[Holy crap! Type disadvantage! This is a terrible matchup!]
[We're done. The streamer is getting countered hard.]
[That Grovyle is such a sneaky bastard, hanging back while sending in Flying and Water types.]
[If Volcarona's wings get wet, she won't be able to fly, right? How is she supposed to fight like this?]
[Get out of there! You'll die if you tank it!]
Yancy fought desperately to dodge, trying to fight back with sonic waves from Bug Buzz, but the crushing type disadvantage left her with nowhere to run.
Every beat of her wings felt like thrashing in quicksand. Her wings were soaked through, her body dragging with a heaviness that made every movement agonizingly slow.
Boom!
A Hydro Pump landed squarely on Yancy's side, and the force of the impact sent her flying.
Volcarona slammed into the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust, and let out a pained cry.
Damage numbers flashed red overhead. Her health bar plummeted into the danger zone.
"Captain!" Wartortle spotted Yancy go down and screamed, scrambling to rush over.
But two vicious Houndoom lunged from the shadows of the ruins, fangs bared, cutting him off.
Their target was clear: pin down Dragonair and Wartortle, keep them from reaching Yancy.
"Think you're getting past us? Try it," the Houndoom snarled, unleashing a barrage of Fire Blast and Assurance.
Dragonair tried to break through with Hyper Beam, but the two Houndoom moved in perfect sync, sealing off every route.
"Don't worry about me! Go, get out of here!" Yancy picked herself up off the ground, wiping ash from the corner of her mouth, watching her teammates get swarmed, her heart twisting with frustration and dread.
But facing a type matchup this lopsided, she felt utterly helpless.
Was this really how it ended? Wiped out right after evolving?
Pelipper circled overhead, its body shimmering with blue light, the telltale glow of a Hydro Pump being charged up. It locked onto Yancy lying on the ground and prepared to deliver the finishing blow.
[This run is cooked!]
[Type advantage is disgusting. There's literally no way to play around this.]
[Someone help! Any ideas?]
[Don't give up! Maybe a miracle?]
The shadow of defeat hung over Yancy. The ball of energy at Pelipper's beak had fully condensed, its blue glow reflecting in Yancy's eyes, which had taken on a look of quiet despair.
Then, in that razor-thin moment between one heartbeat and the next, two voices rang out at the same time. Different in tone, identical in weight.
"Yancy..."
Dragonair watched his captain and his companions being driven into a corner. Those eyes of his, usually half-lidded like he'd never quite woken up, snapped wide open. The soft, rounded pupils shrank to pinpoints, and something blazed in them that had never been there before.
He didn't shout. Not a sound escaped him. But the force radiating from him doubled, then doubled again, as though something had been waiting inside him all along, coiled tight, ready to unfurl. His lean frame swelled rapidly, limbs thickening with power, and the skin along his body surfaced, traced with ancient draconic markings that pulsed with a primordial authority. He made no sound through it all, only endured the reshaping of his strength in total stillness, like a sacred rite being fulfilled.
"We are not losing here."
Wartortle's reaction could not have been more different.
He looked at Yancy crumpled on the ground, and his big eyes filled instantly with tears.
He was terrified. Shaking all over. But he didn't back down.
"Don't you dare hurt Captain! Don't you DARE!"
Wartortle let out a wail that tore right through the air, a sound soaked in fear, but underneath it, something absolutely resolute.
And in that instant, a miracle happened.
Dragonair's quiet, held-inward pressure and Wartortle's outward, streaming cry seemed to pulse at two entirely different frequencies, and in that moment those frequencies resonated with each other and struck the ancient evolution altar behind them like a tuning fork hitting solid stone.
Hummm.
The murals on the altar, dormant for untold ages, blazed to life with a blinding light.
Images of Magikarp leaping through the Dragon's Gate and Metapod bursting from its shell seemed to breathe and move, and a pillar of golden energy erupted from the altar's center, shooting into the sky and enveloping both Dragonair and Wartortle.
"Is that... the light of evolution?" Yancy stared, struck speechless.
Guided by the altar's power and driven by a will that refused to break, Dragonair's body began to tremble violently.
Beside him, Wartortle was caught in the same light. He kept crying, but his voice deepened as it rose. Within the radiance, his once-round shell hardened and thickened, taking on a metallic sheen, and two massive cannons formed across his back, radiating the promise of devastating power.
The light faded.
Where the graceful, drifting Dragonair had been, a Dragonite now stood: imposing, broad-shouldered, filling the space around him. He still looked steady and unhurried, his eyes still warm, but the pressure coming off him was something else entirely. The air itself seemed to go still. A true king had arrived.
And Wartortle was gone too. In his place stood a Blastoise, composed and grounded. He wiped the tears from his face. The twin cannon barrels on his back gleamed cold, and the timidity that had lived in his eyes was simply no longer there.
[NO WAY! Double evolution?!]
[Legendary evolution! Dragonite! He looks INCREDIBLE!]
[Wartortle evolved too! Blastoise! This team just went to a whole other level!]
[So THAT'S what the altar does? I'm obsessed.]
[Crying his eyes out one second, packing two cannons the next. The contrast is killing me.]
[Now we're talking!]
The whole situation flipped in a single breath.
The Houndoom that had been so insufferably confident a moment ago now felt something cold move through them, right down to the bone.
The newly evolved Dragonite simply rolled his neck.
Extreme Speed.
Boom.
Nobody saw him move. One of the Houndoom, which had been snarling and snapping just a heartbeat before, rocketed through the air like a cannonball, slammed into a distant wall, and crumpled to the ground with its eyes rolled back, out cold.
Then Dragonite rose into the air and moved through Dragon Dance, every motion deliberate and powerful, golden energy rolling off him in waves as his attack and speed climbed higher with each step.
The remaining Houndoom took one look at that and its legs gave out. It couldn't move.
Across the field, Blastoise had grown considerably stronger as well. He drew a slow, deep breath. Both cannons on his back fired simultaneously, unleashing twin high-pressure columns of water.
Hydro Pump!
The move had several times the force it once carried, like two dragons surging out to sea, shattering the Houndoom's formation instantly and blasting the last of the enemies clear out of the ruins.
With the small fry handled, Dragonite turned sharply. Those warm eyes had gone cold. He locked onto Pelipper in the air without a second's hesitation.
"Yancy, you okay?" His voice was still steady, but there was a depth to it now, a solidity, the kind that made you feel like everything was going to be fine.
"Yeah... just hurts a little." Yancy hauled herself to her feet, health bar nearly empty, but the sight of those two colossal figures standing behind her sent a surge of energy straight through her.
Pelipper, still overhead, hadn't quite processed what had just happened. The world blurred.
Dragonite launched himself skyward like a golden missile. Pelipper had been lining up another shot at Yancy when a Hyper Beam forced it to abandon the attack and to scramble out of the way.
The moment it moved, Blastoise had already calculated the landing. Flash Cannon, fully charged, fired, and a brilliant beam of light found its mark and brought Pelipper down.
Crash!
Pelipper hit the ground and carved out a crater on impact. Its wings twitched twice — and went still.
"Nice work!" Yancy took to the air again, still a little unsteady, but she, Dragonite, and Blastoise closed in from three sides and boxed Grovyle in.
Grovyle surveyed the scene. Something shifted in those cold, calculating eyes: a flicker of what might have been satisfaction. It didn't attack again. It lowered the leaf it had been holding and stood quietly beside the altar, waiting, as though it had been expecting this all along.
[That felt SO good. Is this what it's like playing a maxed-out character in a starter zone?]
[Dragonite with Extreme Speed and Dragon Dance, who survives that?]
[Those cannons on Blastoise's back, I'd like to see anyone try to bully our captain now.]
[Why isn't Grovyle running? Something's off about that look on its face.]
[Is it setting up something huge? Be careful!]
Yancy was about to demand answers from Grovyle — honestly half a second from launching a Fire Blast just to roast the underhanded little schemer medium-rare before starting the interrogation. But the moment she started to move, Grovyle did something none of them could have predicted.
It opened its hand and let go. The golden gear fragment hit the ground with a soft clink. Then, slowly, it closed its eyes. Its arms fell to its sides. Every guard it had kept up dropped away completely.
"You..." Yancy stopped. The fire she'd been holding back fizzled out. "What is this? Playing dead?"
Grovyle said nothing. Its body tilted slightly forward, as if it might fall at any moment. There was something in that silence: a quiet relief, like that of a creature that had finally laid down a burden it had carried for far too long.
Then the whole world changed.
The dim ruins, the drifting air, the dust suspended mid-fall, even the warmth still rising off Dragonite's skin, everything locked in place in an instant. A strange gray wash swept over everything.
"Time... stopped?!" Yancy realized with a jolt that her character couldn't move at all.
And in that gray-white stillness, a single point of sacred green light blazed as if it were the only color left in the world.
Space rippled like the surface of water, and a small, ancient figure drifted into being slowly from the void: Celebi, tiny and unhurried, radiating something that felt older than the ruins around them. The twin antennae on its head swayed gently. Leaf-like shapes floated in the air around it, mysterious and oddly endearing all at once.
This legendary Pokemon didn't move toward Yancy. It floated instead to Grovyle's side, extended its small hands, and opened a translucent green barrier that wrapped around Grovyle with unmistakable tenderness.
A dialogue box appeared.
[Celebi: After all these years, you're still the same...]
The chat started moving again.
[Wait, who is THAT?]
[The effects! The BGM! They spared no expense!]
[Time stop?]
[Is it saving the villain? New enemy incoming?]
[Even Dragonite got frozen. I don't think we want to mess with this one...]
Then Celebi's voice sounded directly in Yancy's ear, clear and light as water over stone.
"Do not harm him. He is not a bad soul."
Yancy answered inwardly, still reeling. "Who are you? This guy almost killed us just now!"
"I am Celebi. And he is the 'Gatekeeper' I chose."
Celebi moved its small hand, and images bloomed in the gray-white space around them: scenes from deep within the Golden Labyrinth. A tower, impossibly tall, wreathed in coiling black mist.
"Deep within the Golden Labyrinth lies a cursed tower. It is the source of the black fog, and that fog is steadily corrupting the data and the hearts of this world."
Yancy stared at the tower in the vision, billowing with dark haze, and felt a chill settle somewhere she couldn't name.
"Grovyle's cruelty, attacking newcomers, all of it was a test. A way to filter out those truly strong enough to enter the tower. He has been guiding those with the ability to break the curse, using his own reputation as the price. He has been trading what the world thinks of him for whatever chance of survival this world still has."
So that was it. Yancy turned it over in silence.
"The only way to end it is to enter the tower and purify its core. But the tower is extraordinarily dangerous. You will need to be far stronger than you are today. Your evolutions this evening have proven that you are worthy."
Celebi drifted to hover before Yancy and placed a single scale, shimmering with the patina of ages, gently in front of her.
Yancy was still frozen in place, but items could still be stored directly into her bag.
"This is the 'Scale of Time.' It is a gift, both a celebration of Dragonite's evolution and a tool for the journey ahead. Go. Grow stronger. Then save this world."
With that, Celebi gathered the unconscious Grovyle close. Both of them grew translucent, then transparent, and slipped away into a fold in space and time that sealed itself shut behind them.
As they vanished, the gray began to drain from the world. Color poured back in. Time resumed its course.
[Grovyle was working undercover this whole time? The writing on this is insane!]
[I feel terrible for him. That's what a real hero looks like.]
[Scale of Time? That already sounds broken.]
When the moment of stillness passed, Grovyle was gone. Only the gear fragment remained on the ground, lying there quietly, as if it had witnessed everything and had nothing left to say.
Yancy stood still for a long moment. Then she descended slowly, reached down, and picked it up. It was cold to the touch, and heavier than it had any right to be.
"Let's go," she said finally, drawing a slow breath. She tucked the fragment away. Her voice came out a little quieter than usual. "We're heading back."
The rescue guild hall was alive with noise.
The moment Yancy led her team through the door, they became the center of everything.
"Oh my goodness, you actually made it back!" The Wigglytuff at the front desk pressed both hands over her mouth in astonishment. "And Dragonair and Wartortle both evolved?"
"What about that Grovyle? Word is it was there too?" The NPCs pressed in from all sides, questions tumbling over one another.
Yancy looked at the sea of concerned faces and offered a quiet smile. She didn't try to explain what had really happened with Grovyle. That was a secret that belonged to her and that gatekeeper alone.
"Handled," she said simply, and stepped up to the counter, setting the gear fragment and the S-rank commission form down in front of the clerk. "Mission complete."
The answer was brief, but with Dragonite and Blastoise standing there at their full, formidable size, and with the unmistakable presence of a seasoned fighter radiating off Yancy, no one pressed for more. The hall erupted instead into a wave of cheering loud enough to rattle the badge plaques off the walls.