Chapter 3: Enemies

It was dark as far as the eye could see, save for the Typhlosion who awkwardly sat beside Nero. She cleared her throat. “You… uh, your name was Nero, wasn’t it-”

“You’re very proud of yourself, aren’t you?” Nero asked, barely even trying to conceal his bitterness. “Congratulations, you’ve completely outsmarted me. I suppose it was a rookie mistake to assume that my opponent wouldn’t commit suicide mid-battle. Most people have the decency to wait until they’re alone before making their attempt, you know.”

She winced. “I… I really am sorry, but you have to understand that I had no choice.”

“Of course, and I would’ve done precisely the same thing if our roles were reversed. That doesn’t mean I can’t be upset about it.” Nero lied down on his back and stretched his paws out. “Your Successor Burst is supposed to teleport me away somewhere, correct? Where will I be ending up?”

She shook her head. “Not sure. We can only control who gets warped, not where they go. As it is, anyone nearby who is unaffiliated with both the Guild and the Syndicate will teleport to a random location in the vicinity. It’s a risky plan, but unless you get ridiculously unlucky and warp into the basement, it might work out.”

“Well, from what I’ve seen, your plan is quite terrible,” Nero said. “But who knows, maybe you’ll surprise me. What’s the next part of the plan? Let me guess, is it ‘hope and pray that Nero doesn’t get himself killed in front of his father?’ Because if I were in your position, I can’t say I’d have betted my life on that.”

She bore a solemn, weary expression. “It’s a little more thought-out than that. I need you to find someone powerful who might be willing to stand against the Guilds and… well, give your power to them.”

Nero yawned. “Not interested. Not to sound callous, but I truly couldn’t care less about what happens to the world after I die.”

She smiled faintly, and the bags under her eyes became even more pronounced. “You really are your father’s son.”

Nero scoffed. “What, is that supposed to be an insult?”

“Not really,” Mai said. “Just an observation, that’s all. But I do think it’s interesting that you saw it as one. Can I ask why?”

Nero could see what she was trying to do, and felt irritated. If he were even remotely interested in whining about how sad he was because of his mean dad, he’d have hired a therapist. “Look, as much as I’d love to play psychiatrist with you, I’m getting tired of sitting around. Is there anything I can do to make this go faster?”

“I’ll fade away on my own in a minute or two,” she said. “What are you going to do once you wake up?”

“I’ve got it all planned out, actually. I’ll flee the Guild’s premises, survive for around a day or two, and then every bone in my body will get atomized by either of the two global superpowers who will stop at nothing to destroy me.”

She patted him on the back, and Nero wanted nothing more than to bite her. “Hey, it’s not like you’re completely hopeless! You have the power of Palkia at your disposal!”

“How’d that work out for you?”

She deflated. “Just- well, nevermind. Please, just try your best to survive. You have the potential to go farther than you think.” She looked down at her paw, only to find that it was completely gone. “Looks like time’s up. Oh, wait! I should probably warn you about Palkia’s power. It might be a little overstimulating at first, so if you want to turn it off, try to imagine the range of your senses as a huge cube, find all the pointy bits and shrink it down. Got it?”

“I- sorry, what does that mean-”

Everything flashed white, Mai’s voice disappeared completely, and Nero’s eyes shot open wider than they had ever been in his life.

Hundreds of Pokémon on the first floor of the Guild were shoving each other around to clamber their way up the stairs, and his father was thrashing against the barrier sealing him within the basement, and a flock of carefree Murkrow soared outside the building without a care in the world, and construction workers toiled through the night miles away, and a young Gligar blew out the candles to his birthday cake, and condemned prisoners cried themselves to sleep, and the fans in Branch 15 were blowing, and Nero was screaming.

This tsunami of information into Nero’s mind crashed into his brain through a sense that was completely unfamiliar to him. The only word that could begin to describe the feeling would be loud, but even that implied that he was hearing any of it, when he wasn’t. The only thing he could see was that he was in a spacious room, and the only thing he could hear was the sound of his own screams. And yet, he knew everything that was happening everywhere. Overstimulation didn’t even begin to describe it.

He dug a claw into his paw as hard as possible in order to anchor himself, and remembered Mai’s suggestion. She said to imagine the range of this nightmarish sixth sense as if it were a large cube, so Nero started by finding the vertices (what Nero assumed she meant when she said ‘pointy bits’) of his imaginary cube. Each vertex was a few miles out, but nothing especially interesting was happening near any of them, so Nero was able to relax by focusing on them. He still couldn’t hear his own thoughts over the sound of his heartbeat, but he wasn’t screaming anymore, at the very least.

“What did she say next? ‘Shrink it down?’ Well, if it’s a cube, and I’m at its center, I imagine pulling the vertices towards me should shrink it.” He willed the vertices to move towards him, and they did, closer and closer until they were only a few feet away from Nero. He could still tell what was happening a floor above or below him, but he was no longer being barraged by information. After cursing Palkia for setting that ludicrous range as the default, he took a look at his surroundings.

He was in a large, mostly empty room with a grandiose staircase off to the corner and a simple battle arena in the center, and judging by the view from the window, he was around twenty stories high. This was far from ideal, but it was marginally better than the basement. That Croconaw from before was in the room as well, rocking back and forth in the corner. “Oh, great, it’s you,” Nero said, startling him. “I was worried that I might’ve been about to get some peace and quiet.”

He stared at his trembling hands. “Do you still have that spike?” he asked, his voice wavering.

“The one I stabbed you with?” Nero asked. “No, I believe I dropped it right before you grabbed me by the neck and ruined my life forever. Can I ask why?”

He buried his head in his hands. “I- Nero, I killed someone! I can’t- I shouldn’t be allowed to just go on with my day! I… I have to…”

“Kill yourself?” Nero finished Fabian’s sentence. He nodded glumly, and Nero rolled his eyes. “One thing goes wrong for you and you want to end it all? Grow up.”

“I hurt someone!” Fabian shouted. “It’s not right for me to still be alive! And now I’m a Successor, and that’s apparently even more bad than murder, and I only did it to save Mom, and I don’t even know where she is! What if she’s still down there with Claudius?”

“Is that seriously why you did all this?” Nero asked, growing even more incredulous after Fabian nodded. “Your mother was in the middle of betraying you!”

“You’re wrong!” Fabian shot up to his feet and scowled at him. “She wouldn’t, I’m sure of it! I don’t know why she wasn’t trying to fight Mai when I saw her, but I’ll bet she was about to! Maybe she was just standing guard over Dell!”

“And ignoring the person who was trying to save him?” Nero questioned. “Face it, she betrayed you.”

“Shut up!” Fabian turned his head away from Nero. “I… I know she wouldn’t. She’s my mom, I love her! And she loves me and Dad, too! She had a good reason, I know she did!”

It was all too clear that Fabian was even more of a child than Nero had thought. Instead of lamenting this fact, Nero decided to use it to his advantage. He wasn’t a fighter, so he could use a bodyguard, and if that meant he had to play nice, he was willing to suck it up. “You may be right. I suppose you knew her better than I did.”

“Don’t talk about her like she’s already dead!” Fabian snapped.

“I’m afraid she might as well be, unless you plan on doing something about it,” Nero said, approaching Fabian. “My new power will make it very easy to find her, if you’re willing to cut a deal.”

“I’m not making any more deals with weirdo outlaws,” Fabian said, his glare unrelenting. “I just had my life ruined over one.”

“If your life is ruined, doesn’t that mean you have nothing else to lose?” Nero asked. “You may as well save your wonderful, caring mother before you end it all, right? She’s guaranteed to die if you don’t accept my offer, but if you do, you have a slight chance that I don’t betray you.”

“You…” Fabian sighed. “You’ve… got a point, I guess. What do you want from me?”

Nero smirked. “Nothing much, just two little conditions. First, I’d like you to cooperate with me as I try to escape the Guild. Second, I want you to empty your entire bank account into mine.”

He narrowed his eyes at Nero. “Okay, I don’t really care about the money. But when you say ‘cooperate,’ do you mean ‘fight for you?’ Because I’m not fighting any Guild members. They don’t deserve that.”

“Don’t they?” Nero asked. “As we speak, they’re making every effort to have you killed, without any care for everything you’ve done for them. What makes their lives more valuable than your own?”

“Because that’s their job,” he said. “I’m an outlaw. They’re just trying to make the world a better place. I’ll block their attacks, but I’m not fighting back. That’s final.”

“What they’re trying to do is get a raise,” Nero said, “but if you insist, I’m sure I could make that work.” The real reason he wanted Fabian to tag along was because he and his mom were a package deal, and judging by Iris’s prior actions, she was much more likely to be agreeable to Nero’s demands. “Do we have a deal?”

Fabian hesitated for a moment, but nodded his head. “Yeah, deal. But only until we’re out of here, got it?”

Nero nodded, took a deep breath, and expanded his perception range. However, after only a few seconds, he stopped his search. He bit his tongue as hard as he could, but he couldn’t prevent a laugh from escaping him.

“What are you laughing for?” Fabian demanded.

“I’ll lead the way,” Nero declared. “I hope you’re ready, this walk might get draining!” Fabian grunted at him, but followed along. They went up exactly fourteen stairs and found Iris Vanadis, leaning against a wall.

“Fabian, you’re alive!” Iris cried, pulling herself up to wrap Fabian in a tight hug. “Thank goodness, I was so worried! You didn’t get hurt, did you?”

“Well, I fulfilled my side of the bargain,” Nero said, trying not to burst into laughter at Fabian’s stupid, dumbfounded face. “Are you even trying to pull your weight?”

“I- But- no, that’s not fair!” Fabian protested. “I would’ve found her just fine on my own! You can’t keep holding me to your deal!”

“The conditions of our deal were that I have to find your mother, and you have to escort me outside of the Guild. I can’t help it if my job happened to be easier.”

“But-”

“Fabian,” Iris said, releasing him. “I hate to say it, but if you made a deal, you have to follow through with it. You’ve lost a lot today, but you still have your honor. Don’t let this cretin take that from you, too.”

Fabian groaned and glared at Nero. “I’m sorry, I guess.”

Nero didn’t even try to restrain his victorious grin. “I suppose I’ll do you a favor and accept your apology. Wouldn’t want to take that precious honor of yours-”

Something unnatural moved into the radius of Nero’s perception. He had no idea what kind of Pokémon they were, but they were birdlike and they didn’t wear any indicator of their affiliations. “Someone’s under the staircase, and I can’t tell who they’re working for,” he said.

At an unreasonably high speed for a Feraligatr, Iris dove under the stairs and snatched the mystery bird, holding her up by the neck for all to see. “Found her,” she said casually. Nero wrote off every plan he had that involved backstabbing Iris. “Who are you and what do you want?” she asked.

“Hey, you’re that weird girl that my brother was chasing after!” Fabian said, pointing at her. “I’m Fabian, remember? Your name was Sofa or something, right?”

“S-Sofia, not Sofa,” she choked out. “And uh, I… uh, one second I was in jail, and in the next second, I was somewhere else, and I really don’t know what’s going on!”

Nero examined Sofia, but still couldn’t say what kind of Pokémon she was. “Not to sound rude, but could I ask about your species, Sofa? I like to think that I’m quite worldly, but I’ve never seen a Pokémon that looks even remotely like you.”

“Oh, I know!” Fabian said, raising his hand. “She told me she’s a special kind of Spearow from the North!”

Sofia gulped. “Y-Yep! That’s me! A Northern Spearow, born and bred! But- uh, it’s way better down here! You guys are doing great!” With the way she overemphasized her R’s and pronounced the word “better” as “bedder,” her accent could not have sounded more Rumasian if she had tried.

Nero found himself fascinated by her choice to double down. “Is that so?” he asked. “I happen to be from the North, too, if you couldn’t tell from my fur or my accent. Say, now that I mention it, whatever happened to your accent?”

“Oh!” she said, her eyes bulging out of her skull. “I just- well, I’ve been here a while, y’know? I guess I must’ve picked up the accent at some point. How funny!” She laughed nervously.

“How funny, indeed,” Nero replied. As sure as he was that her life story was a rollercoaster of fascinating drama, he truly couldn’t care less about it. “Regardless, if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say you got caught up in Fabian’s genius basement escape strategy.” He nodded towards Fabian, who missed the sarcasm and puffed out his chest. “If you were nearby, and you didn’t consider yourself affiliated with either faction, I suppose you would’ve been teleported away, just like us.”

Iris dropped her unceremoniously. “Well, at least that proves she’s not an enemy. You wanna come with?”

“I- I guess? Is that okay?” Sofia asked, getting an enthusiastic nod from Fabian.

“Can you fight?” Nero asked.

“Uh- I- well, not very well, but I can-”

“Good enough,” he said dismissively. “Worst case scenario, you can be our meat shield.”

“No we can’t!” Fabian challenged him. “I’m not letting you leave anyone behind! The whole reason I’m still here is to help people!”

“Not my problem,” Nero replied. “I can’t help it if you’re stupid.”

“I’m not stupid!” Fabian glared at Nero and cracked his knuckles.

“You’re right, I’m sorry,” Nero said, causing Fabian to relax his stance. “The word ‘stupid’ doesn’t even begin to describe you.”

Fabian went in for a punch, too fast for Nero to do anything but shut his eyes in anticipation. Seconds passed, but Nero didn’t feel anything. When he eventually opened his eyes, he saw Fabian’s fist hovering an inch away from his face, him looking as confused as he was angry. He was clearly trying to move his fist forward, but it was like something else was pushing him back.

“Is this Palkia’s power?” Nero wondered to himself. He released his breath and relaxed, and as soon as he did, Fabian’s fist hit Nero square in the forehead, sending him flying.

“Knock it off, Fabian!” Iris scolded.

Nero sat up, rubbed his forehead, and grinned. “Yeah, knock it off.”

Iris wasn’t as amused. “That goes double for you, Nero. The last thing we need right now is more fighting.”

“I think I’ll do what I want,” Nero said, peering out the nearby window. “You aren’t my mother, and I don’t owe you anything. If anything, you owe me for saving you and your son.”

“Yeah, well I can crush every bone in your body in the time it’d take for you to blink,” Iris retorted.

“I doubt that you would,” Nero said. “You’d need to find another suitable candidate for the role of Palkia’s Successor, and unless you trust the ‘Northern Spearow’ over there with the burden, you’re looking awfully short on options.” Sofia winced at Nero’s thinly veiled insult. “Regardless, we should get moving. The Guild forces seem to have figured out our location, and they’re only a few floors away now.”

Nero headed up the stairs, and Fabian narrowed his eyes at him. “Why are you going up? You can’t leave from up there.”

He turned back towards them. “Maybe not, but we certainly won’t be able to fight our way through the entire Guild’s forces. Even two or three of their stronger men would overwhelm us, especially if Vanadis won’t play along.”

“If we go upstairs, we’ll eventually get cornered,” Iris pointed out.

“And if we go downstairs, we’ll have to fight a battle that we cannot possibly win,” Nero countered. “Currently, we’re doomed to failure no matter which direction we pick. The only advantage we have is in our newfound powers, but we don’t understand them well enough to use them to their full potential. We need time to experiment, and going up is our best way of buying some. Either way, we need to make a choice now, or else the Guild will be making it for us.”

Iris sighed. “That’s true, I guess. Fabian, are you alright with this?”

“All I care about is making sure that he doesn’t let you or Sofia get hurt,” he huffed.

With Fabian’s tacit approval, Nero allowed Iris to lead the way up the stairs.

---

The Mandibuzz broke through the window, and before anyone could react, she hurled a bundle of Stun Seeds into the room, incapacitating all four of them.

“Look out for that window!” Fabian shouted as his mom leapt into action, flicking a claw at the window. It shone a brilliant gold hue, and when the incoming Mandibuzz slammed into the glass, it made a resounding thud, and she shamefully slid downwards until she was out of view. Fabian thought about offering the poor Mandibuzz some help, but before he could even move, his mom gave him a weary look, so he backed off.

The past few floors they had been through, including the one they initially landed in, were all wide-open sparring arenas, which left them lacking in cover to protect against Flying-types. Luckily, most of the remaining floors above were residency halls, and all of the windows were inside of the dorm rooms.

“How does that power of yours work, exactly?” Nero asked Fabian’s mom as he dribbled a pebble in front of him with his mind.

“It’s nothing special,” she said. “I’m Zamazenta’s Successor. I can make an inanimate object nearly indestructible for a good while.”

“I was under the impression that all of the minor Successors had already been wiped out,” Nero said. “Are there any other Successors who I haven’t met? Besides Giratina’s, of course.”

She shook her head. “My power only exists today because of some really complicated planning on Dell’s part. It’s hard to imagine anyone but him pulling something like that off.”

Fabian clenched a fist. They had traveled several more floors without any more words, and he tried giving her the benefit of the doubt for as long as he could, but he just couldn’t take it anymore. “Mom? Were you really gonna betray us?”

She froze up. “…Fabian, I love you. You know that, right?”

“Answer the question!” Fabian cried. His hands were shaking uncontrollably, and his heart was beating so loudly that he covered his ears to try and block out the noise. He knew he was supposed to keep walking, but he couldn’t move at all anymore.

His mom knelt beside him and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. “I… yes, I was,” she admitted. “To be honest, the only reason I never did anything sooner was because I was worried that you might get hurt.” She smiled mirthlessly. “I guess I was right to be scared of that.”

“Of course,” Nero butted in. “I’m sure your inaction against the Guild’s various atrocities had nothing to do with the lavish lifestyle that came with your obedience.”

“Shut up, Nero!” Fabian yelled, so annoyed with Nero that his oncoming panic attack stopped in its tracks. “Not everyone is as terrible as you!”

“Maybe not, but until I’m proven wrong, I’ll assume that they are,” Nero said. “You’d have to be a complete idiot to do anything else.”

Without thinking, Fabian curled up a fist and went in for a punch, only for Nero to shoot his pebble right into Fabian’s eye, forcing him to stumble back from the agonizing pain. “Arceus, that hurts!” he yelled. “What the hell?”

“Target practice,” Nero explained with a cocky grin. “What do you need both eyes for, anyway? It’s not like you plan on being helpful.”

Fabian’s mom smacked Nero upside the head. “One more word out of you and I’m chucking you out of the window right now!”

“I’m starting to consider doing it myself,” Nero said, irritation dripping from his voice as he rubbed his temple. “By the way, I’ve finally come up with a decent escape plan.”

They stood in silence for a few seconds. “Uh… are you gonna tell us?” Sofia asked.

Nero melodramatically turned away. “Not until Iris apologizes to me,” he declared.

Iris facepalmed. “Are you serious?”

“Dead serious.”

She sighed. “I’m very, very sorry for hitting you, and I promise that it’ll never happen again. Are you happy?”

“More than you could imagine,” Nero said.

Fabian gawked at her. “Hey! What happened to not letting him take our honor from us?”

Nero cleared his throat, and the other three gave him their undivided, if somewhat irritated, attention. “Let me walk you through my process. As you all understand, both of our potential paths result in our bodies being torn to shreds by the army of Guild workers behind us. Going down won’t work because we’d be headed directly towards them, and going up won’t work because it’s a dead end. Therefore, it stands to reason that, if we can find a way to negate the danger of either one of our options, we can survive.

“I ruled out the idea of trying to get past the crowd as unviable because of our awkward numbers. Four people is too little for a fight, but too much for stealth, so neither approach yields any chance of success. By process of elimination, our victory condition can only be finding a way to turn the upstairs dead-end into a path forward.”

Fabian raised his hand. “You’ve got that weird telekinesis thing, right? Why don’t you just levitate us away?”

“Not the stupidest thing you’ve ever said, but you’re off the mark. I can only push things away from me, and I haven’t found a way to apply force to myself. Additionally, while it’s possible for me to push multiple objects at once, I’m still quite terrible at it.”

He pulled out a loose floor tile and placed four pebbles on it. “That’s when I had my idea. Observe!” After a brief pause for dramatic effect, he tossed the tile above his head. Once it hit the peak of its trajectory, however, the tile did not smash into the ground; instead, it slowly drifted to the floor, like a leaf falling from a tree. By the time it landed on Nero’s back, all four pebbles were still atop the floor tile.

“Oh, so we’re like the pebbles, then?” Sofia asked. “But what are we gonna replace the floor tile with?”

“My first idea was to pluck all of your feathers and use them like a kite,” Nero explained, and he would’ve gotten a smack in the face for that if Fabian’s mom didn’t preemptively grab Fabian’s arm. “Of course, that wouldn’t work because I need to be below our makeshift hang glider in order to push it upwards. I saw a water tower on the rooftop, and I believe it should function nicely.

“We’ll have to do two things in order to make the tower usable. Firstly, we’ll need to empty the tower. The water inside alone probably weighs around thirty thousand kilograms, and that is far past my weight limit. Secondly, I assume that the water tower is affixed to the roof, so we’ll need to detach it. We can only escape once we meet those conditions.”

Fabian raised his hand again. “But if we do that, nobody at the Guild will be able to shower or flush the toilets anymore!”

Everyone stared at him blankly, and Fabian felt his cheeks getting red. “They’ll manage,” his mom said, before turning back towards Nero. “One more thing. How do we know you aren’t just going to leave without us once we set the tower up?”

“You don’t,” Nero said. “I could pledge my loyalty to you a hundred times over, but let’s face it, we all know I’m going to leave as soon as I’m able to, whether you’re with me or not. My advice would be to get onboard as soon as physically possible.”

She folded her arms. “I understand. Fabian, I want you to get in the tower as soon as possible. Try to poke some holes open while I rip the tower off. Sofia, you should try to follow Nero as he gets into position.”

“But how will you… No, you aren’t seriously implying that you’ll…?” Nero trailed off, his voice holding the slightest hint of seriousness.

She glanced at Fabian, then back at Nero. “Yeah.”

Fabian shifted around uncomfortably at the sudden mood swing. “What are you guys talking about?”

“She’s just trying to bluff her way into getting me to feel sympathy towards her,” Nero answered, reverting back to his indifferent, arrogant tone. “Make no mistake, when push comes to shove, she’ll look out for herself before anyone else.”

“Are you trying to convince Fabian, or are you trying to convince yourself?” Fabian’s mom shot back.

Nero shrugged. “I’m not here to convince anyone. It’s just a friendly piece of advice, that’s all.”

“We aren’t friends,” Fabian snarled.

“That may just be the smartest thing you’ve said all day!” Nero replied, applying force against Fabian before he even started trying to hit him.

Sofia, who was hiding behind Iris’s leg, slightly raised her voice. “W-We’ve got a plan now, right? We should get moving, before-”

A flock of various Flying-type Pokémon, each wearing a Guild scarf, soared right past them, towards the roof. Nero shook his head. “Sofia’s right. Things will only get worse, the longer we wait. Is everyone ready to get moving?”

With heavy sighs, everyone nodded, and pushed on forwards, steeling themselves for the inevitable conflict.