Aurélien Kitagawa

The king’s daughter was ill. The king had tried everything he could think of, from doctors to spiritual healers, but her condition continued to worsen. He was desperate to not lose her, but knew nothing could cure her. So, he became obsessed with one sole concept: immortality. He sent his scholars all over the world to try and find the secret to immortality, and one came back with word that intrigued the king. The word was, that if he created a hexagram of ‘blood seals’ around the palace and later held a sacrifice there, it would summon the god… Yverneas? The scholar admitted that the last bit of his paper had become smudged on his journey back, but the scholar interpreted it as Xerneas, the god of life. 

The king had heard stories of blood seals in the past – to soak an area so deeply in blood and terror that it left a spiritual imprint. The king’s advisors begged him to not go forwards, but the king was maddened by the thought of saving his daughter that he didn’t care what peasants had to die.

It was a cloudy day when the king’s army arrived at Aurelien’s village. Without warning, they began using their pokemon to torch buildings and fields, and cut down anyone they say in their path. Aurelien was hiding in a cabinet when she could hear the screams of the villagers outside, and witnessed the violent deaths of her family.
Rain set in, and the blood washed into the water, dying it red. It was through the rain that 10-year-old Aurelien escaped through the cracks – the sole survivor of the terror that day.

From that moment on, Aurelien was a different person. She followed the bloodstained river to the big city, where she took to a life of begging and stealing to get by. She quickly grew resentful of the king, and her most frequent targets would be royal convoys she found unattended.
As Aurelien grew, she took on a different persona – that of a cunning street drifter, and repressed her trauma as much as she could. She began holding lofty ideals and dreams of vast riches, and changed her name to Aurelien to reflect on her new persona.

As she got older, Aurelien’s crimes grew as well. She found it thrilling to pull off a big heist of goods, and even became the leader of a small gang of those living on Old Lumiose’s streets.
Her favorite pastime was seducing the heiresses of wealthy families, then robbing the family of their valuables. This garnered her a reputation as a casanova, and she was thriving in the attention.

But her stream of crime wasn’t meant to last much longer.

The king’s scholars had located a cocoon thought to be in connection with Kalos’s legends, and despite the pleas of the scholars that it wasn’t Xerneas inside the cocoon, the king wouldn’t listen.
One after another, the king would line up the prisoners he had up to the sacrificial altar. There, a Y-shaped gash was slashed into their chest, and there, each prisoner fell to the ground with nothing to show.

The king was growing impatient, and when Aurelien was called up to the altar, she made a smugly aggressive remake that caused him to order the executioners to rush Aurelien’s execution.
And so, there, on the altar, Aurelien was locked up and the same Y-shape was slashed into her chest, and everything went white. But after a few moments, Aurelien was filled with an inexplicable power. Her thoughts flew all over the place, from wondering if this was what it was like to be dead, to sudden, blinding rage. Soon, the rage consumed her, and all she could think of is how much she wanted the king and everyone in that room dead.

The power overtook her, and suddenly Aurelien felt like she was flying. The moments that followed were mostly a blur to Aurelien, and when she awoke, the bodies of the guards and the king surrounded her.
All she could feel she could do was laugh. The king was dead and Aurelien had killed him, somehow. And now, with nobody to take in the throne, Aurelien felt it was only natural that the throne was now hers.

There wasn’t much that anyone could do to stop her as she strolled up to the throne room holding the king’s body. Aurelien plopped down on the throne, and let out a triumphant laugh.

She was the king now.

Aurelien’s changes to the kingdom weren’t necessarily swift. She spent years lazing around in the luxury she had been bestowed with, gripping her subordinates and subjects with the fear to overthrow her due to her sheer power.

As it would turn out, the scholars were wrong. They hadn’t summoned Xerneas, but Yveltal, the god of death, instead. But Yveltal had been in a hollow cocooned state, and was looking for a new emissary… until Aurelien came along. The sacrificial ritual must’ve sparked on her, as it allowed her soul to bond with that of the death god’s. Through her own private practice, Aurelien learned to harness this newfound power that helped her overthrow the king, and razed a couple of forests while she was at it, too. It was also through her experimenting that she found out she was at least partially immortal, which only managed to inflate her ego more.

Life was wonderful for her.

She was battle-hungry, but didn’t want to harm her own people as the previous king had done. So, Aurelien asked one of her advisors about which region they disliked most, as a ‘joke’. Hesitantly, the advisor responded with ‘Galar‘. And so, it was set in stone – Aurelien made plans to invade Galar and overthrow its monarchy. She specifically instructed her soldiers to avoid peasant towns, and desired to go directly for the region’s elite.

Aurelien’s tactics were described as that of a madman, but to be fair, she kind of was one. Using her godly abilities, she’d transform into Yveltal and wreak havoc on military outposts. The death and destruction from the attacks only made her more powerful, and the Galarian army was convinced she was impossible to stop.
Aurelien had conquered almost all of Galar, leaving a trail of destruction in her wake. She had her eyes set on the last heavily guarded outpost in Galar – the grand city of Hammerlocke.

She knew an attack on Hammerlocke wouldn’t be easy, even with her immense power. But, in the end, Aurelien thought ‘what do I have to lose?‘ and launched the surprise attack anyways.
The attack was going surprisingly well, as the dragon-types of Hammerlocke didn’t have an advantage over Aurelien’s form as Yveltal. But suddenly, with a rumble from the ground, the sky suddenly grew dark. Aurelien could feel it in the air – the life energy in Galar was already slightly overwhelming to Aurelien, but her attacks had oversaturated it even more. It was almost maddening to Aurelien, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she had angered something.

That something burst from the ground below Hammerlocke and flew into the sky, where the oversaturation of infinity and life energy around it seemed to warp reality.
Aurelien’s trigger-happy conquest of Galar had resulted in the reawakening of Eternatus, an old god that had arrived in Galar far before humans had.

Aurelien quickly realized that her army and herself combined was nowhere near enough to counteract this existential threat, and called for her army to make a hasty retreat to Kalos, leaving the devastated Galarian monarchy to deal with Eternatus on their own. It was with this that she also abandoned the territory and outposts she’d conquered, effectively making her entire agenda of war a waste of time.

Doing this led to Aurelien becoming unpopular at home. Unrest was growing, but any attempts to overthrow Aurelien failed miserably.
Over the years, Aurelien found it had become mind-numbingly boring to be king. It was the same thing, day after day, and no amount of luxurious treatment could spice it up enough for Aurelien’s standards. She wanted out, but didn’t know how.

It was while visiting a small village’s inn one night that Aurelien met a strange woman who said she came from the forest. After some conversation, Aurelien had come to realize that this woman must’ve been the emissary of Xerneas.
Aurelien felt like Xerneas was the perfect person to unfold her newest plan with – she was going to fake her own revolt and execution. It took some convincing, but Xerneas eventually agreed to lead Aurelien’s revolt against herself.

When the ‘revolution’ happened, Aurelien wasn’t killed outright, for it was under Xerneas’s merciful nature and Aurelien’s plan that she was to be executed at a later date.
On the day of the execution, Aurelien couldn’t help but have a smug grin as the bells tolled. Bystanders that day said that shortly after, they could see a large Y-shaped pokemon flying away from the scene.

Hundreds of years passed, and after what seemed like so little time to Aurelien, it was the early 1900’s. And with the technological boom that was happening, Aurelien thought it was only appropriate to make her big comeback.
She used her hoarded money to build a grand hotel outside of Laverre city, which served as a base of operations for her illegal activity such as smuggling, gambling, and mob fights that never ended well for the other party.

She was living like a king once again, and just as it had gone previously, she started to feel it had become stale after some time. She considered starting a mob war with smaller mob syndicates around Lumiose, but it would turn out that she didn’t have to. In 1933, war broke out between regions on the eastern continent. For the next few years following, Aurelien would closely monitor the news and consult with her informants about the war. It was like a movie to her, watching the people fight. Aurelien wanted to get into the action herself, but didn’t know the proper time to strike.

Eventually, in 1935, Aurelien caught word that Ecruteak was going to fall soon, and that’s when she made her move. She went to Johto and camped out in an abandoned home just outside the city with a few trusted subordinates. Her plan? Whenever the chaos fell on the peaceful city, she’d roll in and absorb the life energy for her own power, and maybe loot a couple of houses or two.

Which is to say, Aurelien was thoroughly surprised when the city caught on fire. She whined about all the things she could have stolen being lost to the blaze, until a heavy rainfall put it out. Once the rain subsided, Aurelien went flying around to clear her head.
While flying, she noticed a pokemon on the ground by a lake that looked like nothing she had seen before. Aurelien swooped down to investigate.

While Aurelien would’ve expected the odd-looking creature to be scared by the presence of a looming Yveltal, but the creature just sighed, staring into the lake’s reflection. After a moment of silence, she spoke in a human voice, which startled Aurelien. She asked who Aurelien was and why she was here, to which Aurelien proudly introduced herself as Yveltal, god of chaos and death.

“I could use a little bit of that right now…” she said, her gaze transfixed on the water. Aurelien shuffled a bit closer to her and asked for her name. It took a while for her to respond, but she eventually responded with ‘Aya‘, though she sounded unsure of herself.
Aurelien nudged conversation with Aya a little bit more, trying to make smalltalk, and bragging about herself. Aya’s mood seemed to lighten, and she told Aurelien she found her persona ‘funny’. 

The two talked a little bit more, and Aurelien eventually learned why Aya was so upset. In her words, Ho-oh had ‘cursed’ her with immortality, infinite knowledge, and the strange form she was in after she had perished in the fire. Aya felt upset, yes; but she was mostly enraged – and wished to make Ho-Oh pay for what she did.
Aya’s desires resonated with Aurelien, who too had once sought revenge on the king who killed her family. Aurelien commended Aya for wanting to take action, and offered to assist her in her quest for revenge.

Aya agreed, and Aurelien, who had already assumed Aya was an emissary at this point, asked if she was willing to show her human form. Aya nodded, and after a few seconds and a flash of light, Aya switched to her human form, and Aurelien did the same. Aya certainly lived up to her name, because in Aurelien’s eyes, she was one of the most beautiful women she’d seen, which was quite the achievement.
Aurelien offered Aya her hand and the two walked off to the abandoned home together.

In the following days, the two of them would cause havoc over the Ecruteak area as it had been turned into a battleground between opposing forces. Aurelien even went so far as to gather the life spirit that had been stagnating in the air and channel it into Aya as a gift, making her more powerful. It truly was love at first sight for Aya and Aurelien – they both had the same chaotic personality and they complimented each other perfectly.

After all the hell they’d raised, Ho-Oh had no other choice but to come out and investigate. But it was a trap – Aurelien and Aya had been wanting to draw Ho-Oh out to ambush her. It was a sight to behold, watching Ho-Oh and Yveltal duel in the skies. And as Ho-Oh fell to the ground, Aya snuck up on her, and stabbed her in the back.
Aya had gotten her swift revenge, and yet, didn’t seem to want to leave Aurelien’s side. The two’s deal was over, but Aya and Aurelien had both fallen for each other.

But it wasn’t to last. There was another powerful legend in the area, one more powerful than Aurelien. Aurelien had actually met this legend before, who had warned her to ‘stay in her lane‘.
As night fell, Rayquaza approached Aurelien’s camp and launched a surprise attack, capturing Aurelien in golden chains and forcing her into a neutralized state – into the cocoon of death. Aurelien yelled for Aya to run, and Aya promised Aurelien she’d come back for her as the cocoon shut on Aurelien.

Aurelien’s rude awakening came from a man by the name of Lysandre. Aurelien could practically taste the infinity and life energy in the air – it was almost too much for her. She looked around hastily before entering a blind rage due to the energy, yelling out that she was going to kill everyone in whatever building she was in. It was this rage that activated the Ultimate Weapon, but Aurelien misdirected it to fire at the underground complex.

Just as she was absorbing the life energy of everyone in the complex, Aurelien could feel herself being tackled by someone, and cocooned herself for safety from the falling debris.
Inside the cocoon, Aurelien could see that she wasn’t alone – there was someone else with her. Aurelien was quick to pin the blame on being awakened on this woman in front of her, but the woman rebutted and said it was Lysandre. She also asked where she was, to which Aurelien replied by giving her the truth – inside a cocoon.
Aurelien was eventually able to find out that this woman’s name was Wisteria, and that she had been in the complex and tackled Aurelien to try and stop her, to no avail. 

Aurelien then came to the realization that Wisteria had likely absorbed the life energy she was gathering and as probably become immortal as a result. A quick test involving Aurelien’s sharp claw ring confirmed her suspicions – Wisteria was now immortal. Aurelien groaned knowing that she was going to be stuck here with Wisteria until the cocoon was dug up. After some banter, Aurelien decided it was for the best that she send both of them into a short hibernation.

When Aurelien awoke again, she was still in the cocoon with Wisteria, but could hear knocking and scraping on the outside of it. She figured it was safe to take a look, and just as Aurelien released herself and Wisteria from the cocoon, Aurelien was met with a twirling hug, followed by multiple kisses. She got a better look at who it was, and it was Aya. Aya was crying a bit, and repeated her promise to Aurelien – she truly had come back for her.

Aurelien explained the Wisteria situation and Aya didn’t seem too enthused about it either. Aya told Aurelien that they were in a top-secret desert facility and that they needed to leave NOW. Aya held Aurelien’s hand for the first time in so long, and they ran out of the facility together – with a confused Wisteria being tugged along by Aya’s bodyguards.
Once out of the building, they took a short ride in a small car to a bigger cargo truck, and Aurelien and Aya hopped in the cabin, which had been outfitted like a fancy living room. They ditched Wisteria in the desert, and spent their ride back to Lumiose drinking wine and laughing.