"Target: Hammerlocke. Full speed ahead."
The next second, a deafening roar shook the outskirts of Postwick.
The jets in Miraidon's rear wheel flared with blinding blue fire.
The sudden thrust blasted nearby rocks into the air and even scorched a black streak into the ground.
No run-up. No easing in.
This machine-beast from the future shot skyward with an acceleration that pretty much violated common sense.
The wind pressure spiked instantly.
If Gast weren't a Ghost-type without a physical body, that initial overload would've flung her hundreds of meters away.
The scenery in their field of view began to streak backward at high speed.
The forest below blurred into a smear of green. Farther out, Postwick shrank rapidly into something that looked more like a Lego model village.
Their altitude kept climbing.
Two thousand meters.
Three thousand meters.
The frigid air of the troposphere howled against Jason's metal shell, screaming in high-pitched whistles.
He didn't bother to raise a shield, just used his aerodynamic head design to slice into the airflow.
"This is insane!" Gast screamed over the gale, her voice shredded by the wind. "This is way better than a roller coaster! Miraidon, faster!"
"This is top speed," Miraidon snapped, exasperated.
The numbers were spiking hard, brushing up against the edge of the sound barrier.
And Eternatus's seal was breaking. If that raging energy wasn't contained, the entire Galar region would be wiped clean off the map.
"We have to get there before Leon goes down."
Jason calculated silently.
Leon might be hailed as the strongest Champion, but in a god-tier disaster like this he was basically just a slightly sturdier meat shield.
Miraidon adjusted the angle of its tail-fins, using the upper air currents to dive for extra speed.
Purple lightning tore through the clouds.
From the ground, it looked like a violet bolt ripping open the heavy black overcast, shooting straight toward the distance.
As they got closer to Hammerlocke, the environment changed noticeably.
The air grew thick and sticky.
Oversaturation of Dynamax particles.
Red motes packed the sky, like countless fireflies—if fireflies emitted static and radiation.
Every time they passed through a cloud of particles, Miraidon felt a prickling numbness ripple across its armor.
"This feels awful." Gast curled up into a ball behind Jason. "What's with this red dust? It stings and itches when it hits me."
"For modern Pokémon, sucking in too much of this stuff forces a Dynamax and drives them berserk," Jason said. "Keep your mouth shut and don't eat random things."
Ahead, Hammerlocke's massive silhouette came into view.
A city built atop an enormous castle. Spires pierced the sky—normally a grand medieval sight—but right now all of it lay smothered under an oppressive red glow.
Especially the power plant at its heart.
Three huge black pylons were puking out colossal crimson beams that speared the heavens. Those beams converged above the clouds, spinning into a gigantic vortex.
At the vortex's core, purple-black lightning raged wildly, like something monstrous was forming there.
Air raid sirens wailed across the entire city.
The streets were empty; everyone had retreated into shelters.
Only a few wild Pokémon driven mad by the energy were rampaging through the roads, smashing anything in sight.
"What a mess," Jason muttered as he stared down.
Just as he was about to drop altitude and cut straight toward the power plant, his eyes narrowed.
Less than two kilometers ahead, an orange shape hovered in midair, squarely blocking his path.
A massive Salamence.
Its blood-red wings stretched five or six meters across, thick scales gleaming metallic under the red sky.
And on its back stood a tall man.
Even from this distance, Jason recognized that signature hoodie and scarf.
Raihan.
Hammerlocke's Gym Leader, the man considered closest to the Champion's level.
Right now, there was none of Raihan's usual phone-in-hand selfie energy.
His hands were shoved into his pockets, body tilted forward slightly, eyes sharp like a hunting hawk.
He'd clearly spotted the violet lightning bolt tearing this way.
"Flygon, lock down the left flank! Duraludon, hold the right!"
Raihan's voice boomed over loudspeakers in the sky.
At his command, two more powerful Dragon-types slipped out of the clouds, forming a triangular formation that sealed this patch of airspace.
"Hey! You up front!" Raihan shouted at the incoming streak of purple, "This is a restricted zone! It's extremely dangerous ahead! I don't care who you are—turn back now! Otherwise I'll use force to push you out!"
He was Hammerlocke's guardian.
In a crisis like this, his job was to lock the airspace down—stop anyone from getting dragged into a god-level fight they couldn't handle, and stop the rampaging energy from spilling outward.
Jason didn't slow down.
If anything, he pushed Miraidon's engines harder.
"Why is this big guy such a nuisance?" Gast leaned out, glaring at the blocking Salamence. "Jason, wanna blast him out of the way?"
"No time," Jason replied, voice eerily calm. "Hang on. We're going straight through."
The distance closed fast.
A thousand meters.
Eight hundred.
Raihan stared at the unidentified object barreling toward him, still not slowing, and his brows knitted.
"Can't understand human speech, huh?" He gritted his teeth. "Salamence, Intimidate! Then Dragon Pulse to force it back!"
"Rooaaaar!"
Salamence threw its jaws wide and unleashed a thunderous roar.
Quasi-legendary dread rolled out with the sound. At the same time, a swirling mass of rainbow Dragon energy gathered at its maw, packed with lethal power, then hurtled toward Jason.
A hit like that would punch through steel.
But "brake" wasn't in Miraidon's dictionary.
"Raihan! Get out of the way! I'm here to clean up your mess!"
Hearing that all-too-familiar voice, Raihan froze for a moment.
"That voice… is that the viral Ditto?"
Before he could process it, the Dragon Pulse reached Jason.
"Iron Valiant," Jason said—no flourish, just a name.
The silent passenger riding pillion finally moved.
Rather than use a proper move, Iron Valiant relied purely on physics.
Right at the point of collision, it vaulted off Jason's back.
Its silver-white frame traced a perfect arc under the sky, and its twin blades snapped together into a single massive halberd-shaped moon blade.
Borrowing the massive kinetic energy of Jason's flight, Iron Valiant brought that blade crashing down.
Its target wasn't Salamence.
It was the incoming energy sphere.
BOOM!
Fairy-type pink light smashed into swirling Dragon energy.
Type advantage.
Fairy beats Dragon. An iron law of the Pokémon world.
The terrifying Dragon Pulse that should've shredded anything in its path popped like a soap bubble under the Fairy blade, scattering into motes of harmless light.
The blast wave rippled outward.
"What?!" Raihan's pupils shrank.
He hadn't expected his signature move to get dismissed that easily.
And it didn't end there.
After slicing the energy ball, Iron Valiant didn't drop; it rolled with the blast's recoil, twisting midair in defiance of gravity and lunged straight at Salamence.
It didn't strike Raihan himself. Instead, it slammed the flat of its blade against Salamence's side.
THUD!
Salamence's massive body lurched, its balance wrecked, and the blow shoved it hard to the side. Raihan nearly got thrown off and had to drop to one knee and grab scales for dear life.
The line was broken.
In the instant that gap opened, Miraidon shot through like purple lightning.
The passing shockwave tore Raihan's hood back, blasting his famous long hair into a windswept disaster.
"Thanks, big guy!" Gast yelled from Jason's back, pulling a spectacularly rude ghost-face at the flustered Raihan.
By the time Salamence stabilized again, Jason's team was already a violet speck in the distance, vanishing into the thick red clouds swirling above the power plant.
Raihan straightened, dusted himself off.
He stared toward where they'd disappeared, not angry—just stunned.
"What was that speed? So that's the legendary from Paldea…"
He glanced at the faint white streak on Salamence's wing.
Iron Valiant's doing.
They'd obviously pulled the blow—if it had used the blade edge, Salamence's wing might be ruined.
Raihan ran a hand through his hair and gave a wry smile.
"Leon, Leon… looks like what's coming isn't just trouble. There's also a terrifying lunatic."
He pulled out his phone. Even with terrible reception down here, habit made him point the camera at that fading purple glow and snap a blurry photo.
"Is that Ditto insane?" he muttered, but there was clear respect in his tone. "I don't even dare go into that mess, and he just dives right in."
The doors to the elevator leading to the core of the power plant slid open with a heavy clang.
A wave of scorching, staticky air blasted out to meet them.
The air quality down here was ten times worse than outside. The Dynamax particle concentration had gone beyond floating red motes—now they clung to the metal walls in clumps, fizzing with electricity and making the entire underground space feel like a bomb on a hair trigger.
Jason hopped down from Miraidon.
This was Galar's energy heart—and ground zero for Rose's insane scheme.
The corridor ahead wasn't wide. Massive coolant pipes lined either side, warning lights flashing an angry red.
At the far end, a thick alloy door was sealed tight. That was the control room. Where Rose was.
But the way was blocked.
A woman in a white business suit stood before the door.
Oleana.
Rose's secretary and Macro Cosmos's vice president.
Normally, she was the perfectly composed corporate queen: flawless makeup, immaculate bun, icy poise.
Now she looked wrecked.
Her hair was a mess, the once-neat twist coming undone, strands stuck to her sweat-slick forehead. Her eyes were shot through with red veins—symptoms of extreme stress and lack of sleep.
When she saw Jason's group step out of the elevator, Oleana's expression twisted.
"Stop right there!"
Her voice was shrill and piercing, bouncing down the enclosed corridor with the edge of someone about to crack.
"No one is allowed through! No one is allowed to disturb the Chairman! This is for Galar's future! This is to save the energy crisis a thousand years from now!"
Jason stopped.
He studied the woman on the brink of hysteria, his pink face completely calm—if anything, carrying a faint "are you stupid" kind of look.
Gast floated beside him, arms folded, eyeing Oleana's state with a shiver.
"What's wrong with this woman? She looks more like a Ghost-type than I do," Gast muttered. "And why is she screaming so loud? The echo down here is insane."
Jason squelched forward a few steps.
"Miss Oleana," he said, voice lazy and flat—stark contrast to her screaming. "I've always wanted to ask you something. How much is Rose paying you? Or what kind of shares did he promise you, to make you go this hard for him?"
Oleana froze, then flew into a rage, arms waving.
"You don't understand anything! This isn't about money! This is about ideals! About noble purpose! The Chairman has foreseen the disaster of the future—he's trying to save this world!"
"Save the world?" Jason snorted. "So for some so-called 'energy crisis' that only exists in his head and might happen in a thousand years, you want to blow Galar sky-high today? That's your idea of salvation?"
"That's a necessary sacrifice!" Oleana shouted back. "As long as we can awaken Eternatus, we'll have infinite energy! Humanity a thousand years from now will thank us!"
"The way your thoughts spiral is honestly impressive," Jason sighed—the kind of sigh you give someone who is terminally beyond saving. "I don't know if people in a thousand years will thank you, but I do know that if you don't get out of the way, everyone in Hammerlocke is going to hate you in, oh… ten minutes."
He gestured upward, at the ceiling that was starting to hum ominously.
"Feel it? That thing is almost out of control. Rose can't handle it. He's playing with fire."
"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"
Oleana slapped her hands over her ears, refusing to hear a word of reason.
Her mind had snapped long ago under the pressure. The only thing holding her together now was blind worship of Rose and blind obedience.
"If you insist on stopping the Chairman—then you all can stay right here with me!"