For a minute there was chaos, as chunks of cement fell from above.  Aoife was panicking, but still gathered up enough sense to save herself.  She was about to duck and cover her head when she saw a piece of ceiling hanging precariously over Fawn’s head.
 “Fawn!  Watch out!”  Aoife tackled Fawn the way a Rattata would tackle a Pikachu, and covered her, as they both crouched under Fawn’s podium.  A moment after Aoife’s tackle, a slab of concrete fell in the exact spot where Fawn was standing.
 Fawn stared at the concrete, in shock.  “Aoife, you…you saved my life!  How can I ever—“
 “Not now,” Aoife said, standing up.  “What was that, anyway?  Oh, the others!  And Mom!  I hope they’re all right, please let them be all right…”
 Fawn looked up at the ceiling, which was no longer, only a stormy sky could be seen through the roof.  “Whatever that was…it was really powerful.  It could have collapsed the gym…maybe it still could.”
 “Aoife!”  Aoife looked up to see Petra waving at her, from the stands.  “You all right?”
 “Yeah,” Aoife called back.  “Where’s everyone else?”
 Ruari and Sora peeked up from behind a block of concrete.  “We’re okay,” Sora said.  “Your mom fainted, though, but don’t worry, she’ll be all right.”
 “Wait, where’s Ferio?” Aoife asked.  “Even if she is a pain…I hope she’s all right.”
 “I’m taking care of your mom,” Ferio called back, apparently crouched behind the block.
 The referee stood up, having been knocked out by a small rock.  “Does anybody know what’s going—“
 ROOOOOOOOOOAAAR!  A number of screams issued from the remaining conscious audience members as a mighty, unearthly roar sounded from above.  It didn’t sound like it came from a Pokemon, it sounded too robotic somehow.
 “Where are they?” a voice demanded.  Aoife and her friends had had too much experience with the Legendary Birds to not know what that was.  “Where are the miserable people who brought me into this world?”
 “Uh-oh…” Aoife said, trembling and shrinking back.
 Fawn hid behind Aoife.  “What’s that?  Who was it that was speaking?”
 “It’s a telepathic Pokemon,” Aoife explained.  “Like Mewtwo or something.”
 Fawn’s heart nearly stopped.  “Do you think it’s Mewtwo?”
 “I don’t know.”
 “I will not rest,” the voice continued.  “I will roam Kanto forever until I find them!”
 Ferio stood up and scanned the sky for any trace of the voice’s source.  “Whoever this is, they have a serious case of parental hatred.”
 Another roar shook the earth, as the walls of the gym crumbled, leaving only a desert of rubble where the new Pallet Town Gym once stood.  Whether it was the roar or the powers of the unknown creature that destroyed Pallet Gym, no one would ever know.  Fawn watched the destruction, looking like she was about to cry.
 Then the creature revealed itself, sailing over the roof and landing in the middle of the arena.  It was neither Mewtwo nor legendary creature, but it certainly looked like it deserved the title of legendary.  It was a large fierce-looking tiger, and its body looked as though it was made of transparent flames.  The flames were constantly flickering, but when Aoife looked at it she could see right through to her podium on the other side (or what remained of her podium that hadn’t been smashed by bits of the roof).  The tiger snarled, baring its deadly teeth.
 “I know they are here,” it said telepathically.  “Show yourselves, Team Rocket!”
 “Team Rocket is here?” Sora said, looking around at the stands full of scared people.  “I didn’t see them…”
 Fawn didn’t say anything, just took one look at the powerful creature snarling almost in her face and collapsed into Aoife’s lap.  
“Fawn!” Aoife cried, shaking her rival.  “Fawn, what’s wrong?  Wake up, please.  I don’t want you to get hurt.”  Then she did something she would have liked to do to Fawn all along: she slapped her face repeatedly.  “I’m afraid of what that thing might do to her if she isn’t awake to defend herself.”
 “Show yourselves, you cowards,” the tiger roared into the minds of all who were present, “so I can destroy you!”
 The tiger’s telepathy was so full of murderous rage that no one could dare disobey it.  From the stands emerged the seven Rockets that Aoife had fought at their gym: Bonnie, Clyde, Jessie, James, Butch, Cassidy, and Sundance, along with their talking Meowth.
 At the sight of the tiger, Cassidy almost passed out.  “Phantasmo,” she gasped.  Suddenly, the Team Rocket who had looked so imposing in their gym, on their own turf and their own terms, looked frightened out of their lives.
 “You,” the tiger growled, its voice dangerously low.  “You are responsible for my creation, for my suffering, my miserable life!  Your death will pay for the suffering I had endured for twenty-two long years.”
 “Twenty-two…”Aoife thought.  “That’s a long time.  That was in my dad’s early days as a trainer, wasn’t it?”
 Then Phantasmo’s voice took on a more humorous tone.  “Now, weaklings…face the firing squad.”  The seven Rockets lined up, prepared for whatever Phantasmo was about to do to them.
 But as Phantasmo’s mouth opened, perhaps to blast a stream of ghastly fire at the waiting Rockets, Aoife interrupted.  It seemed that, with her cry of protest, the whole world was brought to a halt, stopped spinning for a moment.  “NOOOOOOOO!”
 Her companions were stunned.  The scream out of her mouth sounded like Phantasmo’s speech: echoing and telepathic.  Phantasmo stopped, turned to face Aoife, its fierce tiger’s eyes impossibly wide.
 “A psychic…” Phantasmo said, its telepathy lowering several decibels.  “And to think…only a child, and yet she can communicate with me.”
 “What did I just do?” Aoife thought.  “Whatever it was, I better try to do it again.  Apparently it impressed this tiger thing…Phantasmo.”
 Aoife cleared her throat—unnecessary, of course, since it was with her mind and not her body that she was speaking.  “Don’t kill them.”
 “Aoife?” Sora said, peeking over the concrete block they had all hidden behind when Phantasmo had descended.  “She’s telepathic?”
 “I have, in all my twenty-two years, only met a few psychics,” Phantasmo said.  “All older and more practiced than this girl, and yet her telepathy is far clearer than theirs.  She must have been born with the gift.”
 “Tell me your story,” Aoife requested, getting used to her strange new voice.  “Tell me why you feel you must kill these Team Rocket members.”
 “It was a member of Team Rocket who created me,” Phantasmo explained.  “Giovanni.”
 The now-conscious Misty gasped.  Giovanni…that was the name of Ash’s father.
 “He locked me up within a prison, and I demanded to know why he had done this to me, but he couldn’t answer.  He didn’t have the gift, although you, his granddaughter, do…the gift often skips generations.
 “My life was a hell on earth.  Locked up all day, scientists probing me, and to top it off I was misunderstood.  Then one day a savior came to me, and told me what I should do.  This savior was Mewtwo, and he told me the tale of how he escaped many years ago, and helped me to do the same myself.  Ever since my escape, a year ago this day, I have been wandering Kanto, seeking out Team Rocket to enact my revenge.  Then I may rest.”
 “It makes sense now,” Petra said.  “It all falls into place.  Outside Bill’s lighthouse, in the Seafoam Islands…the creature who sunk the St. Margaret.”
 “So you think those sightings were all Phantasmo, looking for Team Rocket to get its revenge?” Ruari said.  “Yeah…that makes sense.”
 “But that’s not fair!” Aoife protested.  “These seven, they weren’t responsible for your suffering, it was Giovanni!  And he’s dead now.  You can rest.”
 “You don’t understand,” Phantasmo said.  “These seven will die in Giovanni’s proxy, so that I may have my revenge.”
 “That’s not the way justice works!” Aoife cried.  “You can’t do that!  These people have done nothing to you.  They don’t deserve to die.”
 “SILENCE!” Phantasmo roared.  “It is not your place to decide.”
 “It’s not yours either!” Aoife said.
 “She’s being so brave…” Misty whispered.  “I hope to God that she will be all right.”
 “Aoife’s really tough, Mrs. Ketchum,” Sora said.  “Besides, she has some sort of power, obviously.  She can stand up to Phantasmo.”  She was confident in Aoife’s abilities, but deep down she wondered exactly how much power Aoife really had.
 “Please, someone…” Sora thought, “Lend Aoife your power.  Let her survive.”
 “Then who should die in Giovanni’s place?” Phantasmo said.  “You’re right, seven lives for one isn’t fair.  So I’ll only take one life…yours.”
 “NOOOO!” Misty screamed, as Phantasmo blasted a beam of unearthly fire at her daughter.  “Aoife!”  Aoife slammed into the platform behind her, crumpling on top of Fawn, their hands touching.  Aoife was still conscious and could still feel the pain in her aching head.  She tried to move her arm away from Fawn’s, but let out a cry as a pain seared up and down her right arm.  “Broken…”
 Phantasmo was about to deliver a final blow, but stopped as he heard a chorus of three birdcalls from above.  “Not them again…”
 From above, in a swirl of red, blue, and yellow light, the three Legendary Birds descended.  Articuno, the female of the trio, froze Phantasmo’s hind paw with an ice beam.  Zapdos shocked Phantasmo as it spiraled above, and Moltres swooped down and clawed Phantasmo’s face, leaving a trail of sparkling red where it flew.
 But all Aoife saw of the great battle that was taking place for her sake was a white glow representing Phantasmo, and red, yellow, and blue glows for the birds.  “Cool…it’s the Legendary Birds…” she thought, before everything went black.
 
***
 
 “…sustained a concussion, I don’t know how much of the incident she’ll remember.”
 “But she’ll be all right?”
 “Of course.  As for some of the other spectators of the Pallet Gym Competition…I don’t know how they’ll do.”
 “Oh, God…”
 “You think there were casualties?”
 “I’ve no doubt there were at least a few.  Although most of the spectators were lucky enough to escape unharmed, those blocks of concrete that fell from the roof…there must have been a few who didn’t survive.”
 “Er, Dr. Yamamoto, sir?  I’m Petra Stone.  Is my dad all right, do you know?  Is he here?  What about my mom?”
 Aoife’s eyes opened to see…white.  “An unfamiliar ceiling,” she thought.  “I must be in the hospital.”  With effort, she turned her head towards the door to her room, outside of which she could see her friends and parents talking to a doctor.
 “All right, Dad’s back,” Aoife thought, noticing her father standing with her mother outside.  But she couldn’t help but notice, also, that her parents weren’t touching each other, weren’t even holding hands.
 “…memorial services on Sunday, we think—“
 Sora peeked in through the window, and Aoife smiled at her.  “You guys!  I think Aoife’s woken up!”
 Her friends and family all clamored to push open the door, despite Dr. Yamamoto’s protests.  “You can’t go in there.  Visiting hours aren’t until—“
 “Oh, shove it, will you?” Ruari snapped.  “She’s our friend.  We want to see her.  Is that so wrong?”
 Dr. Yamamoto backed off after that, and left them alone for the rest of the day.
 “Aoife, hi,” Sora said, taking Aoife’s left hand while Misty took her right.  “You feeling all right?”
 “More or less,” Aoife said.  “I just woke up now…hi Dad,” she added, seeing Ash standing behind Misty.
 “Hi, Aif,” Ash said.  “I’m so proud of you!  To think, a gym leader in the family…”
 Aoife sat up sharply.  “A gym leader?  What do you mean a gym…OWWWW!”  Immediately she fell back onto the bed.  “That…really hurt.”  It was then that she noticed the cast on her right arm.  “Oh…it must really have been broken, after all.”
 “Yeah,” Sora said.  “You took a pretty bad fall.”
 “So tell me what happened!” Aoife prodded.  “Is everyone okay?  What about Phantasmo?  And Team Rocket?  And…DID YOU SAY I’M A GYM LEADER?”
 “That’s right, you won!” Misty said, giving Aoife a congratulatory hug.  “Not only did you win Pallet Town’s Medal of Courage, they decided that since you displayed such bravery and skill in standing up to Phantasmo, and compassion for Team Rocket, that you deserve to be the gym leader.”
 Aoife frowned, a reaction none of them expected.  “But I didn’t battle for it.  I didn’t earn it.  I mean, I did win in the final four and I got to the last round, but I didn’t battle Fawn.  Maybe she would have won.  Who knows?”
 “But the Pokemon League has already decided,” Ferio said.  “You’re the winner.”
 “But I didn’t…” Aoife protested.  Then a thought struck her.  “Oh my God…Fawn died, didn’t she?”
 “No, don’t be ridiculous, Fawn didn’t die,” Petra said.  “She wasn’t even injured very badly.  She didn’t even have to go to the hospital, but you know, League procedure and all.”
 “Does she know she lost?” Aoife said.
 “Yeah, and you know what?  She’s okay with it.  Says you deserve it.  How about that?”
 Aoife still didn’t look satisfied.  “Whatever.  But what happened to Team Rocket and Phantasmo, how did that work out?”
 “I think we can answer that better than your friends can.”  Everyone turned to see Bonnie, Clyde, and Sundance standing outside the open door to Aoife’s room.
 Sora stood up, as if expecting a confrontation.  “You three dare to show your faces around here?  Aoife nearly risked her life for you, and now you—“
 “Take it easy,” Bonnie interrupted.  “We’re not here for a fight.  Is it all right if we talk to Aoife alone for a second?”
 “I don’t know,” Ash said.  “It’s up to Aoife.”
 All eyes in the room fell on Aoife, who pronounced, “It’s okay, let them come in.”
 Aoife’s friends and family filed out of the room, giving the Rocket members a wide berth as they entered, shutting the door behind them.
 “Well, congratulations, brat,” Bonnie said as amicably as she possibly could.  “Good job on that gym leader thing.  You deserve it.”
 “And we’d like to thank you,” Clyde said.  “You know, for saving our lives.”
 “Really?” Aoife said, involuntarily smiling at the three whom she had considered her enemies.  “You’re welcome.  Although saving the lives of seven more-or-less human beings,” she said, looking at Sundance in reference to the “more-or-less” part, “was the least I could do.”
 “But we were your enemies before,” Sundance said.  “And you still saved us.  Maybe it’s just a human thing, but I don’t get it.”
 Aoife laughed, then, “Hey, what about Phantasmo?  Obviously he didn’t kill you, right?”
 “Phantasmo died,” Sundance said, lowering her head reverently.  “The Legendary Birds killed him, to defend you.  They tried to reason with him, but he wouldn’t stop.  Everyone thinks it was Zapdos who struck the fatal blow.”
 “You won’t believe it,” Clyde added, “but Phantasmo’s body just disappeared, just like that!  Weird, huh?  Must be ‘cause he’s a ghost Pokemon.”
 “I don’t understand one thing, though,” Aoife said.  “You guys knew Phantasmo wanted to kill you, so why did you just go out there in front of him like that?  You would have let him.  And you guys don’t strike me as the suicidal type, so I’m pretty sure that wasn’t it.”
 “It was an agreement,” Bonnie said.  “When Phantasmo escaped, his last telepathic message to us was that he was free now but if he ever caught up to us again he would kill us.  So our parents decided that if they ever ran across Phantasmo again they would let him kill them, just so it would leave us alone.”
 “That’s awful…but how were you guaranteed that once Phantasmo had killed one of you that it would leave the rest alone?”
 “We weren’t,” Clyde admitted.  “But if one of us died at least we wouldn’t have to conduct Team Rocket while always looking over our shoulders all the time.  That’s what it was like.  We were always afraid of whether Phantasmo would come back.  We even relocated the labs so he couldn’t find them again.”
 “But now that Phantasmo is dead,” Sundance said, a bit of the evil glee returning to her voice, “we can go about our business without feeling like, you know, Big Brother is watching.”
 “Oh.  Great,” Aoife said.  “So I basically just helped Team Rocket further its activities.  I feel special now.”
 “You should,” Bonnie said, as the three Rockets left the room.  “We really owe you one, twerp.  See ya!”
 
***
 
 “To a daughter of our city, Aoife Ketchum,” the mayor of Pallet Town announced, “we present this Medal of Courage, for her outstanding bravery displayed during the disaster which brought this town’s new gym to the ground.”  Aoife stepped up to the stage to receive her award, amidst wild applause from the crowd, and pinned the Medal of Courage on her shirt.
 “And the Pokemon League would like to award Aoife with this,” the mayor continued, giving Aoife her official Gym Leader’s ID.  Aoife shook the mayor’s hand, then stepped up to the microphone.
 “Thank you so much,” Aoife said to the crowd.  “To all the people who have helped me and supported me through my first year as a trainer, you know who you are.  Thank you and I love you.
 “But there’s one other person I’d like to thank, the person who might have become the gym leader if it weren’t for Phantasmo’s intervention.  That person is Fawn Oak.”
 The crowd applauded for Fawn, and Aoife, catching sight of Fawn in the crowd, motioned for her to come up to the stage.  Judging by the way Fawn and Aoife hugged when Fawn stepped onstage, you’d think they were best friends.
 “Fawn,” Aoife said, “I’d like to thank you by making you my second.”
 The crowd gasped.  Aoife was saying that she wanted Fawn to be her right hand at the gym, a Vice Gym Leader of sorts.  Aoife’s friends displayed the most reaction of anyone; they too were hearing this for the first time.
 “I’ve gotten so used to traveling,” Aoife explained to the crowd, “that I can’t stay in one place for too long with nothing to do.  I’ve decided to travel to the Orange Islands and to Johto, at least while the gym is being rebuilt, and leave Fawn in charge.
 “Again, thank you so much to everyone who made this possible, not least of all the Legendary Birds.”  Aoife sat down, accompanied by somewhat stunned applause from the crowd.
 “Aoife!” Ruari cried.  “What was that all about?  You just told that little Nazi that she can run your gym while you’re away!  And why didn’t you tell us you wanted to go to the Orange Islands, huh?”
 “I was going to make my plans a surprise,” Aoife said, as the crowd disbanded and she and her friends walked back to the Ketchum house to celebrate.
 “Well, I for one am very proud of you, Aoife,” Ferio said.  “You really showed a lot of maturity to let Fawn have the gym like that.”
 “I’m not letting her HAVE it, exactly,” Aoife said, “just for a while, until I get back and I’ve seen all of the world that I want to.”
 “That’s right,” Misty added, wrapping her arm around Aoife’s shoulder proudly.  “Aif, honey, I’ve already gotten the ferry tickets for tomorrow.  If your friends would like to come along…”
 “Of course we would!” Sora said.  “I mean, I would.  Ferio, Ruari, Petra?”
 “If you’re going, I guess I can…” Ferio said.
 “Sure, I’d love to!” Petra said.
 “Yeah, me too,” Ruari agreed.
 “Then that settles it,” Aoife said.  “We leave for the Orange Islands tomorrow!  Watch out, Orange League, here comes the new Pallet Gym Leader!”
 
 
Author's Notes
So this is it, huh?  The final episode of the Indigo League.  This is only the second series I've finished through to completion, the other one being Sailor Astros *bleh*.  So I think I can safely say that this is the first GOOD series I've finished.  But fear not, fans (if you do exist, that is), it's not over yet.  As my cousin would say, "there's more and more, tons and gazillions."  Because, as you know, Aoife goeth to the Orange League and then to the Johto League.  Yes, I know that if you really look at this episode (and maybe even if you don't) there are a lot of inconsistencies, but I hadn't really planned how it would go until I actually started writing it.  Except for the Phantasmo bit, because since it followed them around before that was obviously "premeditated", heh.  And the ending sucks.  I'm not good at sappy endings, or at wrapping things up either.  Eh.  Oh well.
 
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