The door that had once been a solid alloy bulkhead was now a jagged, triangular hole.
Through the dust and twisted metal, a Ditto sashayed its way in, wobbling along like it owned the place.
Jason.
On his left floated a grinning Gengar.
On his right stood Iron Valiant, light-blades still humming from cutting the door apart.
And in the back, that lazy-looking Miraidon.
Rose clearly hadn't expected this kind of squad to bust in.
"Y–you… who are you?" Rose pointed at Jason, his finger trembling. "How did you get in here? Where's Oleana?"
"You mean that lady secretary?" Jason oozed forward. "She was too noisy, so we tied her up in the hallway to calm down. As for how we got in—obviously, we walked."
"Who I am isn't important," Jason said, looking at Rose. "What matters is: what you just said really pissed me off."
Leon finally caught up with what was happening.
He stared at the pink blob, a flicker of recognition in his eyes.
"That's… Jason?"
He'd seen this Ditto on streams, and heard about it from Hop.
But he'd never imagined that in a city under lockdown, with Raihan forced to guard the outer perimeter, this Ditto would be the one to break straight into the core of the power plant.
And judging by the look of him, he was here to wreck the place.
"Leon-san, long time no see—wait, no, first time meeting." Jason turned and waved a stubby pseudolimbs at him. "I'd really like to ask for your autograph, but now's clearly not the time."
Leon opened his mouth, and for once, had no idea what to say.
Rose had been completely ignored.
That humiliation made his already taut nerves snap even tighter.
"Outrageous!" Rose roared. "This is a moment that will decide humanity's fate! What's a Pokémon doing here spouting nonsense? Get out!"
"Triggered already?" Jason turned back to him, watching Rose's flushed face with interest. "I've said, what, two sentences and you're like this? With that mental fortitude you think you're saving the world?"
He slid forward a few steps. The heat in the room made his surface shine wetly, but it didn't slow him down at all.
"You said you're doing this to solve an energy crisis… a thousand years from now?" Jason asked.
"That's right!" Rose puffed his chest out. "It is my mission!"
"A thousand years," Jason repeated, then let out a sharp laugh. "How old are you now? Fifty? Sixty? And you're losing sleep over something a thousand years in the future? You got nothing better to do?"
"That's called vision!" Rose snapped back.
"That's called being sick in the head," Jason cut him off without mercy. "What makes you think humans a thousand years from now need you to make decisions for them today? Maybe by then they'll have invented some new kind of energy. Maybe by then they'll be extinct."
"And another thing," Jason jabbed a pseudolimbs toward the flashing screens around them. "You're the chairman of Macro Cosmos, a businessman. Your job is to run the company well, pay your employees, and keep Galar's power grid stable. You're not a savior. You're not a god."
"What do you know?!" Rose was shaking with rage. "I'm doing this for Galar's future! If the energy runs dry—"
"Then it runs dry," Jason said flatly. "When the carriage reaches the mountain, there's always a road. If that day really comes and the lights go out, people will find a way. Not like you, throwing everyone into hell now over some vague 'future' in your head."
He pointed in the direction of the city.
"Listen to the sirens out there. Because of this garbage plan of yours, how many people just lost their homes? How many Pokémon are rampaging? In the name of 'the future,' you're burning the present to the ground. If you wipe out today, who exactly is going to be around in that future to thank you?"
Leon stood to the side, utterly stunned.
He'd tried to talk Rose down with duty, justice, responsibility—but with little effect.
Because Rose saw himself on some moral high ground.
Jason didn't bother with high ground.
He yanked Rose straight off his pedestal, threw him into the mud, and told him plainly:
You're just a self-important lunatic. Stop cosplaying a saint.
"You—you…" Rose jabbed a finger at Jason, chest heaving, speechless.
His face had turned a mottled purple-red, a vein throbbing on his forehead.
The belief system he'd clung to for decades was being torn apart and hosed down with the crudest, most down-to-earth insults a Ditto could muster.
"What, me what?" Jason rolled his eyes. "Run out of things to say? If you're done talking, turn that button off. Everyone's busy, no one has time to play apocalypse LARP with you."
"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" Rose was hysterical now.
Shame and fury completely drowned whatever rationality he'd had left.
He couldn't stand having his 'noble ideals' trampled like this.
He definitely couldn't stand being lectured by a Ditto.
"If you refuse to understand me—then let reality do the talking!"
Rose whirled around and bolted for the control console.
"Don't!" Leon realized what he was about to do and shouted, lunging to stop him.
But Charizard was too badly hurt; they were a beat too slow.
Rose's palm slammed down on the red activation switch, and his hand went wild, shoving the output levers all the way to maximum.
"Awaken, Eternatus! Show these fools your power! Drown this world in endless night!"
BEEEEP!
A piercing continuous alarm ripped through the plant.
Every screen shifted to a blinding crimson at once.
"Warning! Energy overload! Warning! Containment breach imminent!"
The cold electronic voice shrieked over and over, but it was too late.
The massive vortex behind the glass suddenly stopped spinning.
An eerie silence fell over the room.
Then—
Crack.
The first fracture spidered across the reinforced glass.
Jason's eyes sharpened instantly.
He dropped fully into battle mode.
"Iron Valiant, guard," Jason said quietly.
Iron Valiant stepped in front of Jason and Gast immediately, twin moon-blades crossing to form a pink energy barrier.
The next second—
BOOOOOM!
The reinforced glass, rated to withstand a nuclear blast, shattered like sugar under the internal surge.
A gigantic shockwave, choked with red Dynamax particles, crashed through the entire control room like a crimson tsunami.
Metal shards became shrapnel in the air. Floating monitors went spinning, exploding in showers of sparks.
Rose, standing on the high dais, took the blast head-on.
He was launched like a rag doll, slammed into the far wall, then crumpled to the floor, unmoving.
Leon and Charizard were also thrown backward, dragged across the platform a dozen meters before smashing into a support pillar.
Only Jason's side, under Iron Valiant's full defensive output, managed to hold their ground.
But the pressure—that couldn't be blocked.
That was a difference in life tier.
The red dust finally began to settle.
A colossal, soul-crushing shape came into view.
It had no flesh, only an immense violet skeletal frame.
A red core throbbed in its chest, and every pulse made the surrounding space shudder.
Huge claws dug into the platform's edge as its serpentine spine unfurled upward. The dragon skull at its head was crowned with five crimson spikes, glowing with a blighted light.
Eternatus.
The source of Dynamax, the body of the Darkest Day.
Its bulk filled half the control room. Those emotionless eyes swept across the ants below.
"ROOOOAR!"
It opened its jaws and let out a roar that felt like it could crack a soul in half.
Steel plates began dropping from the ceiling, and the entire plant shook under the force.
Leon stared up at the gigantic Pokémon, fists clenched, a flash of despair crossing his face.
This power was beyond Champion-tier.
Gast huddled behind Jason, trembling.
That was primal fear.
"S–so… that's the big guy? It's huge! Jason, maybe we should just… run?"
Jason stared up at the bone dragon, its aura still exploding outward.
There was no fear on his face.
Instead, in those beady little eyes, a hunter's gleam lit up at the sight of prey.
He'd been waiting for this moment a long time.
He'd put up with the whole trip for this.
"Run?"
"Why would I run?"
He oozed forward out from Iron Valiant's protection, stepping out to face Eternatus head-on.
The gale warped his body, but he stayed glued to the floor.
The control room's dome was gone.
That one burst from Eternatus hadn't just shattered the glass—it had ripped away the heavy armor plating above it.
Now the wind howled straight through the ruined ring of a room.
Air laden with thick Dynamax particles sliced at their skin like grit.
The giant purple skeleton dragon was no longer inside.
It had risen, winding its way into the sky, its enormous frame flickering in and out of the red clouds.
It was greedily drinking in energy from across Galar.
With every breath, the red clouds sagged inward around its vortex.
Jason tilted his head back, watching that growing shape.
"If we don't interrupt it, once it drains the region, that's going to be a real pain."
He glanced at Gast and Iron Valiant.
"Come on, we're going up. Too cramped down here to work."
No more orders needed.
Iron Valiant scooped Jason up with one arm.
Ignoring the falling steel beams and chunks of concrete, it vaulted straight through the hole Eternatus had blasted open.
Gast shot after them as a violet streak, weaving nimbly through the wreckage.
Miraidon sighed.
"Jason's getting bolder by the day, picking fights with something like that. If I'd known, I wouldn't have come…"
But complaints aside, Miraidon followed.
Even if they couldn't beat Eternatus, it could at least yank Jason out alive.
The very top of the power plant was the highest point in Hammerlocke.
From here, you could see the entire city.
Nobody had any mood to enjoy the view.
Hammerlocke had become an ocean of red.
Streets were scarred wherever rampaging Dynamaxed Pokémon had gone wild. Out on the plains, countless pillars of red light stabbed skyward.
And the source of it all hovered barely five hundred meters above.
Eternatus' core boomed like a heartbeat.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Each pulse sent visible ripples through the air.
As Jason's feet touched down, an orange blaze tore through the red sky.
Leon.
The Champion of Galar clearly hadn't given up.
Even with Charizard battered to ruin and himself a wreck, he'd chased them to the top.
"Charizard! We can't let it finish absorbing!"
Leon stood on a jagged slab near the edge, shouting.
The wind whipped his hair to chaos, but his eyes still burned.
"Use your strongest Blast Burn!"
"Raaah!!"
Charizard answered his trainer.
Its blazing tail flared, wings beating hard as it clawed for altitude, charging straight at Eternatus.
It drew a massive fireball in its jaws, the color shifting from orange-red to blinding white—heat pushed to the max.
This was the ace of the Champion, giving everything.
It was the kind of attack that could vaporize a small lake.
The white-hot sun of flame shot straight at Eternatus' chest core.
Eternatus merely dipped its head slightly.
Those hollow eyes showed no reaction.
It didn't even try to dodge.
Just before the fireball hit, the spikes on its chest lit with a violet glow.
A beam of purple light lanced out.
Dynamax Cannon.
Not just light—a hyper-dense spear of pure energy.
BOOOM!
They met midair.
There was no struggle, no clash.
It was a one-sided deletion.
Blast Burn, for all its power, crumbled like brittle glass against the beam.
The purple cannon pierced the fireball, blowing it apart like mist.
Then, still blazing, the beam punched onward and struck Charizard squarely.
THUD!
The hit landed with a sickening impact.
Charizard, the mighty ace, didn't even have time to scream.
Its body went limp midflight, like a severed kite, and was hammered down into the tower.
It slammed into the metal deck, carving a deep crater, cracks spiderwebbing outward.
Charizard tried to move, but its wings hung uselessly. The flame at its tail had shrunk to a dim flicker, about to go out. Its eyes rolled back. It was completely unconscious.
"Charizard!"
Leon cried out and bolted over, forgetting everything else.
He dropped to his knees beside Charizard, hands trembling as he checked it over.
Only when he confirmed it was merely knocked out did he exhale in relief—but the next breath was pure helplessness.
This was the first time in his career he'd lost so utterly.
He hadn't even managed to take a single hit.