It started, like most of Zane's disasters, with a smile.
Not a sinister one. Nothing villainous, nothing dramatic. Just a wide, sincere, clueless grin — the kind that made old women hand over their wallets and grizzled trainers dive for Pokéballs. That grin was currently pointed at a half-destroyed Pokémart on the edge of Petalburg City, its automatic doors bent inward like a pair of snapped forearms.
Zane blinked at the wreckage and took a bite from a raw Aspear Berry. He winced. "Man, spicy. Remind me not to let that thing Metronome again indoors."
Behind him, a Cleffa spun in giddy circles, blinking rapidly as if surprised to still be alive.
Meanwhile, the city buzzed. People whispered. The League took notes. Someone even tried to interview him, but he'd already wandered into the woods to chase a Taillow and accidentally discovered a shortcut to Route 116 by falling through a weakened cliff wall.
The truth, not that anyone believed it, was this: Zane didn't really know how he got here. One minute, he was asleep — or maybe dying, hard to tell with Arceus — and the next, he was standing in a mist-covered glade with a glowing stone in his hand and a command thundering through his skull like judgment day.
> "Balance the scales."
That's all the god had said. Arceus had appeared not as a benevolent light but as a creature flaring with confusion and contradiction — equal parts radiant justice and fragmented fury. Zane hadn't seen a savior. He'd seen a scared, ancient being trying to fix its own mistakes by playing dice with the multiverse.
And somehow, in its infinite, spiraling wisdom, it had picked him.
Why? Not even Arceus had explained that. Maybe chaos needed chaos.
Maybe the best way to beat a regressor was to throw a comic relief character in the mix who didn't care about rules, timelines, or propriety. Someone with no traumatic baggage. No desire for revenge. Just a raw, instinctive love for Pokémon and a habit of disrupting expectations like a walking, grinning meteor.
And so Zane wandered, laughing at things he shouldn't, winning battles by accident, and igniting rumors the League couldn't keep up with.
But somewhere, in the back of his sunlit mind, a pressure built — like a bubble waiting to burst. He'd been chosen for something. And whatever it was, it was coming.
Fast.
---
Elsewhere, far from Hoenn's laughing chaos, the cold stone of Mt. Moon echoed with something older.
Steel clanged against scale. Air cracked with lightning.
Two figures stood in the snowdrift-shadowed ridge of the ancient mountain. Red. Lance.
Their Pokémon were down to the last.
Pikachu stood panting, fur bristling with the aftershock of a Thunderbolt that had split a boulder down the middle. Opposite him, Dragonite — wings torn, eyes bloodshot with exhaustion — growled, smoke trailing from its nostrils.
Red didn't speak.
He never did.
Lance did.
"You could've stayed Champion," Lance said between breaths, his cape torn, fluttering like a banner of defiance. "You had the power. The name. The fear."
Red's silence was its own answer.
"You could've united Kanto. Kept Rocket from crawling back in the cracks. Instead you vanished."
Pikachu sparked.
Dragonite growled.
"I had to rebuild the League myself," Lance spat. "I stood alone at Indigo Plateau when the ashes were still warm."
Still, Red didn't answer.
Lance stepped forward. "Do you even care?"
Red finally moved. Not with anger. Not even judgment. Just a look.
And Lance's voice caught in his throat.
Because in that look, he saw it. Not coldness. Not pride.
Regret.
Then Pikachu leapt.
And the mountain thundered.
---
Meanwhile, in the quiet dust of Hoenn, Riven stood atop a small ridge, staring down at the stretch of forest where his next opportunity lay hidden. His coat flapped behind him. His eyes, once wide with panic, now narrowed with purpose.
He had a plan.
Finally.
The past few days had been hard. He'd eaten sparingly. Trained long into the night. Slept under trees. His starter, a Torchic he'd found scavenging in a burnt field, was finally growing strong enough to spar without flinching.
"I know what comes," he whispered to the Pokémon perched on a rock beside him. "I know which trainers rise. Which cities burn. Which deals shape the League."
He pulled out a crude map and began marking the corners of opportunity. He remembered which Pokémarts had underpriced TMs. Which Berries became valuable in the coming years. He remembered the Lottery numbers. The Researcher that died before publishing the Pokémon Mega Sync theory. The Company that collapsed before its Pokéball patent exploded in value.
All of it. Carved in his mind like scars.
This world would not catch him weak again.
Ralts growled.
Riven smiled.
"I'm going to buy a mansion," he said, not joking. "Then build a lab. Then buy a lab next to that lab so I can keep the first one honest."
He paused, staring at the horizon.
"And when the world burns again… I'll be ready. With teeth."
A branch snapped somewhere behind him. He turned.
Nothing.
Just wind.
But something had changed.
A warmth in the air. Like the aftertaste of laughter.
---
And, far off, in a place neither Hoenn nor Kanto, Arceus watched.
It did not feel joy.
It did not feel guilt.
It only balanced the scales.
And the boy it had dropped into the world like a firecracker into a library?
He was smiling again.
---
END OF CHAPTER 15