"You gotta be kidding me. Please, tell me you're joking," my sister Adrienne said to my friend Caitlyn, a.k.a. Tiger. We were sitting around a little circle-shaped lunch table in the cafeteria of our school, Frank J. Eibod High.
Tiger just shrugged her shoulders, a sheepish grin on her face. " 'Fraid not," she replied.
"How lame! Man, was slipping that spoiled ranch dressing into Rachel Foreman's salad really worth a whole month of after-school main detention?" Adrienne asked.
"Completely," said Tiger instantly, and the three of us cracked up laughing. For an instant I saw Rachel glare over at us from the popular kids' table, which only made me laugh harder.
"The look... on Rachel's face... was priceless," Adrienne admitted between gasps of laughter.
Adrienne used to be pretty strict about keeping Tiger and me from doing anything that might get us in trouble, but she'd loosened up a bit ever since—well, ever since it happened.
It all started after an argument the three of us had had about the Spirit Pokémon: Uxie, Mesprit, and Azelf. We'd been debating which of them had the coolest power. Which was pretty infantile, now that I think about it. But that night, impossible as it might sound, we'd transformed into those Pokémon as we slept. Adrienne became Azelf, Tiger transformed into Uxie, and I turned into Mesprit. Pretty soon, we'd learned that the powers of knowledge, emotion, and willpower were not only equal to one another, but wouldn't even be able to exist without one another. That, and evil versions of ourselves wanted to take over the world using our transformed bodies.
Yeah... long story short, we didn't argue about the Spirit Pokémon anymore.
But secretly, I sometimes really missed being a Mesprit. Having the power to control people's emotions was pretty dang sweet. I wondered if Tiger and Adrienne ever missed being Uxie and Azelf. I mean, come on. Who wouldn't miss having that kind of power?
"Earth to Maddie! You're staring at nothing again, space cadet." Adrienne was prodding me with her spork.
"Huh?" I jerked out of my Mesprit daydream. "Oh, sorry. Kind of tired." I faked a little yawn and looked over at Tiger. "So you're staying at our house tonight so we can finish the geography project, right?"
"Yeah," Tiger said, and winced. "Lousy project. But I can't afford another lousy grade in the Ringworm's lousy class." The Ringworm was our not-so-affectionate nickname for our world geography teacher, Mrs. Rengwald. She wasn't mean so much as really, really boring. Her lectures made watching snails race sound fun.
That night, I had a dream that made the worst nightmares I'd ever had look tame.
It started out like any normal dream. Random stuff. I was walking with Tiger and Adrienne through an endless meadow. The grass waved slightly and made a soft shushing sound as a gentle wind flowed through it. A full moon shone in the night sky, washing its silver light over the meadow.
The quiet scene filled me with a sense of peace.
And then, as I stared at the moon, it started to darken.
"Look!" I shouted in my dream, pointing. This was wrong. This was very wrong. The moon wasn't supposed to black out. It set at dawn, but it never just disappeared like that. From the corner of my eye, I saw Tiger and Adrienne follow my gaze. The moon was being sucked into some kind of hole... no, not a hole, more like a huge dark eye that was opening in front of the moon, blotting out its light. And from that eye's center a beam of pure darkness exploded, hurtling right for us. The beam was completely silent as it blasted through space, which somehow only made it more frightening.
"Run," Adrienne said. As if I needed encouragement. I ran. Tiger followed close behind. But how could we escape... whatever it was?
"Running," I told myself. "Think about running, nothing else. We'll get away." Not that I believed it. Things never went my way in nightmares. And by now I'd pretty much figured out this was a nightmare, and a whopper too, even by my standards.
It took me until then to realize that I was no longer running. At least, my legs weren't moving. But somehow, I was still fleeing the dark beam. Alarmed, I looked down at myself. I recognized the shape of my body immediately. I was Mesprit again! Instinctively I pivoted in midair. Sure thing, where Tiger had been there was a Uxie instead.
But Adrienne...
"No..." It came out more like a drawn-out groan, but Tiger seemed to understand. She turned to where we'd last seen Adrienne. Both my sister and the beam of darkness were gone. The eye that had covered the moon—or had it been the eye of the moon itself?—had closed once again.
"The eclipse," a freaky voice hissed in my mind. Somehow I knew it came from the same source as the dark moonbeam. "When your world's next eclipse comes, human, I will reign along with your inner evils..."
A chill of horror shot down my spine. "Inner evils?" Was the voice talking about... but no, it couldn't be...
The horrible voice faded as suddenly as it came, and a much gentler one took its place. The hazy image of a beautiful Pokémon appeared before us, and I recognized it instantly even before it told us its name.
"I am Cresselia, Lord of the Full Moon," she said, and quickly turned to me. "Listen carefully to me, for I fear there is not much time. Your sister is being held captive by Darkrai, the Lord of the New Moon. He is conspiring with your three Inner Evils to seize control of the universe come the night of the eclipse."
"Eclipse?" I asked. Then I remembered that there was supposedly going to be a lunar eclipse over our city in... what was it... two days! Yes, two days. It had been on the news, but I hadn't really thought about it until now. Despite my terror, I couldn't help being mad that this stupid eclipse might mean the end of the world as I knew it.
Cresselia wheezed and suddenly looked very old and weary; my irritation faded and I felt my heart give a squeeze of sympathy. "Sadly I cannot help you directly; Darkrai has already weakened me to nothing more than this image you see before you. But I can perhaps set you on your path. To oust Darkrai from your sister's soul, you must travel to her soul's very core. Look into my eyes, both of you."
The core of Adrienne's soul? Cresselia's eyes flashed white for a split second. I blinked several times but didn't feel any different.
"What did you do?" Tiger asked in a trembling voice.
"Now you will both be able to switch between your human and Pokémon forms at will. It is a last resort, but there is no other choice." Cresselia looked gravely from me to Tiger. "Return to the waking world for now and make any necessary preparations. There is not much time."
Two days until the end of the world. And Tiger and I were expected to stop it before then. By ourselves. With no idea where we were going or what we were doing. Find the core of Adrienne's soul, Cresselia had said. What kind of task was that to ask of someone, for crying out loud?! We were just kids!
Cresselia was staring at me with a concerned expression. I forced back my anger. "No pressure," I said, forcing a smile. "Find the core of Adrienne's soul, stop Darkrai. Pretty simple." As if. We were toast.
"So, how do we get to this... core place?" asked Tiger.
"You'll find out."
I sat up in bed. My bedside alarm clock said 4:37.
Across the room, in the darkness, I saw Tiger sit up in the guest bed, sweating and gasping for air as if she'd just been submerged in water.
There was no one in Adrienne's bed. I ran over and opened my door. The bathroom door was wide open, and even from across the hall I could see that it was empty.
"That wasn't just a dream, was it?" Tiger asked from the guest bed.
I shook my head miserably, unable to form words.
"Guess we're not going to have time to finish the Ringworm's project after all," she said with a grim smile.