Massive electrical currents surged violently throughout the underground chamber, shattering the lab's control monitors and overloading the remaining terminal equipment until they burst into scrap metal.
"What's happening? What is going on down here?!"
Sensing the catastrophic malfunction below, King Kai had rushed down the subterranean stairs in a panic. But the words caught in his throat. Standing in the center of the ruined laboratory was a colossal, terrifying dragon, its obsidian hide crackling with thick, strobing bolts of pitch-black lightning.
It was Zekrom.
The legendary dragon stood on its massive hind legs, appearing like a majestic fusion of a prehistoric theropod and a heavily armored western dragon. Its entire body gave off the impression of unyielding, sculpted stone, its hide mostly a deep charcoal-gray accented by patches of solid, seamless black.
Zekrom's irisless eyes burned a stark, pure white against its brilliant crimson sclerae. A small, horn-like rock crested the tip of its snout, while a jagged, lightning-bolt crown trailed from the back of its skull.
The dragon's most prominent feature was its massive, conical, spiked tail. It resembled a cross between a colossal power generator and a jet engine turbine.
As it entered its Overdrive mode, the giant inner rings of its tail engine ignited, glowing with a brilliant, high-intensity cerulean radiance that sent lines of blue luminescent energy trailing up its neck and inner plating. When its power peaked to channel its legendary lightning, the turbine spun with a deafening hum, generating an overwhelming, crushing gravitational field. Zekrom hovered effortlessly into the air, completely untouched by atmospheric friction or the laws of terrestrial gravity.
The pitch-black dragon was covered in the remains of the ruptured nutrient fluid, its glowing red eyes locked directly onto the trembling figure of King Kai.
"Zekrom... you've finally awakened!" Kai wept tears of unadulterated joy. "Magnificent! With your sovereign power at my command, the World League's entire joint force means absolutely nothing to me!"
"Let them witness your ultimate judgment, Zekrom!"
The moment Kai's command left his lips, the turbine in Zekrom's tail roared to life, flashing a blinding blue as the dragon opened its jaws to unleash a bone-shaking roar. Simultaneously, a bolt of pure, pitch-black lightning arced upward, tearing through the reinforced ceiling of the laboratory.
BOOM!
The upper deck of the research facility was instantly obliterated, reduced to falling rubble as the blast pulverized what remained of the high-tech machinery.
"Young Feng Che, though this human did not possess the ideals to truly command my strength, he has spent decades channeling vast reserves of electrical current to sustain my stone," Zekrom's thunderous voice echoed directly within Feng Che's mind. "I owe the swiftness of my resurrection to his material efforts. Because of this debt, I cannot strike him down on your behalf."
"However, I have burned my draconic rune into your flesh. Whenever you require my lightning, simply call upon the mark to establish the connection, and I shall cross the boundaries to reach you."
The engine-tail of the black dragon flared with a final, blinding burst of blue light. With a powerful thrust of its wings, Zekrom shot upward through the newly carved crater in the ceiling, vanishing into the storm clouds above.
"It flew away... Zekrom just abandoned me?!"
Kai's jaw dropped, his mind completely unable to process the reality of what he had just witnessed.
"How can this be?! After everything I've sacrificed... all those years of meticulous planning! Zekrom didn't awaken because it answered my conviction?!" Kai's eyes grew hollow and vacant as he stared up at the fractured ceiling, where a massive hole now exposed the smoke-filled sky.
Slowly, the fog of shock cleared from his mind, and his gaze snapped down, locking entirely onto Feng Che.
"You... you're the one who pulled the strings, aren't you?!" Kai roared, a wave of absolute, blinding fury surging straight to his temples. "I planned this operation for over a decade, only for all my hard work to become your dowry!"
"No, I didn't. Don't talk nonsense," Feng Che delivered a flat, instantaneous triple-denial. "Zekrom flew away on its own, didn't it? If I had truly claimed its allegiance, wouldn't the dragon be standing right by my side?"
Feng Che knew all too well that the tallest nail gets hammered down first. If the outside world caught wind that a single teenager was roaming around with Zekrom at his beck and call, the sheer volume of endless political schemes and assassination plots heading his way would be unmanageable. Furthermore, Zekrom wasn't even his only legendary asset—he already had Mewtwo and Dark Dialga secured in his shadow matrix.
"Hmph!"
"Regardless of what you did, you won't be leaving this room alive. Dracozolt, use Bolt Beak!"
The ancient Dracozolt let out a sharp, piercing shriek, rings of golden electricity instantly enveloping its body as it braced its heavy hind legs to lunge.
"Gengar, use Shadow Switch."
Feng Che's shadow suddenly elongated across the stone floor like a living fluid. Before the ancient hybrid could close the distance, dozens of spectral hands erupted from the dark, pinning Dracozolt's shadow firmly to the ground. The beast froze mid-stride, unable to move a single muscle as the crackling currents of electricity trapped in its hide hummed uselessly.
"Hmph. I performed a thorough background check on you before this operation; I knew you possessed an exceptionally high-level Gengar," King Kai said, his voice laced with venom. "But I must admit, I didn't expect you to hide your true depths so cleanly. A Champion-level Gengar... no wonder Julian fell to your vanguard. He didn't lose unfairly."
"But my Dracozolt was extracted from the deepest layers of an ancient, primordial ice shelf. A simple shadow-bind won't keep a pure Dragon and Electric hybrid pinned for long!"
Kai snapped his fingers. The stagnant current locked inside Dracozolt's hide suddenly surged with a localized, violent frequency. The beast redirected its entire electrical reservoir downward, discharging millions of volts directly into the stone floor. CRACK! The concussive thermal feedback shattered the shadow-bindings completely, freeing the beast from its paralysis.
Dracozolt threw its head back, emitting a powerful, high-frequency sonic wave. The extreme acoustic pressure rippled outward, shattering the remaining glass containment vats across the laboratory into a fine rain of crystalline dust.
"Feng Che, thanks to your interference, Poacher's Island is officially finished," Kai sneered, his eyes burning with pure, unadulterated malice. If looks could cut, Feng Che would have already been carved into a thousand bloody pieces. "The massive empire I spent nearly twenty years carving out of this world is completely gone."
"But I am a realistic man. The moment I caught wind of Master Sky's grand strategic deployment, I quietly liquidated a massive portion of my liquid assets and secretly transferred them to a newly discovered uncharted island outside the League's radar."
"The moment I clear this airspace, the World League will realize they've won nothing but an empty shell. They will have to watch in absolute helplessness as I construct a second, far more formidable Poacher network from the ashes."
"But before I take my leave, I am going to tear you limb from limb."
"Dracozolt, maximum output! Bolt Beak!"
A massive, golden dragon composed of pure, concentrated plasma erupted from Dracozolt's frame. In mid-air, the plasma dragon split into a dozen separate, jagged arcs of lightning that clawed through the atmosphere, hurtling toward Feng Che from every conceivable angle.
The intense voltage effectively warped the spatial grid around Feng Che's position, locking down his coordinates. If he attempted a standard psychic Teleport, the lightning arcs would track his energy signature through the spatial rift, delivering a fatal, localized concussive strike the millisecond he rematerialized.
"Haha! You're finished, Feng Che! Bow before the ultimate judgment of the storm!" Kai cackled.
The massive cascades of golden lightning converged on Feng Che's coordinates, triggering a spectacular, blinding explosion that filled the chamber with thick, acrid sulfur smoke.
"Let's move, Dracozolt. The island has officially fallen," Kai sighed, turning his back on the crater. "Losing the vanguard of my Druddigon army is a minor setback, but as long as I retain the core capital, rebuilding is only a matter of time. A wise man knows when to abandon a burning house."
A high-tech, rocket-propelled mechanical harness extended from the shoulders of Kai's tactical ninja suit, its thrusters beginning to hum with a high-pitched whine.
But just as his boots prepared to leave the stone floor, a low, chilling chuckle echoed through the smoke right behind his shoulder.
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