currents. She could have easily been close to my level, if she had tried. Perhaps one day becoming a worthy counterpart to yours truly. Alas, she couldn't care less. A miniature whirlpool formed on the surface just over where her form could be seen performing its mesmerizing underwater dances. She sprang from the epicenter of the swirling water sending a shower of glittering droplets asunder. Her wings opened to their full, staggering width and her head held high, she called the wind with her authority over the air currents, which I still found to be deeply unfair. Arceus saw fit to gift her with control over both the tides and air currents along with formidable psychic talent, yet I only reigned over air currents with her! Completely uncalled for! It wasn't like I wanted control over water-- damp and full of algae and disagreeable slimy Pokémon. The air entangled around her formed a cyclone that faded from the top down in gusting ribbons while I brooded.

With an almost inaudible tap she landed, her silver-tipped feathers clean and shining. The rippling royal blue scales of her mask gleamed with reflected light, highlighting her luminous eyes that looked nowhere in particular.

"Good enough for you, Your Highness?"

I looked over her form, her feathers no longer carried a collected layer of filth and were all in perfect order, except, perhaps, for one on her forehead which stood straight up.

She must have seen it too because her long, pink tongue slipped out to smooth it down before I had to fix it. I huffed at something that would have expected from a newly hatched Torchic and stepped over to save her from herself. She sighed, dejected, at her fruitless attempts and bowed her head to let me have a better look. It was just a tiny feather from her downy undercoat, and I pinched it with my beak and plucked it out, tossing it to the side. She winced lightly as I preened her forehead and the skin on her cheeks beneath her gleaming feathers took on a light scarlet hue at my actions. My own cheeks, for some disgusting reason, wished to replicate hers, but I refused to let it happen. It was her pride being destroyed, not mine.

I pulled away with a tinge of reluctance, could I have made her look any better? I shook my head, we didn't have the time and I doubted that Dialga was going to give us any.

"Come now, Lugia, I don't wish be late. Let Raikou take Arceus's wrath for being tardy."

Responding with a subdued nod, she followed behind me, her tail slashing semi-circles in the sandy cave path as she walked. I stopped with a huff,

"Lugia, hold your tail up, it is not a broom."

She gave a weak sigh and lifted it up high off the ground, it did look a bit uncomfortable, but sacrifices had to be made. Her blundering steps on land were nothing like the elegance that her actions and movements held underwater. She waddled like a Ducklett when she walked, and the broad slabs of her hand-like wings hung useless at her side.

The cave opened up onto the plain surface of the island whose dirt was not a glittering gold or a shimmering silver, but a dusty, lackluster grey. Sprigs of dried grass sprouted here and there in the shade of any sizable rock while the sun beat down with unrelenting harshness.

I sprang up into the stifling air and pumped my wings, watching from the sky as she, too, jumped up into the sky.

The muscles beneath her waterproof feathers rippled with restrained strength, and the harsh sunlight made her feathers shimmer. Her wings lifted her eloquent form from the parched earth and the whisper of air that she dispersed with her wings became overwhelming surges that spun fragments of dull stone and billowing clouds of fine dirt into the arid atmosphere.

Once she attained a decent amount of height, she shot up silhouetted by the sun. Like a cocoon, she had her wings wrapped tightly around herself as she spun upwards. Sharply, she shot out her wings and drifted along on an air current and I realized that I was still only ten or so feet from the ground while she, now only an avian-shaped speck in the sky, was at least two hundred. Flapping rapidly, I gained altitude and rested just beside her on the same air current. With my wings flared out in full, I watched the rainbow spill from my feathers and drift towards the island which was now barely a smudge on the horizon.

The constantly churning ocean was losing my attention and I peered over the only other interesting thing within a hundred-foot range.

The sun was diagonally behind her and it's rays shone off her feathers, not harsh, but gentle- a smooth gradient of warm light. Her sleek form seemed to shear the air as if friction decided it wasn't worth it to mess with her, and she glided almost like had done in the water. She just lay on the air current, lazily and relaxed, but not slouching. My eyes traced up to her head, every scale of her cobalt mask glinted like a perfect sapphire, the detail of it enchanting the simple monochrome of her intelligent eyes. She was the perfect Moon Goddess, sleek and eloquent, intelligent but laid back, just going with the flow of the tides. I was unashamedly staring at her with such force that when she noticed she said,

"Trying to kill me by burning a hole in the side of my head?"

She grinned smugly before flicking her tail and performed an aileron roll, flipping stomach-up, letting the warmth of the sun's rays soak into her underside.

I felt perfect, stunning-the waning sun making the fading vestiges of light glint off my prismatic feathers and a rainbow cape trailed behind me. It shortened while the sun set, the great golden disc disappearing as if it were a large biscuit being devoured by Sharpedo. A golden trail formed on the water and as we banked towards Sinnoh and it seemed for all the world as if we were riding upon it, a golden road laid out just for us.

I liked the sound of that.

Our temporary home at Navel Rock wasn't home, not even close. I had been wishing for weeks on end now to simply return to my rightful place atop the golden pinnacle of Bell Tower, just to hear the  bronze bells toll in my honour. It was an ponderous ache that settled in my deep in my chest when I thought of it. I knew that Lugia missed her home at the Whirl Islands as well. She somehow had just as much of an attraction to that dank, damp cavern as I did to the empyreal tower where I slept when I wasn't traversing the Pokémon world.

But Arceus decreed that we should leave, so we could only agree. She was nervous that a trainer would come and harm us or somehow manage to catch us so that we would be unable to perform our respective jobs - jobs, unlike those of some legendaries, actually affected the world and kept it running. Rightly so, really, as huge influx of trainers was a real risk, even to a legendary with our formidable abilities. Truthfully, it scared me quite a bit as I often received over triple the amount of trainers that Lugia did in any given span of time. However, the average trainer that managed to arrive at her chamber to meet her was far stronger than the usual ones I was greeted by. Living in the depths of a cave on an island in a chain of many, encompassed by particularly nasty whirlpools probably had quite a bit to do with that. Not only that, but once you passed through the labyrinthine cavern, you had to battle with a goddess that controlled the moon, tides, and air currents -- and had some of the strongest psychic powers in the legendary council (certainly not an easy feat by any means). Her far more sinister reputation made sure that only the most resolute came to her door, and her fighting skills were exceptionally honed because of this.

Even through all of that and the fact that it was for our own safety, I hated leaving my human worshipers out in the cold, so to speak, and Lugia had told me that it was much harder to control the tides from Navel Rock, since all the world's tides converged around the Whirl Islands, so she didn't have to project her powers as far.

I quite missed the trainers as well, the majority were horrendous battlers(but adorable); yet some were truly skilled, their strategies planned far in advance and they improvised when needed, everything focused upon my weaknesses(not that I had many) with contingency plans and backups. What they all had in common was that they were pure of heart. Even though as of late I had tired due to all of the trainers arriving to fight me, I always felt a certain pang of joy deep in my breast when I heard the golden bells on the atop the tower toll and trill; when the beckoning mystic chants of the Kimono girls came to my ears to welcome me down from the sky. Knowing that there was yet another caring mortal in a world which at times seemed bereft of them was one of the greatest joys in all of my living.

I didn't know what made the trainers fit to see Lugia, and never had. A personal question, to be sure. Asking about something that inexorably drew mortals to their patron legendary, a sign of their core traits was quite blasé, even for counterparts.

However, with a lack of other conversational topics available and the pressing questions ricocheting about the confines of my conscious, I threw the question out into the awkward roaring silence.

Her calm and contented visage vanished from her eyes in a veritable instant. She flung her head about to face me with such speed and force that I feared that she had given herself whiplash, her eyes so wide that I felt I could fly through them with wings splayed. Her answer came tinged with reluctance:

"Strength, I guess. It makes me sick."

She turned her head away from me and squeezed her eyes shut as if trying to dispose of whatever image was burned into her corneas. She continued:

"Besides, I haven't seen a trainer in a long time. The bells in my cavern are rusted to the Distortion World and back. Nobody cares for a sea monster when they could have-" She huffed, "You know what? Never mind."

She fell into an almost comatose state after she finished, neither talking nor responding to any attempt at conversation or eye contact. Her eyes were firmly shut and she drifted without much movement within a strong current of air.

After a hour or so, a smooth burst of air next to me alerted me to her movement. She had fallen into a downwards spiral towards the ocean. I watched as she slid under the surface of the star-speckled water, a thin trail of moonlight, like liquid silver, highlighted her path. I could clearly see that she was in her element. Under the moon and stars with the ocean caressing her and supporting her more than any living being could ever manage. Normally in awe of myself, I was now completely mystified by her.

Her form cleaved the water seamlessly, leaping out with a flourishing twirl, a flick of her serpentine tail left a great shower of shining droplets in her great wake. When her body lay under the water again, I manoeuvred down closer to the surface of the great liquid expanse. I flew directly over her, she was swimming supine and her eyes closed and not seeing-not needing to- and I flew straight ahead, I don't think either of us cared where we went, or that we would be horribly, horribly late. The beads of water that splashed up when some part of her same above the surface and clung onto my feathers didn't worry me in the least as I somehow didn’t notice them. I could see how she was so calm and content, just this, swimming carelessly over the water, watching the stars come out in full, blooming bright in the great expanse as the light of the sun drained away for another day. My reflection rippled and distorted over her shadowed form as we continued on.

Soon, land broke over the horizon, ebony, but speckled with the light of the cities. Over the top of the highest point on the landmass - Spear Pillar - lay a great and twinkling star, signifying the meeting to the legendaries, and a time of worship for the mortals. To one group of religious folk, it signified a time of worship. They believed that it was Arceus and her firstborn children(but not Giratina, of course, because he was evil) looking into the mortal plane to judge the living; that she was using it as a way to decide which humans were to spend their afterlife with Giratina and which got to live with their patron legendary in the Hall of Origin. Which was absolute foolishness as Arceus and the space-time twins certainly didn't live in their own dimensions for any great length of time unless they were severely harmed and needed to regenerate their powers and heal(or if you were Palkia, it was if you were lazy or trying to escape doing chores).

As the great blots of light began to elongate into the forms of buildings and skyscrapers, I sighed, now just realizing how late we were and how mad Arceus was going to be when we arrived. But I had to keep my head up, my pride depended on me not being seen as a sniveling scaredy-Skitty. Lugia needed not know that I was scared of Arceus's retribution, or Arceus in general really. What was there to fear about the great white Rapidash, anyways? She was much too soft-hearted to do anything with those supposed “great powers” of hers.

I peered down at Lugia who still had her eyes staring at nothing particular. I reached into her mind with my meager psychic powers. As soon as I divulged into her mind it felt as if I was being enveloped in calm which seeped through my form, was this how she felt? Like she was a part of the moon, the ocean, the sky? As if she were drifting without any purpose, and that that was perfect? I shook my head and placed a statement in the dips and twists of her thoughts, "We're almost there."

My words oozed into the simple serenity of our co-maintained silence, like an oil slick sliding over a stream which Suicune had only just cleaned. Her eyes became focused again, the ebony pupil dilated and then contracted, hooking on white-capped waves and ocean dwelling Pokémon before settling on me. She seemed a bit discontent that I had destroyed her trance, bringing her back to where reality waited in a lethal silence to ruin all her dreams and peace. Her mind, slipped into my own, dropping a response: "All right... Could you move a bit please?" I nodded absent-mindedly and rose up, and shifted to the side, my mind trained on how we could get to the top of Spear Pillar the fastest possible. She rent the water's surface and flapped leisurely up, up past me and rested uncaring on an air current doing nothing more than the bare minimum to keep herself aloft. Did she realize how late we were? How much trouble we were going to be in, and how much yelling that we were going to get from a stressed-out Arceus? Did she care? Looking up at her, barely moving, only when her stability was jeopardized, I severely doubted it.

I flapped up with vigor and called out:

"We are going to be late!"

She didn't even look at me when she replied:

"We're already late so what does it matter?"

I let out a huff while the air current dipped and she flapped for a bit until she found a new one.

"I'll leave you behind and you'll have to find the rest of the way on your own."

I flapped faster and gained a bit of a lead ahead of her to prove my point. Her deadpan response came to me as she seemed to float in ethereal lightness to fly next to me:

"Besides the obvious fact that I'm a lot faster than you and could catch up with ease, I can almost see Spear Pillar now. I could easily find my way"

I growled a bit.

"Could we just go a little faster?"

She huffed in annoyance before performing another aileron roll and nodding. She pumped her giant hand-like wings in a steady beat, easily passing me and the tiny headway I had made. Soon she was up to full speed, a speed at which I could not hope to catch her.

Then I, as the humans said, floored it; going at such a great speed that after a mere few seconds of flying my wings felt as if the joints would fail and my bones became like boiled noodles, and I still wasn't making any headway. In fact, the distance between us was widening at a severely disheartening rate.

Noticing my frustration, she dipped lightly into my mind, dropping a reserve of energy behind her. I flew steadily as she slowed to alight beside me, she was laughing heartily.

"And you're telling me to hurry?"

I grumbled for a few seconds, but eventually returned the grin, her laugh was truly contagious. Her smile wasn't filled with ego or pride like mine would have been had I been faster, but was just filled with light humour and teasing.

"I'll stay here with you, Slowpoke. Make sure you don't fall out of the sky after that stunt."

Her humility, even though she had just won and damaged my pride, just made my pride take another blow.

I just decided to stay quiet and see if that would keep her and her stupid comments quiet. And it did, she didn't say anything more, but the vestiges of the childish grin remained plastered on her countenance.

Soon, Sinnoh's buildings came into view, even though we were still a great distance from them our extremely powerful vision gifted the sweeping scene with great detail, far more than any mortal's pitiful "20/20 vision". We could have counted the windows on the skyscrapers, and then the people in those windows without effort if we had wished to do so.

We flew higher up and slipped silently behind a cloud, not wishing to be seen, especially not by any of our fanatics who had the frustrating tendency to stare longingly into the sky. We might not have been in Johto or Kanto, but that was no reason to be flippant.

The crisp air soon turned biting, making us shiver and speed up just a little more. As we neared Spear Pillar, the air became some how worse, carrying a burning cold, the wind ripping the warmth from beneath even Lugia’s dense coat of feathers. We passed over a small community that we didn't know the name of but, as in the big cities, there was chanting. But here, it wasn't obscured by noise. Even the wildlife was silent. It was mystic and confusing, but not the words themselves(they were as clear as the stars), it was the way they spoke and how it seemed to ring out with an esoteric quality that hung in your head long after the sound of the real words had faded from the air. Most likely some sort of worship prayer, especially for when the special star came out.

“-Monah ahrk Kire, nau stronmahro naar, mu aam hi ahrk ofan un drale-”[1]

I didn’t understand the Dovahzul, even though Lugia did, due to her proximity to Palkia and several other draconic members of the council, and we continued on without a sound, so as to not disturb their worship. Spear Pillar became clearer and clearer as we rose up until we could make out the cryptic carvings that formed Palkia and Dialga, filled with insets of precious stones, always visible, as the snow that covered the perpetually chilly mountain peak never shrouded the legendary-made plateau.

We both stood waiting for a bit until Lugia, of course, got impatient and complained out to the sky where the Hall of Origin should appear. And so it did.

A haunting flute melody rung out briefly, then disappeared as quickly as it had come; its echo fading over the mountain top, mingling with the whispering remains of the chant. From the tile that had the triangle representing the original three engraved upon it came a shower of gold particles that flew into the air and solidified into golden steps that seemed ethereal in their majesty. At a point when the tip of the golden staircase seemed so far up that it would be impossible for even me to dream of reaching, they came to a stop and began to bloom outwards to form a grand building that was large enough to fit even a several dozen Wailord with ease. The temple was formed of a pristine and glittering crystal that was cut in raised panels. The entire building was symmetrical until the great golden doors were formed and a blue-tinted diamond formed on the right, surrounded by an odd crest of polished steel; and a lustrous salmon-hued pearl that was encompassed by a pinwheel of lavender lay on the right. Lying at the center in between the two symbols was the wheel that resided on Arceus's mid-section, raised from the rest of the golden surroundings, it glowed like the pearl and diamond, except not in a violet or azure, but in a blinding white luminescence.

And then, in every depiction of what we didn't want to happen, the doors swung open and an extremely agitated and nigh-deranged looking Arceus lay behind. It was like one of those advent calendars that the humans had for the holidays, and when you opened a door only to find that it was one of those old-lady hard candies that get stuck in your teeth. Like toffee or something. Except that the toffee was going to punish us for our tardiness with it's powers (Instead with getting your beak stuck together with a nigh-omnipotent super glue-like substance). From beside me, Lugia drew back several feet and refused to look Arceus in the eye, but I, ever the brave one, warily peered up at her.

It seemed as if she could have killed me with that gaze of her’s. She looked positively insane, her fur was ruffled every which way and there was some sort of unsightly neon pink substance smeared on her muzzle. It took every bit of me not to back away slowly like they tell you to do in the case that you meet a rabid Ursaring. But I somehow held her gaze and said:

"Good evening, Arceus."

She started her purposefully slow descent down the steps without a sound besides the clinking of her golden hooves on the matching stairway. As she neared, Lugia became taut and barely breathed as if she feared to anger her more with even a slight movement. She stopped stiffly in front of us, and simply turned her head to face each of us in turn. In a instant every muscle in her body relaxed and she let out a deep and stressed sigh.

"Thank Alpha and Omega for your arrival, I thought I was going to go insane. Even I cannot tolerate this insanity. Why are you both late?"

My mind raced to formulate an excuse that would suffice for the God of life itself, but she derailed my train of thought before it could even get going.

 "Never mind that now, I am in dire need of your assistance. Even I cannot control the chaos that ensues inside that building now."

She motioned with a silent gesture of her head towards the grand staircase for us to follow her and she started her return trip. We launched off from the ground, being careful not to hit the broken pillars on our way up.

I peered over at Lugia who just seemed glad that she had not been strung out between the fractured pillars and delimbed violently by a temporarily deranged God. I grinned to myself as we landed just behind Arceus at the top of the staircase before following her in.

The entrance hall was relatively quiet, only tiny vestiges of the insane sound seeped into the room. Some pinkish-red liquid seeped out from in under the door similar to the stuff that stained the fur on Arceus's muzzle. I held my breath before releasing it in a deep sigh, we had to go in there? Where who-knew-how-many legendary Pokémon were completely out of their minds?

I flinched while Arceus took several deep, preparatory breaths and Lugia backed away from the door with wide, glassy eyes and a look that could have very well come from an insane person with a straight jacket. Just before Arceus could open the door a sharp crash along with several muffled 'whoot!'s came from behind the only thing that separated us from a rampaging mob of legendaries with no self-control or inhibitions, who ranged from tiny gratitude goddess to thirty-foot-tall god of the atmosphere. Not a situation I wanted to be in, at all. As if the meeting tomorrow wasn’t bad enough.

Arceus peered over at both of us with deep pity and a sincere 'I'm sorry’ look on her face before coating the golden door with her distinct white-and-gold flecked psychic aura and flinging it wide open. It made a sound like a gong struck too hard, and the scene it revealed looked more like it was one of Darkrai's nightmares than a gathering of the universe's finest.

Groudon, who had apparently been leaning on said door, fell unceremoniously to the floor with an exaggerated cry of surprise, flailing like gravity had abandoned him for more sensible locales. Several tins and cans of things ranging from cashew nuts and iced tea to energy drinks and beer flew out; we ducked and they crashed the floor behind us with a clang. Even Dialga looked disgusted and unwilling to approach in his own inconspicuous way, but Arceus managed to rustle up some of her hallmark undaunted resoluteness and wiped away her previous revulsion before stepping into the room.

I personally felt that I had a Crygonal’s chance in Heatran's cave to survive in that hell-hole, and was about to fling out some excuses and escape like a sensible being, but Lugia shoved me very firmly from behind and I stumbled over the threshold. She then snuck in behind me, using my slightly wider form as a shield for projectiles.

From here, I could see some of the legendary steel types curled up in a protective huddle deep in the corner that was farthest from the epicenter. Jirachi looked like he was about to cry and I wasn't sure if I could really blame him.

Kyogre had made a miniature whirlpool and had caught a laughing Manaphy and a simultaneously giggling and sobbing Shaymin in its swirling cone. From what I could tell, Palkia had decided that merecosplaying was for chumps who weren’t her and decided that real roleplay was much better, especially if it involved the misuse of her powers. It was one of those idiotic computer "entertainment" programs that I had seen Lugia playing at one point, from what I could tell. I didn't really know much of video games, and I also didn't know that Palkia's portals could be any colour of the rainbow, but found that out at that moment as she had somehow found a way to make them blue and orange. Reshiram was knelt, undignified, on the floor beside one and had his muzzle tipped up over and Zekrom was pouring a keg of beer near his white head and he drank it as it fell from the orange rift.

It didn’t take long for the two draconian females got a mischievous look on their countenances and their previously silly grins could now only be described as “shit eating”. Palkia peered at Zekrom with a questioning look in her eyes and Zekrom nodded for some form of sly confirmation. Reshiram was busy drinking beer to a vivacious chorus of "CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!" echoing out around him from various sources. Palkia then snuck behind him and gave him a vicious kick that reminded me of something that should only be done to a football , and he tumbled forward with arms wheeling and feathers soaked with beer. Zekrom pulled back the keg of beer for herself and Palkia, but a thick stream of dull brown liquid still flew through the portals in an infinite loop along with a feathered, white blur that was a screeching Reshiram. He was going to be in such a state afterwards. If he thought that I was going to help him clean his white feathers back to a pristine state after this, I would slap him. He could be such a fool sometimes! Always going to parties with this group of rampaging idiots. He never learned!

Those who weren't laughing at Reshiram’s misfortune or caught in a Kyogre-made whirlpool were playing some mortal game I was told was known as “spin the bottle” over in the center of the floor, although, considering the fact that they weren’t even using a bottle, I was fairly sure that they weren't playing it correctly. Rayquaza was using a chunk off one of the broken pillars from outside to spin and the crowd that formed the circle about it included the Lati twins, the beast trio, the winged mirages, Mesprit, Azelf, the musketeer trio, Mew, all of the Regis(even Registeel, who seemed to be trying her best to get inebriated despite her typing), the Kami trio, and several others that I couldn't tell who they were because they were dancing with more enthusiasm and speed than skill. Kyurem was already passed out cold on Rayquaza's coiled tail and occasionally he would reach his hand down as if to see if she was still there and not another hallucination that was inevitably brought on by whatever heinous substance he had ingested this time.

Unsurprisingly, the mentally-altering chemicals they had taken meant that no one, not even Groudon (who was slowly making his way back the the main area) recognised the fact that their gathering was about to get crashed. That was very unnerving, but what was more so was the silence that began to slowly spread outwards after Arceus' cry of

"ALL OF YOU, STOP THIS INSTANT! "

Arceus' voice rang out like a peal from a church bell and they all turned their heads to peer at her with some very confused looks on their faces. Then, Rayquaza started laughing with raspy gasps and the rest of them followed suite. It wasn't really a great start.

They picked up whatever was in range of their grasp and launched it at us with surprising accuracy for a group of drunken fools as quintet of steel types in the corner pushed themselves into the crevice further, like a Pachirisu being cornered by a man with a rifle. I heard a grunt from behind me as Lugia covered them in her navy psychic aura and transported them over next to us. Jirachi collapsed from his hover and fell face-first onto the floor while the legs of Cobalion and Heatran collapsed right out from under them and the four of them landed with a thud. Genesect managed to catch himself before he hit the ground, but scattered his drives everywhere.

A thick rain of random objects still fell around us and was deflected by Lugia's Reflect, creating a repulsive ring of trash where the shimmering barrier hit the ground. Arceus walked over to check on her first-born son while they reoriented themselves. I waited for the hail of objects to cease, or at least slow enough so that I wouldn't be knocked out in two seconds flat from severe head trauma. Soon enough they ran out of objects and their psychic powers were unusable in their drunken state, so they flopped to the ground, giggling like a group of five-year-old girls.

Reshiram was still in his infinite loop-prison, most likely unconscious and surrounded by two snickering draconian females who would probably kick him back in if he were to escape. Just to grind salt into the wounds they both caused, the spatial and Yang dragons picked up the now empty keg of beer and tossed it there with him. I winced as every several seconds you could hear a dull thud.

As I peered at the newly-saved, I noticed Dialga watching them attentively all the while standing over all of us except Lugia by at least a couple of feet. I had never really talked to the temporal dragon, nor had I ever noticed how intimidating he was up at a closer range. His ruby eyes drove into my own as he stared at the rest of us in turn. They looked positively frightening with the glinting translucent scarlet rubies that contained enough knowledge to put even me to shame. Me! Of all the Pokémon! I was one of the seniors of the Legendary Council! Besides that , his body was sturdily built with razor sharp steel plates covering his claws, chest, muzzle, and back. He weighed at least a thousand pounds, his feet thundering when they came into contact with the shining floor. The scales that coated his form were a deep navy that glinted like the night-time scene of stars reflecting on the rippling ocean, the scales seemed to be sectioned by embedded streams of sky-blue diamond that pulsed and shimmered with moving energy, but not to the extent of the one that lay in the tempered steel plate. That particular one shone with it's own aura of a faintly shimmering light blue.

He growled lightly, almost to himself, then stomped one grand foot on the crystal tiles, causing the floor to shake a bit before speaking psychically to me.

"I will freeze the Beat of Time around them, then we will knock them all unconscious, how does this sound? "

I nodded rapidly, eager to end the demented madness that ensued around us, only separated by an infinitely thin barrier that, now that I had taken a closer look, was starting to flicker.

"And you better hurry, I can't hold this Reflect for much longer.", she said through gritted teeth.

He nodded curtly at Lugia, then turned towards Arceus to confirm his plan with her while Jirachi and Cobalion cowered beneath Lugia's wing. I don’t know why they were going anywhere near Lugia for comfort when I was there.

I watched with dinner-platter eyes as Dialga raised his steel-armoured head and the energy around him began to gather into a swirling mass in his open maw. The diamond in his chest plate began to expand its aura and the color became deeper, from a baby blue then an azure and finally a translucent royal blue that shimmered like the searing heat of the summer and radiated outwards in waves. A roar emanated from his gaping mouth in rings of ocean blue, the first one slowing, then the next few freezing the drunken legends in time.

I snickered to myself as Deoxys was frozen at the apex of a ballerina-like mid-air jump and Reshiram was hanging suspended, tongue hanging out and eyes rolled back into his head.

With an exhausted grunt Lugia let down the Reflect and we peered out to assess the damage.

By whatever unconscious divine intervention, probably Arceus or Dialga since Palkia was drunk and frozen in time, nothing of any worth was broken, it was just a big mess of shattered glass from beer bottles, random crushed cans, and wrappers from more junk food than I would like to think about. The jury seats for the legendary council were relatively unharmed, they just had several unconscious inhabitants. We had found the remains of what had once been a relatively large stash of chocolate, candy, energy drinks, and beer kegs in the corner opposite where Dialga's troupe had been hunkered for the majority of the rave party and had emptied it into a storage closet, never to be found again after swatting a few that Lugia had pilfered from her wings before she could eat the disgusting stuff. Arceus's pedestal hadn't been damaged either, and the goddess walked up to it and opened up the portal to her dimension before placing the Tiffany lamp back on the corner of the golden stand then collected and reorganized the papers and attendance log that had been scattered about the room.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Dialga was standing near both Mewtwo and Uxie, who seemed to have teleported in once the “party” had ended. A smart decision indeed. Both psychic types were putting out hypnosis pulses next to the frozen Pokémon which activated once Dialga had let time flow around them again and they tumbled to the floor, unconscious. When he came to his space-controlling sister, a wicked smirk tipped the ends of his muzzle up and he beat her over the side of the head several times before letting time flow around her again. He received a nasty glare from Arceus and Uxie alike before he carried on with his work with a cheerful grin pasted on his face.

Lugia reared back, and I wondered what in the Distortion World she was doing, attacking Dialga was a move only for the suicidal, Arceus, and Palkia. But with one broad sweep of her great wings, she formed a miniature hurricane to sweep up the trash that was littered everywhere then laid it down in front of me, indicating with with a tip of her head and a spat ember that it was for me to burn. I lit the pile of garbage with a Sacred Fire and watched as it was reduced to a mere tiny pile of ashes in seconds. Just another example of my ample horizon of perfected skills.

Arceus huffed somewhere to my left, lightly nudging her unconscious council to the side of the room before turning to my counterpart.

“Please get several pallets of Ibuprofen and a pool of fresh water please Lugia. We are going to have to have a lot of problems to deal with tomorrow. "

Lugia snorted from her place on the council seats, shifting her slouch to a slightly worse one, even though that didn't seem possible, and said:

"And by problems, you really mean idiot gods."

Arceus looked conflicted in responding, so I decided to in her stead.

"Perhaps she did imply that Lugia, but she was simply too nice to say it and kept it to herself like a someone normal ."

Lugia threw a deeply murderous glare my way, ruffling her feathers in what could only be seen as a challenge. I responded in kind; spreading my wings and displaying my luminous plumage in a clear threat display with a clack of my talons against the tile.

Arceus transported into our line of sight in a hurry with a disorientingly intense flash of gold light.

"Don't you both think that we already have enough to deal with?"

"Yes, she's my responsibility, I have to deal with her."

"And you are also her responsibility, and you are both mine- and I say this is over."

Lugia and I both huffed in sync, looking at some far points on the walls as Arceus glared and I thought to myself, "this isn't over if  I have anything to say about it".

Several tiring hours later, we finally finished cleaning the meeting hall and nothing was left from the previous disaster besides scattered unconscious legendaries who were slumped over the jury seats and floor like rag dolls and all of the nightmare-inducing memories I had accrued over the experience. What they had been doing with most of the objects and refuse we found I did not want to know.

Dialga had since released his hold over the Beat of Time and it now flowed freely everywhere in the Hall. The pallets of medication that Lugia had transported in from the High Goddess’s stash of medical items lay near Arceus's podium and several kiddie pools of cool, clean water from Lake Acuity were down near the door waiting to be ingested by the fools currently scattered. Lugia slid unceremoniously to the now shining floor with an exhausted grunt, I glared at her but she outright ignored me. I stormed over to her despite my fatigue and for one of the few times in my life, glowered down at the slouching moon goddess.

"Stand up straight!", I said at her, impatient, "I can't have my counterpart being a lackadaisical bag of bones! It ruins my untainted reputation!"

I saw her wince and heard her mutter under her breath,

"Your ' perfect ' reputation is already tainted by your massive ego and unadulterated self-absorption."

My eyes flashed open and she snickered and righted herself from the floor.

"That's right, even though you insult me you still must listen- "

She simply shuffled up into the council seats and slammed down onto her rightful spot, the smirk still clear as day on her beaming, teasing face.

I huffed and pivoted to see what the rest of the conscious council was doing. Cobalion was asleep on the floor with Jirachi on his back, his fur still in monumental disarray. Arceus and Dialga were chatting quietly up near Arceus's podium about nothing in particular besides the irresponsibility of the council. Genesect was hunkered next to Heatran talking about something unimportant compared to any of my affairs. I sighed, it was just as well to sit down and wait.

My tail feathers had almost grazed the floor when I realised I couldn't sit on a floor! No matter how clean or recently cleaned it was(especially seeing Lugia ). I straightened up and made my way towards my jury seat. Lugia was almost touching its edge, but not quite, that meant not quite a good enough reason to smack the torpid legendary upside the head. I sat down in my seat, making sure that I was in a position in which I would not ruffle or squat my tail feathers into anything resembling the state of Cobalion's fur, and I fell asleep with a deep sigh.

Quite a while later I awoke to a pained groan and several light thuds; the unconscious gods were awakening.

I felt a light pressure on my shoulder and the overwhelming salty scent of the sea struck me. Peering cautiously down, I saw that Lugia had laid her feathered head on my shoulder. Her breathing was light and indistinct against the roaring jumble of fatigued gods, but it ghosted over my shoulder and made my crimson feathers stand on end. A faint smile painted itself onto my countenance but it was quickly vanquished by a frown.

I fluttered my feathers and pulled away, letting her sapphire crested head hit the oak seat with a dull thud. I flitted down to the floor with a huff and my head held skyward. I hoped that no one had seen that. She snored lightly, how was she still asleep?! She was a heavier sleeper than Groudon !

The ground and rock types came to first, as always. Groudon sat up and rubbed his head with his gigantic, meaty claw, making irritating grating noises from the friction between his stony, knobbly, crimson scales and his sharp claws. He swore colourfully before righting himself. Then Terrakion rose from her place on the crystal floor, shaking her horned head while she stomped her thick front legs with a resounding thud. You were disappointed in her, she was usually much more intelligent than to join one of the “ gatherings ” held by the most raucous members of the council. Cobalion was going to have a time with her later on. You had no idea where Virizion or Keldeo were.

Soon enough, the entire council - except for the water types - were up, about, swearing, groaning and complaining about everything that had existed, was currently existing, or ever would exist. Groudon tottered over to me and slurred in my ear, "What is that?", pointing vaguely in the direction of the tablets of medication. I was almost tempted to lie to him, but he was currently getting his comeuppance, and that was a bit cruel, even for me.

"Ibuprofen to relieve headaches."

Without further hesitation, he stumbled over to it and tried to pry off the tightly wrapped saran wrap from the boxes with clumsy slashing motions. I gave an impatient huff I stepped over and began prying away the plastic with my beak and plucked a bottle out for him. He snatched it with a grunt, ripped off the plastic cap and downed the entire thing. I then gestured with my wing over to the nearest pool of water when he began to choke, he then chugged several mouthfuls of the liquid before settling himself on the floor next to it for later convenience. Several others started towards me and I ended up handing out the medication out like candy on Halloween night.

At this point, I doubted that the water types were going to wake up at all. They'd been laying there, senseless, for who knows how long. With a sigh, I walked over to Lugia who was still dozing soundly with her head on my jury seat. I huffed and swatted it away like a dead Ninjask with my wing. She awoke with a start then looked around in an almost comical fashion, peering out to find the culprit with wide eyes and looking like she was about to give herself whiplash. Her dagger-shooting eyes came to a stop on me, attempting to sear a hole through my head, I ignored her and sat down, but it just became too much after a bit and I returned the gaze in kind.

"What in the Distortion World did you do that for?!"

Her voice was still husky from sleep and it cracked several times, heightening to a pitch that made my ears pang. I barely managed to hold a straight face.

I made a huffing sound and turned away from her, peering out over the now diminutive stashes of headache pills, half empty pools of water and the groaning gods. I noticed a stir of mauve and lavender farther out in my field of vision, then, several seconds later, a swirl of royal blue, white, and crimson.

I heard the spatial goddess groan and watched as she gripped her head with both hand-like claws. Kyogre squeezed her golden eyes shut as tightly as she could in a vain attempt at screening out the blinding light that poured from every possible crevice in the entire hall, eventually she gave up with a sigh, realising that it was futile, then plopped straight from her hover down onto the crystalline floor to sleep. I snickered heartily as that little newbie shrimp, Manaphy, tottered around after his first Legendary party and probably his first time getting drunk.

I could practically guarantee that he wouldn't be drinking for quite some time after this jolting experience.

I removed myself from Lugia's irritating presence, stepping down from the jury seats and wondering why Arceus couldn't have given me a sensible and reasonable counterpart.

The remaining stores of pills depleted quite swiftly with the remains of the council up and about the Hall which was now teeming with noise. It was basically a cacophony of groans, complaints, swear words that would make Giratina and Darkrai blush, and thuds of people giving up and falling asleep straight on the floor.

Dirty scoundrels.

After a bit, I realised that Lugia was still giving me a dirty look every so often out of the corner of her eye. I couldn't ignore it, then went down to talk to Arceus and Dialga who were overseeing the hung-over legends to make sure they didn't do anything stupid. She wouldn't dare do something ignorant like that while two-thirds of the Original Trio was watching(It's not like Palkia would have cared -- drunk or not -- anyway).

The burning, prickling, pins-and-needles sensation that raised the feathers on the back of my neck faded as she placed her attention another poor individual or thing.

I overheard Dialga making some punishment suggestions for his twin that were seriously out of line, even for him. He looked distinctly hopeful as he spouted wild theories and fantasies of somehow making her behave like ‘a proper dragon’, as if that would ever happen. Arceus began to mutter, a warning sign if I had ever seen one, and he continued on anyways.

After a scant few minutes, even Arceus seemed to get fed up with her firstborn and quickly escaped by sidestepping into her chamber behind her pedestal and slamming the golden doors in her wake, most likely continuing with her incessant muttering. I peered over at the temporal dragon who didn't even seem a bit crestfallen at his results. I gave him a questioning look before turning away to oversee the legends.

Most of them simply sat there in their Pokémon forms, although some, such as Kyogre, Palkia, and the spirit trio had transformed into humans.

I watched as the spatial goddess righted herself from the floor and stumbled over towards her door to the right of Arceus's chamber. I watched her failing attempt at getting peace and quiet bite the dust as she was just about there and her brother stuck out his tail and she fell face first on the floor.

So that robot-esque steel type had a personality after all. I had now amassed enough evidence to prove it.

He walked away with a subdued grin on his draconic face, transformed into his human form, then opened the door to his room and stepped inside just as she righted herself from her face plant.

" What the fuck -”

She managed to slur another few choice swear words before retreating to her room. I guessed that I was now in control of the crowd of hungover Pokémon.

A position that I didn't want to be in at all.

They would always listen to one of the Original Three if they said anything, but me? No matter how perfect I was, they mostly just laughed. Even if some of them were taller than both Arceus and Palkia (very few of them were taller than Dialga) they would never dare ignore a direct order from them. Not only were at least fifty percent of them taller than me, several of them, grudgingly admitted, were stronger than me too.

I was lucky that they were all still too incapacitated to do anything that would require my intervention(although Mew and Raikou could almost definitely find a way to something stupid).

I tipped my head back to the ceiling and looked out into the spatial window. The sun was almost perfectly centred over a background of mingling violet and royal blue. It was almost midday! I guessed that we would have the meeting tomorrow, they usually took at least several hours and the longest one that I remember was one that lasted almost a whole day because of arguing between Groudon and Kyogre and also Palkia and Dialga. Arceus and Rayquaza finally managed to subdue the four of them with bodily harm. Nobody was pleased that time and the next meeting had a record low attendance. Deciding that I didn't want to stand there watching a bunch of bumbling buffoons, I flew over to my jury seat and flicked the sleeping Lugia on the side of her head.

She scowled but just as she was opening her beak-like mouth to say a stupid retort to my unexpected actions when I stated,

"Now, I have better things to do than looking after this sorry bunch of hung-over hooligans. Since you have nothing better to do with your time, than why don't you look after them! That's a great idea, don't you think?"

I flashed her a cheesy grin before I flew off, as fast as I possibly could, to the dorm-esque rooms where we all slept. I hoped that her fatigue would prevent her from reaching her top speed, or, hopefully, not let her get up at all. Disgusting, lazy thing.

I turned to the right at Arceus's pedestal and stopped at a grandiose oak door that was embedded with gold around the engravings. I transformed into my human form and stepped through it. It led into a hallway that I hadn't been in for quite some time, it seemed to have gotten longer from when I had last seen it. More spatial compression from the pink and purple dinosaur who was too childish for her own good. There were more doors for the newer legendaries at the far end where it turned to meet the balcony of the dimensional lookout. Each door was oak, but was studded or accented with something that represented the inhabitants' powers or interests. The first door was Uxie's, then Mesprit's, then Azelf's and from there, they progressed by region that the particular legend had reigned from. The Kanto legends started with Mew, then her clone, and the separate rooms for each member of the mirage trio. Then Lugia's oak door that was accented with spirals of silver and tiny faceted crystals of every shade of blue. Across from it lay my door, accented with intricate runes of gold and tiny, eloquent spectra of precious jewels. I opened it and peered around at my surroundings.

The room was done in an old-fashioned way at my request. The woodwork was intricate and the walls were done with wainscoting, gold wall paper with bronze vine patterns and a mission oak stain on the boards as well as the floor. A detailed egg-and-dart moulding bordered the cream ceiling and the floor. There was a depression on the ceiling where a bronze candle chandelier hung, the candles all lit. A canopy bed with a plush scarlet comforter lay in the corner furthest from the door accompanied by a bedside table that had a lace doily and a bronze oil lamp. An oak Davenport desk lay in the corner the furthest from the bed and a neat stack of yellowed papers from who-knows-when and a closed ink pot with an Altaria feather quill adorned its surface.

I shut the door with a flick of my wrist and threw myself down onto the lush bed, letting myself sink into the mattress. From the corner of my eye, I peered at the maple grandfather clock that sat diligently in the corner of the room, counting away the seconds. It was synchronised with the main clock which lay in Dialga's room and I wondered when he had set the alarm for the next morning. Probably around six or seven o'clock in the morning just in case he and his counterpart got into another ceaseless feud.

I peeled off my uchikake and lay it on the edge of my bed along with my kimono, geta, tabi, obi, and headdress. I threw up the covers and buried myself under the silk blankets before dozing off and hoping the alarm wouldn't ever sound.

That little sneaky bastard! He pawned this sucky job off on me! I’m the only sober person here now!

I wonder if they have any more beer . . .

Shaking my head, I might as well keep an eye on them, otherwise the counterparts are going to start a world war over a stubbed toe/flipper/whatever. They’re pretty stupid with that stuff after all, any excuse to fight was a good one when you were drunk.

After a couple of minutes looking over the group of drunk failures, I’ve decided that they aren’t in any immediate danger of a revolt and decide to relive my drunk memories. (ahh, good times)

I recall the time me, Zekrom, Palkia, Groudon, Raikou, Deoxys, Thundurus and several others went to the Sevii glitch isle 24 through a spacial distortion only accessible by the Goddess of Space herself, as such, Arceus or one of the stricter legends couldn’t ruin our drunken fun. Of course, Kia had to be a water type so she got super drunk in record time, then we couldn’t get home! Stuck on a glitchy island with no way out. Sometimes, the ground would get all screwy and it would show a blackish empty space that we jumped over. It was like leap Politoad or something. We also dropped beer bottles down there and came to the conclusion that it went on forever. As water types have a high concentration of water in their veins, Kia took forever clearing the alcohol out of her system and we were stuck there for a good two days at least. Never again. Never again.

I also remember not-so-long-ago when I used to get really depressed about the near-suicide of several trainer Pokémon and started to drink a lot. Too much apparently because Ho-oh found out pretty damn quick and went to take away all of my alcohol. He had a hard time trying to separate me from my beer, that’s for sure. I didn’t go down without a fight, that’s even surer. But he got me out of it anyway, kept a close eye on me for quite some time, at least a year, he’d come every couple of days to check my fridge and make sure that I didn’t smell like liquor or beer. Why would he care anyways?! He never cared anyway, I suspect Arceus’s intervention. But still, unless the definition of cared had changed to be ‘Delivery of minor to major bodily harm to a well known person as well as frequent insults’, he sure as the Distortion World didn’t give half a shit. And still didn’t as far as my knowledge went.

Manaphy breaks me out of my reverie by poking my right wing with a fervor. I do like the little shrimp, no matter how many times Kyogre says that he’s trying to usurp her a Ruler of the Seas. Whatever. He’d be eaten by a Sharpedo within the first week.

“Yeah.”

“Hey, Lugy? I need a pill- please.”

I’m a bit shocked for a second then I realize that he means a Tylenol, and not meth or something.

I snort, “ There should be some down there.” I point to the mess of opened pill bottles and saran wrap were several Legendaries were parked downing the drug and hoping for relief.

“But there isn't anything down there’!”

Frowning, I turn around and walk down to see what the little bugger speaks of.

Indeed, there is nothing there except garbage.

“Well, I guess you’re gonna have to learn your lesson now.”

He makes a grumbling sound, but says nothing. Good, one case solved . I won’t have to deal with a drunk Manaphy for a long time now. Maybe forever. After this jarring experience, he probably won’t be drunk for quite some time. And I won’t have to deal with that drunken accent of his, or did he speak like that all of the time? I don’t know. Never spoke to him much. Is it even a him?!

I wonder where that over grown Pidgey is? Probably being a massive hypocrite and going to sleep or fixing his hair. It’s not like he does much else. I’ll get the bastard back sometime though. Revenge on him is as sweet as Mesprit’s cooking. (Which is completely amazing by the way)

No one seems in a really bothersome mood today, which is good. Probably drowning in their own stupidity and self-hatred for drinking too much. I’ve been to these parties before, I know the self-loathing when it’s all said and done. You’re on a hangover that makes it feel like Groudon is using you brain as a bongo and it goes on for days.

I can practically guarantee that it was a combination of Giratina, Palkia and Azelf who created this shit storm. Arceus is going to kill whoever started it, bring them back then kill them another ten times before they hit the ground and let their corpses be eaten by a group of rabid Mandibuz. More stupidity, it seems like even the most powerful are infected with the corruptive disease sometimes. I peer down at said Reaper of Stained Souls from Arceus’s platform, he’s lying on the crystalline floor like the majority of people but is lucky enough to have a pair of curtain-like wings to shade his eyes from the holy light that seems to pour from every conceivable angle in this place. I watch as he gets up and messily slashes a portal to his own world, the floor is clean enough to act as a mirror. He recklessly tosses himself in it and it seals itself up. The others are too occupied with their overwhelming self-pity to notice.

A sound from behind me makes me spin around, an instinct from all of the times Ho-oh used to sneak up on me when we were just little hatchlings.

Arceus stood there, the pinnacle of perfect and awesome, no matter how much Ho-oh bantered that it was his title. Yeah, the overgrown rainbow Pidgey couldn’t beat the supreme and omnipotent Goddess of Life and existence itself. At least he was smart enough to keep his little quips about it between himself and me.

Her fur is white, but not the silverish white that I have, it’s a pure, blinding white, it’s smooth and there isn’t a strand out of place. The wheel around her stomach, even though gold is a weaker metal, seems indestructible. No matter how many attacks all of her kids throw at it, not a dent nor scratch mar it’s surface. Her wavy mane is striped with charcoal and ebony running through it, as is her tail. Her pointed hooves are likewise fashioned with gold.

She smiles up at me, which I always find weird. Shouldn’t a supreme Goddess be taller than her subjects? Whatever, she could still kick anyone’s ass to the Distortion World and back without batting an eyelash.

“Lugia, how is your stay at Navel Rock?”

“It’s alright, it certainly isn't the Whirl Islands, that's for sure.”

“Of course. Besides that, I wish for you to go and check up on the Whirl Islands. Even though I do like the humans and admire their adventurous and odd spirit, you must keep them from inhabiting your home.”

“I doubt that they’d inhabit that barren wasteland.”

“Do not doubt the stubbornness of the Pokémon trainer humans, Lugia, that just might be your downfall. Though arrogance is normally Ho-oh’s type of thing, is it not?”

“Of course, I’ll leave right away.”

“Thank-you Lugia.”

No matter how tired your muscles are, no matter how much you want to fall asleep on the floor, you always comply instantly to Arceus. Brownie points are always good to have with her.

I’m flying away as fast as I can so I don’t get called back to take care of the drunk failures. My curiosity eventually trumps my want to escape and I’m turning around to see Arceus practically dragging her first-born son out of his room to take care of them while she does other things.

Suck it you fat, blue, Rapidash! Karma's a bitch!

I know how to get to the Whirl islands from Spear Pillar and back pretty well, no matter what Ho-oh says. Almost a billion years of indistinct commute kinda makes you remember, no matter how stone-headed you are with directions.

I pass over the place where Ho-oh and I always meet up to fly the rest of the distance to the hall. We originally did it because I had a hard time finding the place, but even after I knew the way like the back of my wing neither of us had the heart to go our separate ways even though we didn’t say anything during our flights, we just kept on flying together.

A gentle updraft lets me rest my aching wings and just drift for a while, sighing as the tension of a hard, fast flight lifts itself from my wings. Soon, whirlpools appear sporadically, then every couple hundred feet, then every ten, until there’s a big clod of them surrounding a meagerly spaced, pitifully small cluster of islands that I call home.

I land seamlessly, barely even knocking up any dust that would coat my feathers and make Ho-oh angry again. I don’t really feel like washing myself for a bit, as it's a waste of time, me going from the salt water to land to salt water, there's always going to be some dirt stuck to me, something that great overgrown Torchic would never be able to understand. Not only that but the oils from my skin keep my feathers healthy and waterproof so I don’t get waterlogged and weigh a literal ton every time I swim. Let's see that living rainbow brat try to swim in a kiddie pool, let alone the ocean around the Whirl Islands.

Peering into the care merits a response of a trainer yelling brisk orders at their Pokémon to attack the cave’s regular inhabitants. I hiss, then decide to go in the back way, from an underwater cave.

I feel like fucking Batman or something. I’m not even kidding. Sneaking in the back of a cave, around an some trainer(who has a soul that’s probably the colour of Giratina’s scales).

I shear the water with my hydrodynamic form, swirling to gain speed as I sink closer to the entrance which is barely visible in the waning light several thousand feet under the sea. The entrance is built directly into an almost completely horizontal wall of rock that comprises the support to one of the smaller islands. After a few feet inside the jet black cave, it goes almost directly vertical, the walls are smooth, circular and uniform. I can see the surface as the vertical tube tips a bit to the side and I spring out of the water and into the secret room behind the waterfall.

The roaring of tumbling liquid makes me snap out of the reverie induced by swimming in the chilling oceans that I call home. I can’t hear anything, even if I wanted to, and the rushing water is about as opaque as mercury. I peep my head out through the curtain of salty water and into my home. The debris that I left there still cluster the floor, each pile from a different battle that stands out like a sore thumb in my mind when I look hesitantly at each one. Chunks are missing from the walls, floor and ceiling, most of them caused by my own attacks, but a few caused by particularly powerful Pokémon. The rock is still the same greyish-blue that Ho-oh can’t stand and is always trying to get Groudon to change. But I like it, the blue calms me down when the battles end, no matter how badly they end. I’ll just stare at the wall until all of the details and shadows meld away and my vision is a plain slate of dull blue that comprises all of my thoughts and feelings, driving away the negative thoughts. It drives out the negative and replaces it with blue. Better than suicidal thoughts I guess.

Ho-oh also keeps bugging me that it smells of mold and mildew here and that he worries for my respiratory health, although I don’t smell anything. Maybe you just get used to certain smells when you live with them daily.

The bells are still there, dilapidated and covered with patches of barnacles and rust that won’t come off no mater how many Hydro Pumps I throw at it. I severely doubt their ability to ring now.

Through the lookout a floor up, I see a flash of colours and duck my head back into the cavern. It has to be the trainer, the guard doesn’t wear any bright colours, he just wears white, and two shades of blue in a few places. He’s almost here, having got past the guard with one of my feathers and the Tidal Bell. I wonder what kind of Pokémon he or she has, they’re definitely all completely evolved, overly powerful for any normal Pokémon and they usually have at least one dragon type. Almost all dragons are known for being ruthless and merciless. Most likely a fire type as well.

After several minutes of thinking, the trainer peeps it’s head into the cavern, looking around in a comical fashion. I figure out that it is actually a she who has long, sleek, scratch that, it’s really frizzy. It looks like a dried-up bush. Her jeans are scuffed up around the bottom and the knees and she wears a pair of navy sneakers. Her tee-shirt is worn a bit as well and has some old band on it that some of my friends listen to on the front, the image peeling away. Her skin is a pasty white, as if she had never seen the sun a day in her life. She’s really unassuming, barely five feet in height and a bit fat. Four regular Pokéballs, one Great ball and one Ultra ball are hooked onto the leather belt that resides on her waist.

She shuffles around for a bit, seeming lost, before she walks up to the waterfall and runs right through it as if it didn’t bother her at all. Quite a feat for a such a little mite. I watch as she lands perfectly, but fucks it up big time, and trips and falls flat on her face in the greyish mud. I snort, but don’t move as she rights herself and gets the mud out of her eyes. She probably only got past the guard by telling him she had a research project for her mandatory grade 6 Legendary Studies class. Her hair is plastered in a mop-like clod, caked with mud, on her face. Her shirt and pants are covered as well.

She stares up at me with huge eyes that creep me out a bit. She’s odd. I watch as the little girl frowns at my laughter and pulls the first Pokéball off of her belt and holds it up to me and asks me for a battle. Her little squeaky voice cracks a bit and she’s as quiet as a mouse. I laugh at her a bit and the little tyke seems pissed off. Oohhh, I’m so scared. I like her spunk though. She just stands there, staring at me. Okay, I’ve had enough of this kid already, spunk or not. Then I roar as loud as I can.

She lands out in the main area after being thrown about fifty feet. She stands up and her hair is stuck straight back, it reminds me of that retarded and pointless extension on the back of Dialga’s head.

She stares at me like a cornered animal before turning and running as fast as I’ve ever seen a human run back to the entrance hall, tears flowing from her face.

As she runs, two small, silver, shining object tumble from her knapsack and fall to the ground. A gentle ringing echoes out, fading with her footsteps.

I think about leaving the objects there, to rot and become part of the mess that always seems to be here, but the sound it made is so familiar.

I transform into my human form, and let the intense sense of vertigo dissipate before I examine the objects.

I pick up the bell first, and in an instant I recognize it. The Tidal Bell. So she was one of the chosen ones. My Chosen ones. The other object comes as no big surprise after seeing the first, one of my feathers, or, as the humans call them, ‘the Silver Feathers’. She obviously worked hard to earn both as you had to find the feather yourself and once you had a “Silver Feather” battle with th Kimono Girls, who were notoriously strong, beat them all consecutively, then answer a test for them to loan you the Tidal Bell. They would probably have her hanged for losing the sacred object.

I bite my lip, then decide to return it.

I peer down at the feather that lays in my hand. It’s worn and some of the fibers are missing. The silver chain that it’s attached to is tarnished with great age. The silvern luster that all of my feathers have is faded and It’s speckled with mud. It’s in a state of monumental disarray. I feel bad for her. It’s obviously a family heirloom, an old one at that. Judging from the Byzantine chain, she probably has heritage from the Shamouti islands where me and my trio are worshiped like Arceus and the Creation Trio are in Sinnoh and most everywhere else.

I frown a bit, lay the necklace and bell on a nearby rock, and transform into my Pokémon form. I peer down at my form, the feathers on my wing tips look long, smooth and clean. Not ruffled like the ones on the bottom of my tail. I raise my wing, brace myself, and pluck out the longest feather before returning to my human form.

The feather is a bit larger than my human form’s hand, and is a pure white until the tips fade into a glittering silver.

I nod to myself, a self-reassuring gesture. I pick up all of the items that I had laid on the rock and bound away towards where she left. The uchikake is a bit restricting, but I still manage to go at a decent speed. I catch up to her when she takes a break just before the entrance. She’s bent over a rock, panting for air. The guard gasps at my unexpected and sudden appearance. His mouth forming an amusing ‘O’ shape before he bows, his head grazing the floor, saying,

“Mistress Lugia, I am honored.”

I bow lightly back and he watches me with awe.

The girl stands up straight, her back to me, before pivoting and backing away with the same frightened face. I put on what I hoped to be an assuring and gentle smile before advancing towards her, my geta clacking on the stone. I was never good with humans. She backs into a wall, clasps her eyes shut, and turns her head from me as if she doesn’t want to watch her own supposed demise. I simply tap her on the shoulder and hold out the objects in one hand. The feathers and bell glint in the meager light that radiates from the scarcely placed torches on the wall. She stops appearing afraid and just stares incredulously at my attire, her eyes hilariously gigantic. I grab her hand and easily overcome her resistance, turn it palm-up, and drop the feather, necklace and Tidal Bell into it. She looks at the objects in her hand before returning her gaze to me. I hug her gently, but briskly before I say,

“I’ll battle you when you are ready, young one. That time will not be far off. I can tell.”

She smiles like a young child given an abundance of candy, I ruffle her hair before I run out the main entrance, transform back to my Pokémon form, and launch into the air. She rushes outside with the guard and watch me disappear off towards the Sinnoh region. I leave with a smile seemingly permanently plastered onto my face and a bubbly feeling in the pit of my stomach. I can’t wait to see that trainer again, an actually nice trainer, for me! Not for that fat rainbow Pidgey! I perform an aileron roll which switches into a barrel roll and I dip into the ocean. The chilly water that resides closer to Sinnoh assaults me but I stay underneath the waves and watch as the local inhabitants stare in awe and rush of to tell the others that one of their patron goddesses is swimming nearby. I continued on, falling into a daze about halfway there. The ocean tides directing me to where I want to go.

Eventually, the ocean becomes rough and I jolt out of my day dream. I slip out of the ocean’s embrace and into the damp air. There are twenty foot, white-capped waves everywhere and freezing rain pelts from the black, pregnant cloud cover that periodically flashes with lightning. The only way the ocean would get like this is,
a) Arceus is in another fight with her children / her first two children getting in a big-ass fight or
b) Kyogre is getting in another major fight with Groudon.

Either way, some big shit is going down somewhere.

Land, at this point, is just an indistinct black splotch on the horizon and I speed towards it with desperation. I don’t know exactly how long I’ve spent at the Whirl islands, but according to the setting sun, it’s been quite a while since I’ve left. I don’t want to be out here, in the rain with thunder echoing out everywhere. I’m not an idiot like Ho-oh likes to call me. I’d rather be in a building with Groudon and Kyogre fighting that getting electrocuted by thunder. Personal preference I guess.

The distinction between the blotch of land that is Sinnoh and the rest of my surroundings becomes hazy with a wall of fog. The collection of water particles in the air makes my feathers laden with chilled liquid, that, at this altitude, freezes solid in a matter of seconds. Just great. I fly faster until the fog breaks over a lower ridge of Mount Coronet, kind of near to Spear Pillar.

No raging High Goddesses and Gods wage war here so I can safely and happily assume that it’s just Kyogre getting pissed from another stupid insult from the crimson Barney.

I forgo the stairway and fly up, shake myself off, and shove open the door. The first thing I see is a cluster of Pokémon that are scattering and a pissed looking Arceus and Dialga standing in between a steaming Groudon and Kyogre. Well, I escaped the worst of it, thankfully. I sort-of creep my way around the four Pokémon, avoiding their gazes and keeping my head low. Not getting involved in that mess.

I can hear Arceus huff as I’m almost to the dorms, saying

“Dialga, I’m sure you can handle this little skirmish, yes?”

He nods his head, slow and reluctant as if dunked in cold molasses, and Arceus steps towards me. I straighten up a little bit but keep my head low in a bow.

“Lugia, there is no need of that with me, you know that. So, how did it go?”

“It went pretty good nothings’ changed, I met a trainer but I didn’t fight her. I told her that I’d maybe fight her later. But shes a good-hearted trainer Arceus, not Ho-oh ‘s level of good but still -”

Arceus just smiles knowingly. She nods and dismisses me.

I transform into my human form and practically trot towards my room. Everyone else has dispersed around the hall, some into their rooms, some just chatting or doing nothing in general. I swing open the door with vigor, and skip down the hall. My door has intricate ocean like swirls, twists and ripples of silver along with jewels of every possible shade of blue. I don’t skip a beat and open the door with a flick of my psychic powers and throw myself onto the plush silk comforter that covers my bed. My room is very similar to Ho-oh’s in regards of it’s design, but not it’s colour scheme. Old fashioned is a good way to summarize it. A window uses one of Palkia’s spacial portals to make it look out over a part of the sea near the Whirl Islands. Swags and Jabot curtains made with a shimmering navy material identical to the one that comprise my comforter and several other things. All of the wood in the room is unstained and is birch and carved with intricate swirls reminiscent of the ocean. The floor is made of the same birch wood except that in the middle there is a patch of plush navy carpet that I often sit down on to meditate.

I slip off my geta and tabi before sliding down to rest on the carpet. Meditating, I find, is more energy-replenishing than sleep. I watch as a blue tinted aura flits across my entire body before I let myself fall into the trance.

The ringing from the clock is sharp and makes me jolt from the warm sheets of the bed and glare malignantly at the accursed clock as it rings out six times, each chime becoming increasingly infuriating. The pendulum that hangs in the glass chamber at the bottom of the clock swings in perfect timing with the dings of the clock, and I doubt Dialga would have it any other way.

Swinging out of bed, I realize that I had left my clothing in a crumpled heap at the foot of the bed, now completely guaranteed to be creased with wrinkles. Muttering, I grab the silk cloth from the floor and lay it on the bed before grabbing a new set of attire from the closet. The kimono is much more intricate and eloquent than the one that I had worn under my uchikake the day before, so I decide that I could go without the restricting garment. The scarlet kimono’s sleeves graze the floor once I slip it on, left over right, and the obi is white, accented with a gold cord that forms into the grandiose bow whose ends trail behind me. My headdress is slightly different, being mostly gold with jewels and lacking any feathers. I pull on the same geta but grab another pair of tabi that match the colour scheme of today's wardrobe.

I hold the headdress in my hands as I step into the attached bathroom. Peering into the sleek mirror merits a view of the revolting state of my hair. Hissing in anger, I snatch a hair rake from a nearby drawer and comb out all of the knots before applying a thick gel, waiting for it to set and then spraying liberally with a shine spray made from Enigma and Starf berry extracts. When my hair looks at least mediocre after at least ten or so minutes of arduous coiffing and teasing I decide to do a final few tweaks with my wardrobe before I deem myself fit for public viewing.

In the room across from mine, deep snores still radiate from it’s still slumbering inhabitant. Arceus will just send me back in here to retrieve Lugia if I don’t come out with her so I hesitantly swing open the silver and sapphire encrusted door and step into the room.

The room is strangely similar to mine, bar the colour scheme. However, here is also a beautiful window not present in mine, overlooking a sunrise-tinted sea about the Whirl Islands which makes a pang of jealousy arise in my chest. Obviously her friend Palkia’s handiwork. She would scoff at anything I asked her to do, and she had every right to, unfortunately. Her bed is uninhabited, which makes me confused for a moment before I see a lock of her sleek, silvern hair from behind the bed’s front leg.

I walk over a plush carpet to see her lying half spread out over the birch-wood floor and half over the navy rug. She looks more vulnerable in sleep than I’ve ever seen her, legs slung akimbo and elegant hands tucked beneath her head. She wears a huge silken nightgown that she’s practically swimming in. It’s a light, gentle hue of blue. Her chest rises and falls in even intervals, never hitching, and I take a well deserved moment to stop and admire her while the sullen, hostile mask she always wears around me is absent, letting me see her in the face she uses while she’s not filled with a furious, simmering anger pointed squarely at me. It’s quite a difference. it works well on her, anger never really looked good on her, it looks better on me, or Groudon, per say. There are no disapproving lines etched into her face, her mouth isn’t a crescent but an almost completely straight line, tipped minutely up at the ends.

I-

I think it looks good on her.

In a second, I jolt back, realizing what I’m doing. She is who she is. And she is not that vulnerable little thing curled up on the floor. I nudge her with the stilt part of my geta underneath her rib cage, to which I am only honored with a half-response of a grunt. So I bend down, scowling, and shake her vigorously until she reaches her hands up and grips my neck in a vice.

She actually makes some sort of growling-hissing noise so I drop her like last years’ fashion before I make my way out of her room saying,

“Hurry up you torpid ne’er do well.”

I slammed the door and leaned against it as if to keep her from escaping the confines of her room until she gets ready up to a point where it can be approved by my impeccable standards.

It only takes a few minutes of silence to make me grow impatient. She probably just laid herself back down on the rug and fell asleep again, uncaring of me waiting for her and therefore risking Arceus’s retribution. I wait another few, slow minutes before I give up and barge into her room. Besides, the jewels embedded into her door are making my back ache.

She’s standing there, in front of a full length mirror that hangs on the back of the washroom door. Her plain baby blue kimono for underneath her uchikake is on, and several other kimonos and uchikakes lay spread out over her bed. She is obviously trying to fix her hair and place two pins in it to get it to stay in a bun high atop her head. As I approach, grinning ear-to-ear, she grows even more flustered as she sees me, looking almost as if she is trying to stab the pins into the messy ball of hair. I laugh at her misfortune and shake my head. She quickly pastes a defensive look onto her countenance, which only makes me grin more.

“You look like you need a bit of help, hmm?”

She says nothing but folds her arms with a severely exaggerated huff.

I frown at her attire, she won’t match me if she wears an uchikake, besides the fact that it will surely not be comfortable wearing two heavy layers of clothing while bantering in a crowded room for hours on end. Treading carefully into a nearby doorway, into her restroom, I pull open a drawer and take with me a large plastic clip to hold her hair while I deal with her attire. I run my fingers through her silver-and-white hair to remove the largest knots before I twist it around my fingers and pin it with the clamp-like buckle. I swing around to the bed and pull off the most intricate kimono that she has. It looks as if it’s never been worn, which it probably hasn’t. There are a mix of royal blue flowers and Swanna on a background of rippling silver with a navy obi. The obi’s bow will drag at least several feet behind her. The intricate headdress that lays near her feet will match fairly well. I slip off the simple under-kimono that she’s wearing, She still has her chest binding and, unsurprisingly, a pair of biker shorts on to cover her as I drape the new one over her shoulders. I take the thin belt from it’s sleeve and tie it around her torso, over the garment before I wrap the obi over it, then secure it.

I take in her appearance. She looks extremely uncomfortable, twisting to peer at the kimono with a critical gaze. I begin to frown as well. Her simple, eloquent features and nature make the dress stand out from her form, making her appear even more unnatural and stuffy than the uchikake. Shaking my head, I tell her to stand still while I remove it and then I place it back on the bed.

Underneath several other detailed and intricate kimonos lay a simplistic, elegant and streamlined kimono in a calming shade of blue. At the bottom there are wavy lines, like the depressions on a sandbar or white-capped waves. It startles me for a moment, when I lift it, the blues of the fabric grow deeper and lighter and form sea-greens, hauntingly reminiscent of the ocean.

I don’t give her a chance to say anything before I’m tugging it over her arms, tightening the belt and fastening the obi with quick fingers.

She turns to peer at me for my opinion, and as she has stated before, she has no taste in clothing, which is glaringly true with some of the horrid things that I’ve seen her wear. I nod lightly in approval which is enough for her. She only takes a quick look in the mirror, pivoting back on to see the bow and then a twirl to watch the fabric shimmer and change. While I watch her, I wonder what I should do with that silver mop of her’s. Curling it would prove to be too difficult, and it would take forever seeing as the tips graze the tops of her thighs, and we don't have much time considering that were are expected to be there an hour after our clock's sounds and it's already been a half-hour.

After pondering for a moment, I pivot, stalking back to my room to retrieve the shine spray, some de-frizz solution and a cylindrical brush along with a pack of bobby pins. Then I remove the buckle with a plink and toss it in the general direction of her bed. She frowns at the odd-smelling goop that I’m spreading through her hair as she drums a tattoo on the door frame but doesn’t stop me. The brush goes through her hair without a single hitch so I twist two pieces of hair on each side of her head, gather them at the back with a bobby pin, then braid each of them, bringing the ends up to attach to the start of the braid with several more pins, forming a loop. I spray a bit of the shine spray, making her cough and sputter then I grab her a pair of matching geta and tabi from her closet. The smooth wood of the geta is gilt with silver and it shimmers as she slips them on sans complaint, then drags me from her room. She slams the door as we tread through the deserted hallway.

I open my mouth to begin complaining about her lack of makeup but she hisses lightly at me as soon as she sees my jaw lower. She probably would slap me if she knew that there would be some form of retribution from Arceus, but then again, she’ll probably do it after the meeting, when even Arceus is too worn out and ruffled to care about much of anything, bar the apocalypse or resetting the world.

She brazenly flashes her middle finger at my face before stalking down the hall, bent minutely at the waist and a faint rouge flush spread over her pronounced cheek bones. Her fists are clenched, swinging like pendulums at her side, her knuckles blanched with the tightness. Being uncouth in response as I'd like to isn’t an option, so I watch her almost comical reaction as she flings the door open with a slam and stomps her shoes with a wooden clack, only to find the exterior room calm with a distinct lack of arguments, only dignified and reasonable statements whose echos fade slowly as everyone turn their heads to stare incredulously at me.

It’s quite frightening, to be honest.

She blushes even more, the light rose tinge that dusted her cheeks turns to a full-blown scarlet wash as the entire room silences, but she manages to keep her head high and walks to her seat. I do the same, unconsciously attempting to reconstruct and reenact her graceful steps, Grace under pressure, chanting my mantra, Grace under pressure.

The entire council is staring at me with their eyes in the entire spectrum of colours. The red ones of the four highest pierce the most and I can see the slight smirk on the goddess of space’s face as I walk unsuccessfully trying to keep a blush from flooding my cheeks.

The situation took a dive straight into the depths of the uncanny valley -- I’d never seen something which simultaneously defied so many conventions for me. For example, Groudon and Kyogre sat across from each other, and even though they were easily within range for a Hydro Pump, Rock Blast, or even just their fists nothing was being fired!

My seat, one of the few left empty, was in between Palkia and Kyogre. The whale looked distinctly nonplussed that I had interrupted her conversation with Groudon, but Palkia was smirking at me, spreading her fingers on the white marble table top while she tugged my chair out with the spiked silver heel of her boot.

As I moved towards the table, I could see Ho-oh out of the corner of my eye, looking like he was being frog-marched to his seat despite him walking alone. His body jerked, every sudden movement emphasised by the flowing robes he wore. He was just as disturbed as I was.

Palkia gave me a shit-eating grin, and even Dialga across from her looked to be in a distinctly pleased mood. The only reassuring thing that had occurred was that the calm-appearing ‘discussion’ between Kyogre and Groudon was actually a smack-talking fest with their sneers reaching far beyond their eyes and into their entire bodies as they raised themselves threateningly from their seats to stare one another in the eye with an intensity that could have set damp rocks alight.

There it was.

Now that I noticed it, there was a similar state in many of the slices of the conversations I could hear from down the table. It seemed to be mostly trash-talking accompanied by laser-eyes. Which was reassuring, but only to a certain extent.

There people talking shit, but no one was getting hit.

Even more worrying was Palkia’s raised eyebrows and continued grinning. Nothing good ever came of that particular expression. She also seemed to be kicking her counterpart underneath the table with those nasty heels of her’s if the shuffling of her robe every so often said anything. But playing footsie was not throwing a Spacial Rend at him, and he simply scooted his chair out of range with that knowing smile plastered on his face.

As more and more people began to look like they were going to begin the hitting I was looking forward to seeing, and as Ho-oh began to look more and more disturbed from his seat across from mine, Arceus finally spoke:

“Lugia, Ho-oh-”

The fact that the shit-talking didn’t stop when Arceus began talking was telling, however, the High Goddess quickly put a stop to it with a smash of her mallet against her podium. The shit-talking which was fast becoming shit-shouting vanished and everyone who was up dropped back into their seats.

"Ahem, Lugia, Ho-oh, Manaphy, Hoopa, Giratina, and others who have just arrived-

When did the others even get here?

“-would you please get the details of the practice sessions from your neighbours? Alright then, the first matter of business is the heatwave and drought in lower Sinnoh and the other in upper Johto which is affecting agriculture and mortal-”

I turned my head to Palkia, questioning, who was staring at me expectantly, her grin diminished so as not to arouse suspicion from her mother but definitely still present. Through a telepathic link, I asked:

"What’s your mom even talking about? We all know how these practice sessions go. I train my subordinates until she says stop -- that’s how it’s always been.”

Her rich voice flowed about in my head as she spoke:

"Mom’s super pissed, I don’t think you understand. Really I don’t think you- or anyone who’s not her child- even can. You don’t have the context for it. I haven’t seen her this furious since the last time Giratina went berserk at her, and that was back before you were even created.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I thought she was going to kill us last night, to be honest. Dialga and I got in a fight- like wow , that never happens, right? And that’s essentially what we told her when she asked what we were doing and started yelling at us. Azelf, Mesprit, and Uxie got in a little row too -- which is a bit unusual, but nothing to be concerned over. She was furious, of course. As always, she seemed like she was going to just separate us, have a little yell about doing this with ‘our other half’ or whatever, then let us go. She was getting to the reprimanding part when Giratina barged in and started screeching at her. She completely broke down.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, fuck, all of us were scared shitless, even Dialga. She was done. With the fighting, with us, all of it. I mean, I can’t really blame her either- it’s been what, ten billion years-”

“Ten billion, really ‽”

“Okay, maybe it was nine. Anyways-”

It was almost fourteen billion years.

“Giratina just screamed ‘well maybe if you’d actually let us get it out of our systems for once, then we’d be alright! We can’t help this- we’re all kind of opposing forces you know!’ Mom said ‘well maybe I just don’t want to see my children fighting .’”

“...Damn.”

“Yeah, there’s really nothing I can say to that.”

That look on her face was distressing. It didn’t belong on the face that usually had joy enough to share with everyone.

“I do understand, to an extent. Even though the mirages are just my charges, and not my kids, I raised them, and watching them fight each other when they’re all parts of the same whole is, well- it’s difficult and it’s painful. Perhaps you can’t understand because you don’t have any charges- couldn’t handle it-”

“Oh shut up you great overgrown bird-”

“Says the fat lizard-”

“Oh, why you-”

Palkia nailed me under the table with the heel of her boot, and I grunted as I prepared to return it, but Arceus’s spoke before I could begin my retaliation.

“Lugia? Is there something wrong?”

Palkia tipped her head away from her mother and gave me a sly smile.

I said:“No Arceus.”

She gave me a knowing and suspicious look, one of her eyebrows quirked into her hairline, hand on hip, and I could even hear the clacking that meant she was tapping her foot on the ground. Man, you just could not deceive that woman!

“Well, then, just to be sure , I will recap. You are to journey to upper Johto along with Kyogre to seed some rain storms there to relieve the drought and to redirect the warm air currents currently affecting the area. I expect you both to be left by sunrise tomorrow.”

“Yes, Arceus.”

“Alright then, Palkia, as I know that you were not listening either, you are to do similar work in lower Sinnoh, mostly in the Sunnyshore region where the heatwave is most severe.”

“Yes, mom.”

Arceus rubbed at her eyes exasperatedly, then turned to instructing several others on some major and minor events that appearances were scheduled for.

“Ho-oh, Solgaleo, Moltres, Entei, Victini -- you will all be visiting the Hearthome temple for the Summer Solstice, then journeying to meet with Lugia, Kyogre, and Palkia at noon for the passing of the season’s torch at Ecruteak city.”

Dialga spoke as he drummed his fingers on his crossed arms.

“I presume that I will be presiding this year?”

“Of course.”

“Yes, sometimes the mortals do have odd last-minute requests and I’d rather be sure this time.”

Arceus smiled at her son and then turned to face the gathered crowd. As she did, I heard Palkia’s voice drop into my mind.

“Favouritism~”

I snorted, Arceus loved all of her children equally, even if she did appreciate the lessened amount of trouble coming from Dialga and Uxie.

“However,”  she continued, “we’ll see who’s the favourite when I beat his fat blue face into the ground.”

“If you start it, he’ll still be the favourite, Palkia- you know this.”

I rolled my eyes as she pouted and glared.

“But mom allowed this one!”

“Yeah, okay, whatever.”

I kicked her underneath the table with a snort, she was trying to justify another fight. Of course. She gave me a light shove in reply.

“Really, though! I promise !”

I gave her a look that said exactly how much I believed the lies coming out of her mouth.

“I thought dragons were supposed to be better at deception than this.”

“Har-de-har. All seriousness now, she did say this, it’s what she wanted you to talk to the others about because you came in late…”

A return of the shit-eating grin prompted another under-the-table jab from me.

“We are to have our regular practice on the normal date, and then the day after, or was it the day before -- anyways -- all the duos and trios known to cause a ruckus get to have a fight in the hall! Giratina apparently justified it well enough to mom, somehow. I’m certainly not complaining.”

I would have to ask someone else after the meeting for the specific(and for confirmation).

“Are we still having our post-meeting gathering?”, I asked.

“As far as I know. As long as Giratina doesn’t join in, he’s too damn good at poker for my tastes.”

“Quite the poker face.”

“Tell me about it.”