The sounds of battle gradually died away, and the oppressive air hanging over the Destroyer lifted with them. No longer Dynamaxed, Ogerpon returned to her small, adorable form and looked around.
The Laboratory lay in ruins. The traces of Mega Evolution and the red aura surrounding Lucario had vanished after Genesect's defeat, as though they had never been there.
Colress stood frozen, forced to accept his humiliating defeat. Perhaps Ogerpon wasn't the one he should have captured for his experiments. Perhaps it should have been that Riolu.
That was the only thought left to him. After a loss like this, with even the Controller destroyed by Lucario, he had no way to report back.
"Haha. I've never lost this badly before."
He raised both hands and gave up resisting. He doubted Team Plasma had anyone capable of defeating Mingyou and the others. It really was over.
N, who had recovered, quietly stepped forward. "You're Doctor Colress, aren't you? I heard about you when I was with Team Plasma. But do you know why you lost?"
"Something unexpected happened. Perhaps the Controller malfunctioned. If you gave me some time to study it, I might—"
"You're wrong."
"Hm?"
"You didn't lose to a malfunctioning machine. You lost to..."
N paused and turned toward Mingyou, who had collapsed from exhaustion and was being held up, and Ogerpon and Meloetta, who hovered nearby in worry. "The bond born from trust between humans and Pokémon!"
"A bond? Something as vague as that..."
As a scientist, Colress didn't believe in anything so subjective. He believed science could explain everything in the world. If it couldn't explain something yet, science simply hadn't advanced far enough.
But when he thought back on why he had lost, he couldn't find a way to argue.
N said nothing more to