Chapter Text
The end of the world was supposed to happen on March 8th, at exactly 1:50pm.
The day was clear and comfortable, a nice early spring after a tough winter. The warmth from the Sun had finally grown sharp enough to melt the surface of the remaining snow, giving the rare few clumps that remained a glossy, solid sheen on their faces. It looked like the seasonal shift was nigh, and life was being brought back into the land.
At about 1:40pm, the sky from the top of the mountain was clear and bright, with the exception of a few light wisps of clouds hovering off near the horizon. The mountain, Mount Coronet, held a stage at its peak: the remnants of a temple, wood and stone frozen mid-collapse from some mysterious force, each piece hanging delicately, impossibly in the air. Standing amongst the temple remnants were three people. On one side stood a tall woman, her purple hair carefully tied up and out of the way of her bulky gas mask. She leaned against some shattered wooden pillar, frozen mid-crumble just as the rest of the place was. Her outfit, gray and white, matched the one of her colleague opposite of her.
He colleague had her own vibrant hair (short, bright red), and similarly wore a mask, although not nearly as striking as the one her partner wore. It was much more plain: simply a bandanna tied around the lower half of her face to cover her nose and mouth. But, with the more exposed face and head revealed a small device in her ear, just barely visible even like this: a headset, unbranded and as subtle as it could possibly be—both women had the headset, actually, but Red's just so happened to not only be visible, but currently in use. With a word of confirmation, Red pulled a gloved hand down from the headset and glanced across the aisle at Purple. All seemed to be... well, perfect was completely out of the realm of how everything was going, but... it wasn't currently in flames. Even if proverbial gasoline had already been spilled.
Straight between the two, out to the exposed altar of the temple stood the third figure. They were short, most definitely shorter than Purple by at least a foot, and donned a brown, oversized coat. The heavy coat laid across their shoulders, fluttering in the mild wind of the mountaintop. The back of the coat, right at the center of the shoulders bore an emblem: a yellow-gold shape, embroidered, the everlasting symbol of an organization. Under the coat, they wore the same colors: striped gray vest, black undershirt. They wore a black balaclava, hiding their hair and skin, and they wore a mask just like the others: flat and gold, rays radiating out of the top of the disk like a crown.
The figure in the sunlight removed their hand from a pocket, casting a shadow on the broken floor. Between the gaps of fingers, the small lenses displayed the shape of thin crescents upon the stone floor... and the two women looked back at each other with a look that could best be described as... frustrated.
"Any clue when he's going to... you know...?" Red ribbed her hands together, then cracked her individual fingers. "I know he wanted to time it with the eclipse, but..."
"Unless you can move the moon," Purple sighed monotonously, "I don't think there's any world where you get him to go faster than he is right now." Purple’s voice was low, tired. "You know how much presentation means to him—" It's not like they'd been working for him for years by this point.
"But, like, now? Of all times?" Red's eyes darted to the front of the ruins, where the yawning mouth of the mountain’s cave gave welcome to a dark abyss. "I heard from Saturn we might be being, you know, hunted down right now. Hell, we're definitely being attacked at this very moment."
"Which is why we lined the whole mountain with grunts. So the boss can have his special moment." Purple huffed quietly under her gas mask. "I’m sorry Mars, but we just have to wait."
Red—Mars—clearly frowned from behind her mask. She crossed her arms and leaned back against the pillar. "Yeah, I know," she sighed, "but at least can he tell us when he—"
"Mars. Jupiter." The man's voice cut through the air instantly, crisp like a bell. The two women looked over to their third, who had now turned to face the two women. His voice carried a confidence—not one to boast, but one of irrational serenity. "I will begin the incantation.” The ambient light on the mountain top had shifted in tone ever so slightly. The man knew this, of course, it was nearly time. His gaze burned even through his mask. “Allow nothing to interrupt my focus." And with that, the man turned back and let his head fall to a bowed position.
Silently, the pair of Commanders moved to their predetermined positions in the center aisle of the temple. Mars crossed her arms, muttering something about how stupid this was to just put on a huge show (the world could be changed by now!). Jupiter stood silently next to her, one hand placed on her waist as they both looked out from the temple into the abyssal cave. She started to zone out, to fantasize about what was about to happen (a world remade without suffering...) and only tuned back to reality once she heard Mars talking on her headset—right, they would need updates.
With a tap to her own headset, Jupiter was tuned in to the conversation at just the right time to hear how the final leg of the plan was coming along from HQ. The voice on the other end was slightly breathless, as if the man had been running around for the past few hours. (And knowing the man, he surely had been.)
And yet he remained a professional, just as to be expected. “So, how are things doing on ground zero?” he asked.
Mars scoffed at the question. "Keep checking the drone feed." She crossed one of her arms around her torso. "Invictus' only started the incantation, what, a few minutes ago by now? He still wants to be sure it’s in time with the eclipse." Mars turned to Jupiter and dramatically rolled her eyes.
"So you're behind schedule." The voice on the other line sounded... unimpressed.
"No, we got everything set up here all great and perfect, he’s the issue." Mars scoffed. "If it wasn’t for him waiting for this stupid eclipse, we’d already be done by now, guaranteed."
There was an annoyed "right," on the line before the call went silent for a few moments. Mars took this as a cue to interrupt the silence in a low voice, the voice of a confession.
"Saturn—I'll be honest. I thought he was gonna flake."
Jupiter turned her head back to the boss, watching his stagnant form bowed against the overwhelmingly blue sky. She watched him remove a hand from each of his pockets. In their grip, he held two brilliantly red coils wrapped around his hands.
"Did you now?" Saturn's voice sounded bored through the headset. "I mean, he was crazy enough to get here in the first place, why not just go the whole way? It's just a little world domination."
Sol Invictus let the Red Chains unravel partly from his hands, both hitting the ground simultaneously with a weight that shouldn't have been theirs. Judging by the wince, Jupiter wasn’t clear he dropped them on purpose. But he continued, his shoulders twitching and small bursts of red light bounced from the chains and onto his arms and sleeves. She could have sworn she saw something drip from behind that mask onto the ground.
"By the way," Saturn continued with a hum, "aside from the delay, everything is still going well, correct?"
Mars answered after a moment. "Yeah. Why, uh, wouldn't it be?"
Silence aside from clicks of a keyboard echoed through the call again, cut short by hiss of breath. "And how much time do you estimate is left before the point of no return?"
Jupiter finally looked back to Mars. Mars took a glance over at the boss, then responded. "Only one, maybe two minutes tops? Why is this important to know right now?"
There was that hiss of air flowing through teeth over the call again, right on cue with a new noise cutting through the air" something that sounded like... rocks hitting each other. It started quietly at first, almost nothing more than hearing something that wasn't there, until it echoed louder and louder. Jupiter looked right at the cavern.
Of course.
Jupiter put a hand on her waist, pulling out a well-worn pokeball from her belt. She looked to the side to see Mars doing the same thing. Saturn spoke with a quiver in his voice—perhaps it was a plea when he asked, "You two will be able to distract the Champion for that time, right?"
Of course.
The sounds of cracking and crumbling continued to grow louder. The pair of Commanders readied themselves. Jupiter looked back to Invictus for a moment, and for a moment she was caught watching the sky fade from the mid-day blue to the darkness of night, the stars emerging from behind the light of the sun, the cool rush against her skin...
The sudden hit knocked her clean out of it. One moment she was up, admiring the view, and the next she cracked her head against the marble floor of the temple with a thud. Her sight blurred, not ceased, and did so just for a second, just enough to watch Mars run after her assailant.
The reigning Champion of Sinnoh had exploded onto the scene in a dead sprint, straight through the two Commanders. She had shoved Mars clear out of the way in one direction, slammed into Jupiter in the other, and just kept running. Mars was lucky enough to have been paying attention and caught herself. In a heartbeat she whipped the pokeball out as hard as she could, ideally to trip the Champion.
It was only a blessing it worked, the Champion stumbled for just long enough for Mars's purugly to slam straight into her and knock her off her feet. It was mere moments for the Champion to force herself up again, only to be met with Jupiter's skuntank slamming into her legs and got knocked prone. Jupiter had finally forced herself up onto her own shaky feet by this point, plenty a vantage point to watch Mars give out direct attack orders: the Boss couldn't be interrupted. The attacks were only stopped by the Champion's own garchomp herself, breaking out of her own pokeball to take the blows in her stead. It only took a heartbeat of a window for the garchomp to raise her red-scarred head and bite down on the purugly.
Jupiter looked to the side. Mars was shouting, that could be heard, but understood? Jupiter stared blankly until Mars pointed: stop the Champion. Jupiter tried to catch up, she really did, but the concussion and the balance and the everything else. The best she could do was ram into her, knock her to skid across the smooth ground, until—
"That's enough."
As if willed from the two words alone, the entirety of Spear Pillar froze. Jupiter couldn't see much, but she could see the stars were growing bright, along with the pale blues and greens of some magnetic storm pulsing high above the scene. She looked back down to what was happening in front of her to see the Champion pulling herself towards Sol Invictus.
Sol Invictus turned around, his golden plate was almost glowing from the lights above. His head tilted down at the Champion, then to the side ever so slightly.
"You decided to come," he quietly spoke. There was something in his voice, a softness. He brought a fist to his heart, the chain within his grasp pulsing as if it were a heart itself. "I am... truly grateful you would choose to be my audience."
He took a step to the side, to watch the Champion reach for his ankle. He indulged her for a time, then lazily lifted his foot out of her grasp. He crushed her hand under the heel of his boot with a sickening crunch . The screaming was only respected by Invictus’s patience and the slow, disappointed shake of their head.
"I would think you would know it's rude to attempt to touch someone without permission..." he mused. He gave a few more disappointed "tut-tut-tut"s before turning to the stars. "I will, however, forgive you, for such a mistake. My prized guest, out of everyone in the world..." He trailed off for a moment. "Out of everyone, I'm grateful it is you who came here."
With tears in her eyes, The Champion pried her gaze from her broken hand up to the man before her, then to his glowing hands. Wrapped around the palms, just as before, were the two glowing Red Chains pulsing to some inaudible heartbeat.
"Are you as excited as I am, Cynthia?" Invictus's voice was light, tinged with the sinister sound of a smile behind the mask he just couldn’t hide. "All will end in just a few moments. You should be honored to witness the birth of a god."
His hands trembled at his sides as they spoke, fists locked closed. Cynthia looked closer at them to find them... burnt? It was hard to see with the lack of light, but the skin in contact with the Chains looked blackened. Part of her wanted to reach out again, but…
Invictus turned back around to face outside of the Temple, and a loud crack echoed through the air. Not the crack of loud thunder, but the crack of the air itself breaking like glass, a crack that echoed through the skull of everyone on the mountain.
Faintly, suspended in the air, was a hairline fracture, emerging from completely nothing.
Then another crack rang true, and the fracture widened.
Then another.
And another.
The very fabric of reality seemed to be breaking with each of these fractures. One after another, the web of cracks grew thicker and thicker, until they finally stopped and silence filled the air.
Even though she could not see clearly at this moment, Jupiter knew exactly what stood before Invictus. Two gigantic monsters had been pulled from the cracks—one blue and the other purple—the gods of Time and Space.
It took only a moment for the Red Chains to react to their presence. They struck out from the hands like snakes nearly instantly to coil around the gods. Another moment later, they tightened around the gods completely, enough to bring them crashing to the ground. The beasts roared, screamed in their divine voices as the jewel links of the Chains dug into the gaps between plated armor and scales and turned all it touched from to black as it burned. And the sky; with every scream from the dragons, the sky lit up in spectacular fashion, the Northern Lights pulsing to the racing heartbeat of the universe.
But Invictus watched solely the gods before him. His chest heaved with every breath, the shaking from his hands spread to his arms and shoulders. The grip around the chains had tightened. He started to shake, coughing from behind the mask, he scratched at his chest. Fighting for breath, Invictus ripped off his mask with a closed fist. Everything else from his head pulled off. He turned back to see his audience, to let his audience see him: his damp blue hair, steelish eyes, but his face ...
Streaming down his face, as smooth as water, was blood, dripping from his nose and eyes, staining his mouth and teeth while he continued to heave, dripping down his shirt until it hit the stone ground in small droplets to form a puddle. And yet, as he finally looked up to the starry sky, Invictus was able to smile.
"This!" he bellowed, holding his arms up, "is the beginning of a new world. A better world. One without our pain and incompleteness."
His gaze softened with a sigh—as soft as someone can look covered in their own blood. He coughed again. "I was not lying before, I truly am honored you came.” He tried to gesture with his hands, but they seemed to stop working at the elbows. Yet Indiges continued. "I apologize for the injury, but it was only my irrational reaction." His breath sounded warbled. "That pain you are in, that we are in... it will soon be gone forever."
With that, he turned on his heel, walking back towards the gods. He didn't notice the chains in his hands beginning to spark and arc red energy. He could only grip the chains tighter as he bellowed his command for the gods to erase this world and start anew. Dialga and Palkia could only writhe and scream in their Chains and try to delay the order for so long, but the spikes only continued to burn hotter. They reared their heads back, opening their mouths, then...
The sky seemed to flicker darker. Just for a moment.
Invictus looked up at the sky, inspecting the heartbeat of the Universe flashing in green and blue—no, the flicker happened elsewhere, not the sky. Something was starting to obscure the stars..?
His path of sight graced the ground and the source of the obstruction was revealed: a pool of pure darkness, spreading across the stone floor like ink on a page, right at his feet. There was a weight on his shoulders, a pressure in his lungs, a further crushing of his fists tighter with the chains. He took a step back. The shadow could only grow before him, spreading wings further and further outwards before growing upwards. Invictus moved to drop the Chains and run, this was not something he had planned for, he would die if he did not run in this moment.
But he couldn't.
The shadow had sprouted a pair of glowing red eyes and a mouth from within itself, the same red as the Chains Invictus was currently bound with. As the shadow still continued to rise taller and taller, Invictus commanded his body to let go of the Chains—again and again and again—only for his grip to tighten more and more and more still . Even when the shadow had reached its full stature and displayed its spike-tipped wings, there was no response from his body.
Invictus looked around the shadow to the gods he had been bound to, who had since stopped writhing and laid limp. Around their bodies, the arcs of crimson lightning raced up and around between the pair, then to the man holding it. He looked up, back at the shadow emerging from the ground. He saw six spikes heading straight for him.
And like a crack of thunder with a matching flash of red lightning, the shadow was gone. Dialga and Palkia were gone. The moon removed itself from the sun, and the sky turned its radiant blue. All that was left of the scene was the discarded and broken golden mask of Invictus, the impossibly bright aurora shining above, and a large crack in the ground of the temple, shattering the stone floor exactly where Invictus stood.
The world ended on March 8th, at exactly 1:50pm.
The Sun was gone.