Ash opened his eyes. The words he spoke were barely above a breath, but in their current state of unity, Mewtwo caught every syllable.
Through the combined Thunder strike, Ash had finally pushed past the external power defense of both birds and caught a clear impression of what was inside them.
Small box-like devices, one in each bird, radiating a concentrated malice that he could feel even through the Aura connection. That malice was what had been doing the work, locking down the birds' thoughts, suppressing their forms, and sealing something else entirely.
The sealed power was vast. Even compressed and contained, it pressed against everything around it like something that had been forced into a space too small to hold it.
Their God Domain.
Cynthia had given him a brief account of the Legendary Birds' role in the Orange Islands before they had separated. These weren't simply powerful wild Pokémon.
They were the leaders of the Legendary Bird clans in this region, and with that position came an inherited God Domain passed down through generations. Ice, Fire, and Thunder, three of the most fundamental forces in the natural world.
Not rule-based domains like those governing time or space, but foundational in a different way. The basic elements that governed weather, season, and climate across the whole world.
When those elements fell out of balance, everything connected to them followed. The storms around Shamouti Island weren't a natural weather pattern. They were a symptom.
With Moltres and Zapdos captured and their domains sealed, the elemental systems they maintained had started breaking down. The League had been receiving reports of severe weather from multiple regions and filing it under coincidence. The truth was sitting inside two birds suspended in a lightning net above the sea.
Ash understood now why neither bird had drawn on their God Domain during the fight. He had been wondering whether Team Galactic was simply choosing not to use it. The answer was that they couldn't.
Charon had sealed it because he had no way to control it. If either bird had been able to reach that power, Mega Mewtwo Y would have been dealing with a genuinely different fight.
"This might hurt," Mewtwo said quietly, more to herself than to the birds. They almost certainly couldn't hear her in their current state, but she said it anyway. Then she drove her Psychic inward.
The force that moved through Mewtwo's body and into the two birds was the kind that registered in the air around it, pressure that had no visible source.
Moltres carried the Dark type now, which made it immune to Psychic attacks aimed at it directly, but Mewtwo wasn't targeting Moltres. She was targeting the device inside it.
Her gaze sharpened. Her fingers closed and she pulled.
Two small black boxes tore free from both birds at once. Moltres and Zapdos screamed together, the sound cutting across the storm, and then their eyes went white and they went still.
The color changes reversed themselves almost immediately. The dark red flame coating Moltres softened and shifted back toward orange-red.
The yellow-black of Zapdos's feathers returned to gold. Their natural forms came back to them slowly, like a held breath finally releasing.
Without waiting for any instruction, Mewtwo crushed both devices into powder. Whatever backup copies Charon might have, the finished products weren't going to be available to anyone. She moved both birds to her side with Confusion, then teleported back to Ash.
Ash knelt beside them immediately and placed a hand on each one. Viridian Power moved outward through the contact. After a long moment he sat back.
"They're injured but stable. Nothing permanent. Their consciousness has settled. Given time, they'll recover fully."
The damage Moltres and Zapdos had taken was real, but none of it was permanent. The control devices hadn't left anything irreversible behind.
The injuries they were carrying now were from Mewtwo, the unavoidable cost of the method used to exhaust them enough to reach inside. It had been the only workable approach, and both birds were stable.
Ash was ready to move. Mewtwo could get them to Lorelei and Cynthia's position in moments, and once Charon was caught, this was over.
"Mars, you are genuinely remarkable in your uselessness."
The voice came from above. Ash's head came up sharply.
Charon was descending from the sky on a large dark purple bird, his white lab coat catching the wind. Beside him, wrapped so thoroughly in dense energy that its actual form was impossible to make out, was a dark shape roughly the size of a large bird. It radiated something Ash recognized immediately.
The Power of Death.
"Charon!" Ash's attention snapped to him completely. "Where are Misty and the others?"
Charon had been stopped by Cynthia and Lorelei. When only Mars had come out of the submarine, Ash had already worked out that Charon must have slipped away through the water toward Articuno's location.
Cynthia, Lorelei, and the others had gone to intercept him. Charon appearing here now meant something had happened on that end.
"They're fine," Charon said, sounding more annoyed than anything else. "Persistent, though. I dealt with them once and they kept coming. I had to move on before finishing the job or I would have lost the window to take Articuno." He glanced down at the unconscious Moltres and Zapdos with an expression that had moved past disbelief into something colder.
"Two God Level Pokémon. Gone in under five minutes." He shifted that look toward Mars. "I gave you the two strongest assets available and you produced this. When we return I'll be recommending to the Boss that your executive position be reconsidered."
Mars said nothing. She turned her face away. She didn't have a defense that would hold up, and she knew it. Charon had faced the Sinnoh Champion and a Kanto Elite with a barely-controlled God Level Pokémon and had managed to push them back long enough to get what he came for.
She had been given two God Level Pokémon and lost them to a Trainer who had been active for less than a year. The comparison didn't need to be spoken out loud.
If Charon hadn't come back, this position would have already collapsed.
Ash wasn't listening to either of them anymore. His attention had moved to the Pokémon standing beside Charon, the one that looked like Articuno but wasn't quite right. The conversion was obvious once he knew what to look for.
Galarian Articuno carried the Psychic type rather than Ice, which was in some ways a more troublesome matchup than the original, though the God Domain was still sealed the same way it had been in the other two birds.
The other shape was different. He had turned the Eye of Insight on it and gotten nothing back. Not incomplete information. Nothing. A sequence of question marks where data should have been.
That had never happened before.
It wasn't a wild Pokémon with no registered information. Something about this entity was actively resisting the scan. And underneath the energy wrapping it, Ash could feel the power it was radiating clearly enough without any tool at all.
The Power of Death. The same signature he felt from Lucia Jr., but heavier, more concentrated, and older.
"Something built using Yveltal's power," Ash said quietly, more to himself than anyone. "But why can't I see it clearly."
The sound of wingbeats came from behind him. Garchomp swept in carrying Cynthia and Serena, Togekiss close behind with Lorelei and Misty.
All four of them looked like they had moved fast through rough weather. No injuries, just the dust and wind-blown look of people who had been running hard.