The three-headed dragon roared, a sound that felt like grinding metal echoing through the ancient trees. Deep inside each of its three maws, the purple energy began to swirl and condense into a votile sphere. In the next instant, a concentrated barrage of beams shot toward my chest. I didn't have time to sidestep or bank away. The clearing was too narrow, and the projectile speed was faster than anything I’d faced in Paldea.

  Cryo! Drop the restrictions! Now! I yelled internally, the heat of the incoming bst already singeing the air in front of me.

  [Limiter disengaged. Penultimate Primordial Sequence 1 active. Brace for impact.]

  I pnted my bare feet into the prehistoric soil and let the power flood through me. It wasn't like a suit of armor clicking into pce; it was a hot surge of biological growth. A blinding light erupted from my chest as my body began to stretch and warp. My skin turned a ghostly, featureless white, smoothing over my mouth and nose until only my eyes remained, glowing with an intense white light. Massive wings tore out of my shoulder bdes, snapping open with a sonic crack that shattered the nearby ferns. I crossed my fourteen-foot wings in front of me just as the beams hit.

  The force of the Dragon Pulse smmed into my wings with the weight of a freight train. It pushed me back, my feet carving deep, smoking trenches into the dirt as I fought to keep my ground. The heat was suffocating. I could feel the energy trying to peel back my skin, the pressure vibrating through my entire skeletal structure before the bst finally sputtered out.

  I lowered my wings, my white form steaming in the humid air. I felt powerful, but there was a nagging ache in my core. The Penultimate form was supposed to make me invincible, but that one hit had already drained a significant chunk of my reserves.

  "Fascinating!" Colress cheered from the edge of the clearing. He was tapping frantically at the holographic screens on his forearms, his gsses reflecting the glow of the battle. "The speed of that biological expansion is incredible. A human-legendary hybrid in its natural habitat! Please, don't stop. I need more data. Hit it back!"

  My blood was boiling. I didn't care about his data; I wanted to end this before he could cycle another attack. I crouched low, snapping my wings down to unch myself forward. I broke the sound barrier in a second, reaching the Hydreigon before it could even reload its maws. I drew my fist back, channeling every bit of kinetic energy I could muster into my knuckles. I smmed my fist into the center head.

  The impact sounded like a bomb going off. A shockwave fttened the undergrowth and snapped several ancient trees in half within a fifty-foot radius. The giant dragon staggered back, its middle head snapping upward as the force ripple through its long neck.

  I nded, intending to follow up with a sweeping kick to its legs, but the Hydreigon didn't fall. It stabilized almost instantly. The red, corrupted eyes of its two side-heads locked onto me with a predatory focus. Before I could recover my stance, one of those heads swung like a massive battering ram, smming directly into my ribcage.

  The force was astronomical. I was thrown off my feet and sent flying through the jungle like a ragdoll. I crashed through several thick branches, feeling them snap against my back, before hitting a massive rock formation. The impact was so hard it spiderwebbed the stone behind me.

  I dropped to my knees, groaning as the white light of my form flickered. My body held together, but my insides felt like they’d been put through an industrial blender. Cryo was screaming at me, warning of internal bruising and rapid stamina depletion.

  "Incredible durability," Colress narrated. He was looking at his telemetry like a kid in a candy store, completely detached from the violence. "Your biological density is far beyond any organic material recorded in this era. But my Hydreigon doesn't feel pain, Landon. I’ve bypassed its receptors entirely. It only knows aggression and the drive to consume. It won't stop until you stop."

  I pushed myself up, breathing heavily. This was a nightmare. I had hit that thing with enough force to level a skyscraper and it had just tanked it. If this was what an alternate-timeline Colress could produce, I wasn't going to win a straight brawl in this restricted state. I needed to know the stakes before I committed to a desperate move.

  "What about the others?" I growled, my voice sounding hollow and metallic through the featureless white visor of my face. "Where are the other prisoners?"

  Colress chuckled and swiped at his interface, bringing up a grid of small video feeds. "You don't need to worry about the riffraff. My retrieval drones secured the others the moment they stepped through the wormhole. They’re already safely tucked away in stasis pods in my mobile boratory. I have all the test subjects I need for the next phase of my research."

  He looked up from his screens with a chilling, clinical smile. "Now, let’s finish the test. Hydreigon, maximum output. Let's see if you can survive a true Dragon Meteor."

  The dragon roared, and the purple light in its three mouths started to warp the air around it, drawing in the light and heat from the surrounding jungle. It was charging an attack that looked like it would vaporize the entire clearing—and me along with it.

  Cryo, I can't take another hit like that. Not in this form. Not without breaking something permanent. Get us out of here.

  [Agreed. retreat is the only logical conclusion. Routing all remaining reserve power to the wings.]

  I didn't let my ego get me killed. I had the info Interpol needed. I knew who was behind the breach, and I only knew a fraction of what he was capable of. As the Hydreigon unleashed the massive, blinding beam of destructive energy, I threw my wings wide and channeled every bit of my remaining energy into a localized, blinding fsh.

  The white light acted like a massive fshbang, blinding the dragon and the scientist for a split second. I didn't wait to see if it worked. I triggered the spatial anchor tying me back to Nemona’s stadium. The prehistoric jungle vanished in a blur of greens and browns.

  I materialized in the air a hundred feet above the concrete Battle Box. My momentum was completely gone, and the adrenaline crash hit me like a physical blow. My white form shattered into motes of light, and I fell. I didn't have the strength to catch myself, crashing heavily onto the pulverized concrete floor of the arena.

  "Landon!"

  The girls were there before I even stopped rolling. I pushed myself up onto my elbows, coughing as the dust from the stadium floor settled around me. Every single muscle in my body felt like it had been shredded. My shirt was gone, and my chest was a map of dark, heavy bruises where the Hydreigon’s head had made contact.

  Lusamine, Grusha, and Nemona dropped to their knees beside me, their hands all over me as they checked for broken bones. Nemona’s eyes were wide with a fear I’d never seen in her before.

  "What happened?" Nemona asked, her voice trembling. "We felt the shockwave. Did you fight the convicts? Was it Shadow?"

  Anabel ran over a second ter, her pistol drawn as she scanned the air above us, fully expecting a three-headed dragon to drop through a portal next. She looked between my battered body and the empty arena, her professional composure finally starting to slip.

  "It wasn't the convicts," I rasped, spitting a wad of bloody dust onto the floor. I leaned into Lusamine, letting her take my weight as I tried to stand. My legs felt like jelly. "You’re going to need a much bigger team, Anabel. A team that can handle more than just psychics."

  "Landon, talk to me. Where are the prisoners? Did you secure them?" Anabel demanded, her voice rising in pitch.

  "They're gone," I said, the exhaustion finally winning as I slumped against Lusamine’s shoulder. "A scientist named Colress orchestrated the whole thing. He used the wormhole as a fishing net to steal your inmates for experiments. And the Pokémon he brought with him... I've never felt anything like it. I couldn't beat it. I had to run."

  The stadium went dead silent. Nemona and Grusha looked at me in absolute shock. I had always been the invincible one, the person who stepped in when things got too heavy. To hear me admit I’d been beaten—that I’d had to retreat—seemed to shake the very foundation of their world.

  I looked up at Anabel, seeing the flicker of genuine terror in her eyes as she realized the International Police was outcssed.

  "This new war just escated," I warned her, my voice barely a whisper. "Colress is building something. And we need to train a lot harder if we're going to survive what comes next."

  Lusamine held me tighter, her expression turning from worry to a cold, hard determination. She looked at Nemona and Grusha, and I could see the same fire starting to build in them. They weren't just Landon's "girlfriends" anymore; they were the only defense this world had against a timeline jumping madman with an army of corrupted Pokémon.

  "We all need to get back to the sanctuary," Anabel said, her voice unusually quiet as she lowered her gun. "I need to call Looker. We need to move the base, and figure out if it was you that led him to us, or if we have a mole. Regardless of what it is, it seems that our fates are all tied together."

  I didn't argue. I let the girls guide me toward the wormhole portal we entered in, my mind already racing through the data Cryo had managed to scrape from the fight. We had lost the battle for the prisoners, but the war for the timeline had only just begun.