In the deep past - or is it the future? - Sinnoh was, is, and will be a place for history. In the entire Nation of Pokémon, it sits to the far north of the centrepoint, dutifully remembering the events of the other lands, both in and beyond the great Shield that protects the lands of the Nation. Among the people in the other major areas within that barrier, it was something of a proverb: "Did anything happen in Sinnoh lately?" "No, but they remember what happened in this place at this time." Perhaps it was crass and rude, but the people who said that before the war began more than ate their words, because those events swirled with Sinnoh at their core.
And standing in the face of those future fires stood a lone stone plate, and the talented young woman who could read the languages of the peoples who came before the formation of Sinnoh itself.
"Ash, please stop panicking," the lady stated, picking her way through the debris of a ruined temple on the Western edge of the region, a place called Tsukikage Island. Said to be the base of a group among the Michina civilization who worshipped a moon goddess, the historically-minded lady had had to investigate, and had discovered an encrypted calendar engraved upon the temple's altar.
Upon returning with a key to the codified language of the temple priests, she had discovered a shockingly accurate projection of future events, akin to the calendar of the Mayans in modern times. In the same fashion as this contemporary calendar, this ruin also featured a ticking time bomb.
"Ash, I told you, it doesn't give me any accurate time measurements," the woman told the communication pad in her hands, interrupting the incessant, and increasingly hysterical, monologue coming from the other end of the connection. "If we believe the accuracy of this calendar in predicting past events, doomsday could be by the next solstice or not even in our lifetimes." Nobody in Sinnoh ever kept time, and the moon-worshippers had been no different.
Listening hard to the half-intelligible chatter from the other person, the explorer sighed. "If I can find the exact inscription, of course I'll read it to you. I didn't bring any recording equipment with me on my last expedition, and not even Lucario are known for their memories of written material." Humans were, but this particular human really wasn't. She could read, but she wasn't exactly encyclopedic.
After a time spent searching for the exact location of the altar of the description of the world's end, she found it covered in the dust of a recent tremor. Brushing the particles out of the etched letters took even more time, but the woman soon had the entire quote clear of debris. She shivered as she read it once more
"Here," she muttered, silencing her contact. "This is the entire relevant part of the engraving: 'Youth empowers youth; ancient empowers ancient. Forces of nature, past, present and future shatter the barriers of spacetime as the War of Few drags those who deserve better away from childhood.' There is more, but I don't want to take the time to read more bad news."
A short silence grew in the moments after the woman's ringing voice rang into the open sky of the fallen temple. "Youth empowers youth," Ash said slowly, trailing his voice away.
"You." The woman's voice was absolutely sure. "Such a young National Champion has inspired children everywhere. I wouldn't be surprised if all the Gym Leaders and Champions cycle out within a few solstices to be replaced by youths."
"But what does 'the war of few' mean? A war usually implies massive battles with hundreds of people, right?"
"That's what I'm trying to find out. From what the Leaders tell me, there is a definite rise in both organized crime and a jump in Pokémon thieveries, both in Sinnoh and across the other Regions. It could be a precursor to some uprising involving a small group of ringleaders."
"I know," the man on the other end of the communication said, sounding pained.
Changing topics, Ash suddenly asked a question. "We still have time, right? We can still act before spacetime is torn apart, whatever that means." Always optimistic, even when he was terrified.
"I already have." A smile crept across the explorer's face. "I contacted a former Leader of mine, and the head Professors. I've given my own lead researcher a bit of motivation to go and start some youths who idolize you on their way."
"Then why didn't you warn me before?" Ash asked, exasperated by the way the woman had gone straight to the head Researchers. As he saw it, the old windbags were barriers to bypass.
"I wasn't sure I'd need to contact you, and I knew you'd want information. The Profs are always looking for gratitude and recommendations for their next recruits. I've given them both, and kept them in the dark about this." As she spoke, the lady gestured at the words before her, with their angular, pictographic writings. In the half-light of the ruin, they seemed to swirl before her.
"What about your former Leader?"
"I told him everything I knew. Danny is discreet. He won't give away any information unless it becomes absolutely necessary." And maybe not even then, she added silently.
"And again, the greatest trainers in the Nation are pulling the wool over the eyes of our citizens." Ash sighed. "We can't keep this charade up for long, but we can probably keep it up for longer if we don't involve ourselves. Can I count on you to carry on this information to the other Champions, and impress upon them the gravity of the situation?"
"Of course, Ash. You can always count on me." Please don't tell me I'm flirting with him again, she pleaded with herself.
"Thank you, Cynthia. Remember, you can't involve yourself, no matter how much you love involving yourself in the journeys of young trainers." Cynthia gave a mock frown that nobody but her Garchomp saw, and proceeded to say goodbye to the senior trainer. The Garchomp sighed, blowing steam. She was flirting.
"Well, Gabu," Cynthia said, swinging onto his back. "The stage is set, and all we're allowed to do is watch. When I was small, I always thought that being Champion would be much more interesting than this." With this sentiment, the premier Trainer in Sinnoh launched into the air on her Mach Pokémon and powered off to the east.
Solidad, former contest champion and artistic darling of the Kanto Region, was never supposed to feel surprised. But the seemingly random appearance of Daniel, one of her contemporaries, on her doorstep, was a shock to her.
Completely without warning, the youth often praised as a genius had dropped down from his Tropius's back, right past the upper story window that Solidad worked beside. He smirked at her as he passed, though that might have just been him realizing how far the drop was. The beep of the visitor alarm a moment later had sent her scurrying downstairs.
Composed and barely windswept at all, Daniel was waiting patiently for her at the door. After walking inside like he visited her in this fashion daily, the young man pulled out a small communicator with a flexing screen and connected it with the communicator belonging to Solidad's children's grandfather, Professor Rowan. The immediate response was enough to set the Kanto Trainer's nerves on edge. He never responded to her that fast!
"You've arrived?" Rowan's gravelly voice sounded after a short moment, and the screen's light faded as if satisfied.
"I wouldn't have called you while Flying," Daniel responded primly. Very literal thinker, that youth.
A gruff snort accompanied Rowan's next comment, along with a tinge of drama. "I'm at the town's edge, so I'll arrive within a conversation's time." Time, the ultimate nonentity to Sinnohi people.
"Perfect." Daniel terminated the connection before Solidad could say a word, and the small machine purred quietly as it turned off. As if it was satisfied that it could annoy a powerful trainer.
"What is going on here?" Solidad tried and failed to keep irritation from her voice. Daniel might be a peer, but he had walked into her house and contacted her family without so much as a hello. Solidad had trouble backing down after anger emerged.
If Daniel noticed the woman's tone, he did not deign to acknowledge it. "What is happening is an order straight from the Champion."
"Cynthia?" Rhetoric not being Daniel's strong point, he nearly responded before Solidad continued. "What power does she have over a young family in Sinnoh's smallest town?" Solidad didn't like the idea of a trainer randomly arriving at her house, and she really didn't like the idea that Cynthia was ordering her around. A Kanto-born contest star simply didn't get ordered around by a foreign power!
"You're looking at the situation differently from how she sees it," Daniel explained. "I can't explain everything, but I can say this: something happened a few days ago that scared both Cynthia and Champion Ash witless, and apparently they want to send some of the more promising youths throughout the region on some wild Farfetch'd chase to solve it."
"If they're thinking Alexa or Markus, they're both wrong." Solidad was highly defensive about anyone who might overestimate her child or her child's best friend. "Just because they both have talented parents doesn't make them any more powerful than other children with better access to the Trainer's Schools."
"You're the one who moved your family out to Twinleaf Town. You can't expect the most powerful trainers within the Shield to ignore such a high concentration of potential and exposure. So many powerful Owners have escaped the bustle of cities for this place. This town is a Trainer's School." An 'Owner' was someone who had one or more Pokémon, regardless of how they worked with them.
"That can't be the end of it," Solidad muttered darkly. "I know Ash. He may act like an idiot ninety-nine percent of the time, but he's more cunning than a Ninetales under that bubbly personality. His contingency plans have contingency plans." Ash was known for his exceptional instincts alongside that, and- well, hopefully Alexa or Markus wouldn't become one of his little obsessions.
"That may be," Daniel stated flatly. "But he's kept his position among the regions for almost as long as I've been alive, so we have to trust his judgment. I considered it myself, and all three of us have specific skills that the League may be after." Now there was her surprise of the day. Daniel, a member of one of the most prideful, powerful families inside the Shield, was admitting that someone else could help him.
"You would be travelling with them." Audible grumbling ensued from Solidad and her empathetic Slowbro, alerting the Professor, who was waiting outside, to the state of the conversation.
Waiting for the redheaded mother of his grandchildren to open the door, Rowan checked his pack for the hundredth time. During the short, easy walk from Sandgem Town to Twinleaf, he had checked on the Pokémon Cynthia had specifically told him to gift his new charges with every hundred metres or so.
Solidad eventually opened the door with a look that could fry a Magmortar, and Rowan slipped in to sit beside Daniel on a large couch. The slam of the door as Solidad vented her anger brought an answering thump from an upstairs room; then a chorus of thumps moving across the ceiling and down the stairs. Ka-thump-a-thump. Thump-thump-thumpthumpthump.
Daniel looked over with unabashed curiosity as three younglings peered around the wall into the living room. The two smaller figures had Solidad's features, with the exception of her soft burgundy hair, and the third was taller, with thick blond curls and wide eyes.
The three of them looked at Solidad first, as she glared at them and tried to shoo them back upstairs with her mind, and then over at Daniel, who peered back, and a very uncomfortable Professor Collin Rowan.
With a knowing glance at his mother, the smaller boy turned and headed back upstairs, but the two older children remained, to Solidad's obvious dismay. Shrugging at her mother's discomfort, the girl pushed past a weak barrier that the Slowbro had erected, her long, long hair trailing in the air to mark its location.
Solidad turned to the florid pink Slow Pokémon. "Fisher, stop that!" she told him firmly, as if she hadn't been subconsciously ordering her faithful friend to erect the psychic wall.
Fisher's only response was an unhappy moan as the tiny shield winked out of existence.
"Hypocrite," was Alexa's only response in her mother's direction. She swaggered over to the couch, and her friend, the blond boy, sighed and followed.
With a cynical glare, the Slowbro began to growl a response, but Solidad stopped him. "Not now," she murmured as her faithful partner looked up.
"Aaaand there's a secret," the blond youth said from behind Alexa. "With famous Owners, there are always secrets." He looked at all three of the Pokémon Owners in the room with knowledge more fitting for an adult. Not the greatest start, as far as conversations went.
"Except that this time it's not so much of a secret," Daniel said quietly, and without any guile. He sounded like he really meant it, too. Solidad turned to hide her surprise. "Your grandfather has decided to provide you two with Pokémon, and I have a conveniently placed vacation from university right now."
Unnoticed by the two children, Fisher wandered behind a partition and proceeded to fix the location where Daniel was with his full telepathic power. That is to say, the limited telepathy that a Slowbro possesses. Unlike their close relatives, the Slowking, Slowbro were more telekinetic than telepathic. At the same time, he extended a link to Solidad to augment her contact with himself.
Being a former Psychic Pokémon specialist, Daniel's only indication that he was in contact with another person via telepathy was his dropping out of the conversation as the Professor began to explain the rare Pokémon he had recently been provided with to give to young trainers, spinning out the fabricated half-truth Cynthia had told him to use. Meanwhile, Daniel stared into the distance and Solidad exited the room.
What are you two doing?
Daniel responded promptly, though Fisher warped the response speed slightly. We're only doing what we were told to do by Cynthia.
Withholding important information from children?
This is of dire importance, Daniel sent, sounding exasperated. Whatever happens later can be explained away as coincidence, but we need to earn their support now. You have to realize this: I would not even be trying this if it were not absolutely necessary.
And what are you going to do later? Do you think they'll trust you when all of this falls apart? Solidad gesticulated wildly in the other room, and the sudden physical movement made Fisher's tentative connection with Daniel's mind fray and suddenly collapse. Daniel was left with only Solidad's parting knowledge that Alexa was as quick to trust as Markus was to mistrust. Her anger was also terrifying. When the web of lies he and Rowan constructed here collapsed, they had better have some good excuses.
Slipping back into the conversation just as Rowan finished, Daniel was hardly even missed. Alexa and her friend Markus were too immersed in the three Pokémon that the Professor had brought. As Solidad rejoined them, she sent Daniel a tiny nod, her small consent to him to take her child on her journey. Apparently some of the dubiously vast knowledge in Daniel's head had convinced her somehow.
"Once you select your First, I'll guide you on the basics of training." Daniel returned to the conversation, interrupting Markus's gushing.
In the following rush of Alexa's sheer willful excitement, Markus raised a question. "Why are you travelling with us? Nobody does anything for nothing." In his family, altruism was a rarity.
Daniel arched an eyebrow, but he had been in contact with the gangling youth's father, so he knew why Markus held this view. "The Professor has several incredibly rare Pokémon with him, which I may not be able to train otherwise. Having ready access to them should be able to help add information to what we already know." Solidad snorted in derision at the lie, but Alexa simply considered it disgust that Daniel considered everything in terms of research.
"Markus," she said, like she was talking to someone slow, "The researcher is travelling with us so that he can do research. Do you need me to make it more obvious?" Markus reached up and bopped her lightly on the top of her dark hair. Alexa smirked.
Daniel looked slightly confused by the exchange, but he managed to dismiss it for what it was: friends being friends.
Rowan took a deep breath and counted to ten, not used to dealing with children. Especially not wayward youths. Then he continued. "The Regional Leagues recently provided each of the head researchers in their regions with a trio of rare, powerful Pokémon," her reiterated. "Since each laboratory is in a small town, we were recommended to provide the Pokémon to more unlikely candidates than usual. Generally, I would look to the Jubilife Trainer's School to show me some worthy youths, but I decided that the time has come to give you two your Youthturning Gifts."
"Prof," Alexa interrupted, "sorry to interrupt. But my Youthturning was last solstice. You couldn't get out here for a day to give me something then, and now you come tramping up the road to give me a late gift?" Subtlety, as anyone could see, was not something Alexa exactly valued.
"And my mom says that my Youthturning can't be for another year," Markus muttered. "Because I'm only thirteen in Outside years."
"Your mother is a Timekeeper?" Daniel was always distractible without a pressing research project. It came with the enviable territory of brainpower.
"Back on topic!" Rowan called, pointedly not answering the original question and earning a matching pair of death glares from the two women in the room. "I reserve the right to provide you with your Youthturning Gifts whenever I wish. As there are three Pokémon, I'll be allowing Daniel to take one." Daniel, who had been worried by Rowan's bad cover-up of the discrepancy, was suddenly surprised.
Markus's expression suddenly darkened. Reasons that Daniel might be allowed to take a highly valuable Pokémon when he had plenty of his own flashed through his mind. "This is something to do with the League," he whispered to Alexa, suddenly angry. "And they want Daniel to try and protect us. They must be bartering with him through Rowan." Alexa just turned and continued the death stare she had just been giving her grandfather. Her expression read, to Markus's trained eye: Keep the conspiracy theories to yourself. He turned and folded his hands meekly in his lap.
Daniel thought fast, seeing the need to move away from this topic. "As you two know, you need to earn the Trainer's License before I can let you challenge a gym. For that to happen, I'd like to let you bond with these Pokémon within the day." Most of Daniel's studies surrounded the Loyalty Bonds that Pokémon formed with humans, and he knew that defining the nature of their relationship was important to do at the first opportunity.
"Indeed," Rowan agreed gravely. "Even with their often great intelligence, many Pokémon tend to solidify their first Bond with a specific nature in mind."
"Like Fisher? He tends to prefer battling to hanging around the house like this." Fisher nodded emphatic agreement. Well, emphatic for a Slowbro. For a human, it would have been closer to a sleepy, half-attention nod.
"Precisely. If you let your starters think that they're simply companions on the first day, rather than battling partners, it will be difficult to change their minds." Daniel was proud that someone understood him. For him, that was a severe rarity.
"But there aren't many training areas around here," Markus pointed out. "The Pokémon ceded this land to humans before the Shield existed." It was an old story, one that anyone in the area knew. The Michina tribes had needed warm land to live on; the Pokémon hadn't needed to hoard the entire thick forest. Those were the only details anyone agreed on, however.
"Some Pokémon still live here, and they will have to do." Rowan considered for a moment. "Lake Verity is probably perfectly fitting for your training. Even in the old stories, Pokémon have never given up that land."
"Sure. We'll go there." Daniel was getting impatient, as always. He was fidgety in the room, for reasons few would understand.
"Not to interrupt," except for the part where Solidad always meant to interrupt when she said something like that, Alexa thought, "but it's past noon now. If you want to get out to Lake Verity and back before sunset so soon after the Solstice of Shadows, you should leave soon." Markus nodded agreement after a glance out the window.
Despite Rowan having been in his element only moments ago, speechifying to his heart's content, he felt the situation slipping out of his control. Control was very important to the professor. "If I could have your attention, I'll give you three the Pokémon. I'd like to see you in Sandgem Town tomorrow after Daniel gives you the basics of training. Now, I have a meeting with a radical young Floaroma researcher." With a suitably dramatic air, the professor handed the Poké Balls to Daniel before striding out the door as if he was in a Jubilife holo-production.
"He needs to join a theatre group or something," Solidad pointed out with a sigh. "Maybe it would make his little episodes of melodrama less annoying."
"Episodes?" Alexa snorted. "He acts like that all the time. Some people just can't get enough of themselves." Implications: obvious. The youth was quite proud of the generalized insult.
Daniel carefully placed the pristine Poké Balls on the low table in front of him. "You two should pick. I'll take whichever one's left," he told the youths who were now officially his protégés. Or his puppets. Speaking of puppets, Banette had recently been seen in Sinnoh…
Pulling his mind back on track, Daniel gestured at the table again, trying not to let his brain follow its typical slide away from the topic of discussion.
Markus watched Daniel's eyes slide in and out of focus as he looked at the three Poké Balls. "How can I tell what's in them?"
Solidad replied. "Usually, people label them. Since these don't have labels, you can pick them up. If you concentrate, the power they have should be evident to you." Poké Balls weren't powerful enough, in general, to contain the energy of a physical being compressed and stored as, quite literally, pure energy. Solidad and Daniel had both seen the calculations of the containment technology integrated in modern Poké Balls, and the sheer amount of pure heat and light that the Pokémon existed as in the energy state was staggering.
Slowly, like the benign metal surface was threatening to hurt him, Markus reached out one finger and poked it. A short blast of power brought his hand quickly away from the orb. Ancient and powerful, he could feel the power of the earth and its all too temporary neighbours, the plants. Along with it came the image of an even more temporary creature: the ubiquitous green tortoise that appeared in children's tales like The Turtwig and the Lopunny. He stood there, staring dubiously at the oxymoronic little sphere of metal, for a long time.
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