Interlude III – Son of Stone

The arc closes on Leader Brock, opening with the creation myth his great-grandmother taught him: a cosmos that began as a single lump of stone in the Great Dark, fought over by gods who filled it with fire, water, lightning, and root until the deities Haniyasu-Hiko and Hime made creatures of stone that could endure the endless strife. The stone people softened into flesh over generations but kept stone in their bones — "stone endures," she told the boy Takeshi, pressing his arm to feel them. It is the creed Brock leads by.

Roused by Viridian's alert, Brock rides his colossal onix Aeosis — the sixty-meter legend of Mount Moon he captured two years ago — into the forest at the head of the Pewter Gym and its volunteers. He is a study in command: he lifts a fallen tree off trapped trainers with Aeosis's jaws (one dead, one's arm crushed by breloom seed-bombs that felled it), and where he finds grief he instills resolve, drawing a broken survivor back to duty with grip and will — "you have the strength of stone." But the night also shows the terror beneath his power. In the smoke Aeosis grows unmanageable, and Brock must climb and physically dominate the half-wild titan to keep it from rampaging — a beast that a year ago crushed a tyranitar and ate its granite hide, that much of Pewter worships as a god, and that Brock insists is only a tamed monster, however perilously held.

Then the shiftry come for him too — over twenty, drawn through the smoke to Aeosis — and Brock springs the trap in reverse, holding the onix in Bide until it unleashes its stored fury and breaks the swarm, his Second Sharzad's fearow finishing the three that link their minds for a staggering joint assault. Among the dead the Gym finds two trainers, Pamela Harris and Derek Watson — the cover team that never reached Sarah and Luis — and Brock commits their names to memory. He extends the firebreak with Aeosis until the blaze is contained, and crosses paths with Blue Oak, whom he recognizes; told the boy survived six shiftry, he says he got "incredibly lucky" (Blue, who knows the luck was his dark blood, stiffens and says nothing). At Blue's anxious request Brock confirms over the radio that Red is bound for Pewter and Leaf is safe, and invites the relieved boy to visit the Gym. Dawn breaks; a Gym Leader's work is never done.