Celosia: The Scientist Who Names the Ultimate Weapon's Price

She's the one who says out loud what Team Flare would rather save for the end. Celosia holds the rank of Scientist in the Kalos organization, and Pokémon X and Y puts her in the player's way twice. Once beaten, she doesn't apologize: she explains. And her explanation is worth more than the battle that comes before it.

Contents

• A Scientist Among the Four Lieutenants
• The Poké Ball Factory: Persuade, or Help Yourself
• Three Thousand Years of Bookkeeping
• In the Anime: Drapion Against Team Rocket
• Celosia at a Glance
• Frequently Asked Questions

A Scientist Among the Four Lieutenants

The title of Scientist puts a character on the side of devices rather than speeches. Celosia is one of the four female lieutenants in the Kalos organization, a rank that puts her in charge of field operations rather than tucked away in a lab.

Her outfit follows the group's color code to the letter. A tunic with shoulder pads and red boots trimmed with white, a belt stamped with the Team Flare logo, black sleeves and stockings marked with a yellow oval at knee height. Purple, on the other hand, is all hers: hair, lipstick and tie.

That leaves her gaze, or rather its absence. High-tech glasses cut across the top of her face with a horizontal band lit in purple, so her eyes are never visible. The silhouette says a lot about the role: one more measuring device in a group that claims to calculate what the world is worth.

The Poké Ball Factory: Persuade, or Help Yourself

The first encounter takes place at the Poké Ball Factory. Celosia shows up there with Bryony and a Team Flare Admin to bring the factory's president around to working for the organization — above all, the scene shows what the group means by "bring around."

The duo splits the roles. The Admin lectures him and appeals to elegance, Celosia puts money on the table: a donation of fifty million, presented as something so obvious it would be absurd to argue. The refusal changes nothing about the outcome, though, since the factory's stock has already been emptied, from the most basic Poké Balls to Ultra Balls, and the haul is deemed sufficient.

The battle matches the format of the scene: a Multi Battle, Bryony and Celosia on one side, the player and their rival on the other — Calem or Serena, depending on the protagonist chosen at the start. The player meets her again later in the adventure, at Lysandre Labs, for a second round.

🔥 Two Trainers across the field, two Pokémon to send out: the Pokémon figures section has everything you need to restage a Multi Battle.

Three Thousand Years of Bookkeeping

Once beaten, Celosia feels her opponent has earned the right to some explanations. Bryony opens the technical file: the electricity diverted from the Power Plant is used to start up the ultimate weapon, but switching it on and knowing how to use it are two different things.

The fuel is missing, and that fuel is alive. The weapon needs the energy of one specific Pokémon, which the standing stones lining Route 10 are tasked with absorbing before passing it on. This is where Celosia adds the missing line: these stones are the graves of Pokémon.

She then goes back three millennia. The weapon supposedly ended a bloody war, at the cost of a great many Pokémon lives. Her conclusion reads more like a balance sheet than remorse: Team Flare's ambitions will demand their share of sacrifices too.

In the Anime: Drapion Against Team Rocket

The Kalos series brings her in twice before the final assault, which she takes part in like the rest of her team. She remains one executive among others, until the moment the organization's headquarters itself becomes a target.

She's then holding the hideout with Mable when the intruders show up: Serena, Mairin and Professor Sycamore, with Team Rocket in tow. It's against the latter that she sends out her Drapion, facing the Gourgeist of Jessie and the Inkay of James.

The counterattack is short-lived. Jessie's Wobbuffet takes down both Scientists, James ties Celosia up, and the rest happens without her: when the Zygarde construct born of the Giant Rock springs into action and the headquarters collapses, she disappears in the rubble.

Celosia at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• Who is Celosia in Pokémon?
  A Team Flare Scientist in Pokémon X and Y, and one of the four female lieutenants of the Kalos organization. The player battles her twice: first at the Poké Ball Factory, then at Lysandre Labs.
• Where do you battle Celosia for the first time?
  At the Poké Ball Factory, where she accompanies Bryony and an Admin who have come to make the factory's president give in. The battle is a Multi Battle: the player and their rival, Calem or Serena, against the two women.
• What does Celosia reveal about the ultimate weapon?
  That the standing stones lining Route 10 capture a Pokémon's energy and pass it on to the weapon, and that these stones are actually the graves of Pokémon. She also recalls that the weapon ended a war three thousand years earlier, at the cost of a great many lives.
• Which Pokémon does Celosia use?
  In Pokémon X and Y, she sends out a Manectric at the Poké Ball Factory, then Manectric and Drapion at Lysandre Labs; the anime gives her the same two species, and it's her Drapion she pits against Jessie's Gourgeist and James's Inkay during the defense of Team Flare's headquarters.
• What happens to Celosia at the end of the Kalos series?
  She's defeated along with Mable by Jessie's Wobbuffet, then tied up by James. She then disappears when the Giant Rock's Zygarde construct is activated and destroys Team Flare's headquarters.

In short

Celosia takes up little space in Pokémon X and Y: two battles, a handful of lines, a uniform. But she's the one the story entrusts with the line that gives the whole Kalos plot its weight, the one that turns a row of roadside stones into a cemetery. Team Flare promises a more beautiful world; Celosia is the one who reads out the bill.