ACL: 59. Behold, the Path to Victory. (Patreon)

Chapter 59: Behold, the Path to Victory.

Blake IsleySunday, February 20, 2011Type: Psychic

Victini and I watched as hundreds of rockets rose into the air. They were each about as tall as a grown man and shaped like a football. Their dull, metallic shells gleamed as they caught their own engine lights. All across Detroit and Windsor, they took to the sky like countless fireflies.

We turned as one. Together, we imagined a pair of hands that swept across the sky. They struck with enough force to pancake cars. Some of those oblong pods exploded, but the ones that were caught along the edges bobbed out of the way, not unlike a boat riding a rough wave.

The Simurgh had to have built a way to redirect kinetic energy, or she was manually doing it herself, protecting the vast majority of her creations. That was the trouble with her. Victini was by far the stronger psychic, but she could take so many actions at once that it felt as if we were fighting an entire swarm of supercomputers.

Around us, Legend and Eidolon did the same. The sky lit up with their attacks, only for even more debris to rise into the air, intercepting most of their barrage. Some lasers got through, but only the ones that struck the pods directly managed to destroy them. And unlike us, the Simurgh could freely smack around the Triumvirate heroes to throw off their aim.

My mind raced. Dragon told us that there were two tinkers of note. One specialized in ballistics, which was probably what I was looking at, missiles that would remain stable regardless of external influence. The other specialized in esoteric fields.

‘Any ideas on what that looks like?’ I asked Victini. She knew nothing about tinkers, but she had millennia of experience in battle.

‘I’m not sure. It could mean anything,’ she said, ‘especially if we count the teleporters and hammerspace bags you showed Dragon.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I thought. Can we do anything about the pods?’

‘They’re too spread out. Any attack that destroys them all will also blow up the entire city.’

‘Shit.’

Over the next few minutes, we got rid of sixty or seventy percent of them. Even so, hundreds still managed to take to the sky. The oblong footballs cracked vertically. Some split into three parts, like lemon wedges.

They positioned themselves into rings that crackled with electricity. For a moment, I thought they were collars, but they expanded even as arcs of energy maintained the circumference between them. Portals swirled into place in a mockery of Hoopa’s own rings.

Others retained their football shapes. They oriented themselves parallel to the ground and began to seek out targets. They launched themselves at seemingly random patterns, only to be intercepted by the portals to strike elsewhere.

‘Is… Is this bitch copying us?’ Victini cried in indignation.

‘The teleporters Dragon was building here. They’re not tinkertech and can be powered normally. She probably figured out how to make stable portals from the blueprints,’ I groaned in exasperation.

Together, we condensed a telekinetic barrier around ourselves. No matter what her payload, we were confident in our ability to tank a few shots.

One missile appeared in Alexandria’s blindspot so I yanked her out of the way. I then Tricked her into what would be the Simurgh’s own blindspot had she been any normal creature. She dodged, but that was the instant Victini needed to sneak a Searing Shot from below, the explosion detonating against the endbringer’s chin.

It blew her head clean off her shoulders. Even through the smoke, we  tracked the Simurgh as she careened into what seemed like a death spiral. Alexandria grabbed on to a wing that sprouted from her collar and hammered into her without letting go.

A beam of inky darkness washed over them both. My new favorite brick was fine, but the Simurgh’s wings began to corrode away. Her extremities crumbled, spreading ashes down onto the city below.

“She’s not dead!” Eidolon’s voice crackled through the comms. “Keep hitting her!”

Victini and I were startled. This was far beyond the damage even a ghost or construct could sustain. Claydol, golurk, even a metagross, they all would have long since perished after an assault like that. After all, the head was the seat of identity, the anchor for the spirit.

‘Unless the head isn’t the head,’ Victini grumbled as she began charging more fireballs.

‘She has a core somewhere else. It’s going to be a bitch finding it,’ I replied grimly.

That was when the Simurgh retaliated. A missile found each of us as a massive, concentrated telekinetic shove blasted Alexandria away. She’d used her own body as a decoy to buy herself time. And, like a skitty fixated on a laser pointer, we’d all fallen for it.

A shimmering, green Protect formed around us. Not even most of Victini’s extended family had the raw power to break this right away. As she shielded us, I did the same for Legend and Eidolon. I wasn’t as good at it, but they had defenses of their own as well.

We needn’t have bothered. Three missiles found the two Triumvirate members and us, but they did not detonate with force. Instead, we felt the distinct, stomach-churning feeling that accompanied involuntary spatial displacement.

When the light faded, Victini and I found ourselves in a space swirling with countless hues. It looked like an old Windows screensaver, or a druggie’s acid trip. The colors seemed to stretch out forever, but that couldn’t be it. Hammerspace bags were just that, bags. They had confined limitations.

The gravity here was strange. Each mote of color swirled around us, forming waves of cascading colors that swirled around us. We were being forcibly held in place.

‘Huh… Did we just get pokeball’d?’ Victini asked at the speed of thought. She sounded almost bemused despite the circumstances. ‘I think we just got pokeball’d.’

‘Is this really what it looks like inside a pokeball?’ I asked dryly.

‘No, of course not. I mean, I’ve only been in one once or twice in my life, but they’re pretty cozy from what I understand. I remember mine feeling like a warm sauna I could nap in.’

‘Ugh, this is why I never introduced pokeball technology to Earth-Bet. Leave it to the Simurgh to figure out a similar application.’

‘Is it weird that I’m a little impressed?’

‘Honestly? Same. Still, we need to break out. Eidolon and Legend are probably stuck inside one of these, too.’

‘Right. As you mortals like to say, “She doesn’t have the badges to train us.”’

With that hurried conversation, we stretched our psychic senses. Our minds were a lot harder to lie to than our eyes.

We soon found the edge of this space. We were stuck in a cube of expanded space, each side the length of Arcadia High’s gymnasium. All things considered, it was an impressive use of Silph-tech.

It only managed to piss me off. The hammerspace bags and teleporters were gifts I’d given to Dragon in the hope that she’d use them to improve the world. Having them turned against me like this was a unique kind of humiliation.

‘Blake, we might have a problem,’ Victini said nervously. ‘I think the swirling colors are unstable energy currents.’

‘You… You’re probably right. Hammerspace bags aren’t supposed to be this big. I’m not sure that they can mix with this world’s tinkertech.’ I was mostly guessing, but it sounded right. The creation of a stable pocket space wasn’t the kind of thing you could fuck with on a whim.

‘Space manipulation is finicky. Everyone thinks Palkia is a brute, but he’s obscenely intelligent, you know. Do something even a little wrong and it can all collapse catastrophically.’

‘One of the tinkers specialized in esoteric zones. That’s probably this weird gravity well we’re in. But what if you’re not interested in doing it right in the first place? What if the collapse is the point?’

We came to the same conclusion. Suddenly, the Simurgh’s little pokeball experiment wasn’t cute anymore. ‘We need to get out of here.’

The good news was that this was all based on Silph-tech. There was no magic involved, no aura to extend its tolerance beyond physical limits. And while Silph Co. was certainly ambitious, hammerspace bags sure as shit weren’t meant to contain a Legend.

I considered our situation as Victini focused a Psychic hammer. She slammed it directly down, only for it to slam against the edge of this space. Surprisingly, it held.

‘A dimensional barrier. Force alone won’t do,’ she grunted. ‘Any ideas?’

‘Can we teleport out?’

‘I’d need to sense where I’m going. I’m not familiar with that city.’

‘Then… Whatever’s maintaining this space has to have a presence in this space, at least partially. You can’t make a pocket space that’s completely divorced from the outside.’

‘You can if you’re Palkia, which she’s not.’

‘So if we find it, then–’

‘Too slow. Watch and learn, Blake.’ Victini took over with an eager grin. An orb of eye-searing aura formed in her hand. But rather than scorch the world around us, it began to drink in all light, all heat. “Glaciate.”

As my chemistry teacher would say, Victini was typically highly exothermic. But that was a scientist’s best attempt at describing someone who fundamentally didn’t care about the laws of physics.

She didn’t have to. At her core, she was an immensely skilled energy manipulator who recreated the signature moves of Unova’s legendary dragons. Bolt Strike. Blue Flare. Glaciate.

She was perfectly capable of seizing energy directly. The feat was no different for her than me grabbing a solid object. She reached out her senses and the swirling mass froze. Kyurem’s signature move took shape as she drew in all that energy into herself.

It was an indiscriminate attack, made all the more powerful because of our limited space. I’d initially wanted to search for a connection point to the outside world, but that didn’t matter. Everything in the pocket space was battered from within as ice took hold.

The Husk, the Dragon of Nothing had been left behind and cast aside when Truth and Ideal took form. Kyurem was therefore a being of ice, preserved in that moment in time by its own domain. Or rather, perhaps it wouldn’t be wrong to say that ice was a domain that had been forced upon it. Nothing was left when fire and lightning had been stripped away.

That was what really made Glaciate so devastating. If aura was “communion,” then Glaciate was more than a simple lowering of temperature. It was a move that carried a Legend’s lamentations, all his resentment and regret, the loss of purpose, the sorrow of abandonment, and the bitterness of solitude. It was a move that sought to impose a fragment of that stillness upon the world.

It was not something any mortal creation could survive. I didn’t know where the connection point was, but her attack completely blew apart the pocket space entirely.

The world around us shattered like broken glass as the boundaries fell apart. For a moment, I saw bits of metal, the tinkertech that the Simurgh had gone through so much effort to create and defend, rendered worthless in seconds.

The bright lifesigns of Legend and Eidolon were missing, still trapped in their own spatial anomalies. From the outside, they looked like black, featureless cubes that hung in the air, no bigger than a mailbox.

Dragon shouted into the comms as Alexandria harried the Simurgh as best she could. To her credit, she barely reacted when I slammed her into the Simurgh again.

All the heat that Victini had drawn in, she held in her hand. It was a little, blue marble that shone like a star, one of the most devastating fire type moves known.

She pulled my conscious to join her as we rolled the orb between us. Shaped by our combined intent, we spoke as one, “Blue Flare.”

Reshiram’s signature scythed across the sky as if to cleave the very heavens apart. There was no explosion. The sky did not literally ignite, as I knew it should have. The fire almost seemed cold, a cleansing wave that bathed the sky with purifying light. It was breathtaking to see, especially through her own eyes. 

It washed over the Simurgh and Alexandria both. We saw the brute grab the endbringer and yank her back into the stream with all the determination of a krookodile. That kind of absolute faith in her own durability was downright inspiring.

X

Keith Jameson

Before I met Contessa and Doctor Mother, I was a gay youth in the eighties. And afterwards, upon learning just what humanity was up against, I despaired. I understood then, just how a man might find comfort in faith. I tried once; I prayed to the God that David swore was listening and received only silence.

Suffice to say, I didn’t have a high opinion of religion. I respected men of the cloth, especially those who lived out their faith through charity and gave hope to the broken. I respected David, the friend I’d come to know who took on the mantle of Eidolon, both literally and figuratively. I knew what he went through and felt that there was nothing more pitiable than a savior.

That was my relationship with religion. It was one of cold detachment and academic understanding, perhaps even a general distaste. I’d seen too much, I knew too much, to truly give faith a chance. I never had a “religious experience” and never expected to.

But this, being shrouded in the flames of Victini, was pretty damn close. I’d heard countless people describe hope as a light, a candle flame that refused to go out despite the wind. I hadn’t felt it quite this literally before. 

I wasn’t noticeably stronger, if only because I was already powerful enough that “more boom” wasn’t easily observable. No, power alone was worthless against the Simurgh, anyway.

Instead, I was more in tune with my agent in a way I hadn’t thought possible. It was as if a mental block had dissolved, one I hadn’t known existed. There was no distinction between flesh and light. The Simurgh tried to blow me away, but something, raw intuition perhaps, told me to become light and I allowed the attack to fly through me harmlessly without launching myself halfway across the country.

It made me laugh. I couldn’t help the shout of delight as I literally transcended human flesh to become a being of photons. I was invincible, if in a very different way than Alexandria. I flew across the sister cities, scanning for any sign of the capes who’d yet to evacuate. I split my attention between them and the endbringer, rattling off coordinates for other flyers while protecting those on the ground from her attacks.

I hadn’t been able to do this before. No matter my speed, there was a limit to human cognition. Dividing my attention like this against the Simurgh had been suicide, but I now had the strength to protect them.

Then, she unveiled her tinkertech. The missiles rose into the air by the hundreds. We tried to shoot them down, but it became clear that she was controlling every one of them independently, each with the same precision she applied to everything else. 

A little less than half survived. They danced in the breeze, drifting like balloons until they split apart to reveal their payload. Some became teleporters, further masking their trajectories. Soon, there was no way to avoid them.

Eidolon was the first to go. I could see the eager grin on his face as he blasted massive beams of decay in her direction. The air hummed with his aerokinesis as he chased her.

But though he seemed to have returned to his prime, he was too blinded by the high to avoid the missile that snuck up on him. I saw an oblong missile detonate behind him. A cube of energy formed that trapped him inside before shrinking back down.

I thought I’d lost my friend and it cost me. I was the next to get captured. I tried to avoid the missile by phasing into light, but the Simurgh must have detonated it manually. The next thing I knew, I was within the cubic space and I knew then that Eidolon must also be stuck in a similar pocket dimension.

There was a gravity effect, something akin to a singularity that pulled me in towards the center of the cube. I overcame it by turning into light again and threw myself at the edge of the cage. If I could phase through, then I could find a way to free my friend.

The swirling motes of light in the space should have been a clue. The moment I touched a face of the cube, I found myself being disassembled. Before I knew it, I joined the kaleidoscope of colors and spun around the singularity like water spinning down a drain.

Then, the damn thing exploded from within. Or maybe from without. It was impossible to tell. I was not dead, merely scattered. I was here, there, everywhere. I could see, touch, the Empire State Building, or a moose in Canada, or someone fishing off a boat in the Mississippi River.

It was a nauseating feeling. There was no pain, light could not be hurt nor slain, but nor was a human mind meant to handle so many perspectives. Somehow, through instincts I didn’t know I had, or through the fire that all my disparate selves shared, I found the pieces of myself drawn together again.

I looked around and had to take stock because I wasn’t anywhere near Detroit anymore. Menagerie’s orange flames still shrouded me and I used that as my guide. Like a moth to the flame, I found the origin of the light.

It was impossible to miss. There was a cascading corona of blue fire that emitted from the mouse that could be seen for miles. Eidolon’s cube shattered like mine had, obliterated in Menagerie’s large-scale attack. It made me wonder if there was any point to me going back. He’d clearly held back, probably because he feared we wouldn’t survive it.

As it was, Eidolon emerged from the exploding cube heavily injured. He’d had three powers: a laser that decayed everything, an aerokinetic shield, and a thinker ability that made him immune to master effects. He’d been content with his choices, chiefly because he never got to choose the specifics of his powers.

The shield wasn’t strong enough. A compressed ball of air hadn’t been enough to protect him from the detonation of the subspace. He was bleeding heavily from a stump where his right arm had been. His right leg was similarly missing.

I flashed over as Alexandria and Menagerie arrived. She caught him as Menagerie projected an emerald shield over them. A dull thrum rang out as an invisible force impacted the barrier.

“Heal him,” I told Menagerie. It was what he was famous for. “I can keep the Simurgh busy.”

“Can’t,” he grunted as he reinforced the barrier. A stream of lightning erupted from his paws, destroying several nearby portals. The Simurgh spread them out more in response. “Victini sucks at it.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” Trump. Blaster. Shaker. Mover. Probably some kind of thinker, too. Of all the things his current form could do, it felt ridiculous to hear that he couldn’t do the one thing that first built his reputation.

“Nope, no joke. Healing’s the one thing Victini never learned. Get him out of here.”

The wind stirred around us as Eidolon came to himself. An air bubble pushed Alexandria away until he was floating under his own power. “No. I’m not going anywhere.”

I could hear how much it hurt him just to say those words. But at the same time, there was a glint of madness in his eyes. Resolute, determined, self-sacrificing madness, but madness all the same.

This was everything to Eidolon. To my friend who’d borne the weight of the world, this was quite literally his reason for breathing. For so long, he’d been forced to face the reality that he was growing weaker. Never mind Scion, more endbringers appeared as he dwindled in strength.

Now, faced with his return to form and the possibility of finally ending the Simurgh, he couldn’t leave. It’d mean spitting on everything he’d ever fought for. I both loved and hated him for it.

“You’re losing a lot of blood,” Alexandria told him. Her voice was as clinical as always, but there was an undercurrent of concern.

“I can still fight! I just got my power back, Lexi!”

Menagerie, Victini, almost stumbled in the air at that. He seemed to be having a conversation with himself, which was a distinct possibility if what reports said about another consciousness was true. “Are you sure, Eidolon? I suppose you can always grow your limbs back after this.”

“Yes!”

“Fine, I respect your resolve. Grit your teeth.”

“What are you–Aahhh!”

A plume of flame curled around Menagerie’s head crest. It split into two motes that landed against Eidolon’s bloody stumps, searing the wounds shut.

The acrid-sweet smell of roast pork filled the air. The first time I smelled it, back during Behemoth’s first appearance, it made me go vegan for six months. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to it.

“Can you hold the Simurgh? If you can, I have something that can kill her.”

“You do? Why didn’t you–”

“Because it’s a  one-time thing. Whether we hit or miss, I’m out of the fight. Can you do it or not?”

He looked at his stump. His whole body trembled in agony but he managed to keep his voice stable. “I… I can switch powers. It’s… It’s smoother than before. Two minutes? No, just one to hit full strength. I’ll figure something out.”

“Together, then,” Alexandria nodded.

They looked my way and I found myself smiling in spite of the situation. “Well, I guess we’re doing this. I’ll keep the missiles off Menagerie as much as I can.”

“Just focus on keeping Eidolon safe while his power charges. I can handle myself,” he said.

So began the most stressful minute of my life.

Aerokinesis kept my friend afloat, but it was clear he was still in a great deal of pain. Nor did searing his wounds shut magically replenish his blood loss.

Protection against masters. Aerokinesis for flight. That meant he had to give up his laser, the only offensive power he had. He was already running on fumes, trusting that I would stall the Simurgh until whatever he toggled could charge to full strength.

All the while, Alexandria chased the Simurgh with everything she had. Without Menagerie to reposition her, she had to weave herself around what tinkertech remained. We all knew it wouldn’t last; she couldn’t outfly the Simurgh forever.

X

Blake Isley

‘Are you sure you can destroy the core?’ I asked Victini as we flew directly into a mass of the Simurgh’s tinkertech portals. A Fusion Bolt lanced out, bouncing between them and detonating her missiles prematurely. ‘We know her head is hollow so it’s in her torso, or maybe one of the wings.’

‘Does it matter? If her whole body is hollow, I think I have a good idea of how durable she is. If I atomize the whole thing, who cares where the core is?’ she replied with uncharacteristic viciousness.

‘Then we’ll need to hold her in place, negate her precognition for a short while. She hasn’t let us get close to her at all after that Flare Blitz.’

‘Not long, even a second or two is sufficient. Any ideas?’

‘One.’

I sent her a mental information packet. A pulse of approval and we were off. We began yet another round of high-stakes tag. I didn’t know what the Simurgh knew, but she seemed willing to continue to battle against us.

We knew the exact instant Eidoloon finished charging his new power. Eight, green orbs of light formed around him, each as large as a car. From them, eight chains emerged and lunged like vipers towards the Simurgh.

Each moved independent of the others, fast enough that the vast majority of pokemon would not have been able to dodge them. When they ran into debris, they phased through them, a little like Crusader’s ghostly spearmen. Even then, the Simurgh avoided everything with the grace of a pidgeot. 

It wasn’t enough that she knew where every attack was coming from; she had the speed to make that knowledge count. She adjusted her own flight path to weave between Legend’s lasers and Eidolon’s chains. Sometimes, she allowed one to graze her, knocking her away from the other. At other times, she redirected the lasers with what few teleporters she had left, forcing Alexandria to break away and run interference.

‘You were right. They need a bit of help if they’re going to help us,’ Victini pointed out.

‘Yeah, I’ve got it.’

‘You do that; I’ll set up V-Create.’

I felt her recede a half-step in our shared consciousness. I filled the vacant space and stretched out our senses as far as I could. The entire airspace became our territory, not unlike when we began this battle with Safeguard.

Then, I molded enough psychic aura to crush a mountain. I never would have tried to command such a wide domain in any other body, but Victini’s reserves were boundless.

I tapped the collar around our neck. “Hold her, now! Trick Room!”

The world glitched. Physics made way for aura. What was fast, became slow. What was slow, became fast. Trick Room was a move that even the greatest of psychics used sparingly.

Even champion-class pokemon didn’t usually cover more than a few dozen cubic yards. The reason was simple: Palkia was a jealous master. Aura could be exerted to manipulate space in brief bursts, that was what Teleport did at its most basic, but continuous alteration of natural laws was very different.

The Dragon of Space wasn’t of space; in a way, it would be more appropriate to say he was space. To alter spatial laws was to rebel against the laws enforced by Palkia himself. Suffice to say, very few could maintain such a thing for long. It was only through Victini’s own claim as a Legend that I could cover Detroit’s airspace like this. Any other form, even a metagross or gardevoir, would have died in the attempt.

Even then, I strained against the effort like never before. Every single thing in the air, alive or otherwise, was a weight I had to carry. It was a mental burden Victini could not share with me, not right now.

I wondered what the Simurgh made of this. I knew that the source of aura and parahuman powers were different. She saw a tapestry of possibilities. She would adapt to a mere difference in velocities, but for a precious few seconds, the tapestry looked nothing like what she’d extrapolated.

To their credit, the Triumvirate took ruthless advantage of this golden opportunity. Legend turned away to destroy the rest of the Simurgh’s tinkertech. Alexandria suddenly sped up, faster than the Simurgh now. She grabbed onto the Simurgh’s wing and dragged the bitch into a bear hug. That gave Eidolon time to wrap his chains around them both.

‘Fuck, that hurts,’ I groaned at the splitting headache. Just four seconds, and I’d never felt more mentally drained. ‘All you, my friend.’

I felt her yank me out of the driver seat as she slotted into place. Her power leapt to her call like a loyal growlithe welcoming its true mistress. ‘You did well. I’ll… try not to fry the gray lady, too.’

V-Create was… unique. Most pokemon moves as trainers knew them were “this thing, but bigger.” Hydro Pump was just a bigger Water Gun. Or, one quality was tweaked, like increasing the water temperature using aura manipulation and calling it Scald.

Not so with the signature moves of Legends. I hadn’t been joking in the least when I told Amy that Legends could be compared to gods and demigods. Those favored children of Arceus could, with a bit of effort, touch upon the concepts of their creation. The Sacred Fire of Ho-Oh could raise the dead. The Dark Void of Darkrai could plunge an entire city into the realm of nightmares.

And Victini was no different. Even if for just a moment, the flames of Victini could, quite literally, “create the path to victory.” I’d always wondered if that was the difference between a singular entity like Victini and merely an exceptionally rare pokemon like raikou, that ability to commune with Arceus, however limited in fashion.

‘Heh, you’re right, and wrong. Admittedly, you’re closer than most humans ever get,’ she laughed as she climbed into the sky. “Hehe. It’s been fun, but let’s end this. V-Create!”

Her crest blazed and a second sun appeared in the sky. Fire that was more than fire filled our vision as she brought us down.

I didn’t feel the impact. The Simurgh was there, wrapped in our Brick and Eidolon’s fancy, ghost chains. Then, she wasn’t. Her body began to disintegrate from the proximity alone. By the time our head reached her, it was like driving through a wall of Jell-O.

When I could see anything but orange light again, all that was left of the third endbringer was a wing the size of a grown man’s forearm. It was the one attached lowest on her body, literally at the sole of her left foot.

A wave of exhaustion hit me as I nudged myself back into the forefront of Victini’s mind. She struggled for a bit to take the backlash of V-Create on her own, but I yanked away my share anyway. 

‘Huh, you didn’t fry Alexandria, after all,’ I said with a tired grin. I reached out and grabbed hold of both our favorite Brick and the leftover wing.

‘Who do you think I am? My control is perfect, I’ll have you know,’ she replied with a stubborn but equally spent pout.

‘Be honest, how much of that was because Alexandria’s obscenely durable?’

‘...’

‘...’

‘About fifty-fifty… She’s weird. It’s like she’s in this space, and not.’

‘I noticed. Parahumans are weird.’

‘That they are. You’re going to keep the wing, aren’t you?’

‘Obviously. It’ll be such a huge flex.’

‘Never change, Blake. Never change.’

Author’s Note

Woot! I think this is the second time I’ve killed the Simurgh in my fics, though I’m not sure if The Holy Grill counts because it’s so crack-y. Hope this one was unique enough.

The biggest difference I see between Blake and my other protagonists is that Blake doesn’t know. Andy, Bryce, and John all know about the Simurgh’s core or her damn near infinite capacity for multitasking. He learned about these things mid-fight.

That’s the limit of Future Sight. Lisa is well-informed, but she can only give Blake information based on what she herself knows. She has never felt the suicidal compulsion to overanalyze the Simurgh. 

Fun fact: Victini does not know any healing move except Rest. No Wish, Heal Pulse, Healing Wish, Recover, etc.

History Fact: There’s a history meme going around that in 1895, there were only two cars in Ohio, but they still managed to crash into one another. This is, as far as I can tell, false. 

The very first gasoline-powered automobile in America was made in 1891 in Ohio. That same year also saw the very first car crash by the car’s inventor, James Lambert. No one died, and they certainly made way more cars in four years than just two.