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If you used a Master Ball on Xerneas and/or Yveltal then you wasted it. The game will let you try as many times as necessary if you faint them to give you another try at catching them.

The story is far more cleaver than you give it credit for, especially when I started noticing these strange patterns in the story that mesh very well with World History. In particular the WW2 to modern era.

Crazy? Well here's a taste.

The giant guy who is mourning over his rash action is symbolic of the US. Who lost his 'soldiers' (Pokemon are the soldiers here, the humans are more symbolic of their policial masters who give them the orders). This loss that caused the giant to lash out in revenge is Pearl Harbor.

In retaliation he lashed out with a devastating weapon and killed thousands (the atomic bomb).

Now a group of red guys who's main philosophy is that people are too selfish and greedy and people should do more to share rather than take (of course their actions contradict this mantra, but this is purposeful) unlock the secrets to this weapon. Take the communist sickle, and turn it its vertical axis, fatten the lines until it is alllmost indistinguishable and you get the Team Flare Symbol .

It is important that one may argue that Team Flare is not a symbol of communism itself, but more Stalin's implementation of it.

Interestingly the game is slightly damning of both capitalism and communism and how they can go wrong when taken to extremes. The Communism antagonist is clearly the leader of Team Flare. The Capitalist antagonist really plays a more subtle role. It's the guy you visit at that mansion between the first and second gym. The one where you find his dog and have everyone of your friends agrees the guy is kind of an alloufe narcissist whose ignorance of his behaviors and how off putting they are.

Many players who I've seen do walk-through despise this part as a time killer with no real point, however without it the message in the game would fail.

He celebrates all the small things that happen to him (and only him), shooting off fireworks just for having his dog brought to him, while the communist antagonist worked on a system that he gave to the world open source before he started to lose faith that people would not be anything but greedy. In essence turning him into a different kind of greedy himself.

Sure, the rich guy doesn't try to destroy the world on his own, but it may be his behavior that is the driving force of the main antagonist... and isn't that just as bad?

As for the design of the Team Flare leader. When he's going on his little rants about his philosophy I always imagine him saying at the end "My hair is a bird, your argument is invalid."

There is so much more symbolism and I've only scratched the surface, if I were to present this interpretation in it's fullest I would probably need to organize it more and present it either in an article on other medium.

Like the Pokemon battles themselves, they are simplistic on the surface, but applying one's understanding of the world you can find wonderful things that very few others see. Like IV and EVs.

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