But I thought Dragon types were weak to Ice moves. SO CONFUSED

 

"ELSA's attack missed!"

 

TOOTHLESS used FIRE BLAST!

IT'S SUPER EFFECTIVE!

 

Sorry for the delay. Hope you enjoy.

The Chosen One

“What is thy bidding, my master?”

His robotically doubled voice echoed strangely in the window bay of the newly built, and truly monolithic, Death Star II. The emperor was a deep shadow against the light of Endor, choosing not to answer until his apprentice had drawn even with him, towering over the diminutive ruler like a dark pillar of machinery. Darth Sidious allowed his distaste to manifest itself plainly upon his terribly disfigured visage as his eyes met with the blank lenses set into the mask the protected and secured the crippled warrior’s breathing apparatus, situated beneath the obnoxiously reflective helm he wore over his weak and irreparably scarred cranium.

“I have been in commune with the Dark Side of the Force, deep in Trance,” he finally muttered. “In my meditations, visions were revealed to me . . . of a world just beyond the Galactic Rim, populated by Force users of incredible might.”

Vader’s labored breathing was the only response he chose to offer.

“There is one among them, a Chosen One,” he said, wrinkles deepening as his mouth twisted into a malicious grin. He moistened his lips with his tongue, clearly savoring the bitter irony he knew his student to be experiencing just then.

“A child of prophecy,” he finished, voice saturated with glee as he drew out the last syllable in his low, droning rasp. “With his powers, Luke Skywalker could be defeated, perhaps, and turned to our cause. Go, and seek him. His name is Harry Potter.”

“Where will I find him?”

The Dark Lord peered into the distance for a time, eyes shifting back and forth as he attempted to divine an answer. Another smile curled his dry lips. “Hogwarts.”

He drew a handheld holocron from within his robes, to project a three-dimensional image of the galaxy before them. He used the device to move out past the outer edges of their system, and the limits of their galaxy, to one on the outer edges of another.

“You will locate them on the third planet from the pivotal star, on the outermost arm of a neighboring galaxy two parsecs beyond the Rim of ours. It is a blue planet, with breathable air, orbiting a star of average mass. The rest, I leave to you. You will depart immediately.”

Knowing that he had been dismissed, Vader gave a short bow and departed for the docking bay.

----

There was a soft hiss of aerial compression as the cockpit sealed itself in preparation for takeoff. Relative silence fell as the bay doors were opened and the shields lowered to allow for his departure. He lifted his craft into the air, and drifted gently into the center of the ring that would accelerate him at warp-speed to the edge of the Galactic Rim.

He stopped gradually, coming to rest gently within the grip of the fasteners as they latched themselves to the wings of the cruiser.

Beams of soft blue light seemed to pervade the deep, starlit void of space, growing in intensity as the ship was prepared for warp-travel. The craft was launched not long after, and to any observer, might have appeared to stretch for a time as it shot into space at velocities near the speed of light.

Time seemed to slow, and for a time Vader thought o nothing, simply watching hyperspace fly by in a fantastic blur. His breathing was, to his own ears, in perfect harmony with the electrified humming of the destroyer’s various engines and interfaces. How strange then, that he feel most human, closest to those memories that resurfaced most often in his mind, as he sat in the cool, sterile space of his ship, surrounded and immersed in the cold, insensitive calculations of inhuman technology.

All too soon, the ship was shuddering upon re-entry into standard subspace, forcing him to focus his attention on navigating the treacherous fields of gravitation and debris at the edges of and in between galaxies. His hands moved calmly over the control panels as his fighter swerved over, beneath, and around countless asteroids, allowing gravity to fling his ship hither and thither, on numerous trajectories as the ship tilted and tumbled its way to his destination. Soon, he would be entering the solar system.

----

Vader felt his eyes widen behind the dark lenses of his mask as Earth came into view. It was beautiful; an immense sapphire, laid softly against the black velvet of space, littered with diamonds that appeared to shower the magnificent blue gem with light. His eyes were drawn to opalescent accents of land amidst the crystalline cerulean waters. The planet seemed eager to reveal its charms, to showcase the grandeur of its beauty and revel in its own splendor, glowing in the light of sun and moon. And yet . . . just off the coast of three much larger, interconnected continents of gold and peridot, a verdant isle perched unassuming. Like someone standing at the back of crowd, it shied away unnoticed, seeming merely by its shape and subtle separation to desire that it remain unseen as it peered askance at the rest of the world.

Steering his ship in that direction, he found, upon penetration of the atmosphere, that the situation within the borders of the isle were a microcosm of what he had observed before. The island was actually rather large, and quite as striking. Cities crowded its interior, coasts, and even its frontiers as fingers of human civilization not unlike that of similar planets reached out into the areas bordering rivers, mountains, and valleys. And still the Force guided his eyes to seemingly unpopulated wilderness in the North, situated farther from the continent than the rest of the isle, positioned even farther north than a neighboring island that in this context seemed to protect it from the other group of larger continents to the West.

He cloaked his ship as it approached the ground, and landed it in a field of rolling hillocks, covered by a think pelt of healthy grass. A derelict shack stood some distance away, at the tip of the highest hill, and Vader was again stricken by the unsettling impression of being carefully observed by someone who did not wish to be seen, or who sought desperately to be overlooked. There was some deception here. Some mischief at work.

And just like that, he began to sense it. It was hiding just at the edge of his senses, like something seen out of the corner of his eye, or heard at a distance but not understood; a strange smell he recognized but could not identify.

The Force was strong here; he could feel it in his bones, but it had been condensed, hidden, influenced and woven into a blanket of oblivion by someone’s wariness, by his or desire to turn all eyes away from where they stood. It felt as though something lay hidden behind a circle of mirrors, waiting for him to leave.

But that would not do. The Force was strong in him, and he felt that any illusion he could sense, he could tear away. He clenched his fist as he fixed his eyes on the shack. His will to see and know was greater.

He raised his arms, channeling the swelling waves of power that seemed to wash over this place, and used its own strength against it, willing the massive illusion to peel itself away. The very air seemed to wrench and convulse as the mysterious Force deception resisted his efforts to reveal what had been hidden, but Sidious had not chosen him for nothing, and his strength with the Force had only grown after his loss to Obi Wan, forced as he had been to increase his dexterity with it in the absence of limbs.

Existence itself seemed to warp and shimmer as turrets and towers emerged, pushing past barriers of shifting light as the castle revealed itself against the will of its creators. The sky shattered, breaking into shards of illusion like sharp-edged pieces of glass. There was an ear-splitting snap, and Vader was confronted by a vision of Hogwarts and its grounds in their entirety. He stood before the gate, with a sprawling village stretching away some distance behind them.

He could feel the stares of those who lived in the village, but their minds were weak, and he was able to divert their attention with the Force. A man in black robes was rapidly crossing the grounds, the wind kicking his skirts up behind him in a dramatic whirl. There was a hint of fear about him, and regret . . . but mostly irritation.

“Leave this place,” he shouted, nearing the gate. “You have no business here.”

“I have come in search . . .” Vader paused to take a breath, “of Harry Potter.”

“I do not know what manner of being you are, but no such person resides here,” answered the man, sneering as his greeting was casually ignored. “Now leave.”

He turned and strode away, apparently confident in the strength of his defenses. Vader did not call after him, turning to gaze instead at the metallic bars of the fence, tall and black, studying them with fascination. Though he could sense the material underneath, he felt that they had been overlaid with some mysterious power, which he found it impossible to understand by observation or intuition. Whatever it was seemed to retreat, or perhaps dissolve, as he approached them with his Force powers, but matter was matter, and the gate would have to go.

Vader raised his hands, attaching his consciousness to the metal structure of the gate, willing it to implode beneath the weight of his thoughts. The strange power binding them to their initial shape and position resisted him, sapping and leeching away at his efforts with greater intensity as the integrity of the construct grew nearer to being compromised. Still, the metal began to curl, folding in on itself as its edges were drawn inevitably toward the center of its mass.

The master of the school had managed to cover half the distance back to the castle doors when the grinding screech of twisting iron met his ears. He turned in time to see the gate’s hinges yanked from their moorings in the wall as the stranger crushed them.

The greasy-haired wizard made his way back down the lawn, drawing his wand as he strode over the grass. Vader saw the man raise his arm, presumably with the intention of firing some sort of ranged weapon, and calmly swept his hand to the side, tossing the warped metal of the gate as though it weighed no more than a skipping stone. The wad of crumpled iron kicked up dust and leaves in its wake, soaring like a monstrous arrow toward the bolt of crimson light.

Vader watched in triumph as his enemy’s power dissolved against the onslaught of his Force projection, until he saw the man wave his stick dismissively in the aftermath of his first attack’s failure, triggering the rapid sublimation of iron into smoke. It curled lazily about his form, and Vader stood perplexed as he was lost to sight for a time, submerged in a cloud that had only moments before been an enormous gate.

The invader raised his hand again, parting the smoke and sweeping it to the sides as he facilitated its dissipation, only to discover the man waiting with an incantation of some sort upon his lips.

“AVADA KEDAVRA!”

Another bolt of light shot toward him, green this time, but he immediately knew this to be a different, far greater power. This blow would be fatal. The wizard’s features had grown pinched, contorted by unbridled hatred, which seemed to flow out of him like blood from an open wound. It was hatred drawn from the deepest recesses of his mind, reaching for him like the hand of death.

He drew his lightsaber just in time, managing to catch the spell against its blade at the last second. The noise was unthinkable. Moreover the man did not appear to be letting up, and he was dismayed by his inability to simply deflect the lethal energy, whatever it was. It was struggling against him, fighting its way toward him with a tenacity that forced him to redouble his efforts.

It was fortunate that his strength with the Dark Side allowed him to understand the powers utilized by his opponent. Its existential qualities were simply beyond him. Any interaction was wholly contingent upon the presence of some conscious or subconscious emotional component, but he found himself unable to manipulate or influence it as a force unto itself.

Channeling the homicidal hatred and cold, inhuman malice of the spell, he began to push back as he had seen Mace do so many years before.

Crackling, forked tendrils of viridian light had begun to crawl up his arms and over his chest, leeching life and strength away as he sought to turn his enemy’s power against him. Eventually, he managed to angle his blade forward, inverting the momentum of the curse and reversing its direction.

The Killing Curse rebounded in a terrible, arcing loop of murderous intention, shattering Snape’s wand spectacularly in his hand as the magic backfired. He screamed in pain, reeling away with twig-sized splinters lodged in his arm and chest.

Vader raised his left hand, and silence fell as he did everything in his power to crush the mage’s windpipe with the Force. The man’s feet kicked convulsively as they were slowly lifted from the ground. He stared deeply into his enemy’s eyes, gleaning just enough to know his name before his mind was suddenly closed. Severus Snape.

Snape’s consciousness was fading, and he could feel himself losing copious amounts of blood through the receding waves of agony. Shock was setting in, and he was going to die. Here, on the grounds of the place he loved more than any other, surround by sights that had never failed to please him, even as he aged. His eyes rolled, and his uninjured hand twitched feebly as he reached for the last thing Dumbledore had left to him in this world.

Omnipotence seemed to pervade his body as his fingers closed around the wood of the Elder Wand, and Vader felt a terrifying disturbance in the Force. The professor’s pain was suddenly immaterial, and he drew the Deathstick with a mighty flourish from the inner pocket of his robes, raising it over his head in an effortless gesture of supreme ease.

Sectumsempra!

Snape felt air rush back into his lungs as Vader’s arm was parted from his torso at the shoulder. He turned the wand upon himself, and snarled “Episkey!” Blood and oil sprayed from the stump where Vader’s right arm had been, and the shards of wood fell from the closing wounds in Snape’s skin, healing internal and superficial injuries alike almost immediately.

Vader howled in shock and anger, and the lightsaber that had tumbled from the grip of his severed arm’s hand flew from the grass into his remaining hand, extending with an ominous hiss as he approached Snape, closing the distance with long strides.

His rage made the earth tremble beneath his feet, but Snape was far from done. Vader felt the hilt of his lightsaber fall to pieces in his hand, deactivating it. It had been dissembled as though he had taken it apart himself in seconds.

Snape smirked at him, but quickly twirled his wand again as Vader raised his remaining hand, seemingly far from any kind of dependency on his blade. A brightly glowing shield of some sort manifested just in time to resist the Sith lord’s attempt to destroy him with the weight of the force. The bubble of bright blue magic popped into existence, shrinking rapidly around the wizard as Vader unleashed his might against it before growing outward again as Snape sharpened the intensity of his concentration.

Vader continued to channel his rage and pain, stifling the wound he had sustained even as a he drew strength from the potent sensations associated with it, both physical and emotional. He persisted in his attack, and felt himself begin to rise from the ground, suspended against the force of gravity as he allowed his negatively charged thoughts to augment his powers.

Snape grit his teeth with the effort of sustaining his defense and bit out an incantation, wrenching his arm sideways.

“Finite!”

Vader felt his connection to the Force falter for moment, broken by the wizard’s spell. The effect of his murderous intent was dispersed in every direction with a silent backlash that forced Vader to stabilize his levitation.

Seizing the opportunity to strike, Snape began to cast curses in rapid succession. Seeing the now familiar green light and sensing the homicidal intent of the action, Vader pulled massive slabs of earth out of the lawn to raise between himself and each curse, lifting hunks of stone and dirt large enough to fill a giant’s hand from the ground to intercept the deadly spells.

He ripped trees from the Forbidden Forest, yanking them up root and stem with absurd ease in the midst of his rage and sending them to do his bidding as they were flung like virtually weightless sticks in the direction of the wizard at his behest.

One by one, Snape transfigured each of them into water, swarms of flies or fluttering bats, clouds of mist, or columns of writhing but ultimately harmless serpents that dissolved at his feet before slithering away.

Refusing to relent, Vader gestured with his hand, and tugged the heavy wooden double doors at the front of the castle from their threshold, and sent them careening toward the sorcerer at converging angles, hoping to confuse him, or divide his focus.

Instead, Snape whispered something to the tip of his wand, and swung it in a wide arc over his head. Plumes of bright gold and searing red flame leapt from the rod into the air, pouring forth with explosive force and scorching heat. The intensity of the fire seemed almost unnatural, reducing the doors to ash in less than a second as it took the shape of wild phantasms he had never seen, or even imagined. It seemed to feed upon its own destruction, consuming smoke and ash in and endless cycle of horrifying conflagration.

But beneath the heat, smoke, and ash, he could still sense them – those same feelings. He could feel the wrath, jealousy, envy, and again, the irritation. It almost made him want to smile.

Before long, the dark, threateningly sentient flames had coalesced into an ambiguous shape of immense terror and malice. Burning wings wreathed in black, pyroclastic vapors smothered the sun, stretching away from an indistinct center to the edges of the grounds. Two wickedly clawed, skeletal hands of flame emerged from within the infernal haze, reaching to meet him with unsettling speed as tide of destruction rolled to encircle him in a living maelstrom of hellish light and roiling heat, leering at him with the glower of a thousand demonic faces and licking at him with an infinitude of fiery hands and arms.

But this was nothing new to him. Vader knew what it was to burn. He knew it with every fiber of his perpetually tormented being, with a certainty that was unparalleled by anything else he had ever managed to learn in this life. He had experienced hatred and psychological suffering that burned hotter than molten earth, had felt the stifling rage of humiliation and defeat ache in miserable harmony with the curling of his fully ignited flesh, and lived. The fires of his wrath burned hotter even than these, and he would master them.

The grounds of Hogwarts were awash in swelling waves of incineration, and the hovering Sith Lord did everything in his power to divert and cool the flames as he sought to reign them in, fighting to bring them under his command. He could feel his passion beginning to influence their behavior, withstanding the searing agony of the heat and allowing it to strengthen his will.

The flames coiled around him aggressively in a final attempt at sustaining their wild independence, before he smothered the entirety of the inferno in a withering expulsion of heat with a single, forcefully dismissive gesture. Only scorched earth was left in their wake as they were banished back to the abyss.

He emerged trailing smoke from clouds of ash and dust, more powerful than he had ever been. His cloak hung over the cauterized stump of his arm, concealing it from observation, and the lenses of his mask gleamed white in the reflected light of rapidly dwindling embers, eerily blank as the towering shape of his body reappeared.

Before Snape could even raise the Wand, Vader brought his might to bear against it, snapping it with a sound like mountains being torn asunder.

“No!” was all the man managed to say before Vader snapped his arm by inverting it at the elbow joint. He allowed his powers to saturate the vicinity, watching as the professor’s knees buckled beneath the weight of the Force.

“Tell me where he is,” Vader intoned, still hoping to make progress on the mission, “and I will grant you the mercy of a painless death.”

Snape sneered, and spat at his feet.

Vader used the force to straighten his remaining limbs and break them, raising him off the ground as though he had been suspended by wrist and ankle, a prisoner bound with marionette strings and awaiting execution. He said noting as his limbs were stretched, uttering no cry even as the sickening crunch of popping joints grew louder. The volume of his whimpering nevertheless increased as the strain on his body intensified, until Vader clenched his fist once more, inverting the pressure of the Force.

There was ragged scream of shock and anguish, followed by a series of sharp, wet cracks, and Severus Snape was no more. Vader released the body and allowed it to fall to the ground in a crumpled, misshapen heap of torn flesh and broken bone.

He finally raised his eyes to the open doorway of the castle, and saw a crowd of adolescents gathered there, standing behind what appeared to be older wizards like the one he had faced. Turning to them with his hand outstretched to sway their minds, he addressed them as a crowd.

“Where is Harry Potter?” he asked, waiting for a response. “My patience is growing thin.”

 

Alucard and/or Buffy vs any/all of the twilight vampires.

 

Afrojack, let me be the first to demand that this is continued.

EDIT: Someone throw a challenge my way - HP or DF or a crossover, with Dumbledore or Voldemort's inclusion a strong preference.

 

Voldemort vs Ebenezer.

 

I'd like to see Voldemort and Cowl get crosswise.

 

Challenge accepted. Voldemort vs Cowl, coming soon. Then Voldemort vs Ebenezar as well.

 

Jesus Fucking Christ.

This thread is over.

I demand you turn this into a full fic in which Vader takes Harry to Sidious.

 

~[Pocket Monsters: Ramen edition]~
​

or
​

When Legends Collide;
the Sixth Hokage versus the Indigo League Champion
​

Tidal waves large enough to smash against the barren roof of Mount Silver itself at their apogee loomed up from thirty leagues out and fell upon each other violently, tumbling and rising anew without end at that distance. With each titanic collision two and three hundred after-ripples and lesser waves roared outward, only a little less tall and destructive than the ones to come before, yet the vast swath of open ocean between their origin and the great white perimeter walls only a hundred feet out from the beach where a few oblivious trainers roamed the Tanoby Ruins in search of fame, treasure, and the rarest of the Unown proved to be enough to diminish the threat to a few lapping currents mere feet high by the time they slipped up to the shore.

He was not oblivious, nor interested in such pedantic glimpses of glory as the others there that day sought with a single-minded intensity. His name was still known from one edge of the Indigo League to the other, including these next-to-autonomous Sevii Islands. It was spoken with reverence by many, with hushed whispers by some, and with vehement disgust by no few of the politicians who believed him dead and gone forever. No, he did not need more fame. He had beheld and tamed the rarest of treasures this world had to offer for three years, and his pokédex had flagged only a handful of the newer Johtoan-files. That old quest had concluded the day he scribed his name into the roof of the Hall of Fame, where no marching feet could erode it but by those of time itself. His was a purpose far removed from the others on that beach. For an hour he had stood and watched the roll and plummet of those ungodly waves taunt the northern world, assessing, rolling the odds, considering the risks that lay ahead. He was already committed to the task of surmounting this plateau, of that there was no doubt. The past six months had gone into procuring the means to do just that, six bitter and extolling months...

Salt spray gathered upon the volatile winds swept in for the umpteenth time, drawing him back to the moment and making him tilt vermillion eyes downward by rote beneath the rim of his tattered, bleached cap more faded scarlet and white than bright red any longer. Sea foam brushed against his weathered running shoes, lapping around the soles without care and slipping in between his toes. On the edge of his attention he caught the sound of steady footsteps trudging through the sand, too light to be the old man digging at the temple remnants nearby, too heavy to be one of the children eager to swim in octillery-infested waters.

"Do you know how to pick a scenic view or what, pal?"

His head tilted up and aside in recognition of the voice, and the casual tension in his shoulders smoothed out as he turned to lock vermillion eyes upon familiar hazel-brown again. They examined one another briefly, and Blue let out a rough snort of derision as he stopped only feet away.

Darker, ruffled hair left in a tumble of natural spikes came a few inches longer these days, almost touching the back of Blue's collar. The retired-Champion tilted his own head in mocking tribute to the one man to ever best him at his height of success, a wry grin playing over his lips even as he hooked his hands through his pockets and slouched back just-so, completely at ease.

"I swear, you look more coolly detached every time we meet," his rival said derogatorily, "although to be fair, for a deadman-warmed-over you're in fairly good condition."

Red inclined his head, saying nothing in return. They both knew that he had made contact throughout the years, if highly-classified. The Oak heir simply couldn't let the opportunity to be brash pass by unmolested, and he continued in that vein after only a few moments of waiting to see what kind of rise he could draw out.

"Don't give me that look, hot-shot. I haven't see you inside of three-and-a-half years, and once-a-clefairy-moon emails don't count for squat. Maybe try for a little sympathy when I have to go back home and tell your mother how her only son has taken on another death wish to fulfill, as if the first two hadn't been bad enough for her health."

Nothing more passed over his battleworn features, no hint of a smile at the old banter. The current Viridian City Gym Leader seemed to realize that wouldn't change; he sighed and shook his head in disdain.

"Y'know, Red, I had hoped your little stint at the top of the world would have taught you, what, peace? Respect for the sanctity of your own life? It isn't good to carry on like this, always reaching out for the next impossibility."

"No." The way he said the word conveyed any number of meanings; no, it isn't a death wish. No, the others weren't, either. Or no, you don't understand. Even no, don't tell her anything at all. But somehow he managed to avoid answering the actual questions poised to him.

"Fine," Blue conceded reluctantly. "I can recognize that Aggron-hard stubbornness from a mile away - and FYI, so could the paparazzi that spotted your tell-tale Charizard's black scales glinting in the sky from Vermillion City to here, the ones I had to beat back with a stick half a mile behind us just so we could even be talking right now in a measure of quiet to ourselves, so have a bit of advice before you bite off this much vista in one go; the only real way across those waves you're so intent upon conquering is to halt them altogether." Red tilted his head again to glance at him askew, drawing a quick bark of laughter from his rival. "Hah, you think I don't know you better than this? Give over, pal. Mount Silver was just a stepping stone compared to the leviathan staring us down right now."

His hands settled idly across his hips, thumbs hooked through the edge of his pokébelt to rest across the back of Pikachu's fast ball and Snorlax's heavy ball. It was a tell and they both knew it - a measure of consideration, of acknowledgment.

The unsaid 'OK, I'm listening'.

Some of the weight seemed to fade from Blue's posture and expression. He grinned again, turning to face that imposing sea.

"Glad to see even you have a chink or two left in that plating to exploit. Okay. Advice - You're going to need to flash-freeze them and believe you me, it isn't so simple as hurling an ice-type at the problem and letting it go to work. The waves in the back will just grind the ones ahead apart in a matter of minutes-to-seconds the further out you go." A brief pause, considering his words. "Its the same age-old stratagem everyone whose ever bothered to try has invested in, and not one of them succeeded. Personally, I had the good sense to retire after two and a half miles, Articuno or not."

The pause stretched out for several seconds, observing each other again in light of that information. Blue finally sighed and took on a stricken expression when it was clear that he had nothing to say. "What, you aren't impressed? I know its not mapping out the legendary depths of Mount Silver, but I'd like to think that tracking down and persuading that frozen chicken to obey my commands - and without a master ball, thank you very much! - would be worth at least a frosty 'Congratulations, Blue!' over the usual cold shoulder, pal."

Vermillion eyes widened a fraction, the lines around them lifting just a little. The faintest quirk to the corners of his lips. It was a brief crack in his resolute facade - and he had to admit that it did feel good to hear Blue's voice in person again after all these years.

Blue grinned. "If you want to follow in my footsteps, as always, then use Sheer Cold, Blizzard, and Ice Beam, in falling order of viability. Stagger them together in quick succession - Cold to cut the deepest through the sea and stifle the undercurrents, Blizzard to reenforce the frost and cool down the immediate and up-coming environment, and Beam to generate the passage up to the next sluggish wave before it breaks upon you. Rinse and repeat until your little plesiosaur collapses from exhaustion and you might just make it to half an hour."

Blue flicked his left hand idly over to the pitted surface of the lone poké ball resting on Red's belt, the ash-black Charizard within a dark shadow beneath the surface. "Of course you could take your chances and try flying over them, but good luck breaking mach velocity against these gales. They've only grown stronger and more wild through the centuries from the few records in the Indigo database, and I haven't heard of a Crobat capable of surviving that barrage, let alone an overgrown wyvern. You'll both be slapped down and drowned in minutes."

The growing amusement he had felt crinkled, expression stiffening. He could feel his starter's poké ball heating up as Charizard shared the sentiment, awoken from their conversation.

Blue broke out into a satisfied smirk at finally riling him up.

"I've had a good bit of time to think about this on the trip over, after I was tipped off to your presence by the early media break starting at Vermillion City - which, again, I stifled before it could grow out of hand beyond a few of the vermin beating me out here. I figured you would appreciate the gesture with all that haste you were making."

He nodded imperceptibly. Blue returned the nod part-way and continued, "We can rule out flying and freezing, and you don't need me to tell you about trying to surf your way forward. Psychic barriers and telekinetic movement more-or-less are rendered just as useless due to the amount of force constantly pounding away at them. You see where I'm going with this yet?"

"Yes." The word was short and sharp. He was growing tired of the Oak heir's antics.

"No need to get snippy, pal." Blue settled back into a slouch again, refusing to acknowledge the tone. "The sole exception to that domain is teleportation. But you're looking at roughly a thousand miles by my best calculation - yes, I said one thousand. More than three times the length of the old estimates. And at this level even an Alakazam would faint before getting a quarter of the way over - again, mine did." He fell silent and closed his eyes for a few moments, and when he spoke again it was with a bit of melancholy in his tone. "Ala's empty poké ball is resting in Lavender Tower. He died out there so I could learn how far I'd failed to traverse, thinking that maybe, just maybe all I had to do was warp my way forward."

And like that, suddenly things made sense. The anger he felt at taunting Charizard's life was pushed aside and blocked out, eyes softening.

Blue opened his own eyes and forced himself to grin again, but now the brittleness to it could be seen. He was using humor and crass to offset the pain coming here had evoked.

"Even that trumped up clone of yours is going to have a hard time crossing such a distance in a single bound. Mewtwo isn't the only solution, but..." he trailed off as his eyes examined Red's pokébelt. There was the usual fast ball and Pikachu, net ball and Lapras, heavy ball and Snorlax, luxury ball and Espeon, and of course the plain poké ball and Charizard. But where a sixth should have rested at the back, the master ball holding the ferocious gene-spliced legendary, there was nothing but an ordinary and empty great ball.

A sharp pain seemed to cut through the former Champion's expression. He breathed in quickly and reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose in imitation of his grandfather, shoulders dropping, hazel half-lidded. "You actually went through with it, didn't you?" he asked, and suddenly old frustrations long concealed burst up to the surface at the thought - at the reminder of the very first email more than three years ago, when Red had abdicated the throne to bring Mewtwo under control... until it could self-regulate itself in this world of monsters and men.

To teach it calm, to teach it understanding... and to isolate it in the deepest barrow known to humanity should its unstable powers explode again. Mount Silver would not be so vulnerable a target as Cerulean Caverns had been.

"You gave up your reign at the Indigo League almost before it began to tame that mess of enzymes and fiery rage, like it was nothing at all to have defeated Lorelei, Bruno, Agatha, and Lance four-straight." His voice took on a black edge and his eyes flashed open to stare hard at his rival. "Like it was nothing to overcome me."

Red said nothing to that. He had made his choices. They had proven true. And he had expected this kind of outrage since the onset, but knowing what he knew now about Blue's loss... well. Let him vent.

"Well that's just perfect, then," the Viridian Gym Leader uttered in disgust, turning and walking down the shore a good distance. He eventually returned, still fuming, but he had wrangled the worst of it under control by then, and he jabbed a finger in Red's direction. "Either find another mind strong enough to sustain extreme mass-teleportation, or go hunt down that new upstart, Ethan Gold, and find out if he'll loan you the beast of the seas to beat the whole affair into submission from here to whatever exists beyond."

"No," he said more evenly than before. A simpler sort, no hidden meanings wrapped up within it. Before Blue could speak up he reached into the inner pouch on his jacket, where once he had stored his badges, and drew out the miniature master ball missing from his belt. A quiet groan warped the air around it as the sphere was enlarged and the battered purple surface turned transparent to reveal its goods; burnished silver feathers, baleful cobalt slits above a maw spread wide in fury, eight distinct jet-blue flaps flared upright in agitation. A legendary born of the Whirl Islands, and trailed to its ancestral roosting grounds between Four and Five Island just over six months ago.

Hazel widened, a moment of disbelief coloring Blue's expression. "I just fought Gold at the Cinnabar Ruins two days ago, and he brought out that bastard as his trump card! How did you convince him to part with it already?"

"My own," Red stated firmly. A hundred thoughts flashed over his rival's face, jealously and realization for the lack of impression over capturing an Articuno, frustration at being surpassed yet again, and a more recent pain, perhaps even humiliation, that was crushed before it could appear for more than a moment. Eventually denial was the strongest to win out as the inquisitive nature inherited from his grandfather finally emerged.

"I don't believe it. Where could you have found a mate or offspring? The legendaries don't breed as common creatures do, and we both know it. So why the lie?"

He considered telling him, for just a moment. His pokédex would have the registration information proving his ownership, the time and date, and would have included the capture coordinates on the charted seas... had he not terminated the tracker protocol years ago. He - and therefore his capture - were suitably listed as "unknown", and he preferred it to stay that way.

Nothing good could come of three Champions beholden to Lugia, however, and if Blue believed that there could be more available in the world... no. Two were bad enough that he was only at peace with that decision because he would be traveling far away from the other in due time.

Blue's hands clenched into fists and he shoved them into his pockets at the silence. "You know I'm going to call the kid up and demand an explanation for why he'd hand over his legendary, right? I'm pretty sure he didn't know you were going to take it for a spin out into the impassable seas! I didn't seriously think you'd be able to convince him to part with it!"

Red just sighed at the indignation, breaking their gaze as he turned his cap down and stared at the master ball. When he lifted his head long seconds later a rare moment of fatigue marked his features drawn, tired.

"Blue," he said at last, weary of the argument and certain at last that he was ready to depart, as if he had unknowingly been waiting to speak to his old childhood rival one last time, face to face. He clapped his left hand to the other man's right shoulder, vermillion eyes upon hazel, and for just a moment conveyed something that they had once shared when the Indigo League had been ignorant of the names Champion Red and Champion Blue, before they had received pokédexes and inherited the weight of all-consuming responsibility.

Then the moment was gone. "Goodbye."

He stepped back and flung his right arm high, the master ball soaring skyward to burst open at the peak. Crimson poképower fell like a bolt of lightning and coalesced beneath the calmer waves on this side of the barrier wall, and the young legendary's head broke the surface the next moment with a thunderous roar that shook the sand beneath their feet and could be heard for miles around.

Blue winched. "Mew-dammit," he swore. "If you go through with this you're going to make me go chase after Ho-oh to bless your bloated corpse when it turns up beyond the wall! It'll singe me to soot before I get within a hundred yards!"

A faint smirk finally crested his face as he snatched the sphere from the air and replaced the great ball with it on his pokébelt, then dove into the water. The wilder Lugia eyed him warily, thin pupils easily agitated after the short time they had had together, yet it kept its maw closed tight and allowed him to wrap his arms around its neck with only a low growl in the back of its throat. A whispered command was given and in the next moment, as hundreds of reporters armed with microphones and cameras rushed up the canyon slope toward Tanoby Beach at last, ignoring Blue's orders to stay back, trainer and Lugia erupted fifty feet into the air, arcing wide to splash down and, some seconds later, emerge just as victoriously into the sky. Twain vortexes followed with each flap of wings as it broke the surface.

Thousands of photographs would show nothing but a harried blur, reddish-black upon a beam of white - while only the live footage aired at that very moment would remain as distant proof that Pallet Town's second esteemed hero had come again.

"It is him!"

"Champion Red!"

"What kind of pokémon is that?!"

"Where has he been all these years? Champion Blue, what's going on?"

Blue ignored the questions and watched his rival vanish beyond the barrier walls into the impassable seas with the force of a moving typhoon, unable to quantify his emotions beyond the same age-old sadness, regret, and quietly simmering frustration.

~*~*~*~ ​

The last drop of ink was still fresh from the pen as Naruto Uzumaki, elected Sixth Hokage of the Village Hidden in the Leaves by near-unanimous vote, stood upright from his desk and stretched with a wide yawn. The old hat perched across his head proclaiming his position swayed precariously, leaning back far enough around the tangle of wild blond spikes to display the slightly newer band of cloth and steel wound round his forehead that he had inherited from a childhood teacher. It was one of his most treasured positions, that roughed up hitai-ate and scribed leaf symbol recognizing him as an official Genin of Konoha, second only to the long white coat his father, the Fourth Hokage, had once fought and died in that he himself now wore every day.

Just as he finished the extension and began to relax his stomach gurgled pitifully. His expression of relief at completing the paperwork and standing upright again after two hours hunched over those forms became a frown as he surveyed the dearth of microwaveable ramen cups at his feet.

"Aw, man. Do I really need that reminder right now?" he lamented the lack of his favorite food, the gurgles growing stronger. Usually he would have had twenty or thirty of the heaven-sent snacks stacked up on either side of his desk, the empty plastic thoroughly cleaned out by this time of the night, while a handful of larger bowls balanced precariously in a chair across the room courtesy Ramen Ichiraku from breakfast.

But not tonight.

Or last night, or the night before that, trailing back for more than a week straight. It was the most heinous crime the Sixth Hokage had ever seen committed against the Land of Fire during his several-month-term - noodle thievery. All the crates coming in from the Land of Grass were mysteriously empty by the time they reached Konoha. Ramen had become an S-class rarity, and no one was feeling it more than Naruto Uzumaki, whose diet was primarily a staple of the stuff.

It wasn't hard to place the blame, either - Sasuke Uchiha, his old friend-turned-rival-turned-Otokage. He knew perfectly well that no other man alive had a reason to instigate this kind of petty retribution for sleights both real and imagined - it was a Uchiha tradition, and by Kami did Sasuke ever live up to that legacy now that he had a wife of his own and the family name to rebuild from scratch.

It all stemmed back to the most recent Hokage Election and, really, the end of the Fourth Shinobi World War. Sasuke had finally picked a side to fight for after years of wayward, even out-and-out villainous pandering, of trying to change the ninja world and cutting down those who stood in his path with little to no remorse. That he had contributed to the downfall of his resurrected ancestor toward the end had only been enough to balance the scales in the eyes of many, and the villagers had long memories. The hero's welcome Sasuke had expected was instead a cold shoulder, and he had taken to brooding in the old Uchiha Compound with his allies while the Fire Daimyo and his council conferred with the Konoha council.

Which had lasted two months. Exactly long enough for Naruto himself to recuperate and leave the hospital, to be officially named a candidate and, at the approval of nine-tenths the Jounin, elected Hokage. Sasuke vanished within the hour in a burst of Kirin, leaving Karin, Suigetsu, Juugo, and Kabuto to follow as they would. It was only some time later that word began to spread of the last Uchiha's claim to the abandoned Sound and all of its resources. That no Daimyo would pitch in to solidify his position as Otokage had only underlined the tensions between the two villages over the coming months.

He hadn't been able to openly cast his doubts about Sasuke until just the day before, when an envoy had arrived with Sasuke's new peace treaty terms, carried by one Suigetsu Hōzuki formerly of the Village Hidden in the Mist. A brief letter attached named the Sound as responsible for the act of sabotage and that they would continue such operations until Konoha signed the aforementioned document and returned it to the Otokage for confirmation. Then and only then would the shortage of ramen supplies be compensated for with the surplus stock of the stuff held by the Sound.

Oddly enough there was no mention of preventing the crime from reoccurring.

The council had advised him not to take Sasuke's bait, to wait and consider the outrageous terms as a proper Hokage should.

Suigetsu was thus currently tied up in the ANBU Torture and Interrogation chambers with Anko and Ibiki, rather than sent back in a sealed keg - if the Daimyo and other village heads did not recognize Sasuke as Otokage or the Sound as a proper location, and the last Uchiha was determined to alienate the one 'kage willing to acknowledge the empty position like this, then he was just as happy to retract his previous statements on that front and treat the 'envoy' as just another missing-nin in need of a meeting with the hunters of his home village.

Having given the subject the rest of the day and night to stew, proving to the council that he wasn't a hotheated boy that rushed into trouble eagerly anymore, Naruto had come to a decision on what else to do about the matter.

Go to Sound and remind Sasuke that peace was a two-way street... and so was war.

~*~*~*~
​

The sun was a bloody disk upon the horizon before he had finally departed, crimson and orange rays bright across the treetops of his home village.

The Shadow Clone he had left behind to run the day-to-day operations in his steed would last long enough to conclude the mission, with Kakashi serving back-up and assistance duty to it. He wasn't foolish enough to leave Orochimaru and the Root entirely loose to do what they would in his extended absence.

As he leaped from branch to branch for the third hour in a row, Naruto rubbed at the back of his eyes wearily. Sleep had eluded him when he had returned to the hospital for a quick nap - the thought that he would finally be confronting his old rival again had his nerves too jumped up to permit much rest. He wasn't fool enough to meet Sasuke head-on as he was, however, and he didn't anticipate reaching the Sound within a few days, giving him time to stop at one of the inns he and Jiraiya had once used during his two-year training period so long ago once his body finally wore itself out.

He was mid-way through his next jump when a sudden flash of information interrupted his concentration - his clone's abrupt dismissal, relaying news that warranted immediate action; Kiri-nin sent by the Mizukage had just arrived with word of an unknown nin riding a summon as powerful as a Tailed Beast, which had come from the south seas and passed beside the Land of Water leaving whirlpools and storms in its wake. More to the point, it was angling toward Uzushio.

His family's ravaged home village, appropriately left behind in the ruins of the Land of Whirlpools.

Naruto managed to land on his hands and feet as he processed that, bright blue eyes narrowed to slits. His metaphysical hackles rose at the thought that someone was invading that hallowed place, let alone someone causing chaos on this kind of scale again.

Dammit. The Bijuu are dead and gone! They can't be coming back into the world!

He exhaled sharply and closed his eyes to concentrate, forcing himself to calm down and sit still. Minutes came and went as he tried to gather in nature energy. It felt like a constant chidori was pressed against the back of his neck, the itch to be on the move, making the task far harder than it should have been. Eventually, feeling as if it took an eternity, nature energy began to fill the former jinchuriki. More than ever be missed Kurama and the Nine Tails abilities - he could have been in Uzushio in an hour at full run, without any of the delays he now had to go through to enter Sage Mode.

Four or five hours would have to suffice when he was done.

~*~*~*~
​

Fresh, lush green forests that never seemed to end, along with great churning rivers zigzagging here and there, represented the majority of the land of the great continent. A few tiny islets dotted a larger island shrouded in thick fog off to his right, allowing just the rare stone peak to emerge here, a patch grass and trees there.

And everywhere he looked he could see old-world structures still intact. Communication equipment atop buildings, fishing vessels that were too new to be relics. Even the rare human, who fled at the mere sight of his approach - proof that life had gone on after the cataclysm hundreds of years ago on this side of the world as well.

His eagerness offset the exhaustion of ten hours trapped in an unending tsunami, riding on the back of a living typhoon. The wind and the waves a constant barrage... it did not do to dwell on those memories, not before this revelation.

He had let the legendary beneath him guide them around some sort of monumental stone bridge and swing them around by the aforementioned island of fog, the sea-dragon keening in the back of its throat in the same manner as when he had tracked it from the Whirl Islands originally.

Somehow or another, another nesting spot lay nearby, just as there had been one in the Sevii Islands.

It was doubtful that the Indigo League could still receive his signal, half-way around the world. He jolted down his thoughts into the pokédex regardless and saved the email as a draft to peruse later, documenting the harrowing voyage and his means of victory therein, the discovery of the continent hours afterward, the rich land and geography, the unevolved sea life swimming away from them. He made note of everything even remotely worth interest for several hours, just as he had during the mapping of Mount Silver.

Eventually his hypothesis was proven true when the sound of churning currents arose, and the sight of swirling whirlpools appeared - along with the ruins of a vast, sprawling village, thousands of buildings sunk into the sea that were momentarily revealed by the vortexes stirred up as they leaped into the air, hundreds of others that survived as so much detriment along the faded shores.

Fatigue made his fingers numb as he clutched the pokédex, speaking quickly. They swam on for close to an hour as the sun emerged from behind the clouds, and the sea calmed even further. Lugia kept up its keening note the entire time.

He finally put the encyclopedia away and pulled the poké ball and master ball from his belt, sending out Charizard. With a gentle run of his hand down the legendary's neck he stood upright and grabbed ahold of the black-scaled wyvern's outstretched arm, climbed up to the hollow between the shoulders, and recalled Lugia.

"Thanks," he murmured appreciatively, safely nestled into place. He closed his eyes and gave an order to glide the rest of the way toward the distant shores. Sleep cried out in his muscles, hunger from his stomach. He ignored them both. There was too much he didn't know about this place to risk indulging in the needs of his body. His cautious was proven true upon hearing a faint crackle carried by the coming breeze the closer they progressed. Vermillion scanned the forestry again and locked onto the distant sway of branches, rapidly approaching the barren plain of land past the buildings.

By the time they were clear of the ruins along the shore a blond creature in a tattered white coat and atrocious orange and black cloths beneath it leaped thirty feet out of the trunks, rolling to a smooth stop to stare at him with slitted golden eyes. He nearly assumed it was some strange breed of pokémon, but the flesh was too human, the facial features too clean. And he had seen those headbands this one wore on one or two of the people on the other side of the continent.

Whoever it was bit out a short and sharp message in a dialect he could barely comprehend, and even then it was so foreign from modern Indigo as to be borderline unrecognizable. "Deteike！"

Regardless of the actual words, the meaning was unmistakable - you aren't welcome here. And I want you gone.

Red pushed his cap up a little higher above his black bangs, staring resolutely, issuing a challenge just as clear without words at all that he had no intention of leaving. Not after traversing half the world to get here.

The other man's expression darkened thunderously as his hands flew into a flurry of movement and then half a dozen duplicates appeared in a rush of smoke, disabusing him of the notion that it was not a monster after all. They overlapped hands together and three swirls of blue-white energy began to appear between them. He had no intention of letting the apparent monster strike him or his partner. He barked out an order for Flamethrower and high speed evasion.

Charizard roared in answer, swaying the trees. Then he dived, a rumble deep in the ribs that reverberated up the spine and gathered before that hollow, clutched in the throat, building and building and building. The first pair below thrust their hands skyward and the ball of energy flew forward like a round of Shadowball. Charizard twisted aside and let it blow past them harmlessly. The second pair and the third waited in light of that as the distance fell from seventy feet to fifty, to thirty.

Abruptly they launched and his dragon's maw spread wide. An inferno of blue flames washed over the shoreline and the land where the opponent stood. Two vast thuds filled the air as ebon-and-ruby wings beat against the sky to halt all momentum, deftly avoiding the swirling spheres and bathing the foe in concentrated fire.

It was long moments before Red noticed the way those flames bent around the center of the ground, where the faux-man pokémon stood defiant. Barrier, he thought grimly. "Enough," he uttered aloud. Charizard's eyes narrowed in annoyance before he obeyed, gradually closing the jaw and releasing the pent up stream, swallowing the remainder.

The land was charred and cracked for a dozen feet around save for a small circle at the center. No trace remained of the doppelgangers, but he hadn't expected there to be. "Sore ga subetedesu？" the creature mocked them, left hand still upraised defensively. The right clutched a buzzing giant throwing star that whipped at the unburned soil, the center like the balls of energy collected before.

Vermillion flickered mercurially. Assessing, considering.

Two can play your game. "Double Team," he ordered.

Before they could begin to pull back, to gather speed, the figure below launched into the air to swing the shuriken directly, moving so fast - and a white-hot rage burned to life in both trainer and partner. They could do no more than twitch back violently, the pain of one shared by both, so that Red reeled back and felt as if he had just had his own right eye sheared from his skull as the great wyvern's had been. Charizard's neck rolled and smashed the bastard's arm aside before the buzzing tool could come round to finish the job, reaching forward with razor-tipped claws desperate for blood.

The faux-man slapped the slashes aside with his other hand as his momentum drew him back to the earth, managing to spin somehow, and in the instant before he was around, Red knew that he would throw that deadly tool. The poké ball found its way into his hand as he forced the recall trigger, and time slowed to an eternity as the spinning, screeching throwing star raced upward for his partner's belly and throat...

A rush of crimson poképower swallowed the black scaled starter back inside protectively just after a faint snick of pain flared across Red's belly, the barest contact scarring the lighter cream scales and transferred across. He himself managed to roll back and downwards in a parallel arc to the opponent just before the recall was completed. Golden eyes met vermillion, fierce determination conveyed against a summit of contained wrath.

Then they hit the ground. It was impossible to turn his own fall into anything more than a bone-jarring collision, to get his legs up underneath himself to try and perform a roll. He smashed down upon one side and felt the air punched from his lungs, while the other flipped easily and came up standing tall.

No. He could hardly see around the pain and darkness clouding his gaze. But he had not endured ten hours upon the impassable seas, six months virtually trapped within constant vortexes and buffeting gales, three years under threat of immolation at a moments notice, a year toiling away in the Indigo League, to roll over and die before this stranger's attacks. His good hand stirred and clutched the fast ball, thumbing the release without word or sight to guide him, only instinct. Static numbed his fingers.

And a bloody smile stretched his lips into something macabre.

Pikachu erupted and thunder fell from the heavens in half an instant. The next, lightning rolled, a protective barrier of electric wrath defending his body as the enraged mouse jolted around the landscape and sniped at the enemy. He couldn't see and he could hardly hear, but the vibrations thrumming through sky and soil told him that the battle raged on.

~*~*~*~
​

Whoever the other shinobi was, he seemed to rely entirely upon his unknown summons to fight for him, not unlike Kankuro, a Puppet user from the Land of Wind. The great black beast specialized in fire, and he had nearly taken its head before it was returned to whence it came.

Despite the tiredness making him slower he still managed to flip around and come down on his toes easily, rising upright, marching forward to finish the job. He had never seen such regular eyes glow so bloody and red, as a Sharingan without the tomoe or swirls. He drew a kunai as the other nin stirred from his terrible fall, reaching feebly for one of the odd devices he relied on to call the summons out.

No you don't, he thought, drawing his arm back to fling the knife when his foe smiled. Such agonized features should not have been capable of contorting into the way they did, practically feral and dripping with blood.

His eyes narrowed. Then it was too late to stop - a flash of red energy instead of smoke, and a yellow creature appeared - right before lightning burst from its sparking cheeks. It honed in on his metal tools, especially his headband, and the former jinchuriki was forced to leap aside rather than try to stop the element with senjutsu techniques as he had the flames before.

Now lightning. This feels like fighting Kakuzu all over again!

He watched as a wave of bolts shot into the cloudy sky, then fell back down and smashed into the ground before the summoner, one after the other in quick succession, forming a living cage that he had no hope of penetrating from afar, most especially having to zigzag around those coming at him directly.

He forced a henge to mask his Sage Mode highlights and then ran through the old handseals to summon two basic clones; the smoke was as helpful for disguising him as the henge.

The three of them launched out, watching the yellow summons juke about erratically. It hissed in confusion for a moment, then threw out three more thunderbolts aimed toward each of them - and each sizzling flare of electricity was slower than the one before it.

Only the real Naruto was able to dodge with any success, as the clones simply attracted the element when they tried to leap away, but it was still useful enough to get him close while tiny black eyes tracked to him. He thrust out with a low yell and was rewarded with the overly large striped mouse being picked up and thrown by the nature energy up against one of the buildings clogging the shoreline.

He evaded its retaliatory stoke in mid-air and rushed toward the summoner, rolling to avoid another round and spinning off two and three kunai to draw the lightning away as he moved.

In no time at all he was before the lightning barrier and he forced his hands together, concentrating as he had rarely done so before. A wisp of blue-white swirl built up between his palms. He had to jump back as he continued molding the chakra, shaping it, bleeding nature energy from the air and environment to help him.

Despite what was obviously a bad blow, the summons limped after him, cheeks bulging and dripping blue sparks. "C'mon!" he urged as the sphere trickled into a quarter-size ball.

The summons stopped moving. Beady black eyes watched him with venomous hatred. Its maw opened and it bellowed, and even as Naruto jumped aside to avoid the next attack, something in the air warned him it would not be enough.

Then the world was awash with white. A noise so loud his eardrums felt as if they had burst. The Rasengan in his hands began to falter, collapse, as he fell backwards to stare at a sky gone black with clouds, of that much he could still be certain of. His whole body tingled, head to toes. Numbness. Air swept into one ear and he winched, blood leaking out.

What... what just happened? He blinked hazily and tried to sit up. It hurt. He shuddered as his muscles twitched involuntarily, each movement a small agony. Aah... and yet... he forced one leg to rise, the knee locking into place. Then the other. This pain was not so bad as half the things he had endured fighting Madara, and Obito. His stomach roiled as he did sit up, reaching to grasp one knee to help steady his progress. His vision was still off, hearing practically gone, but with each odd jerk, he could feel a certainty growing... this is nothing compared to having Kurama ripped out.

The well of chakra in his gut, in the broken cage, began to emerge. He had lost his nature energy entirely, and his erratic movements wouldn't let him stay still long enough to gather it again, but that supply of energy filled his limbs and soothed the worst of it. He had to consciously cut it off before he spent more than was needed - he still had to confront Sasuke when this was over. He would need the lion's share of that chakra to be sure of success.

The summons had fallen to the ground after felling him momentarily, wheezing from the outburst of electricity. The barrier around its summoner was gone.

He stood up. Drew a kunai. Took a step, and then another. "Whoever you are," he said with a slight slur, "I can't let you roam the Elemental Countries. The Bijuu were meant to stay dead. Your summons... whatever they are... wherever you come from... I can't let you threaten us."

~*~*~*~

The all-pervading silence of the vacuum left in the wake of Pikachu's Thunder proved he had blown out both eardrums. He had been able to roll over off his likely broken hip and leg and force his eyes into the crook of one arm before the bolt, worthy of Zapdos itself, fell from on high, however, and as he rolled over again his sight was mostly clear.

He felt an ounce of respect for the faux-man pokémon's tenacity. Few could claim to rise up again after taking a direct hit so potent. It did nothing to offset his still simmering rage over permanently wounding his starter, but even so.

Breathing hurt. Sitting up hurt him more so. He could feel the shards tumble around, mind-numbingly bad in that hip. He let it grow, used it to feed the furnace inside of himself, his molten pillar of support.

He managed to recall Pikachu. Of the options left, Espeon, Lapras, and even Snorlax might be enough to drive the creature to its knees at last. He dared not risk any further wounds to Charizard despite the boilingly-hot surface of the poké ball the wyvern 'rested' in at the moment.

He could see but not hear the words the enemy uttered. It didn't matter.

He gripped the master ball and leaned into the ruined wall at his back for support, shoving and pulling and leaning until he had his feet up underneath him. All his weight fell on his unbroken leg.

The creature across from him threw the silver knife at the same moment he threw the master ball forward to meet it, tool-against-tool. Red poképower boiled out into the air and Lugia appeared, even as the knife and ball clattered to the ground, useless.

"Aeroblast." He ordered with all the strength he could.

Baleful cobalt turned upon their foe as it landed on its feet. The legendary had little reason to trust him, let alone love him, but it had plenty of respect for those on his team.

It flapped its wings once, and the battle was over, twain vortexes converging on the bloody opponent without end.

/END?

7.5K. Holy wow.

EDIT: By-the-way, this is set in the loose future of that TGYH!Naruto edition challenge-world I've been building, and To the Victor go the Spoils(former Hiro's Journey), in case anyone is lost.
​

 

I jizzed.

/10chars

 

I loved it.

Even though personally I would have liked to see Red and Naruto become allies in the end. Especially given that you have combined their worlds. Red would realize that Naruto is a human being, perhaps they would even communicate somehow. It would rule.

Still, what you have written is very good.

 

Thank you muchly, gentlemen. Sorry for all the grammatical errors, I've been editing them as I spot them.

I'd be willing to do another, and I'll extend my group of viable settings and characters to include Batman and Gotham, if someone wants any of that.

For now, though, time to do some serious backreading. I missed all the goodies because I felt to guilty to read any until I'd finished with mine.

 

Speak no further, I'm on a roll.

This time HP-only, just to return to the roots.

AU Fun! So you have much freedom with the characters.

Canon Albus Dumbledore vs Dark Lord Albus Dumbledore who joined Grindelwald.

Bonus points for setting: liberal use of Apparation.

 

How about Ash Ketchum vs Ash from Evil Dead.

 

Here's an idea to ponder for anyone willing to do a crossover:

The Nameless One vs Voldemort

That is, TNO from Planescape Torment, as a mage. If you like, make it be the same incarnation that had turned Ignus into what he was in the game.

 

Hey, this may sound completely demented, but how about Peeves vs the Ghostbusters?

Dumbledore decides that it is time for the poltergeist to leave, so he arranges for these guys to arrive.

 

I'm feeling a bit scared, inadequate and inferior, but throw me something Harry Pottah and we'll see.

 

Arthur Weasley (with as many enchanted gadgets as possible) vs Lucius Malfoy.