My mind had been twisted before.

That time in the ruins of Pokelantis, where I'd been jailed in the void of my unconscious mind, with the only remaining link to reality my one true passion: a window from which I could conduct battle at the whim of a despot and tyrant who'd forsaken an entire civilization in the name of his own pride and lust for power.

That time with Hoopa, where I'd taken in the resentment and evil festering in him since time immemorial, where I hadn't the will to resist for more than a token moment before being subsumed by a putrid malice that hung over me like a shroud, that ate away the color in my eyes until only the red of a rage that'd been steeped for millenias burned within my irides.

My own weakness. My untrained abilities in aura that let the memories of others supersede my own reality and drown out the ringing of my universal wave.

My own hate. The resentment of being the eternal also-ran. The resentment of coming close and falling short. The resentment of being unable to live up to the expectations of others, but more importantly the failure of living up to the expectations of myself.

Oathbreaker. Liar.

My own malice. The vicious desire to war for the sake of war, that lust for power that overshadowed my faith in Infernape and turned the fight with Paul into an unseemly grudge match that ignored any noble motivations related to kinder and gentler methods and ideologies. Power for power's sake. Desire enough to bring myself and Greninja to the breaking point, and leave us gasping for air, laid out in the dirt of a forest floor. The shuriken on our back is the symbol of our power, as easily manifested by a desperate plea for the satisfaction of my ego as much as the genuine link between us.

Now, with the Mega Evolution energy Alain had gathered to end the world flowing through me, I realized:

The mind of the King of Pokelantis was not a mind at all. The mind of the darkness of Hoopa was not a mind at all. They were simply lingering motivations that poisoned me and brought to the forefront despicable qualities that were always there.

I did not want to fight for Lysandre, but I did want to fight. And standing against the world, there would be many, many strong opponents, and in the face of such competition my partners and I would become much, much stronger.

I was released from my bindings. I reached into the power shared between myself and Greninja, and a platform of compressed water gently lowered me to the landing below.

"This is a chosen human, Alain! A paragon!" said Lysandre. "One with a unique, one-of-a-kind power that surpasses the unrivaled strength of Mega Evolution!"

And wasn't that your dream? I thought, peering into Alain's heart. To use Mega Evolution and become its strongest wielder? A trainer standing over all on a stage already standing over all trainers without the benefit of a stone?

He flinched as though struck. Could he feel the movement of the waves?

Does an existence that stands above the peak of your dream invalidate it as it looms overhead?

No. Greninja and I had lost to Alain on the greatest stage.

Lysandre doesn't know what he's talking about. He's just enamored by a novelty. If you wanted an unmatched enforcer, why didn't you turn your machine on Alain instead?

Click. Greninja was released from the black bindings and fell to my side in a graceful three-point landing. He thrummed with that sickly aggregate power, mega evolution energy taken from many different species. It hung over him in a crimson shroud.

I glanced at my hand. It hung over me as well.

"Director," Alain said, his eyes tight with stress, "let him go. He has nothing to do with this! What does any of this accomplish?" He grimaced and turned his head away. "If you need someone to fight, I'll fight for you."

"And if I said you were nothing more than a disposable tool, not viable for use in the age to come?" Lysandre asked, tone dripping with contempt. "You're a Mega Evolution user, and an adept one to be sure. But I have Malva at my disposal, and many others in my employ who use it as well." He threw an arm out towards the ruined Lumiose, and the twin serpents rampaging throughout the streets. "And with them under my thrall, you, who have no true loyalty to me, are little more than a liability."

He turned towards me, and favored me with a fatherly smile. His eyes were deceptively kind, and I could feel a true affection from him that made me shudder. "Ash. Greninja. If you could demonstrate your power for me now?"

"Alain," I ground out, struggling to speak through the intoxicating haze of the Mega Evolution energy, "is a stronger trainer than me. He proved that in the Lumiose Conference."

"Oh?" Lysandre seemed puzzled. "There is a difference between sport for the entertainment of the masses and a true fight for one's life. I heard of your unofficial match with Diantha from the Champion herself. She told me you had an unrelenting ferocity there that was absent in your league performance."

That much was true. My heart was soaring with joy on that great stage, fighting my friend with the whole world watching. But with the opportunity to test my might against a Champion, I felt that there, right then, even with the only audience being my friends and Diantha herself, I needed to break the boundaries. Every self imposed limitation shattered.

I was Greninja, wrapped in a spiraling wave, and I held a blade of light in my hand, intent on using it to finish off Gardevoir as she writhed on the ground in pain at her trainer's feet.

I witnessed the shock on Diantha's face and felt a deep lust well within my heart. Ink splattered across my field of vision and quickly overtook it in haphazard streaks. It wasn't something so dramatic as a manifestation of malice or black marks staining my soul. My heart was giving out. I wasn't receiving enough oxygen to my brain.

"Don't you want revenge, Ash?" Lysandre drawled, flexing his fingers. I could hear the leather crinkle of his fingerless gloves and idly noted that superficial similarity between us.

Did you start out like me, Lysandre? At one point, did you leave your hometown and set out on the route north with your most precious partner?

"Not enough to kill him over it," I said. I glanced over at Greninja and he croaked his agreement.

"I could just make you."

"But you won't. You know that you need to make some concessions for me if a long term partnership is going to work, mind control beams or otherwise."

"That's a strange assumption."

Was it? No. If I could still think for myself, and move under my own power, then there were limits to Lysandre's compulsions.

"I'll stand against the world with you, Lysandre, but my friends aren't a part of that world."

Lysandre hummed lowly. "Well said. You are one of my chosen humans, which affords you status in my new world. Consequently, I don't mind you choosing some of your own to partake in this genesis as well. But Alain isn't particularly close to you. In exchange for sparing that girl and that gym leader, will you not give me this at least?"

"There won't even need to be a fight." I reached out towards Alain with my hand. "No hard feelings, Alain."

He was a skilled trainer, and quick on the draw to release his pokemon, but the speed of thought and an unexpected vector of action surpassed his reflexes. I remembered the way the King of Pokelantis had manipulated my aura to telekinetically manipulate distant objects, and Charizard's pokeball shot into my hand with an exertion of will.

Only Charizard? Where is the team he used in the finals?

I turned the miniaturized monster ball over in my hand. Within the palm of my hand was the instrument of my defeat. Yet another impassable wall to my dreams, small as a marble and so fragile, completely at my mercy.

But twisted or no, there were lines I would never cross.

Alain balled his hands into fists and snarled. "Charizard!"

"How unsatisfactory," Lysandre said.

"I'm not here to entertain you," I said. I felt my arm quake, and the ball expanded in my hand. My eyes widened, and I felt a sharp pain as the ball burst with pneumatic sharpness, the action jostling my bones.

A beam of light shot towards Alain, and resolved into Charizard standing in front of him in a defensive stance. The stone on his neck shone red, reflecting the cast-off light produced by the shrouds covering myself and Greninja.

"Is Mairin one of your chosen, Ash?" Alain glanced down at the keystone on his wrist and grit his teeth. "If Lysandre told you to kill her, what would you do? Do you even know who I'm talking about?"

"I met her once."

"If it was between her and that girl you travel with, what would you do?"

"I'd find a way to spare them both."

Lysandre smiled.

"And if you couldn't?" Alain growled. "If it was between your friends, and Mairin, or Professor Sycamore, who would you cut down?" He raised his arm up and balled it into a fist. "I already know your answer."

I nodded.

Beside me, Greninja unfolded his arms and opened his eyes wide. They were wild, furious orbs of jaundiced yellow, with irides the color of an inflamed wound, and the white pupils within them reminded me of the cataracts of a an old man rotting on his deathbed.

Still, there was no denying the power within him. I felt my consciousness bleed into his in the nascent stage of our Bond Phenomenon, accessible even in our violated state.

He too held hate and resentment within him.

Why did I fall before my liege, when we both weathered the flames of Charizard's Blast Burn? How dare this pretender dragon make me look the fool at the apex of my development?

I wanted to bring Ash his victory.

Ash blames himself- when a trainer wins, it's because of his pokemon, but when a pokemon falls, it's the fault of the trainer- but I had never put stock in that philosophy, because it diminished my own efforts and cast aspersions on my agency in battle.

Here, then: to the hated rival I have never overcome, and to the world that witnessed my humiliation- this is my counterattack.