Legend of the Exile
Chapter 31: Champion's Showdown
Narrowing his eyes as he stood in the lobby of the Pokemon League, Rush sprinted up past shattered counters and toppled bookcases towards the terrible white figure and his minions, the floor tiles quivering beneath his feet as he charged up the debris-coated carpet staircase. "Horizon! Turn and face me!" yelled the Swampert, his golden eyes glinting with unending strength, light glinting off his golden bracelets.
Blinking, the Tyranitar whirled around to face the rapidly approaching Swampert. "Ah, Rushing River," said the White Tyrant coolly, stretching out its leathery black demon wings and raising its bronze staff high. "What a shame. I almost liked you!" No sooner had Rush reached the top step that the lieutenant whirled around with a sneering laugh and vanished behind the double bronze gates.
"Stupid coward," muttered Rush as he slammed into the solid bronze doors and rebounded with a jarring impact, stumbling back several steps. Closing his eyes, he slowly took a deep breath to calm his nerves, allowed his thoughts to settle, and then body-slammed the door to tear right through the barricade, badly mangling the precious engraved images of Ho-oh and Lugia. No matter. He had a Tyranitar to destroy.
The Swampert hurried up another set of steps and through another doorway to find himself in a large indoor battle arena, paved with rugged boulders and large misshapen stone columns. "What in the hell?" muttered Rush as he slid to a halt and turned around, wondering if he'd missed another pathway forward--only to see an immense stone slab sliding down from the ceiling to seal off the entrance. Great. He'd walked into a trap--he knew all too well that the Elite Four reinforced their walls to prevent challengers from fleeing partway through a Pokemon League challenge. Time to see what sort of game the White Tyrant was up to here.
"Grahhhh!" roared a voice from the opposite entrance of the arena, stomping onto the battle floor with a beastly growl. Startled, the Swampert glanced towards the sound of the voice to see a massive Rhyperior lumbering towards him, its grand bellows shaking dust from the ceiling as it came crashing through the rocky terrain towards him. Narrowing his eyes, the Swampert sprang at the Rhyperior to smash his fist into the beast's armored chest, yelling as the wrecking-ball tail swung around to collide with his leg.
Ducking low as the Rhyperior swung its mighty fists at him, Rush opened his mouth and spat a thick stream of blinding airborne mud at his foe, sending the wreckager reeling back several steps. Springing behind a large boulder as the Rhyperior shot a burst of shadow energy at hiim, the Swampert sprang up onto the rock and struck his foe with a mighty Hydro Pump, blasting the beast back into a large stone pillar with a tremendous dust-stirring crash.
But to his surprise, the Rhyperior rose to its feet to glare at the warrior, furious and inexplicably unharmed. As Rushing River stared at the gargantuan soldier, the Rhyperior gave a foul wide grin, and drew back both fists to charge up a Hyper Beam, its body quickly glowing bright. The Swampert's eyes widened in alarm, and he frantically sprang down from the boulder, bashing at the ground with his reinforced arms.
At once, the entire floor shuddered violently beneath his strength, and the rickety stone column behind the Rhyperior began cracked and collapsed upon his foe, just as the beast opened its enormous maw to fire at the Swampert. "Graaack-!" screamed the Rhyperior, just before a large large boulder fell from the column and lodged in its throat, and the choking soldier stumbled back several steps wildly, before collapsing to the floor.
Smiling grimly, Rush continued on through the doorway and up another set of stairs towards the next room, his heart pounding with near-sacreligious guilt for entering an Elite's arena without truly earning a victory at the side of a trainer. This room was a large rectangular platform suspended by chains on the surface of a large bubbling pit of magma.
Coughing on the thick haze of acrid vapors and searing heat that filled the room, the doors behind the Swampert closed as he stepped across a stone bridge that vanished as he crossed it and onto the platform, which dipped only an inch or two beneath his weight before bobbing back up again. "All right, who's next?" growled Rush, crossing his arms as he stared at the approaching figure in the far doorway, his body quickly growing slick with sweat.
"Sssss!" rasped a pot-bellied Magmortar as it tromped into the room and sprang onto the platform, its three long hair tufts rippling like clown plumage as the heavily sweating Swampert clenched a fist. He recognized the Magmortar at once from Cinnabar Island--it was the Vulcan League's gatekeeper, who fled after Insyte overthrew Heatran. Leaping to one side as the Magmortar cocked its cannon-arm to spew a thick stream of flames at him, Rush ducked and rolled behind the oversized clown to bring an aquatic fist smashing into the back of the Magmortar's head.
As the furious beast rolled over onto its back to aim both flamethrower-cannons at the Swampert's head, the warrior raised a fist high to extend a Protect force-field around his body, which quickly dissapated as twin flamethowers blasted the barrier. Eyeing the molten pool around him distastefully as his foe sprang forward onto its feet, Rush dodged several fireballs from the approaching Magmortar's maw, clenching his fists tight. Leaping forward and slamming both fists into the pyromaniac's immense belly, he quickly knocked his foe back to the edge of the suspended platform that rocked unsteadily beneath his feet. The splatter of molten lava seared painfully on the Swampert's flesh as he lumbered towards his foe, who snorted and sprang back into the magma pit.
"Damn!" swore Rush under his breath as the Magmortar swam in the pit beneath him, and he hurried to the center of the platform to glance around the room frantically to wait for his enemy to emerge. Suddenly, the Magmortar surfaced at the corner of the pit, leaping up and out of the magma to swipe at one of the chains suspending the platform. "Stop that!" yelled Rush, whirling around towards his enemy furiously with an jet-propelled burst of water as it dove into the lava once more--and where the water pulse struck the lava, the water rapidly vaporized into a thick plume of steam as the molten rock instantly solidified into a large stone floating in the magma. "What the-"
A thought suddenly struck Rush as his eyes followed the small eddies of the submerged Magmortar's breast stroke. Fire-types could swim in magma pools like water, as he'd seen at the Vulcan League, but they couldn't breathe in magma any more than most Pokemon could breathe underwater. In other words...
"Yahhhh!" yelled Rush, whirling around the platform as he shot water pulses and hydro pumps at the surface of the frothing lava, quickly racing to solidify the entire molten rock with thick rising walls of steam before the Magmortar surfaced again. Then as the Magmortar shot up out of the lava again towards another chain, the Swampert's eyes widened, and he shot an ice beam across the room at his foe, trapping the Magmortar in a massive cocoon of thickly steaming rock.
Letting out a triumphant cry, the Swampert fished his immobilized foe out of the magma pool and onto the platform, gasping with pain as he clutched the burning-hot rock. Narrowing his eyes, Rush peered at the massive Magmortar's helpless, steaming form, his eyes locked upon the back of his foe's head where the magma had not frozen. Smashing the gargantuan's skull with a deadly strike, the Swampert took a deep breath, and continued onwards, hurrying up the stairs and out of the sweltering heat and smothering steam.
The third set of doors closed behind Rush, and he found himself standing on the edge of a swimming pool with another rectangular platform suspended on its surface by chains. Rolling his eyes, the Swampert ignored the bridge, dove into the pool, and swam over to the floating stage. The moment he crawled up onto the battle arena, however, a vile roar split the air, and the entire pool trembled beneath his paws. "Ghy-rhuuuuuuu!" bellowed a crimson-scaled Gyrados rearing up and out of the water as the Swampert whirled around to face his assailant.
"Damn! How did I know it would be a Gyrados?" muttered the Swampert, jumping back off into the pool as the mighty sea serpent came crashing down upon the platform, smashing it to pieces. Taking a deep breath, he swam down under the Gyrados' scarlet thrashing tail and then back up towards the pool deck. Climbing up and out of the turbulent waters, Rush opened his mouth to freeze the pool solid with an ice beam--just as he'd done with the Magmortar--then gasped and fled down the pool deck as the red Gyarados shot a thick stream of dragonflame across the floor.
He dove back into the pool as the beast smashed its skull wildly against the pool deck again and again after him, the Gyarados' fearsome skull streaking in swift pursuit after him. He swam down under the Gyarados' lengthy body, veering up towards the surface to take a breath before diving down through one of the loops in the vicious-red scaled coils. The Swampert expertly swam back up, then back down through another coil with the sea serpent's gnashing fangs just behind him. Up and down, through and around... almost there-
As he surfaced near the far exit, Rush grinned and glanced down as the Gyarados lunged at him one last time--and pulled the knot in its coils taut. "Ghy-rhuuuuuuu!" screeched the enraged, self-tangled sea serpent as it flailed helplessly in the pool, unable to stop the Swampert as he climbed up and out of the thrashing waters, and continued onwards with suppressed glee.
Rush froze in his tracks as he ascended the stairs and entered the fourth room, and found himself standing on the edge of an arena in the midst of a tropical rainforest clearing. Artifical Noctowl and Mankey cries hooted from the corners of the Elite's room as he padded through the eerily vibrant shrubbery underfoot towards the battle field, his heart pounding with fear as never before.
"Torrrr!" bellowed a giant Torterra as it sprang at the Swampert with a wood-hammer strike. Eyes widening, the Swampert sprang aside to dodge the heavily spiked turtle, smashing a fist into its mean-eyed head that was quickly countered with a whirling spiked iron tail to the face. With both their heads ringing badly, the two reeled back from each other before lunging at each other's throats again.
The Torterra ducked an Ice Beam as Rush sidestepped an Energy Ball, smashing their paws against the ground in perfect unison to knock each other off their feet with simultaneous Earthquake strikes. Time was growing short, thought the Swampert as he and the Torterra circled around each other with fiercely locked eyes. He'd spent too long fighting the others; how far had the White Tyrant gotten? He had to stop the lieutenant!
As the Torterra charged at Rush with murder in its eyes, the Swampert snatched a fruit from a tree and flung it into the rampaging reptile's eyes, sending it into a blind thrashing fury. He lunged forward and brought a hammer-arm fist crashing down upon the giant turtle's massive shell with all his might, howling as the shell spikes jabbed into his hand. At once, the massive turtle shell cracked in two and the wide-eyed Torterra sank to the ground, screaming in agony.
Pressing his wounded hand close to his abdomen, the warrior scrunched up his eyes and brought an ice punch crashing into the green turtle's flank, his spike wounds leaking red-violet blood as the Torterra gave a final howl and lay still. Gasping and stumbling to his feet, the Swampert took several deep breaths to calm his nerves before examining the wounds on his hand. Not too deep--but it would certainly bruise. Taking one more deep breath, Rush turned towards the final door, and ascended one last set of stairs.
The Swampert shielded his eyes from the blinding sunlight as he emerged from a pair of double doors engraved with the three birds' images, paling as he stepped out onto the vast green-velveted field of Indigo Plateau's legendary Pokemon Stadium, glancing around the double-decker chrome-steel stands which stood silent and empty around the edges of the grand colosseum. The Swampert quivered as he approached the rectangular battle-field painted at the very heart of the immense stadium, complete with the trademark red-and-white Poke Ball emblem of Indigo Plateau in its center.
In the middle waited Lord Horizon, the fearsome White Tyrant, his scales whiter than chalk and his eyes blood-red. His scales tapered into long spines, over his shoulders and under his arms, from the sides of his head and out from his back, forming the shape of jagged, skeletal wings. In one fist, he held the bronze scepter of Giratina's lieutenants. "We met at last, master stooge of humanity," said the Tyranitar. "Truly, your impertience knows no bounds. Know that you stand in the prescence of Kanto's king!"
With steady footsteps, the Swampert approached Lord Horizon, coming to a stop in the challenger's box. The stadium was empty, but he could easily remember the roar of the watching crowd. "You think yourself some sort of champion, tyrant?" said Rush, staring the Tyranitar . "How many skulls have you crushed? How many lives have you trampled on, to climb this far?"
"Such matters are irrelevant," spat Horizon. Shadow energy began to gather around the tip of his staff. "I am the champion, and I lay my four challenges before you. And you, you could not kill even one! You should be honored that I should grace you with an audience! Now submit!"
"How do you know my name?" said Rush, shifting his weight onto his back leg, raising his hands. "How did you infiltrate the system so quickly? How did you get into the computers? Have you already murdered the humans in their sleep, Tyrant?!"
"My faithful Porygon-Zs seized the entire facility's computers and slipped my soldiers into the Elite chambers, just as they seized the Sinnoh Pokemon Storage network and snuck my servants into cyberspace," hissed the White Tyrant as he advanced upon Rush, his eyes glowing like rubies. "The Red Dragon has not yet exterminated the backwash of Hoenn, but her bloodlust grows ever stronger!" The wan tyrant's lips curled into a thin smile that sent chills down the Swampert's spine. "And I found your name easily under Slick Silversky...deceased trainer."
"Shut up!" yelled Rushing River, his blood boiling as he slammed a fist into the ground to tremble the stadium floor around him. Eyes widening, the White Tyrant spread his wings and leapt up into the air to dodge the earthquake's shockwaves, shooting a shadow blast down at Rush as he flew past the Swampert.
Opening his mouth wide to unleash a hydro pump on the Tyranitar, the Swampert fled as massive boulders rained down from the sky upon his head. Springing at the cruel fiend swooping low to the ground, the Swampert flew past Tyranitar and tumbled into the ground, just barely missing the lieutenant's vicious dark pulse that swept the arena.
Getting to his feet, the Swampert lunged up into the air towards his enemy with a tackle that could climb waterfalls, violently thrust back to earth as a ring of glowing Ancientpower stones smashed into his torso and knocked him to the ground. Leaping back to dodge a sweeping stream of blue-white dragonflame, Rush shot another hydro pump at the Tyranitar to clip the tip of the tyrant's chalk-white tail. Drawing back a fist, the Swampert suddenly was flung off his feet as Horizon dove to the floor and sucker-punched Rush onto his back.
Rolling aside to evade an energy ball from the lieutenant's staff, the warrior got to his feet and broke into a sprint across the field towards the gallery cases on the far side of the stadium, leaping and rolling aside as the pursuing White Tyrant flung jagged stones at him.
Tyranitar can use a weapon to help him, thought Rush, but so can I. Diving out of the way as the Tyranitar flung a massive boulder down at him to smash on the arena floor a few feet away, the Swampert smashed his reinforced fist through a tall glass display case and snatched the Champion's ceremonial bell mallet, a beautiful hammer that he'd revered ever since his first visit to Indigo Plateau with Slick. Triumphantly, the Swampert held up the beautiful hammer, incomparable in strength. With the bracelets to reinforce his wrists, the hammer felt light as a feather in his hands.
Feeling a rush of adrenaline rising in his chest as he raised his new hammer high, Rush whirled around and raced towards the swiftly approaching White Tyrant. The warrior let out a battle cry and swung the hammer around him in a wide arc, his eyes bearing a glint of the glory days at the side of Slick the Hoenn Champion. Barrel-rolling aside to dodge Rush's hammer-strikes, the winged Tyranitar swung his staff to send jagged shadow claws slashing through the air at the Swampert, who smashed through the phantom blades before swinging up at the lieutenant once more. Dragonflame streamed from Horizon's maw Rush as he lunged back from the charging hero, hurling stones and gravel at the Swampert that were crushed to dust benath the warrior's weapon.
Gritting his teeth, Rush swung his hammer around to strike a burst of violet light from Tyranitar's hand, sending it volleying straight back into the White Tyrant's head, sending the cursing lieutenant flailing head-over-tail back through tbe air. Frantically pulling out of his descent, the Tyranitar narrowed his eyes to scarlet slits and struck the ground with his staff as he swooped low to the floor, his body erupting with a mighty shadow wave that swept the battlefield, sending Rush skidding back several steps as the White Tyrant swerved around and shot towards the warrior like a speeding bullet.
Lunging high into the air, the Swampert raised his hammer with a roar as the malignant Tyranitar rushed upon him. "For the Retrievers!" yelled Rushing River as he brought the hammer smashing down upon the lieutenant's spine with all his earth-quaking might, driving his weapon down upon his stunned enemy who shrieked like a banshee as he crashed headfirst into the stadium floor, tumbling to a tumoltuous stop in the center of the battle-field with a furious shriek.
Rush's legs buckled to absorb the force of his impact as he landed a few feet away, tightly clutching his hammer in both hands as his heart pounded with adrenaline, his chest heaving with as he struggled to regain his breath before rising to his feet. Padding towards the White Tyrant's motionless form resting on the Poke Ball symbol at the center of the stadium, the Swampert examined Giratina's lieutenant with a frown, who lay helpless and broken beneath the warrior's gaze.
As Rushing River set the Champion's hammer down on the floor behind him to stare at his dreaded foe's burning-red eyes, dark cracks began to form on the Tyranitar's scales, slowly spreading across his body like spiderwebs. A low hum began to fill the air as the massive body spasmed, once, twice, three times. Then, the White Tyrant's body burst open with black swarms of flies, fleeing from the terrible corpse in droves, until nothing remained before the Swampert but a mishapen bronze staff.
"That was brave," said a voice. Breathing hard, the Swampert glanced over his shoulder to see Red and his Pokemon approaching, battered as if they had aged a hundred years that day. "To stand before the might of Horizon the conqueror and prevail? Who but a true champion could do such a thing?"
And yet there was a peace in his eyes as the duo stared down to Route 23, towards the masses of cheering humans and Pokemon. "Too many of us are sequestered here, Trainers and their families, homeless survivors seeking refuge. That beast would have torn them all to shreds. Whoever you are, wherever you came from... you saved Indigo Plateau." Pride swelled in the Swampert's chest.
"Horizon has fallen, but his master still rages," said the Champion darkly as he knelt down beside the Swampert, his eyes turned up to the sky. "Surely, the Exile would aid his servant in this final charge?" Blinking, the exhausted warrior slowly followed the man's gaze towards the atmosphere, and his heart skipped a beat as he stared at the streaks of crimson red that filled the heavens with their unholy light. "Giratina, Giratina the Exile..."
Blinking, the Tyranitar whirled around to face the rapidly approaching Swampert. "Ah, Rushing River," said the White Tyrant coolly, stretching out its leathery black demon wings and raising its bronze staff high. "What a shame. I almost liked you!" No sooner had Rush reached the top step that the lieutenant whirled around with a sneering laugh and vanished behind the double bronze gates.
"Stupid coward," muttered Rush as he slammed into the solid bronze doors and rebounded with a jarring impact, stumbling back several steps. Closing his eyes, he slowly took a deep breath to calm his nerves, allowed his thoughts to settle, and then body-slammed the door to tear right through the barricade, badly mangling the precious engraved images of Ho-oh and Lugia. No matter. He had a Tyranitar to destroy.
The Swampert hurried up another set of steps and through another doorway to find himself in a large indoor battle arena, paved with rugged boulders and large misshapen stone columns. "What in the hell?" muttered Rush as he slid to a halt and turned around, wondering if he'd missed another pathway forward--only to see an immense stone slab sliding down from the ceiling to seal off the entrance. Great. He'd walked into a trap--he knew all too well that the Elite Four reinforced their walls to prevent challengers from fleeing partway through a Pokemon League challenge. Time to see what sort of game the White Tyrant was up to here.
"Grahhhh!" roared a voice from the opposite entrance of the arena, stomping onto the battle floor with a beastly growl. Startled, the Swampert glanced towards the sound of the voice to see a massive Rhyperior lumbering towards him, its grand bellows shaking dust from the ceiling as it came crashing through the rocky terrain towards him. Narrowing his eyes, the Swampert sprang at the Rhyperior to smash his fist into the beast's armored chest, yelling as the wrecking-ball tail swung around to collide with his leg.
Ducking low as the Rhyperior swung its mighty fists at him, Rush opened his mouth and spat a thick stream of blinding airborne mud at his foe, sending the wreckager reeling back several steps. Springing behind a large boulder as the Rhyperior shot a burst of shadow energy at hiim, the Swampert sprang up onto the rock and struck his foe with a mighty Hydro Pump, blasting the beast back into a large stone pillar with a tremendous dust-stirring crash.
But to his surprise, the Rhyperior rose to its feet to glare at the warrior, furious and inexplicably unharmed. As Rushing River stared at the gargantuan soldier, the Rhyperior gave a foul wide grin, and drew back both fists to charge up a Hyper Beam, its body quickly glowing bright. The Swampert's eyes widened in alarm, and he frantically sprang down from the boulder, bashing at the ground with his reinforced arms.
At once, the entire floor shuddered violently beneath his strength, and the rickety stone column behind the Rhyperior began cracked and collapsed upon his foe, just as the beast opened its enormous maw to fire at the Swampert. "Graaack-!" screamed the Rhyperior, just before a large large boulder fell from the column and lodged in its throat, and the choking soldier stumbled back several steps wildly, before collapsing to the floor.
Smiling grimly, Rush continued on through the doorway and up another set of stairs towards the next room, his heart pounding with near-sacreligious guilt for entering an Elite's arena without truly earning a victory at the side of a trainer. This room was a large rectangular platform suspended by chains on the surface of a large bubbling pit of magma.
Coughing on the thick haze of acrid vapors and searing heat that filled the room, the doors behind the Swampert closed as he stepped across a stone bridge that vanished as he crossed it and onto the platform, which dipped only an inch or two beneath his weight before bobbing back up again. "All right, who's next?" growled Rush, crossing his arms as he stared at the approaching figure in the far doorway, his body quickly growing slick with sweat.
"Sssss!" rasped a pot-bellied Magmortar as it tromped into the room and sprang onto the platform, its three long hair tufts rippling like clown plumage as the heavily sweating Swampert clenched a fist. He recognized the Magmortar at once from Cinnabar Island--it was the Vulcan League's gatekeeper, who fled after Insyte overthrew Heatran. Leaping to one side as the Magmortar cocked its cannon-arm to spew a thick stream of flames at him, Rush ducked and rolled behind the oversized clown to bring an aquatic fist smashing into the back of the Magmortar's head.
As the furious beast rolled over onto its back to aim both flamethrower-cannons at the Swampert's head, the warrior raised a fist high to extend a Protect force-field around his body, which quickly dissapated as twin flamethowers blasted the barrier. Eyeing the molten pool around him distastefully as his foe sprang forward onto its feet, Rush dodged several fireballs from the approaching Magmortar's maw, clenching his fists tight. Leaping forward and slamming both fists into the pyromaniac's immense belly, he quickly knocked his foe back to the edge of the suspended platform that rocked unsteadily beneath his feet. The splatter of molten lava seared painfully on the Swampert's flesh as he lumbered towards his foe, who snorted and sprang back into the magma pit.
"Damn!" swore Rush under his breath as the Magmortar swam in the pit beneath him, and he hurried to the center of the platform to glance around the room frantically to wait for his enemy to emerge. Suddenly, the Magmortar surfaced at the corner of the pit, leaping up and out of the magma to swipe at one of the chains suspending the platform. "Stop that!" yelled Rush, whirling around towards his enemy furiously with an jet-propelled burst of water as it dove into the lava once more--and where the water pulse struck the lava, the water rapidly vaporized into a thick plume of steam as the molten rock instantly solidified into a large stone floating in the magma. "What the-"
A thought suddenly struck Rush as his eyes followed the small eddies of the submerged Magmortar's breast stroke. Fire-types could swim in magma pools like water, as he'd seen at the Vulcan League, but they couldn't breathe in magma any more than most Pokemon could breathe underwater. In other words...
"Yahhhh!" yelled Rush, whirling around the platform as he shot water pulses and hydro pumps at the surface of the frothing lava, quickly racing to solidify the entire molten rock with thick rising walls of steam before the Magmortar surfaced again. Then as the Magmortar shot up out of the lava again towards another chain, the Swampert's eyes widened, and he shot an ice beam across the room at his foe, trapping the Magmortar in a massive cocoon of thickly steaming rock.
Letting out a triumphant cry, the Swampert fished his immobilized foe out of the magma pool and onto the platform, gasping with pain as he clutched the burning-hot rock. Narrowing his eyes, Rush peered at the massive Magmortar's helpless, steaming form, his eyes locked upon the back of his foe's head where the magma had not frozen. Smashing the gargantuan's skull with a deadly strike, the Swampert took a deep breath, and continued onwards, hurrying up the stairs and out of the sweltering heat and smothering steam.
The third set of doors closed behind Rush, and he found himself standing on the edge of a swimming pool with another rectangular platform suspended on its surface by chains. Rolling his eyes, the Swampert ignored the bridge, dove into the pool, and swam over to the floating stage. The moment he crawled up onto the battle arena, however, a vile roar split the air, and the entire pool trembled beneath his paws. "Ghy-rhuuuuuuu!" bellowed a crimson-scaled Gyrados rearing up and out of the water as the Swampert whirled around to face his assailant.
"Damn! How did I know it would be a Gyrados?" muttered the Swampert, jumping back off into the pool as the mighty sea serpent came crashing down upon the platform, smashing it to pieces. Taking a deep breath, he swam down under the Gyrados' scarlet thrashing tail and then back up towards the pool deck. Climbing up and out of the turbulent waters, Rush opened his mouth to freeze the pool solid with an ice beam--just as he'd done with the Magmortar--then gasped and fled down the pool deck as the red Gyarados shot a thick stream of dragonflame across the floor.
He dove back into the pool as the beast smashed its skull wildly against the pool deck again and again after him, the Gyarados' fearsome skull streaking in swift pursuit after him. He swam down under the Gyarados' lengthy body, veering up towards the surface to take a breath before diving down through one of the loops in the vicious-red scaled coils. The Swampert expertly swam back up, then back down through another coil with the sea serpent's gnashing fangs just behind him. Up and down, through and around... almost there-
As he surfaced near the far exit, Rush grinned and glanced down as the Gyarados lunged at him one last time--and pulled the knot in its coils taut. "Ghy-rhuuuuuuu!" screeched the enraged, self-tangled sea serpent as it flailed helplessly in the pool, unable to stop the Swampert as he climbed up and out of the thrashing waters, and continued onwards with suppressed glee.
Rush froze in his tracks as he ascended the stairs and entered the fourth room, and found himself standing on the edge of an arena in the midst of a tropical rainforest clearing. Artifical Noctowl and Mankey cries hooted from the corners of the Elite's room as he padded through the eerily vibrant shrubbery underfoot towards the battle field, his heart pounding with fear as never before.
"Torrrr!" bellowed a giant Torterra as it sprang at the Swampert with a wood-hammer strike. Eyes widening, the Swampert sprang aside to dodge the heavily spiked turtle, smashing a fist into its mean-eyed head that was quickly countered with a whirling spiked iron tail to the face. With both their heads ringing badly, the two reeled back from each other before lunging at each other's throats again.
The Torterra ducked an Ice Beam as Rush sidestepped an Energy Ball, smashing their paws against the ground in perfect unison to knock each other off their feet with simultaneous Earthquake strikes. Time was growing short, thought the Swampert as he and the Torterra circled around each other with fiercely locked eyes. He'd spent too long fighting the others; how far had the White Tyrant gotten? He had to stop the lieutenant!
As the Torterra charged at Rush with murder in its eyes, the Swampert snatched a fruit from a tree and flung it into the rampaging reptile's eyes, sending it into a blind thrashing fury. He lunged forward and brought a hammer-arm fist crashing down upon the giant turtle's massive shell with all his might, howling as the shell spikes jabbed into his hand. At once, the massive turtle shell cracked in two and the wide-eyed Torterra sank to the ground, screaming in agony.
Pressing his wounded hand close to his abdomen, the warrior scrunched up his eyes and brought an ice punch crashing into the green turtle's flank, his spike wounds leaking red-violet blood as the Torterra gave a final howl and lay still. Gasping and stumbling to his feet, the Swampert took several deep breaths to calm his nerves before examining the wounds on his hand. Not too deep--but it would certainly bruise. Taking one more deep breath, Rush turned towards the final door, and ascended one last set of stairs.
The Swampert shielded his eyes from the blinding sunlight as he emerged from a pair of double doors engraved with the three birds' images, paling as he stepped out onto the vast green-velveted field of Indigo Plateau's legendary Pokemon Stadium, glancing around the double-decker chrome-steel stands which stood silent and empty around the edges of the grand colosseum. The Swampert quivered as he approached the rectangular battle-field painted at the very heart of the immense stadium, complete with the trademark red-and-white Poke Ball emblem of Indigo Plateau in its center.
In the middle waited Lord Horizon, the fearsome White Tyrant, his scales whiter than chalk and his eyes blood-red. His scales tapered into long spines, over his shoulders and under his arms, from the sides of his head and out from his back, forming the shape of jagged, skeletal wings. In one fist, he held the bronze scepter of Giratina's lieutenants. "We met at last, master stooge of humanity," said the Tyranitar. "Truly, your impertience knows no bounds. Know that you stand in the prescence of Kanto's king!"
With steady footsteps, the Swampert approached Lord Horizon, coming to a stop in the challenger's box. The stadium was empty, but he could easily remember the roar of the watching crowd. "You think yourself some sort of champion, tyrant?" said Rush, staring the Tyranitar . "How many skulls have you crushed? How many lives have you trampled on, to climb this far?"
"Such matters are irrelevant," spat Horizon. Shadow energy began to gather around the tip of his staff. "I am the champion, and I lay my four challenges before you. And you, you could not kill even one! You should be honored that I should grace you with an audience! Now submit!"
"How do you know my name?" said Rush, shifting his weight onto his back leg, raising his hands. "How did you infiltrate the system so quickly? How did you get into the computers? Have you already murdered the humans in their sleep, Tyrant?!"
"My faithful Porygon-Zs seized the entire facility's computers and slipped my soldiers into the Elite chambers, just as they seized the Sinnoh Pokemon Storage network and snuck my servants into cyberspace," hissed the White Tyrant as he advanced upon Rush, his eyes glowing like rubies. "The Red Dragon has not yet exterminated the backwash of Hoenn, but her bloodlust grows ever stronger!" The wan tyrant's lips curled into a thin smile that sent chills down the Swampert's spine. "And I found your name easily under Slick Silversky...deceased trainer."
"Shut up!" yelled Rushing River, his blood boiling as he slammed a fist into the ground to tremble the stadium floor around him. Eyes widening, the White Tyrant spread his wings and leapt up into the air to dodge the earthquake's shockwaves, shooting a shadow blast down at Rush as he flew past the Swampert.
Opening his mouth wide to unleash a hydro pump on the Tyranitar, the Swampert fled as massive boulders rained down from the sky upon his head. Springing at the cruel fiend swooping low to the ground, the Swampert flew past Tyranitar and tumbled into the ground, just barely missing the lieutenant's vicious dark pulse that swept the arena.
Getting to his feet, the Swampert lunged up into the air towards his enemy with a tackle that could climb waterfalls, violently thrust back to earth as a ring of glowing Ancientpower stones smashed into his torso and knocked him to the ground. Leaping back to dodge a sweeping stream of blue-white dragonflame, Rush shot another hydro pump at the Tyranitar to clip the tip of the tyrant's chalk-white tail. Drawing back a fist, the Swampert suddenly was flung off his feet as Horizon dove to the floor and sucker-punched Rush onto his back.
Rolling aside to evade an energy ball from the lieutenant's staff, the warrior got to his feet and broke into a sprint across the field towards the gallery cases on the far side of the stadium, leaping and rolling aside as the pursuing White Tyrant flung jagged stones at him.
Tyranitar can use a weapon to help him, thought Rush, but so can I. Diving out of the way as the Tyranitar flung a massive boulder down at him to smash on the arena floor a few feet away, the Swampert smashed his reinforced fist through a tall glass display case and snatched the Champion's ceremonial bell mallet, a beautiful hammer that he'd revered ever since his first visit to Indigo Plateau with Slick. Triumphantly, the Swampert held up the beautiful hammer, incomparable in strength. With the bracelets to reinforce his wrists, the hammer felt light as a feather in his hands.
Feeling a rush of adrenaline rising in his chest as he raised his new hammer high, Rush whirled around and raced towards the swiftly approaching White Tyrant. The warrior let out a battle cry and swung the hammer around him in a wide arc, his eyes bearing a glint of the glory days at the side of Slick the Hoenn Champion. Barrel-rolling aside to dodge Rush's hammer-strikes, the winged Tyranitar swung his staff to send jagged shadow claws slashing through the air at the Swampert, who smashed through the phantom blades before swinging up at the lieutenant once more. Dragonflame streamed from Horizon's maw Rush as he lunged back from the charging hero, hurling stones and gravel at the Swampert that were crushed to dust benath the warrior's weapon.
Gritting his teeth, Rush swung his hammer around to strike a burst of violet light from Tyranitar's hand, sending it volleying straight back into the White Tyrant's head, sending the cursing lieutenant flailing head-over-tail back through tbe air. Frantically pulling out of his descent, the Tyranitar narrowed his eyes to scarlet slits and struck the ground with his staff as he swooped low to the floor, his body erupting with a mighty shadow wave that swept the battlefield, sending Rush skidding back several steps as the White Tyrant swerved around and shot towards the warrior like a speeding bullet.
Lunging high into the air, the Swampert raised his hammer with a roar as the malignant Tyranitar rushed upon him. "For the Retrievers!" yelled Rushing River as he brought the hammer smashing down upon the lieutenant's spine with all his earth-quaking might, driving his weapon down upon his stunned enemy who shrieked like a banshee as he crashed headfirst into the stadium floor, tumbling to a tumoltuous stop in the center of the battle-field with a furious shriek.
Rush's legs buckled to absorb the force of his impact as he landed a few feet away, tightly clutching his hammer in both hands as his heart pounded with adrenaline, his chest heaving with as he struggled to regain his breath before rising to his feet. Padding towards the White Tyrant's motionless form resting on the Poke Ball symbol at the center of the stadium, the Swampert examined Giratina's lieutenant with a frown, who lay helpless and broken beneath the warrior's gaze.
As Rushing River set the Champion's hammer down on the floor behind him to stare at his dreaded foe's burning-red eyes, dark cracks began to form on the Tyranitar's scales, slowly spreading across his body like spiderwebs. A low hum began to fill the air as the massive body spasmed, once, twice, three times. Then, the White Tyrant's body burst open with black swarms of flies, fleeing from the terrible corpse in droves, until nothing remained before the Swampert but a mishapen bronze staff.
"That was brave," said a voice. Breathing hard, the Swampert glanced over his shoulder to see Red and his Pokemon approaching, battered as if they had aged a hundred years that day. "To stand before the might of Horizon the conqueror and prevail? Who but a true champion could do such a thing?"
And yet there was a peace in his eyes as the duo stared down to Route 23, towards the masses of cheering humans and Pokemon. "Too many of us are sequestered here, Trainers and their families, homeless survivors seeking refuge. That beast would have torn them all to shreds. Whoever you are, wherever you came from... you saved Indigo Plateau." Pride swelled in the Swampert's chest.
"Horizon has fallen, but his master still rages," said the Champion darkly as he knelt down beside the Swampert, his eyes turned up to the sky. "Surely, the Exile would aid his servant in this final charge?" Blinking, the exhausted warrior slowly followed the man's gaze towards the atmosphere, and his heart skipped a beat as he stared at the streaks of crimson red that filled the heavens with their unholy light. "Giratina, Giratina the Exile..."