Welcome to Gaia! ::

I looked at Ship for a moment. Apparently he was readying himself. I guess he's grown to expect that of me. "You're wanting to know, by chance?" I asked. "I figure you have your own agendas, by now; I'd hate to keep you up."

"Well, tell me, Ship." I said. "Serious question. Have you in some way, shape, or form, know of the stories of the Elementals?" I asked.

"Well, heh. Neither do I, really. Only thing I do know is first hand experience. There's seventeen of them. One for every known type of Pokemon. Grass, Fire, Psychic, Water, so on and so forth. The very embodiment of Chi as I soon learned from Miles." I said. "As you may have concluded by now, one was responsible for the reason why I look the way I do today." I said. "The Ice Elemental, Celcius. This one was a bit on the evil side...compared to most of the elementals anyways. The rest range within the whole neutral area. Then again...I guess neutrality is a matter of perspective." A thought for me to ponder on later, I thought.

"I was a puppet to him for a brief period. I was rescued, though sometime afterwards, and for years, I would never know the identity of my savior." I told him. "My run-ins with Celcius wouldn't exactly stop there though...after a year I ended up in a bit of an adventure...one of the 'save the world' sorts. And incidentally, you can blame Freth for kicking that off for me."

"It came a time, after a few months, after getting into one fight after the next and gradually learning what I was capable of, where I finally squared off with Celcius himself. The fight took place in the mountainous areas of the Snowpoint area in Sinnoh. Now, the Snowpoint region...its like that its winter is year round. Don't ask me HOW that is, but well...what ever the case, it was made worse with Celcius, the very embodiment of chi that makes up the ice itself, which made traversing such mountains, let alone the caverns inside all the more treacherous." I said.

I thought back for a moment, then took a sip. "I confronted Celcius. The fight felt like an eternity. Such a fight, one such as myself at the time, and against the likes of a monster more powerful than most, if not all of the known legendary Pokemon, would be suicide." I said. "I only had one edge...a more literal one, than proverbial..." I opened my inner vest pocket. It almost pained me to take it out, thinking about the implications that I found out back in Hyda after my final fight with Celcius. I took out something flat, wrapped tight in a cloth that I picked up out of Hyda and unwrapped it...a somewhat transparent flat object, a absurdly sharp on one side, blunt on the other, with various engravings, those similar to texts found in Hyda along the blunt side. "Hinterbane. A sword. Not an ordinary one, though...which was something that I didn't realize at the time." I said, placing the piece of the sword close to Ship to look out.

"What's left of it anyways..." I said to him. "What I didn't realize at the time, this sword...was really an artifact. A rather powerful one. And just to fill you in on something, this isn't by definition, ancient, though they very well can be. They are objects imbued with the very power of a Pokemon. As such, the being of a Pokemon, and for that matter, its very well aware...at the time, I didn't realize that until a cruel realization later down the road. Years later." I explained.

"No." I said. "I'm implying that it's essentially both, though given that now its broken, it's truly gone."

"Thinking back on it?" I said, looking up towards the ceiling. "Probably not at first. But given that it helped me right when I needed a miracle most? It probably knew what fate it would succumb to at the end. Regardless, apparently the Pokemon in the artifact figured out how to defeat Celcius...it started to absorb Celcius's chi...contain it in the blade. Though I didn't realize it at the time. I sensed chi wavering at the time, but that was back during a time where my senses weren't as honed as they are now." I explained. Celcius was in a dire panic, trying to get the sword out of his head. Yes, I managed to embed the sword right in Celcius's head. In his panic, and in my time of dire desperation to act while I still had the strength to fight, I attacked. You see, the fight went down to the lowest levels of the mountain...there was literally a magma stream a ways below us, I'd say at least a 40 or 50 foot drop from us. As Celcius desparately tried to get the sword out of him, I took it upon myself to unleash my last attack, an Ancientpower, dislodging part of the ground in which Celcius stood and made him fall into the lava." I said. "I sensed nothing afterwards. I thought from there on, for years, I had finally killed him. For good. It wasn't so..."

I sighed a bit. "My only guess is that after the fight was over and by some twist of fate, Freth, who was an enemy of mine at the time, decided to have some streak of good in her, or rather, at least needed me for something, dragged me out of that cavern and out of the mountains, arranging to get help for my injuries, because I was no shape to go anywhere on my own. Neither were my Pokemon that I had on me at the time for that matter. My guess is he finally dragged himself out of the lava and broke the sword on his own power. It would explain why, years later, rather here about a half year ago, when, with the help of Miles, I defeated him for real, for certain this time, I found this in his remains. Celcius had a scar, right where the sword was planted in him...it was the discoloration where Celcius's chi could not heal over because the part of the sword was still there." I said.

Ryan and Gardevoir arrive back at HQ. He recalls his pokemon and heads inside. He was still feeling that fight. It would be quiet for now. Ryan then winces. He still had Master Varuna's ship in his gourd! Oi. hopefully Master wouldn't be too cross if he held onto it until they met again for his training. Summoning seemed like it would just bring a guaranteed scolding for getting defeated in battle.