60-64

Conquest 3.13

We woke up before Marina did, and used the time to have a go at figuring out what the fuck was up with the Dragon Clan. We used sis' body. She was tiny and easy to miss, and she had an easier time slipping out of the cuddle pile. Marina had me completely locked down, but at least my face was someplace super nice and her hands apparently got grabby when she slept. We were sure as fuck not complaining or doing anything to change that particular state of affairs.

Still, ninja Ralts. No one would ever suspect sis to be trained in how to do bullshit ninja magic, which just made us deadlier when using her body. We Teleported inside the Blackthorn Gym, directly into the arena, and scanned Porygon into their network. Sis' Mega Stone choker had a psionic control interface, and while we couldn't download data from our AI directly, it could send it to the choker and we could download it from there. We fucking loved technology. Psionic tech especially. Who needed wetware when we could just use psionic amplifiers and extra machine processing power?

Their defense Porygons were good, but we only needed the physical security disabled, and they were focused on defending the data servers. Clair was here in a different room. Did she live in the Gym? Didn't really matter. We crushed the cameras and microphones near her room and in the arena before retrieving our little AI that could and Teleporting in on Clair. She was a mess, an empty bottle of vodka on the floor next to her passed out body. We seemed to have an alarming tendency to encounter or cause situations that led to people passing out drunk. Well, she wasn't waking up anytime soon. Snacks then. We were in and out in minutes and then we climbed her empty bed and sprawled on her pillow.

Wonder who'd wake up first?

Turns out the answer is Clair. Because someone knocked very insistently on her door while loudly asking if she was okay, and that she was really late. The growled "Fuck off and leave me alone." had us wondering if she had actual dragon pokemon blood or something, somehow. Then she did the usual hungover pained groan and writhing in agony thing. Well, press for advantage, yeah?

"Ra-Ralts."

She jumped and turned to face us in one swift motion, looking super fierce and ready for everything, for all of a second. Then when all she saw was a tiny Ralts lazing around on her pillow the hangover caught up with her and she ran for her bathroom. Then it was some rather nasty sounds coming through the open door. Heh. She flushed and then ran the tap before coming out with the funniest hungover deathglare we'd ever seen. Funny because we weren't the ones suffering.

"You. How did you get here and where is my niece?"

"Ralts."

"The fuck it's none of my business, she's my niece."

"Ralts."

"I had nothing to do with that, I didn't even know it was happening, I was seven!" The sheer hatred with which she said that was eye opening. It was the kind of hatred that drove people to brutally murder someone, the kind of hatred that burrowed deep into one's soul and drove them insane. Just being reminded of as much as we had was already unhinging her sanity.

This… was unexpected. Very unexpected, and anything that evoked a response on this level was something we needed to know about right the fuck now. The mental spike we sent into her mind was subtle, exploratory, to see what we'd have to deal with. It found a mind falling apart, whatever defenses she may have had lay in shambles as fundamental parts at the core of her self shifted and broke and restructured themselves into new shapes. We found her memory of when we'd left. She'd called her cousin Lance, the current Champion, she screamed at him, demanded answers to questions she didn't even have yet. Why her sister had disappeared, why she'd suddenly had a niece pop up out of nowhere at her Gym, why, why, why.

She'd screamed herself hoarse at Lance and he hadn't said a thing. Then when Clair could only sob at the videophone terminal Lance had asked her if she really wanted to know. That he knew and he wished he didn't. She'd gone a little mad then, her memories were hazy and we could only imagine she'd screamed at her cousin some more. Then Lance had told her of the depredations the clan leaders had visited on the younger members, of the ways mad power drunk old men had defiled and abused the children they should have been protecting. He'd been detailed in explaining what had been done to him, to her sister, to others.

He'd told her of how her sister had snapped during a particularly monstrous session and killed one of them in the middle of the act. How she'd disappeared with several elder dragons belonging to the clan leaders. How Lance had taken the opportunity presented by the sudden loss of most of their greatest weapons to seize control and imprison them all in the deepest pits of the Dragon Den he could find. How everyone that lived inside their once sacred caves was there on pain of a tortuous death if they ever tried to leave and forbidden to speak about what had happened. The public had never learned of it, and the animals were still alive only so there wouldn't be more rumors about the clan, so the reputation of the clan wouldn't be tarnished.

And then he'd told her she was forbidden of speaking about it with anyone, of acting on the information she'd just learned, or of reaching out to her sister or niece. That if she disobeyed she'd be imprisoned with the rest until all danger to the Dragon Clan had passed, or forever if she became a danger to the clan herself.

Our grasp on our power had snapped at some point when reliving her memories. Her room and our room at the Pokemon Center were freezing cold, hoarfrost and mist covering everything. Boiling shadows seemed to cover everything and swallow all light, hateful faces trying push out through them. Our Gengars sensed our agitation, sensed our desire to go into the Dragon Den and slaughter everyone inside.

We would have.

Marina had woken up to our power lashing out around her, she'd clutched us to her, frightened at first, then worried when she realized it was us. She'd called our name but we'd been fully in sis' body. She shook us a little and it jolted our consciousness partly back into my body. Our eyes focused, we saw her beautiful worried face, so concerned about us, unaware of the atrocities that lay in her family's history. We took it all in and hugged her. We cried into her chest because for all they we wanted to forget what we'd learned, we couldn't allows ourselves to. We made Clair sleep while we hugged Marina, soothed her mind and put it together as best we could, just like sis had done so often for me. Her mind would heal better while sleeping. We Teleported back to our room, and turned our hug into a cuddlepile again.

We needed to decide if we were going to massacre Marina's blood relatives.

"Talk to me 'Zula, I'm worried. What happened?"

"We visited Clair while you were still asleep." She stiffened against us.

"What did she say?"

"We… we don't think you want to know. We don't want to know. We want to destroy those memories, we want to make Clair forget too. She probably wants to forget. Your mom probably wishes she could forget."

Our words scared her, and at that very moment we were glad that she listened to us, that she thought highly of our opinion, because she didn't jump into demanding we tell her. Instead she thought about it, about what could possibly be so horrible that we wanted to forget it. It was good that nothing she could imagine was even a fraction as bad as the truth.

"If I asked you to tell me, would you?"

"Yes. We would hate ourselves for doing so, we would desperately ask you that you reconsider, but we would tell you."

"Okay." She squeezed us, acceptance and worry flowing from her.

"Hypothetically speaking, if someone were to, say, release a legendary beast in the Dragon Den with full knowledge that if they were to do so it would kill everyone inside, would you try to stop them?"

We had to ask. They were her blood, for better or worse

"Is it really that bad?" She'd taken our face in her hands and she looked deep into our eyes. We nodded, slipping from her grip and burying our faces in her chest. What they'd done… we couldn't think of anything worse, couldn't imagine more heinous atrocities. We cried on her. We couldn't help it. We'd almost managed to forget the visions we'd had about the Rockets, the ones from before we'd grown powerful enough to make them impossible, before we'd taken them over from the inside out. What Giovanni had done to us in them… We wanted to forget. I wanted to walk into the Center's storage area and take all the morphine they had until the world was a blur of warmth and chemical bliss.

"Are they a danger to others?"

We shook our heads against her, shaking and sobbing against her.

"Are they suffering?"

We nodded.

We couldn't lose control. No one could take it from us. Not anymore. We had an army, we had our Gengars, we'd mastered and controlled all psionic technology. We were unassailable now, and we'd murder anyone who tried to take it away from us.

"Then don't. Not because they don't deserve it, but because they're not worth it, and this way they'll have however long they live to suffer more."

She was stroking our hair with one hand and scratching our front horn with the other. We fell asleep to her breathing, exhausted and spent.

61

Conquest 3.m

Watching Azula tear her way through the Indigo Conference was like watching a force of nature. She was unstoppable, untouchable, uncaring, but most of all, bored. I knew she'd expected as much, that she considered herself to be far above all others, even her nephew and Ash, who she considered better than most, and yet she was still disappointed. She'd hoped to find a worthy opponent. She spoke about it sometimes, when her, their, mood turned dark. She lived for power, to truly use that power, and to have no one who could drive her to make an effort? It weighed on her.

I'd watched her on her first match at the Conference. Her face in that blank, emotionless mask she wore nearly all the time. She showed emotion so rarely, though I knew it was mostly just a mask. The more time I spent around her the more and more her and Luna's emotions seemed to just hang around them in a cloud that was easy to sense and feel. It was worrying, how she seemed to be anxious, scared, and slightly depressed so often. How little she seemed to sleep, and how what little she did sleep was plagued with nightmares that leaked some fairly horrible emotions. I was worried about her, and from some of the questions her mothers had asked me, so were they.

I wasn't blind. I could see she cared, more than cared, about me. Even before that first kiss, I'd had an idea about her feelings, and the stirrings of feelings of my own for her forced me to consider things about myself I'd never considered before. She was almost obsessed, but her affection was honest. She cared about my well being, she cared about Mom's well being. I felt the Gengars she left at Mom's home, watching, making sure that we were safe against retribution from a family I'd never known I had until I ran into my aunt.

And wasn't that another worrisome thing? What could have been so terrible for things to be as they were? I remembered the nightmares she'd had after finding out my family's secrets, remembered how disturbed and broken she'd been when she came back from talking to Clair. I'd done my best to comfort her, and it'd seemed to work, but she'd had to leave so soon. The next time I saw her, the bags under her eyes were even worse than before. At least Mom seemed happier than I'd ever seen her since she got in touch with Aunt Clair. At least something good had come from that. Well, besides qualifying for the Silver Conference, but that seemed so small in comparison.

Azula and Luna. When I first met them so many months ago at Professor Elm's lab and challenged them to a battle, they'd refused to let Wani-Wani fight Luna. I hadn't thought much of it at the time, she'd sent out Zeus and we'd tied, but now, seeing them demolish a trainer so much older than them, supposedly so much experienced than them… Well, it was really quite a sight to behold, especially when I could tell they weren't trying, not even when they and the Ampharos put up that light show.

That was another peculiarity about Azula. When you spoke with her you weren't speaking just with her. When she spoke, it wasn't just her speaking. Azula and Luna were so close at times they were more a single individual than two. They were unimaginably close, sometimes disturbingly so, but I couldn't bring myself to care. They were unique, passionate, strong, and frankly super cute. So I was going to see where things went. It helped a lot that kissing was, uh, amazing, even if she had a tendency for public displays of affection. I was still blushing from the kissing she initiated at the cafe she seemed to favor while waiting for her matches.

She smashed her second match, sent out her Starmie, gave her opponent the first move with that little phrase she'd used when we fought. She proceeded o one shot her opponent's Seaking and Victreebel with a Psychic, then drowned their Tentacruel in an unending tide of Thunderbolts and Psychics. She'd done it with her face in that emotionless mask she always wore and an added air of bored disappointment to her. She actually pulled out her phone and put on her headphones on after the Victreebel was recalled. She was already walking back to the arena's exit, beckoning us to follow, when the Tentacruel went down. Nameless the Starmie circled back to her and hovered around her head for a few second before being recalled.

We had dinner with our families, taking over a couple tables at an all-you-can-eat buffet. It was amusing to watch Azula's niece and her Chansey browbeat her into eating much more than she usually did. Interesting to watch her mothers scold her and Luna for being as disrespectful as they had been in their second match, and them being stubborn and pouting about how there was really nothing else they could have done. At one point Ash and Gary loudly proclaimed they would be the ones to win the Conference and Azula and Luna snorted at the declaration. It felt like what I'd always thought a family reunion might be like. Even Mom, for all that she'd barely met everyone, seemed to be fitting in well with Azula's mothers. I was happy.

The accommodations assigned to our weird group were nice. A furnished cabin with room for everyone, even if Azula and Luna hadn't crawled into my bed half an hour after most of us had gone to bed. She'd done that at home too. I couldn't say I minded. For all that she seemed to be bones and cold skin, she and Luna were surprisingly huggable, and they loved cuddling into me.

That's how I woke up. Cuddling. My hands had not wandered during the night. At all. Nor had the terrible twosome sighed in disappointment when I repositioned said hands. A night without nightmares for her and Luna, and a pleasant one for me. Wonder who she'd fight today, and how. Hopefully she'd have a chance to cut loose. Brooding wasn't good for her. I shook them awake. We could get an early start and get a nice breakfast together before her first match.

Their next match was as easy as the first two, with Nameless making another appearance and letting their opponent wail at the starfish until it looked like it was dead. The announcers were baffled at her complete lack of response to attacks, Nameless was completely covered in blood, then there was a shift in Azula. She never stopped being bored, but she seemed to have deemed her demonstration of superiority to be enough, and then a Recover had her starfish looking like new a moment later. Then she crushed the Pidgeot that had been beating on it in one hit, followed by a Gloom. The third was a Raichu that actually managed to fight back and force another Recover before taking a barrage of Psychics to the face, slumping down against the arena wall where it'd slammed after the first hit.

She was less disrespectful this time, sure, she'd still been… less than ideal with the show she'd put on, but at least this time she hadn't essentially ignored the fight in favor of her phone. Or left the way she had last time. I had this feeling that the general public would have two views of her: arrogant disrespectful child among the older people, and cool badass among the younger ones.

Funniest part was that for all her lack of manners, and for all that she couldn't be bothered to even pretend to be a little modest, no one could say it'd been luck. Not after the smackdown Luna had laid on their first opponent, or the one Nameless had delivered to the second one, and most definitely not after the show they'd just put up. Seriously, it'd lasted longer than the previous two combined, and had consisted mostly of the starfish letting its opponents hit it until they felt like they'd made their point.

I watched Azula feed Luna a waffle fry, love for her sister clear on her face, giggling when she pulled the fry away and Luna pulled most of it back to her mouth with her powers. Then Azula poked Luna's front horn. The most powerful Ralts to ever live responded with an annoyed cry of "Ralts!" and jumped on her sister, poking her back, prompting a breathy squeak from Azula. Well, what do you know? She was ticklish. The ensuing poking war lasted a few minutes and ended as a decisive victory for Luna who was merciless, slippery, tiny, and didn't have severe breathing problems to rob her of her endurance in the face of uncontrollable giggling.

I laughed at their antics. Stopping for a snack had definitely been a great idea. I wished I'd recorded that. Then I realized that maybe I may have not had a chance to record it, but quite a few of the people sitting around us had. If the whispers along the lines of "Oh Arceus, they're so cute!" and "Wow, that's Trainer Azula!" were anything to go by, they'd just won themselves a major PR win.

Seemed like they were in a good mood. I smiled and snatched Luna from her sister's lap in the middle of her show of dominance over said little sister, then tickled her until she surrendered. Damnit, how could they be so cute? Azula was beaming at me and Luna was pouting with her arms crossed, pointedly looking away from us. I kissed the top of her back horn. I was doomed. I don't think I could ever walk away from so much cute.

62

Conquest 3.14

We talked with Clair before we left for New Bark Town, mostly to reassure her that if anyone ever tried to put her in the cave we'd break her out. She was a little sceptical, since, you know, Lance, but she did remember the stomping she got from us, so she felt a little reassured, not to mention her sister likely still had all of the dragons she'd reappropriated. We weren't sure about other siblings, but if anyone ever imprisoned either of us, the other would murderfuck their way through anyone until both were free. We could only assume Clarissa Ddraig would at least try something similar, except with more dragons and less eldritch abominations and murder ghosts.

Couldn't be sure though, so we made sure to call father and mother and inform them of the situation, just in case. Let's see Lance try to take on Mama, Gardemom, and father. We were a little annoyed that she wasn't as reassured by us as she was by our parents, but it couldn't be helped yet. We still left a Gengar in Blackthorn Gym, also just in case. Hopefully Marina's mom would reach out to her little sis. We couldn't imagine what their separation was like.

Our meeting with the woman who'd given birth to perfection given form was awkward. For a variety of reasons. Not the least of which was the fucking atrocities perpetrated against her that we could fucking feel despite actively trying not to. Still, she was a loving woman, and she clearly loved her daughter. We left a pair of Gengars there too, also just in case. The leader of the Dragon Clan had not made a good impression, even if it hadn't been first hand, even if we didn't have a read on his mind when he'd said what he had… We couldn't afford to trust him, not with this, not when it involved Marina.

We left, even though we didn't want to, because apparently the President of the League Competition Committee wanted to speak to us, and Clarissa didn't want Marina to leave so soon after coming back home, especially not after having dealt with her family. So we were going home alone, where Charles Goodshow would meet us.

Hm.

We could Teleport. We could spend the night in New Bark and go home in the morning. So we did exactly that. Somehow we managed to still be late to the 11:00 AM meeting. It was totally not because of breakfast with the Ddraig family or snuggling with Marina. The official story was that we were very tired and overslept. Judging by the looks our mothers gave us they didn't buy it for a second. Pout. We could totally be tired and undersleeping! We were irresponsible children, it was our nature! I even had the bags under my eyes and everything from all the nightmares and stuff.

Ah well.

We walked into the compound's living room where we found President Goodman chatting away with father and Mama. It occurred to us that they both knew the man, what with both being past Champions. We walked in and sat down without anyone noticing. Combined ninja and near death experience stealth modes made it damn near impossible to spot us if we didn't want to be.

"Your daughter must be a remarkable girl, Asami. She's not even eleven and already she's shattering all sorts of records. Truly remarkable." He shook his head. "Though I wish you hadn't gotten her files classified so high, when I saw a starting trainer registered so quickly, I couldn't wait to see their records, but all I could access was her name and everything else said to contact Samuel here."

"She's always been more than a bit precocious when it comes to training and battling." Mama smiled one of those smiles that lit up the world, the ones we lived to see. "She and Luna have been training since… I can't really remember how young they started. Must have been two or three, though at the time it was more game than training."

True. It had started as play, sort of, we'd tried to do both from the start. Probably. We didn't really remember that far back that well.

"I didn't even know you had a daughter though. You more or less disappeared after you became Champion and only came out of hiding to deal with big issues."

"Yes, well, we were worried for our daughters' safety." Then she blushed. "And then there's the issue of how young I was."

"Hm. True. I hadn't thought about either of those things." The old man was solemn, but then a sly grin curved his mouth. "So, Hammer of Sinnoh, who's the father?"

"I'm not telling. If he wants to say it's up to him."

"Father filled his name in on my Trainer Registration, so really you just have to wait until next month when our records get declassified for the Conference to find out." We would fucking never get tired of doing that to people. They fucking jumped out of their seats when we started talking.

"Azula Luna, stop doing that." Err, maybe we should limit it to people who were not Mama. Or Gardemom. Or Mom.

Charles Goodshow stared at us. We felt a whirlwind of emotions coming from him. Surprise, incredulity, concern, worry, realization. His mind was better than most. He'd taken one look at us and in an instant he'd drawn conclusion. Some correct, some wrong, but the speed with which he'd done it was something to behold. Not for the first time, we were grateful for the flowy design of our jacket. Who knew what kind of ideas he'd get about us if he saw our Haunter scars or how thin and small we really were.

Then his eyes narrowed and he turned to look at father, then back at us. Heh. Goodshow had likely known father when he was young, younger than when Mama had met him. His eyebrows climbed up into his hairline. We took after Mama very much, and our red hair was much, much redder than father's, but there were far too many clues in place for a mind as sharp as his not to put it together.

"I see."

"So you do."

"Well, regardless of the subject of your sire," And here he paused to smirk at father. "I wished to offer you the honor of carrying Moltres' fire to light the central torch."

Hello.

This was unexpected.

Unexpected, and very much welcome. It would give us an excellent opportunity do some shameless self-promotion of our Avatar phones. They were already selling well, but after the news coverage of us advertising for our company during prime time of the league opening ceremony, followed by us winning the Conference and smashing our way through the Elite Four and the Champion? Yeah, this was going to be fucking perfect. We needed to get together with our tailor and have her make new jackets with our company logo sewn onto them, as well as add it to our torn and bloodstained ones. We had an idea about what we were going to wear to the finals and afterwards.

Overdramatic? Us? Perish the thought.

"We'd be delighted to." We said with a bright smile. We were always happy to do things that contributed to our greater glory.

63

Conquest 3.15

We got to the Indigo Plateau by way of blue fire, and this time we had our phone and headphones with which to listen to music on the way. We got there four days before the start to do rehearsal on the ceremonial lighting of the flames and to scope out the competition already there. It helped I was a tiny slip of a girl who didn't look old enough to be in the competition, and sis a jacket Ralts. And no, she did not appreciate the comparison to purse dogs. Unethical? Sure. Did it actually provide even a slight advantage? Not a single fucking bit. Honestly, we hadn't really expected it to. The truly good competitors were either already confident and more or less done with their training, or smart enough to train in secret.

The actual day of the opening ceremony was exciting. So many people, so much energy in the air. Our whole family had gotten front row seats to watch and not for the first time we contemplated the fact that we were all very much celebrities and VIPs in some manner and to some degree. Still so fucking weird. Hell, even Marina's mom qualified as a VIP, though she was incognito at the moment. At least our political, celebrity, and financial pull had made getting tickets for everyone to all of the events and getting access for Marina to sit in on our matches as our couch possible.

When one of the choreographers gave us the signal to go out with the fire I would use to light the central torch we did it with style instead of just, you know, running through the field and up all of those steps. Partly because we were pretty sure that if we tried I'd collapse before I was halfway to said steps, but also because we just did not do running or simple. Instead we did showy psychic, messing up our control on purpose so power bled out into the visible spectrum with a purplish glow. From sis. After all, why show our hand as both of us being psychics if we didn't have to.

Still, we cut a pretty impressive figure in our trainer outfit and the now iconic stylized flame logo of Red Technologies displayed everywhere we could fit it without getting gaudy. We'd even made a hair pin in the shape of it to hold up my hair in an elaborate tail. The announcers were pretty surprised at the blatant advertising, but they were quick on their feet and they certainly agreed with us on how well we pulled off the whole thing.

Then we encountered something that annoyed us. A lot. We were pretty sure we'd told Gengar Vittore to tell all Rocket operatives to leave my fucking Conference the fuck alone. So when we found ourselves face to face with the idiot trio trying to ruin our moment of awesomeness, we may have been a tad rougher than we should have. Credit to the idiots where it's due, they were fucking terrified when they saw who exactly was carrying the fire, they still remembered Cinnabar, but Jessie tried to take the fire anyway. We objected. Strenuously. With a lot of violence. We're pretty sure we broke more than a few bones. When Meowth tried intervening with their fucking stupid giant robot thing, sis smashed a Psychic into its stupid face and crumpled it like a fucking soda can. Fucking idiot trio.

Ugh. Now we'd have to arrange for someone to break them out of jail after the Conference was over. Right. Porygon, send a message to G-Vittore to extract the idiots and keep them the fuck away.

We walked up to the central torch and the Moltres fire came alive, flowing of its own accord into the bowl, though we did make sure it made a nice Red Tech logo as it flowed in. Amazingly, we actually felt some feelings of annoyance coming from the fire. We'd have to learn that trick. The show that followed was pretty amazing, with fireworks that somehow worked in daylight and all manner of spectacles drawing the eye everywhere. Everyone started clearing out an hour later, and we headed for the administrative area to get our first fight assigned to us. Wonder who we'd fight, on what field we'd fight.

We walked up to one of the clerks at the terminals, and handed her our Avatar to check us in. The randomizer cycled through the four field types until it settled on a snowflake. The ice field. Yue would get a chance to have some fun.

"Excellent, though you'll have to wait until an opponent is selected for you. I'm afraid you got here a bit early, Miss Sato." She fiddled around with her console and our picture appeared on the screen beside her. "This year we've implemented a new notification system for people who have an Avatar phone, so when your opponent is selected you'll receive a text message with their name and the time of your match."

Ah, magnificent. We were dragging the fucking pokeworld into the future and we couldn't be happier about. Having the Conference include things specifically for our phones made us think there may be some credence to the whispers we'd been hearing about an exclusive League contract to use our tech.

"Thank you. We'll be on our way then." We sent a message to Marina asking her if she wanted to join us at a cafe we'd seen near the ice field while we waited for our match to be scheduled.

We'd been at the cafe for an hour with Marina, who kept trying to wheedle details on what we planned to do for our match when we finally received our match notification. We would fight some rando called Ron Valentine in half an hour. Gary showed up a few minutes after that, likely to wait for his match to start. He was surprisingly civil and didn't try to tease us about Marina, instead he was fully focused on planning for his own match. He wanted to open up with his Alakazam due to its general versatility and power, as well as the rarity of Ghost and Dark types. Good boy, he was taking things seriously. We left just as we felt Ash and company coming up to the cafe as well. Fucking coincidences.

A short walk later saw us on a raised platform on the red side of the arena, across from some dude in his early twenties. Ron Valentine was not as disappointing as we'd expected. he had a measure of destiny in him that the majority of people just didn't have. He was blond and dressed casually in jeans and a t-shirt, and seemed like he might have made it out of the preliminaries if he'd fought almost anyone else. Then he saw us, his opponents, and smirked. Yeah, okay. We had a feeling we were going to have to make an example out of him.

"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the first battle of this year's Indigo Plateau Conference!" The crowd went wild. "The battle will take place on the ice field! On the green side, we have a Conference favorite and one of last year's semi finalists, Ron Valentine! And on the red side we have a newcomer and the trainer who carried the Moltres fire to the central torch, ten year old Azula Sato from Pallet Town, who has a tough battle ahead of her. What a way to start your Conference circuit career! Each trainer will fight with three pokemon, let the battle begin!"

"Sorry little girl, but it's nothing personal." He kept smirking at us even as he threw out a pokeball. "At least you'll get to see a powerful pokemon before you have to go back home!"

Then a fucking Rhydon of all fucking things came out of his pokeball. Fucking seriously? That was what this condescending idiot called a powerful pokemon? Yeah, no. Sorry Yue, but this was now example time. Now we just had to figure out the best way to do it. Show of power with one of our monsters, or show of power with someone who looked milder, like sis. The latter would be much more humiliating, and would destroy his credibility, if perhaps only briefly until we kept stomping everyone put in front of us. The former would have us raise in threat level to the rest of the competition and lower our ability to shock and awe right now, as opposed to it happening down the line.

Well, sorry about your ego Ron Valentine, but we liked drama and theatrics a little too much. Sis Teleported out onto the field and stood there like she faced six feet tall rock monsters every day. Which she didn't, but we were pretty sure the monsters she did face and beat every day were orders of magnitude above a fucking Rhydon.

"Ron has opened with his Rhydon, a strong battler that endured some tough battles last year, and what is this?! Azula has sent out her starter, a Ralts named Luna! Our newcomer may not be taking things as seriously as she should!" Then we took another step in building our legend. And temporarily destroying Valentine's reputation and ego. We keyed our microphones and said that phrase we'd stolen from somewhere so long ago.

"After you, trainer."

"Arceus above, viewers, Azula has given Ron the first move! What is she thinking?!"

"I'm sorry Little Red, but you're really asking for it. Stone Edge!"

The Rhydon stomped the ground, causing a spike of rock to break through the frozen earth, then sent it flying at sis with a punch in a move that vaguely reminded us of earthbenders from the cartoon that seemed to have bled names and bullshit all over our life. Weird. We really needed to get on with the whole finding out what legendary led to our life being the way it is. We'd promised an ass kicking for throwing bullshit at us. We absentmindedly raised a Protect and started gathering power for a Psychic.

"I can't believe my eyes! The tiny Ralts blocked a full power Stone Edge at the last second!"

"Keep using Stone Edge, she can't stop them all!"

Hm. This time the Rhydon sent out two jagged stones at us at the same time, and we sent a pair of Psychics at them, exploding the rocks mid air into a fine dust. We supposed that if we were weaker trainers or pokemon, those attacks might have been too strong and too fast to stop. It really was a shame he'd gotten matched against us this early. If he hadn't he'd have probably gotten somewhere, and when if he'd eventually gotten a chance to fight us, he'd known we weren't to be trifled with. In such a hypothetical situation we likely would not have felt the need to crush him. Ah well, such is life.

"Psychic."

The spear of psychic energy was overkill. It really was. It was the kind of attack we'd have used against something like a Dragonite, or a Metagross, hell it wouldn't have been out of place in a fight against a legendary. Against a Rhydon? Tyrannosaurus Reckt was one of the few ways to describe the results. The Psychc hit with more power than we'd used against our Snorlaxes, though not quite what we'd used to break Suicune. We didn't want to kill the Rhydon, after all. The shockwave knocked down Valentine, or it could have been his Rhydon slamming against the base of his platform and cracking it nearly all the way up to the floor. We had a hard time keeping our grins from showing. We'd actually stunned a fucking packed stadium into silence for a few seconds before they broke out into deafening cheers and shouts.

"Victory for Azula! Please send out your next pokemon!"

"Incredible, people, absolutely incredible! Tiny Luna the Ralts took out Ron's Rhydon in a single overwhelming attack!"

"I overestimated you, little girl, but this ends now. Go Gengar!" And this time we couldn't stop ourselves. We actually laughed out loud. We were the worst opponent this guy could have pulled out a Gengar against in the whole Conference. "Shut up brat! Shadow Ball!"

We seized the ball of negative energy with our power and squeezed it out of existence, much like Gardemom had done to our Psychics for so long now. Then the Gengar vanished to wherever the fuck. We probably didn't even need combat precognition for this one. Chances were high it'd pop up at our backs with a Shadow Ball or perhaps even a priority attack like Shadow Sneak or something like that.

"Sludge Bomb!"

Gengar appeared behind us with its mouth already open and the Sludge Bomb halfway out of it. The ball of poisonous sludge flew the short distance towards our back and exploded against a wall of psychic power, splattering everywhere but us. Then a Psychic flew back at the Gengar before it could vanish away and splattered it's semi gaseous form all over the base of our platform. Poor bastard was going to need a steel type at least a little resistant to fire if he wanted us to make even a little effort.

"I can't believe it! Newcomer Azula looks to be on track to smash her way through what looked to be like an impossible match for her! What will Ron do?"

"Damn you for making us bring out our ace so early. Go Ampharos!"

Now we paid attention and pushed our combat precognition. Electric attacks could be fucking dangerous.

"Thunderbolt!"

Predict, Protect, Psychic back. Then the Ampharos actually dodged. Oh baby. Were we going to have an all out slugfest this early?! Fucking yes! Fucking forget keeping a low profile. Slugfests were rare things not to be wasted. Thunderbolts and Psychics traveled back and forth between us and the Ampharos. We lived for this kind of fighting. We stepped up the force and speed behind our attacks little by little, and the dodges got closer and closer. We kept it at that level of intensity for a bit, you know, give the crowd a show the likes of which they were unlikely to see very often. Honestly, it was like playing catch, but for keeps.

Then we very clearly and deliberately smashed a Psychic into Ampharos' dodge. The mutant Electric sheep slammed into the wall of the arena and fell down, out cold.

"Simply amazing! That has to be one for the history books, folks. Trainer Azula, what do you feed that Ralts?! Pokemon Trainer Red, Azula Sato, has pulled of the most unbelievable win I've ever seen in the preliminaries!"

Sis Teleported back to the platform and jumped into her spot in our jacket. We turned and pulled Marina with us when we noticed she was a bit stunned at seeing a slugfest like that one. We sensed a news crew following us into the green room in the ice field arena, and for a moment we considered Teleporting out. Then we got an idea and posed so that the first thing the camera would catch would be a bunch of Red Tech logos. We would force our fucking phones down everyone's throats if we had to.

"Miss Sato! Tara Jayne, PXTV News, could we ask you some questions?"

We nodded and beckoned them over to us.

"Azula, can I call you Azula?" We nodded. "It's not every day that we see someone so young have such a dominating victory over an experienced veteran trainer like Ron Valentine. How did your Ralts, I believe her name is Luna, become so powerful so quickly?"

"Quickly?" Damn. The flinch at hearing our voice was big. Bet they weren't expecting that. "Sis is older than me."

"Truly? And she's still a Ralts?"

"Ra-Ralts."

"You don't feel like evolving and you want a real challenge if you're going to go through the bother." We would never get tired of giving out that answer. Fucking caught everyone by surprise. "That… that has to be the first time we hear that one."

"We figured."

"If you don't mind me asking, Azula, would I be correct in assuming that, uh, that the reason your voice is like it is has something to do with the the scar on your neck?"

"There was an accident, completely unrelated to pokemon or training. That's all we're willing to speak on the matter." Yeah, we were never saying how it'd actually happened, to anyone, but especially not to a reporter and her cameraman. That seemed like a terrible idea for everyone involved.

"I see, I'm sorry to hear that. Any comments on your stunning victory?"

"To be honest, we were not expecting much to begin with, especially not after our match with Leader Blaine, but if Ron Valentine was the level of skill and power we can expect from the rest of our opponents… Well, we came to this Conference... with the expectations that we would... win it as handily as our mother... did her own, but we hadn't... expected it to be that easy. We... would like to ask Champion Lance to please ready his… team, because we have every intention of taking the... title from him."

And my fucking lungs picked the worst moment to act up. We fished out the inhaler and took a hit. The medicine started working pretty quickly, and we were back to normal within a minute. Our new reporter friend looked rather worried about us.

"Wow, um, are you okay?"

"Yes, it… happens every now and then. An unfortunate result from the accident we mentioned."

"I'm sorry to hear that. Well, those were some strong words you said. I hope you can back them up. I'm sure you won't mind if I dig into your trainer record to see what was so special about your match with Leader Blaine, or to find out who your parents are. Unless you'd like to comment on them yourself?"

"We're going to let you find that out on your own." We had a feeling the news would be more interesting that way. "But we suppose a few tidbits won't be too much. They're both former Champions and very famous."

"Truly? Well, I'm sure the network will do its research. Now, everyone's noticed you wear the Red Technologies logo on you, and that you used the trainer name "Red", could you comment on this?"

"It's our company. Our mothers and father helped set it up so we could market the Avatar phone. We like to think we're doing pretty well on that front."

"Yours?! How did you…?"

"Pardon, but we wouldn't be true to ourselves if we didn't answer as we are about to: Fuck you, that's how." That shocked her out of her, well, shock at a ten year old somehow doing the impossible. They'd have to start getting used to that from us.

"You keep using "we", could you tell me about that?

"We have been together since we were born, sis and I, our bond is correspondingly deep."

"I… wow. I don't know how to respond to that."

"Understandable." Our phone's text message ringtone went off. A glance showed us our next match had already been scheduled to start in two hours at the water field. "We must go now, our next match is in two hours and we would like to get something to eat."

"Thank you for your time, Azula. Good luck on your next match."

We Teleported out to the cafe from earlier, and settled down to have a meal with Marina. Did this count as a date? We were going to count it as a date. Marina was very pretty when she blushed, and she seemed to blush a lot when we kissed her. Yeah, definitely a date.

64

Conquest 3.m

Watching Azula tear her way through the Indigo Conference was like watching a force of nature. She was unstoppable, untouchable, uncaring, but most of all, bored. I knew she'd expected as much, that she considered herself to be far above all others, even her nephew and Ash, who she considered better than most, and yet she was still disappointed. She'd hoped to find a worthy opponent. She spoke about it sometimes, when her, their, mood turned dark. She lived for power, to truly use that power, and to have no one who could drive her to make an effort? It weighed on her.

I'd watched her on her first match at the Conference. Her face in that blank, emotionless mask she wore nearly all the time. She showed emotion so rarely, though I knew it was mostly just a mask. The more time I spent around her the more and more her and Luna's emotions seemed to just hang around them in a cloud that was easy to sense and feel. It was worrying, how she seemed to be anxious, scared, and slightly depressed so often. How little she seemed to sleep, and how what little she did sleep was plagued with nightmares that leaked some fairly horrible emotions. I was worried about her, and from some of the questions her mothers had asked me, so were they.

I wasn't blind. I could see she cared, more than cared, about me. Even before that first kiss, I'd had an idea about her feelings, and the stirrings of feelings of my own for her forced me to consider things about myself I'd never considered before. She was almost obsessed, but her affection was honest. She cared about my well being, she cared about Mom's well being. I felt the Gengars she left at Mom's home, watching, making sure that we were safe against retribution from a family I'd never known I had until I ran into my aunt.

And wasn't that another worrisome thing? What could have been so terrible for things to be as they were? I remembered the nightmares she'd had after finding out my family's secrets, remembered how disturbed and broken she'd been when she came back from talking to Clair. I'd done my best to comfort her, and it'd seemed to work, but she'd had to leave so soon. The next time I saw her, the bags under her eyes were even worse than before. At least Mom seemed happier than I'd ever seen her since she got in touch with Aunt Clair. At least something good had come from that. Well, besides qualifying for the Silver Conference, but that seemed so small in comparison.

Azula and Luna. When I first met them so many months ago at Professor Elm's lab and challenged them to a battle, they'd refused to let Wani-Wani fight Luna. I hadn't thought much of it at the time, she'd sent out Zeus and we'd tied, but now, seeing them demolish a trainer so much older than them, supposedly so much experienced than them… Well, it was really quite a sight to behold, especially when I could tell they weren't trying, not even when they and the Ampharos put up that light show.

That was another peculiarity about Azula. When you spoke with her you weren't speaking just with her. When she spoke, it wasn't just her speaking. Azula and Luna were so close at times they were more a single individual than two. They were unimaginably close, sometimes disturbingly so, but I couldn't bring myself to care. They were unique, passionate, strong, and frankly super cute. So I was going to see where things went. It helped a lot that kissing was, uh, amazing, even if she had a tendency for public displays of affection. I was still blushing from the kissing she initiated at the cafe she seemed to favor while waiting for her matches.

She smashed her second match, sent out her Starmie, gave her opponent the first move with that little phrase she'd used when we fought. She proceeded o one shot her opponent's Seaking and Victreebel with a Psychic, then drowned their Tentacruel in an unending tide of Thunderbolts and Psychics. She'd done it with her face in that emotionless mask she always wore and an added air of bored disappointment to her. She actually pulled out her phone and put on her headphones on after the Victreebel was recalled. She was already walking back to the arena's exit, beckoning us to follow, when the Tentacruel went down. Nameless the Starmie circled back to her and hovered around her head for a few second before being recalled.

We had dinner with our families, taking over a couple tables at an all-you-can-eat buffet. It was amusing to watch Azula's niece and her Chansey browbeat her into eating much more than she usually did. Interesting to watch her mothers scold her and Luna for being as disrespectful as they had been in their second match, and them being stubborn and pouting about how there was really nothing else they could have done. At one point Ash and Gary loudly proclaimed they would be the ones to win the Conference and Azula and Luna snorted at the declaration. It felt like what I'd always thought a family reunion might be like. Even Mom, for all that she'd barely met everyone, seemed to be fitting in well with Azula's mothers. I was happy.

The accommodations assigned to our weird group were nice. A furnished cabin with room for everyone, even if Azula and Luna hadn't crawled into my bed half an hour after most of us had gone to bed. She'd done that at home too. I couldn't say I minded. For all that she seemed to be bones and cold skin, she and Luna were surprisingly huggable, and they loved cuddling into me.

That's how I woke up. Cuddling. My hands had not wandered during the night. At all. Nor had the terrible twosome sighed in disappointment when I repositioned said hands. A night without nightmares for her and Luna, and a pleasant one for me. Wonder who she'd fight today, and how. Hopefully she'd have a chance to cut loose. Brooding wasn't good for her. I shook them awake. We could get an early start and get a nice breakfast together before her first match.

Their next match was as easy as the first two, with Nameless making another appearance and letting their opponent wail at the starfish until it looked like it was dead. The announcers were baffled at her complete lack of response to attacks, Nameless was completely covered in blood, then there was a shift in Azula. She never stopped being bored, but she seemed to have deemed her demonstration of superiority to be enough, and then a Recover had her starfish looking like new a moment later. Then she crushed the Pidgeot that had been beating on it in one hit, followed by a Gloom. The third was a Raichu that actually managed to fight back and force another Recover before taking a barrage of Psychics to the face, slumping down against the arena wall where it'd slammed after the first hit.

She was less disrespectful this time, sure, she'd still been… less than ideal with the show she'd put on, but at least this time she hadn't essentially ignored the fight in favor of her phone. Or left the way she had last time. I had this feeling that the general public would have two views of her: arrogant disrespectful child among the older people, and cool badass among the younger ones.

Funniest part was that for all her lack of manners, and for all that she couldn't be bothered to even pretend to be a little modest, no one could say it'd been luck. Not after the smackdown Luna had laid on their first opponent, or the one Nameless had delivered to the second one, and most definitely not after the show they'd just put up. Seriously, it'd lasted longer than the previous two combined, and had consisted mostly of the starfish letting its opponents hit it until they felt like they'd made their point.

I watched Azula feed Luna a waffle fry, love for her sister clear on her face, giggling when she pulled the fry away and Luna pulled most of it back to her mouth with her powers. Then Azula poked Luna's front horn. The most powerful Ralts to ever live responded with an annoyed cry of "Ralts!" and jumped on her sister, poking her back, prompting a breathy squeak from Azula. Well, what do you know? She was ticklish. The ensuing poking war lasted a few minutes and ended as a decisive victory for Luna who was merciless, slippery, tiny, and didn't have severe breathing problems to rob her of her endurance in the face of uncontrollable giggling.

I laughed at their antics. Stopping for a snack had definitely been a great idea. I wished I'd recorded that. Then I realized that maybe I may have not had a chance to record it, but quite a few of the people sitting around us had. If the whispers along the lines of "Oh Arceus, they're so cute!" and "Wow, that's Trainer Azula!" were anything to go by, they'd just won themselves a major PR win.

Seemed like they were in a good mood. I smiled and snatched Luna from her sister's lap in the middle of her show of dominance over said little sister, then tickled her until she surrendered. Damnit, how could they be so cute? Azula was beaming at me and Luna was pouting with her arms crossed, pointedly looking away from us. I kissed the top of her back horn. I was doomed. I don't think I could ever walk away from so much cute.