The moment the two girls breached the central perimeter, Entei rose to his full height. His heavy, armored paws inadvertently scraped the edge of the active energy barrier, triggering a sharp, crackling violet shock that rippled across his hide. He gritted his teeth, enduring the kinetic feedback without breaking his stare, before lifting his massive golden-masked head toward the structural anchors above. The signal was clear: Destroy the source.
Sushang and Qing Lan rapidly orbited the three massive emitter towers, their fingers tracing the sleek steel casings. There was no local administrative interface, no physical override terminal, and no clean diagnostic panel to hack. The machinery had been hard-coded to operate entirely via remote instructions from Yao Feng's command deck.
"We aren't going to find a key," Sushang hissed, her eyes locking onto the dense, reinforced conduits channeling juice from the backup batteries. "Xiao Gui said to sever the lines. We do it by force."
"Espeon! Slowking! Coordinated severing strike! Confusion into Iron Tail!" Qing Lan commanded.
The two Psychic anchors focused their fields, their energy compressing into a razor-sharp invisible shear that slammed down onto the primary power cables. Because the internal wires were insulated with heavy, military-grade polymer sheeting, the kinetic impact didn't split them cleanly; instead, it triggered a spectacular, concussive short-circuit that tore through the terminal blocks with a deafening explosion of white sparks.
BOOM!
The heavy iron plates shielding the cargo hold buckled under the blast, the structural resonance echoing across the ship's framework.
The Shift in Focus
"What was that explosion?!" Yao Feng roared inside the crimson-lit monitoring room, his hand slamming against the visual feed console.
The primary tactical radar had just logged a massive, instantaneous drop in the containment fields of the cargo bay. His eyes widened as the data aligned. The frontal assault on his three perimeter sectors wasn't a coordinated advance by three separate champion-tier trainers; it was a massive, single-operator illusion designed to siphoning his focus away from the core hull.
"We've been baited!" Yao Feng snarled, his face contorting with fury. "The main forces are inside the flagship! Pull back half of our perimeter vanguard immediately! Order all remaining infantry lines to seal the cargo deck! If those three sovereigns break their data locks, I will personally see this entire division dismantled!"
The corporate logistics network fractured as the orders shifted. Automated alerts wailed across the valley, forcing dozens of guard squads to break engagement with Guinaifen's frontline anchors to sprint back toward the primary basin.
Miles away on her mountain ridge, Guinaifen felt the sudden, structural easing of the pressure on her flanks. Her breathing was ragged, her cognitive processors running on pure adrenaline after managing an overlapping multi-front simulation for over an hour. She reached into her belt pouch, pulling out two bitter Cheri Berries and crushing them between her teeth.
The intense, spicy chemical shock cut through her mounting mental fatigue, forcing her eyes wide as her focus stabilized. Spotting the massive corporate migration toward the central flagship, she tightened her link with Alakazam. "They're running back to the hive! Increase the suppression metrics! Don't let a single squad clear the ridge smoothly!"
She expanded her attack lines, forcing her remaining anchors into high-risk, maximum-output moves to buy every single second her companions needed to complete the extraction.
She remained completely unaware that deep within the velvet folds of her heavy backpack, the iridescent gemstone harvested from the Ecruteak hollow had begun to vibrate with a blinding, incandescent intensity. The core crystallization was dissolving, transforming into a dense stream of pure, multi-hued data particles that remained trapped beneath the leather seals, waiting for the structural matrix to fracture.
The Choice of a Sovereign
Inside the smoke-choked cargo bay, the containment cages had successfully collapsed into slag, but the operational reality remained grim. Suicune's integrity bar was too depleted; her breathing remained faint as she lay motionless on the steel plating, unable to register a movement command.
Qing Lan scrambled forward, pulling a standard Ultra Ball from her linen robes. "Lady Suicune, your internal metrics are failing! Please, allow my matrix to shield your data until we clear the canyon!"
The red capture beam erupted from the sphere, wrapping around the majestic water type and drawing her form into the capsule. The ball snapped shut, falling onto the metal floor.
Wobble... wobble... CRACK!
The sphere didn't even complete a primary cycle before a violent explosion of pure, azure energy shattered the plastic casing into a thousand fragments, releasing Suicune back onto the deck. Her body rolled against the plating, her internal code fiercely rejecting the structure of the ball.
"The standard compression parameters can't contain her," Sushang analyzed, her brow furrowed as she checked her terminal. "The elemental density of her sovereign core is too heavy. If she doesn't actively accept the synchronization, a normal ball will just fracture under the torque."
"Ooooh~"
Entei and Raikou stepped over the broken shards, their heavy heads lowering as they exchanged a series of low, rhythmic growls.
Slowking's forehead gemstone flashed with a soft light, his telepathic translation bridging the language barrier directly into the girls' minds:
[The sovereigns state that unless a deity's heart is completely aligned with a trainer's path, no physical vessel can bind their essence. Without a mutual covenant, even absolute data dissolution is preferable to temporary containment. They will not hide inside a sphere.]
"The pride of a mythic line..." Qing Lan whispered, a look of profound respect softening her panic.
"No time to argue philosophy!" Sushang barked, her ears catching the rhythmic, heavy thud of combat boots echoing down the adjacent corridors. "If she can't fly in a ball, we carry her out the old-fashioned way!"
Entei offered a low nod of agreement. Crouching low to the deck, he slipped his massive, white-pelted shoulders beneath Suicune's limp torso, while Raikou anchored her flank, hoisting their sister securely onto the volcano king's heavy basalt carapace.
Thud-thud-thud-thud!
The main security doors were violently thrown open. A dense column of Cihuai infantrymen, their high-output energy rifles already glowing with a lethal kinetic charge, poured into the bay.
"The anchors are linked! Espeon, Slowking... coordinate master vector... Teleport!" Sushang screamed.
FLASH.
Before the corporate guard lines could depress their triggers, the entire group dissolved from the cargo bay, leaving the infantrymen firing into an empty room.
The psychic matrix printed their coordinates directly onto the perimeter ridge where Qing Lan's Xatu stood waiting. The moment their boots touched the grass, Sushang didn't follow the retreat vector; she turned on her heel, using a secondary psychic jump to materialize directly in front of the flagship's master storage crates. With two rapid, sweeping motions of her arms, she scooped three entire boxes of pristine corporate Poké Balls into her dimensional menu before executing a consecutive jump to rejoin the vanguard.
"The relay is active! Xatu, double the distance! Launch!" Qing Lan ordered.
"Gurgle!"
The ancient bird type opened its wings, its eyes glowing with a deep, cosmic violet as it caught the data packet from Espeon, running a secondary, maximum-range Teleport that pulled the entire extraction team five miles clear of the valley's tracking web.
The Awakening of the Feather
After running three consecutive weather and positioning relays across the mountain folds, the vanguard finally settled within a deep, secluded granite basin at the foot of the Ecruteak cliffs. The moment the party interface updated with a [SECURE] status marker, Sushang fired an urgent data packet to their ridge monitor.
"Extraction complete, Xiao Gui! We have the assets! Fall back now!"
On her distant peak, Guinaifen received the ping. The intense tension holding her mind together snapped instantly, and a massive, crushing wave of cognitive exhaustion threatened to buckle her knees. Her active anchors were running on pure fumes, their hit pools blinking a dangerous scarlet.
She systematically initiated her retreat sequences, pulling her exhausted Pokémon back into their spheres before mounting her primary Dragonite. The dragon kicked off the basalt ledge, transforming into a silent shadow as it tore through the canyons to rejoin the extraction unit.
Back in the command flagship, Yao Feng stared at the empty crates on his inventory screen, his face turning a terrifying, veins-bulging purple.
He had assumed the three trainers were operating as a single unit on the perimeter; he had never calculated that a single human mind could maintain a flawless, high-tier multi-front suppression loop against an army while her companions looted his central vaults.
Yet, the raw sting of losing his inventory was completely eclipsed by the primitive, raging humiliation of being toyed with by a handful of sandbox players.
"Scour every millimeter of these ridges!" Yao Feng roared into the master communication link, his voice cracking with unbridled malice. "Their stamina bars are completely depleted! The sovereigns are crippled and cannot clear the regional passes on foot! Bring them back to my deck—and as for those three trainers, reduce their avatars to ash!"
"Chairman... there's a problem," a vanguard officer reported hesitantly. "The thieves managed to lift over 80% of our specialized deployment spheres during the extraction. Our frontline units lack the capture reserves to process the secondary wild lines."
"I do not care about the common lines!" Yao Feng spat. "We have enough high-tier containment spheres left in the command vault to secure the trio! Move the infantry lines now!"
The Crimson Resonance
Within the granite basin, the situation had reached a critical bottleneck. Although the three girls had successfully executed the extraction, they were completely boxed in. The three sovereigns refused to enter standard Poké Balls, and Suicune's injuries prevented her from matching the movement velocity of their Dragonites.
Sushang had tried to use her Psychic assets to project a continuous Confusion field to float the heavy beasts across the valleys, but the massive energy drain rapidly exhausted her anchors' remaining fuel, limiting their movement to a few hundred yards per jump.
Wrooaaarrr—
The low, electronic hum of corporate tracking drones began to echo from the upper cliffs. The Cihuai infantry vanguard had closed the gap, their long-range plasma lenses tracking the heat signatures inside the basin.
"This is it..." Sushang muttered, drawing her training blade as her Golem and Rhydon stepped into a final defensive line. Her active assets were flashing emergency gray; their stamina pools were completely dry.
"ROOAAARR!"
"AWWW!"
Raikou and Entei stepped past the trainers, their bodies crackling with weak, erratic embers and residual electricity. They let out a defiant, mythic cry that echoed against the stone walls, their AI explicitly communicating a single, unyielding prime directive: They would face total data dissolution before they allowed the iron collars to clamp around their necks again.
The script had reached an absolute dead end.
PONG!
The heavy canvas of Guinaifen's backpack suddenly ruptured. The iridescent gemstone flew into the open air, its crystalline matrix completely shattering in a spectacular explosion of blinding, multi-hued light.
The light didn't dissipate into the atmosphere; it transformed into a fluid, pulsing torrent of pure, rainbow-colored data that cascaded downward, merging simultaneously into the physical bodies of the three trainers, their active Pokémon, and the three legendary beasts.
The transformation was miraculous.
Suicune's fractured integrity bar shot toward the 100% threshold within a single decimal tick, her white-hot purifications washing away the soot and burns on her fur. Raikou's electricity transitioned from a weak blue flicker into a blinding, golden atmospheric current. Entei's mane ignited with a violent, pristine volcanic fire that turned the surrounding stones to slag.
Even Guinaifen felt the crushing, suffocating cognitive fog vanish from her mind instantly. Her vision cleared, her mental processing speed resetting to peak capability as if she had just finished a full night's cycle inside an advanced rejuvenation capsule.
"The asset data..." Guinaifen breathed, looking down at her palm.
The shattered fragments of the gemstone had coalesced into a single, majestic item: The Rainbow Feather of Ho-Oh. The central spine carried a faint, pulsing warmth—a pure crystallization of a deity's grace that had answered their honor with a miracle.
Guinaifen unclipped her master interface, a brilliant, confident smile breaking across her face as she looked toward the descending corporate lines.
"Family... the setup phase is officially over," she whispered into the stream channel. "It's time to run the counter-attack."
With their parameters fully restored to their mythic peak thresholds, the three sovereigns let out a synchronized roar that shook the foundations of the canyon.
"ROOOOOAARR!"
"WAAAAAH!"
"AWWWW!"
The counter-offensive was an absolute slaughter. The Three Legendary Beasts drove forward like a wall of natural cataclysm—shattering the incoming corporate guard lines, short-circuiting their plasma arrays, and flattening their infantry formations within minutes. With 80% of their specialized capture reserves sitting inside Sushang's dimensional pack, the corporate vanguard lacked the mechanical resources to re-establish a containment loop. Their entire perimeter layout collapsed like a house of cards.
The Machine of the Executive
"Incompetent heretics! Absolute trash!"
Inside his command deck, Yao Feng watched his entire security matrix blink out of existence. His forehead veins were pulsing violently against his skin, his teeth grinding with a raw, aristocratic hatred as he watched the three sovereigns effortlessly dismantle his life's work.
"If you want a transaction handled with absolute precision," he whispered, his hand descending onto a massive, locked scarlet toggle beneath his primary terminal, "you do not rely on standard algorithms."
CLICK.
RUMBLE-RUMBLE-RUMBLE—
A series of heavy, structural explosions rocked the grounded flagship. The massive nose cone of the dreadnought began to slide outward along internal hydraulic tracks, the steel alloy plates folding and reorienting themselves via advanced mechanical automation. Within seconds, the command section of the airship detached entirely from the fuselage, rising into the air as a towering, fifty-foot armored bipedal Mecha.
The massive steel boots of the machine slammed into the granite basin, the shockwave creating a localized tremor that forced the trainers to anchor their footing.
"Whoa..." Sushang blinked, her eyes tracking the massive array of laser batteries bristling along the robot's shoulders. As a Xianzhou native who had spent her life watching the massive starskiffs and defensive constructs of the Alliance, a mechanical robot didn't cause her a single trace of primitive fear.
But within the balanced rules of a sandbox game script, an end-of-campaign Faction Boss carried a mechanical difficulty pool that completely outscaled everything that preceded it.
"ROOAAARR!"
Entei and Raikou launched themselves at the metal joints, their minds driven by the memory of their past imprisonment. They unleashed a maximum-output Flamethrower and a sky-splitting Thunder directly into the torso.
THUMMM—
A translucent, hexagonal energy shield snapped into existence around the mecha, absorbing the mythic elemental output with zero degradation to its structural hit pool.
The machine raised its left arm, the massive steel palm opening to reveal a high-speed rotary cylinder.
VIP-VIP-VIP—
A dozen high-velocity, ring-shaped magnetic restraints launched into the airspace, their automated navigation sensors locking onto the sovereigns' tracking signatures. The beasts swatted them away using their claws, but the devices simply corrected their vectors mid-air, looping back to strike from the blind spots like an endless game of kinetic catch.
"Hahaha! Do you honestly believe your primitive beasts can match the peak industrial output of our corporation?!" Yao Feng's amplified voice bellowed from the mecha's external speakers. "This unit was engineered from the ground up to withstand the eternal fires of the Phoenix itself! Enjoy the weight of your choices!"
The robot raised its right arm, the main particle cannon charging with a blinding, white-hot kinetic mass.
BOOM!
An absolute cataclysmic beam of pure particle energy erupted from the barrel, tearing through the center of the basin. The immense destructive output forced the three sovereigns to cancel their offensive logic, combining their elemental force to construct a desperate counter-barrier. Guinaifen and Sushang immediately ordered their remaining anchors to join the defensive line, layering their Hydro Pumps and Protect shields to buffer the strain.
Yet, the trade remained a dead-even lock, the mecha's reactor maintaining the beam's energy without a single sign of thermal throttling.
And while the trainers' attention was entirely centralized on surviving the particle beam, the flying magnetic rings successfully bypassed their blind spots, snapping tight around the necks of Raikou, Entei, and Suicune. The familiar, oppressive violet energy cages materialized instantly, sealing the three deities back within their industrial chains.
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