As manifestations of a trinity, the Dark Trio of Time and Space shared a unique sensory connection, able to locate one another at all times. But now, that bond felt severed, as though jammed by an unseen force.
Black mist surged around Giratina, and in the blink of an eye, it vanished.
Shadow Force.
Lucius ignored the looming threat of an ambush. His body swelled and shifted into the colossal form of a Leviathan, stretching several kilometers long and blotting out the sky.
The Leviathan's gaping maw opened wide, like a black hole ready to devour the skies, and lunged toward Lugia.
Shrouded in spiraling water energy, Lugia slammed its wings together like massive hands, releasing a concentrated beam of force that resembled a Kamehameha-style shockwave.
Aeroblast.
Lugia's signature move.
The air cannon, strong enough to obliterate an island, blasted directly into the Leviathan's mouth. But it didn't slow the gaping jaws in the slightest.
Not even for a second.
Faced with imminent devouring, Lugia didn't hesitate. It turned mid-air and soared backward in retreat.
With its power as a Mythical Pokémon, it should have been able to traverse ten kilometers with a single wingbeat, but the suction from that monstrous maw behind it was so intense that it couldn't escape.
Abandoning flight, Lugia enveloped itself in a radiant blue shield of energy, a protective barrier formed to resist the Leviathan's bite.
But to its shock, the Leviathan didn't clash with it in a contest of strength.
It simply swallowed Lugia whole.
Falling into the Leviathan's belly felt like being cast into a bottomless abyss.
Then, from within the darkness, a rift appeared, crackling with prismatic lightnin, —and sucked Lugia inside.
Lucius had opened an Ultra Wormhole inside the Leviathan's stomach.
And on the other side lay his own World Base.
In an instant, Lugia found itself in a desolate wasteland, a barren dimension devoid of light.
As a Mythical Pokémon, Lugia immediately grasped that it had entered a different world.
Unlike Xerneas, who revered life and cherished peace, Lugia had no interest in understanding this place. But it sensed a connection to the virus, and that was enough.
Destroy first, ask questions later.
It flared its wings and fired another blue shockwave.
Aeroblast.
But instead of pulverizing the ground, the blast was absorbed by a sudden vortex that materialized beneath it.
This was Lucius's domain, his rules.
He had laced the terrain with counter-elemental energies tailored to neutralize Lugia's attacks.
"Heh, let's see how many you've got in you," Lugia growled.
It launched into a relentless barrage:
Aeroblast, Ancient Power, Psychic, Hyper Beam, Blizzard...
Each elemental strike tore across the barren land, leaving it cratered and broken.
Lucius didn't try to stop any of it.
Instead, hidden among the chaos, he quietly opened dozens of small Ultra Wormholes across the ground, redirecting the overlapping energy blasts to another world.
They reemerged squarely on top of Zekrom, who had been rampaging through Kalos.
With Ho-Oh and Yveltal tied down elsewhere, all of Lucius's Mythical Pokémon were deployed. Holding off Zekrom and Mewtwo fell to Lucius's avatars and cloned Zapdos, Latios, and others.
Though the number of cloned legendaries was impressive, the power gap between them and true Mythical Pokémon was stark, they were being completely overwhelmed. Only Lucius's avatars prevented them from being wiped out immediately.
Now, by redirecting Lugia's rampage, Lucius caught Zekrom off guard mid-battle with the Leviathan's avatar.
But this was only a diversion, far from enough to defeat Zekrom.
Lucius's true focus remained on the main battlefield.
In just two minutes of flight, Lugia had unleashed over a hundred devastating moves, plowing through nearly the entire continent.
Even after most of its attacks were siphoned off, the residual force still caused ongoing earthquakes, shifting the landmass's position on the planet itself.
"Hahaha... Done showing off? Good. My turn."
Lucius's voice boomed across the sky, with no discernible source.
The shattered earth twisted, and a hand, towering as a mountain and forged from shattered stone, erupted from below, lunging at Lugia.
With two wingbeats, Lugia surged a hundred kilometers away, but the massive hand's fingers exploded outward, unleashing a swarm of flesh-like tendrils, hunting Lugia like spectral vines. They wrapped around its wings, legs, tail, and neck with a death grip.
Even as divine light pulsed from Lugia's body, it couldn't shake free.
This was the will of the world. How could a single Mythical Pokémon resist it?
The massive hand reached farther and closed tightly around Lugia.
The crushing force was like being squeezed between two tectonic plates.
But Lugia, a divine being, quickly activated Roost and Safeguard, entering a peak defensive state. While it couldn't break free, it could at least minimize the damage.
But Lucius didn't want to kill it.
He didn't care about its defensive stance.
The giant hand was composed of stones saturated with virus, and now those viral organisms crawled into Lugia's body like a tide of ants.
Under Lucius's altered world laws, Safeguard no longer protected against infection. The virus seeped into Lugia's body and mind without resistance.
Elsewhere, Ho-Oh and the other Mythical Pokémon were finally engaged in open war, their space-hopping abilities blocked by energy nets.
By Lucius's command, Kyogre and both Rayquaza ignored Palkia, and focused solely on attacking Ho-Oh.
Even the Black Rayquaza alone could rival Ho-Oh in power, let alone a fully restored Primal Kyogre and a Mega Rayquaza. Ho-Oh was quickly overwhelmed.
That's when the virus struck.
Like a flood, the virus surged into Ho-Oh's body mid-battle. Though repeatedly burned by sacred flames, they advanced wave after wave, until they finally rooted deep within Ho-Oh's form.
Yveltal fared no better.
Xerneas, Zygarde, and Dawn Wings Necrozma completely ignored Dialga, pinning Yveltal in an all-out assault.
Xerneas and Zygarde knew Yveltal's fighting style inside out. It didn't take long before they had it cornered.
And the virus waited for this moment too.
Just like with Ho-Oh, it surged into Yveltal's body while it was on the run.
Unlike Ho-Oh, Yveltal had already been partially infected, the original virus was merely suppressed. Now, as new viral forces invaded, they linked up with the dormant infection inside Yveltal.
The combined attack tore through its defenses faster than it had with Ho-Oh.
Of course, the duo of time and space weren't fools. They had blocked what they could, endured what they couldn't.
All to crush Ho-Oh and Yveltal at full force.
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