Sry for the chapter mix up just notice
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As the command fell, the battlefield roared back to life.
At that moment, the lone remaining heavy armor's eyes flared with crimson light as it let out a thunderous bellow.
Its steel frame slammed through the Golem trying to block its path, sending chunks of rock flying and forcing the Pokémon to retreat.
The massive metal beast pivoted violently, its enormous claws tearing through the air with a screaming shriek as they hurtled straight toward Kairos!
At the same time, the main cannon on its back emitted a sharp, overloaded whine, its barrel glowing white-hot as it gathered a devastating charge, aimed directly at him!
The three Magnezone, battered but still hovering, acted like machines executing their final directive.
Ignoring the incoming attacks from all sides, they trained their electrodes on Kairos. Savage currents compressed along their bodies into three massive thunderbolts, each packed with annihilating energy!
Even a few heavily armored soldiers who had lost their Pokémon and descended into madness raised their smoking energy rifles, red targeting dots locked dead center on Kairos!
Every attack, every killing intent on the battlefield, ignored all other targets in that moment. They existed only to obliterate the man standing in that corner.
Gengar felt the barrage of locks closing in from every direction. His purple body tensed instantly.
After a brief hesitation, he threw himself in front of Kairos without a second thought, arms spread wide.
The sight caught Kairos a little off guard. The ghost had only known him a short while, but he'd already started treating him like family.
He glanced at the storm of destruction bearing down on them, pooling every last ounce of strength left on the battlefield. A flicker of resignation crossed his eyes, and he let out a soft sigh.
Damn. Still had to cash it in.
His palm turned slightly, and a feather appeared, resting quietly in his hand.
It was about a foot long, shimmering with an indescribable iridescence. Red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, violet—seven colors flowed through it in perfect harmony.
The feather itself didn't radiate overwhelming energy. But the instant it appeared—
Hummmm…
An indescribable, vast wave of power surged across the entire battlefield!
Under the influence of that radiance, the armored mech's descending steel claws became sluggish and heavy.
The light gathering at the cannons' barrels flickered and vanished. The Magnezone's compressed thunderbolts wavered violently before dissolving into thin air!
Even the soldiers' fingers, poised on their triggers, were frozen by an irresistible force. Deep within their souls, an inexplicable urge rose—a compulsion to lower their weapons.
Kairos simply tossed the rainbow-colored feather forward.
Whoosh—
There was no deafening explosion.
No tearing beam of light. Only a visible wave of seven-colored radiance, spreading outward from the feather like a tide—gentle, yet impossibly fast—sweeping across the entire battlefield in an instant!
Where the rainbow light passed, the massive purple flames of Chandelure flickered and steadied, growing stronger and more stable, as though blessed by some unseen buff.
The Watchers' Pokémon—Snorlax, Golem, and the others—saw their minor wounds vanish instantly. Their stamina fully restored. An unprecedented surge of power flowed through every fiber of their being!
But on the Alliance side, the heavy armor and the amplified Magnezone touched by that radiant wave reacted as though they'd been doused with cleansing water washing away filth.
The cold alloy plating on their frames began to emit wisps of eerie black smoke. Flames erupted across their surfaces, and within moments, they simply disappeared. The entire battlefield fell into a strange, frozen silence.
With Kairos at its center, an invisible domain formed—an absolute territory brimming with boundless vitality and peace. And behind him, a colossal phantom emerged.
The moment the phantom appeared, it was as though the entire underground world had been illuminated!
It was enormous, radiating light like a rainbow. Its wings and long tail feathers seemed made of flowing, seven-colored flames, so bright they were almost blinding.
"SCREEEEE!"
A soul-piercing, majestic cry echoed in the depths of every person's mind!
Then, an indescribable presence—mixed with awe-inspiring vitality and crushing pressure—surged outward like a tidal wave!
The entire field went silent.
Everyone froze in place, as if encased in ice. Trainers and Pokémon alike stood motionless, breath forgotten.
They stared, wide-eyed, at the colossal phantom that seemed to cover half the sky.
Such overwhelming power… such a presence… none of them had ever encountered anything like it in their entire lives.
Before this seven-colored, radiant phantom of Ho-Oh—before its crushing, overwhelming force—every human and Pokémon felt nothing but profound shock and reverence. No one dared even to breathe.
And the earlier kill order against Kairos? In the face of the might displayed by that small rainbow feather, it seemed laughably insignificant.
The crazed determination that had driven the Alliance soldiers—fueled by their death command—was snuffed out like a candle doused with ice water. What replaced it was dawning terror.
Not fear of the enemy. Fear of a power beyond comprehension.
The force was holy and warm, yet to them, it was more terrifying than anything else in existence.
"R-Run! RUN!!"
Someone was the first to scream, their voice cracking with panic and despair.
That shout was like the first domino falling.
BOOM!
The Alliance soldiers and Pokémon, who had barely been holding formation and trying to execute Quinn's insane orders, completely collapsed.
What "highest priority elimination"? What "court-martial for disobedience"? None of it mattered in the face of this mythical apparition!
Not just the humans—the heavy armor's engines roared with piercing whines as their treads spun in reverse.
Magnezone crashed into each other in terror, stampeding toward the entrance in a frantic scramble.
Some Alliance soldiers even started brawling with each other, fighting to squeeze into the narrow passage first. The scene was utter chaos.
"Useless! You're all useless! Get back here! Follow orders!!"
Quinn stood amidst the wreckage, his face iron-gray, screaming into his communicator.
But his authoritative voice was drowned out by the soldiers' panicked shouts, utterly powerless.
He tried to draw his sidearm and shoot the deserters, but his arm wouldn't even lift!
The power of that sacred phantom had robbed him of even the ability to raise his weapon, let alone anything else.
Just then, a massive purple figure wreathed in searing heat came barreling toward him!
It was the newly evolved Chandelure!
Ghostly cold flames spread instantly across the ground, forming a containment ring that trapped him in place!
Then Mason Hart, along with several elite Watchers who'd recovered their senses, charged forward.
Elara's wounds were completely healed. She strode up quickly, a weapon scavenged from an Alliance soldier steady in her hands, aimed squarely at Quinn's head.
Anvil, with Golem and Snorlax in tow, blocked Quinn's last escape route.
"Don't move!"
Quinn's body went rigid.
He looked around at the Watchers—people his forces had been beating into submission just moments ago, now fully restored by the phantom's power, their eyes burning with vengeance.
Then he glanced at his own troops, long since scattered without a trace. Finally, his gaze landed on the rainbow feather in Kairos's hand.
A trace of defeat and disbelief flickered across his cold features. He slowly released his grip on the communicator, letting it fall to the dust-and-oil-stained ground.
"You…"
He croaked, trying to maintain some shred of dignity, but there was no strength left in his voice.
He simply couldn't understand. What was this kid?
How could everything he pulled out be more terrifying than the last?
The candy from before was one thing, but this feather—what the hell was it?
"Clean up the battlefield! Confiscate all usable equipment! Especially their comms and command gear! Move!"
Elara barked orders immediately.
The Watchers snapped out of their shock and erupted into cheers of relief before quickly springing into action.
They began collecting abandoned weapons and salvaging valuable metal components from the clunky but high-value armor wreckage.
On Kairos's end, he put the feather away, and the Ho-Oh phantom vanished instantly.
The item's effect… yeah, definitely lived up to the hype. Ho-Oh was one of the top-tier legendaries for a reason.
The pressure and impact just now? No complaints. But using it up like that… man, it really did feel like a waste.
As he mulled it over, he glanced down at the environmental recorder strapped to his chest. The indicator light was still green.
The data he'd filmed from the surface world was intact. He let out a small sigh of relief.
The feather's burst of power had been so sudden, he'd been worried this fragile device wouldn't survive the energy surge.
Good thing it held up. Otherwise, all that footage would've been for nothing.
He looked up, his gaze locking directly onto General Quinn, restrained by Chandelure's flaming chains.
The general's uniform was covered in dust.
Kairos noticed a small, inconspicuous black metal plate—about the size of a palm—hanging from his belt. As Kairos's eyes fell on it, Quinn instinctively covered it with his hand.
Kairos raised an eyebrow.
"Mason." He called the old chain-smoker by his current name. "Check out that thing on his belt."
Mason stepped forward without hesitation. Under Quinn's watchful glare, he yanked the black data pad free without ceremony.
The pad was heavy, with no visible ports. Only a small biometric scanner blinked faintly with a red light.
"Heh," Quinn sneered, his earlier despair seeming to evaporate as he regained some of his condescending composure.
"Top-tier 'Ark' core encryption. Physically isolated. Dynamic biometric key binding. You sewer rats could have five hundred years and you'd never—"
But before he could finish his sentence.
Mason's face remained expressionless as he reached into the pocket of his greasy coat and pulled out something that looked like a metal finger cap, still streaked with dark, congealed red.
It was a piece of a hand he'd torn off one of the Alliance officers Chandelure had charred earlier.
Then, with his mechanical prosthetic index finger, he pressed hard into a recessed slot on the side of the data pad.
Click.
A faint sound echoed.
At the same time, his fingertip glowed with a soft blue light, as though inputting some complex sequence of commands.
Hummm—
The black coating on the data pad's surface vanished instantly, revealing the smooth screen beneath.
The screen lit up. A blue progress bar began scrolling rapidly!
Quinn's sneer froze completely.
His cold eyes—which had widened in shock so many times today—went wide once more, fixed on Mason's practiced movements and the weathered lines of his face, as though trying to recognize something.
"You… who the hell are you?! How do you know the Ark's engineer backdoor protocol?!"
His voice trembled.
Mason didn't bother responding. He stayed focused on the screen.
A few seconds later, a crisp beep sounded. The complicated authentication interface disappeared, replaced by a dense array of file folders and charts.
"There. Unlocked." Mason shrugged wearily and handed the data pad to Kairos.
Quinn's face drained of all color in that instant, turning deathly pale, as though every ounce of life had been sapped from him.
His last shred of confidence had been shattered in a way he couldn't begin to comprehend.
What the hell was going on today? Why was everything going so wrong?
Kairos took the metal data pad and tapped a few times on the smooth screen. It looked like the thing held quite a bit of information. Mason leaned in as well, and the two of them browsed through the files marked as top secret.
After just a few pages, both their expressions turned grim, brows furrowed tightly.
The full scope of the "Genesis Engine" project ran far deeper than they'd ever imagined.
This wasn't some benign energy device. The engineering diagrams on the data pad clearly showed it was an immense geothermal directional detonation and channeling system!
Its core components had all been placed at the most fragile connection points in the crust—places known as "ley lines," energy veins running through the earth.
The plan's objective was to simultaneously detonate compressed charges planted at key ley line nodes at a precisely calculated moment.
This would create an artificial mega-fault, which they'd then use to extract massive amounts of energy all at once!
The goal was to forcibly extract all available energy from deep within the core and mantle in the shortest time possible, using the energy eruption caused by tearing apart the ley lines. As for the consequences…
Inside the data pad, an assessment report laid it out in the simplest terms possible:
[The torn earth will trigger chain reactions of super-volcanic eruptions and catastrophic earthquakes.
The ley line energy, now wild and uncontrolled, will unleash energy storms across the entire surface world, powerful enough to tear apart the ecosystem that has spent five centuries recovering, reducing it to a scorched wasteland.]
[The underground world, deprived of the surface as an ecological buffer and energy source, will also suffer impacts.
Localized regions may experience collapse and disasters of catastrophic scale.]
[Once the plan begins, the negative effects cannot be reversed. Extreme caution is advised before proceeding.]