Every now and then, I'll have a certain nightmare. It's a recurring one, filled with fighting dragons, burning cliffs that drop off into voids, and nightmares coming true. Yes, within the nightmare. I'll wake up in a panic, scared of falling off a cliff before I realize it was just a dream. And then I'll remember it's an actual memory, and have to freak out a little more before I can get up.
It was a beautiful day. The skies were interspersed with puffy little clouds that promised clear weather. A warm breeze was blowing, the kind that neither requires a jacket nor makes you too warm. Drifloon and drifblim floated in the sky, and a green and yellow hot air balloon was descending lazily from the top of the Space-Time Towers, which had started to play a song a few minutes before. I suspected that whoever flew up on the balloon put it on, since otherwise it only ever plays on the hour. It was fifteen minutes past ten in the morning. I was with six friends, just hanging out at the summer festival. Battles are permitted anywhere in Alamos for the festival, so we'd each brought along our pokemon.
"Evelyn, if I win, will you buy me a pineapple?" Zoe asked, holding up a pokeball. She had a pineapple obsession. Don't ask. These things happen.
I grinned. "That's a pretty big if."
Kids in Alamos Town commonly have one or pokemon each. Going on pokemon journeys across the region isn't really popular around here, but we still train and battle.
"Weavile, get ready," Zoe said, tossing out her pokemon.
"All right, glaceon," I responded. My own pokemon materialized.
"Go Evelyn!" Mira cheered on the sidelines. She was standing on a bench for added height.
"Oh, thanks," Zoe said jokingly.
"Glaceon, quick attack!" I called, hoping to catch Zoe off guard.
"Assurance," she countered, not missing a beat.
Glaceon darted behind Weavile and landed a solid headbutt on the unsuspecting dark-type's backside. Weavile spun around and, claws turning dark as night, smacked my glaceon in the head. I flinched; that gotta hurt.
"Come on, Evelyn, do you really want to give her pineapple?" Willie joked. He actually knew Zoe better than most of us, and vice versa. As a joke, the rest of us sometimes paired them: tall, long-haired Willie and dark, pineapple-loving Zoe, whose hair was shoved into a ponytail to get out of her way.
"Course not. Ice fang," I told Glaceon. The ice type nodded and grinned, his teeth glinting crystal blue.
"Ice punch him away when he gets close," Zoe said to her own pokemon.
"Look for an opening!" I encouraged Glaceon, who was weaving around the taller pokemon. He finally caught Weavile looking in the wrong direction and lunged in.
"Watch out!" Zoe warned.
Too late. Glaceon caught Weavile's leg in his teeth. With a growl, Weavle swing an icy fist into Glaceon to knock him off, but the spot where he'd been bitten was stiff with ice.
"Shadowice, hurry!" I continued.
"Counter with dark pulse!"
Shadowice was a move Grace and I had come up with. Quiet, shy Grace was fantastic at the tactical side of battles. When she found out how her luxray could use both firefang and thunderfang at the same time, she helped Glaceon and me with a shadowball-ice shard fusion. She and I exchanged a glance, both of our expressions excited: this was the first time Glaceon had tried out the move in battle.
Glaceon conjured a sphere of ghost energy in front of his jaw, and a fragment of ice grew steadily at the sphere's core. Soon it was big enough to release. Weavile let go of his dark pulse simultaneously. The moves hit and exploded with enough force for the pokemon to nearly lose their footing.
"Weavile –"
Zoe was cut off by a sudden burst of light. A breeze accompanied it, smacking us with air. Like Glaceon and Weavile just seconds earlier, several of us nearly lost our footing from the suddenness of it – Mira grabbed Alden by the shoulders to avoid falling over the back of the bench. The rest braced ourselves as best we could.
Finally the wind slowed and stopped. The light accompanying it retreated back to its source. Mira let go of Alden's shoulders and jumped down from the bench. Both were a little pink in the face – Alden and Mira had recently discovered that they both liked each other a lot. Nothing had changed except their friendship had new meaning, but the slight internal difference remained.
"Just like yesterday," Mira mentioned.
We knew what she was talking about. Yesterday morning it had happened too, and again in the afternoon. None of us had known what it was. Soon after, Mira and Grace and I had found the others at the Alamos gardens. All of us were there when Grace spotted the pool.
It had been a small, rectangular pool of water, surrounded by Hellentistic columns. When we encountered it, though, the six-foot-deep pool was dry and the columns had been broken.
"Broken?" Alden had echoed me. "It's not that. It's…"
"Distorted," Joel finished for him. "The bottoms look warped."
Joel. Not tall, but he'd found a recent growth spurt and passed Mira and me. Dark, short hair, light brown eyes, skin so tan Mira called it bronze. I'd fallen in love with him months ago, even before I noticed that he was cute. He was really nice, and caring, and funny in a quiet way.
The columns were indeed distorted. The base of each column was twisted like wax that had melted and frozen again. Several pillars were tilted; a few had toppled over completely.
"I was talking about that part," I informed them, pointing to a section of a pillar that had crumbled away, "but yeah, the rest is distorted."
"Maybe some psychic type went on a rampage," Grace suggested.
"On the contrary," a voice said. The governor of Alamos Town, Baron Alberto, stepped out from within a wire-and-vine tunnel. It was hard not to recognize him. With his red suit, yellow sash, and elaborate pink hairdo, he looked like a skinny lickilicky. His appearance was kind of creepy, though – had he just been lurking there?
"It was a dark type," the Baron informed us. "Darkrai himself, as a matter of fact."
"Darkrai?" Willie frowned. "The one who's been living here for years?"
"That's the one. It appears to want the town for itself," the Baron declared.
"So you've seen him," I realized.
"I have. Around ten minutes ago, actually. Darkrai appeared, told myself and a few tourists to go away, and then attacked. My lickilicky attempted to stop it, but Darkrai hit one of the tourists – a ten-year-old boy – with a dark void attack," Baron Alberto said. "Poor boy was sent to the hospital immediately, and Darkrai escaped."
"That doesn't sound right," Grace suddenly said.
The Baron raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Then explain how this happened?" He waved a hand over the wreckage beside us.
Grace just shook her head. "The darkrai's lived here a long time. There's no reason to attack now."
Baron Alberto gave a grim smile. "Like humans, pokemon can have a change of heart. Anyways, I'm just getting the word out that if you see Darkrai, please do attack for the sake of our town." He walked away.
Was Darkrai pulling tricks again?
"It came from over there," Willie said, pointing towards the Space-Time Towers.
"It might have been Darkrai. Let's see if they need help," I decided, withdrawing Glaceon.
"What about our battle?" Zoe protested.
"I'll buy you a pineapple."
Zoe followed immediately. I wished we could have kept battling (I wanted to show Joel the results of my and Glaceon's training) but this seemed important.
By the time we reached the open square in front of the towers, clouds covered most of the sky and pokemon lay everywhere. "Are they dead?" Mira gasped.
"They're sleeping," Joel told her.
I blinked. "How did you kno–"
He pointed at a little girl who was crying, "Wake up, Tropius, wake up!" over and over again, rocking her gigantic tropius back and forth.
"So, denial that her pokemon's dead," Willie decided.
"She'd be more frantic if that was it," Joel said.
Alden silently walked toward her. The rest of us watched him. Alden spoke softly to the girl, who gave him a teary response. He walked back over to us afterwards, a grim look on his face.
"Darkrai," he said shortly.
Mira's head suddenly snapped to the side. I followed her gaze to find what appeared to be a shadow near the fountain, darting away.
"There!" Mira started running. "Lucario, aurasphere!" she yelled, throwing a pokeball out.
Her partner summoned a ball of blue energy and hurled it forward. It collided with an oddly solid-looking shadow and burst. From the explosion came a dark torso, a red protruding collarbone, smoky white hair. A sharp blue eye glared from beneath the pokemon's hair.
"Do not interfere!" Darkrai growled. He plucked a black disk out of the air and flung it at Lucario. The aura pokemon was engulfed in the darkness.
"Lucario!" shouted Mira.
Lucario emerged from the void and immediately collapsed. Her eyes were closed, but her eyelids twitched like she was dreaming.
"Staraptor, pursuit!" Alden yelled, throwing his own pokemon out.
"Luxray, thunderbolt!" Grace followed suit.
"Empoleon, use hydro pump!" called Willie.
The staraptor's pursuit caught Darkrai first. Narrowing his one visible eye, he rose up above the thunderbolt and hydropump (which dissipated into the air and bounced off the fountain, respectively) and created a dark void disk. Suspending it in the air above his head, Darkrai let it fire an arsenal of dark voids at us.
"Look out!" I yelped, ducking under one.
A dark void flew by Zoe's wrist, narrowly missing both her and Staraptor. Willie and Grace nearly collided dodging a dark void, and Joel almost ran into one while avoiding another. As I swerved around a dark void, I saw Mira land on the ground and Alden, who was standing where she'd just been, become swallowed by the sort of darkness that had claimed Mira's Lucario already.
A final disk of darkness zoomed past Grace's luxray, and suddenly Darkrai disappeared. Zoomed away and sank into the shadow of a building. Just like that.
Joel reached Alden first. Rolling his best friend onto his back, Joel found Alden fast asleep.
"He… I didn't see it… he shoved me away…" Mira's voice was barely audible.
The previously bright, sunny weather was now cold and very dark through a thick blanket of clouds. "Guys," Zoe said warily. She was staring at Lucario.
Mira's pokemon had split in two – or, at least appeared to. One Lucario was transparent with a glowy outline and seemed awake; the other was opaque and asleep. The transparent version looked around, but didn't seem to see us.
Just a few moments later, a glowing, see-through Alden rose up from the sleeping version of him. "Alden?" Mira said cautiously, getting to her feet. "Alden, can you hear me?" The alert form of Alden didn't even look at her.
"That means no," Willie informed her.
"Thanks…"
Suddenly, Lucario's eyes widened, and the ghostlike Lucario took off across the square, leaving her body and the rest of us behind. "Wait!" Mira yelled.
Alden – both Aldens – flinched like something was going to hit him. The transparent one opened his mouth as though to shout, but no sound came out. Like Lucario, Alden started to run, a look of terror etched across his face.
"Alden, stop." Grace placed herself in Alden's path. He reached her, passed right through her, and kept going.
"They're both going the same way," Willie noticed.
"Follow?" Zoe suggested.
"Yeah, let's go," Joel agreed, his tone definite.
"What about…?" Grace gestured at the sleeping Lucario and Alden, who still lay on the cobblestones.
"Empoleon, you get Lucario," Willie commanded. "Staraptor, can you take Alden?"
Staraptor chirped urgently.
With Lucario in Empoleon's steel flippers and Alden draped over Staraptor's back, we ran in the direction the two ghostly figures had escaped in.
"Where are they going?" I wondered, looking at Joel.
"You're asking me?" he replied grimly.
The transparent figures wove through narrow streets and alleys. At some points all we could see of one or the other was a reflection of the light they gave off on the windows of buildings. Other times they'd stop or slow down long enough for us to nearly catch up, then look at a particularly frightening spot on the plaster walls and start running a little faster.
Alden's legs were long, and Lucario was from a species known for being long-distance runners. It was only a matter of time before we lost them both. No light from them was visible on the surfaces of windows or even the glass tops of streetlamps. The rest of us stopped in an alley, gasping for breath.
"Do you recognize this place?" Joel asked once we all had stopped panting.
I looked around. Narrow alley with wilted potted plants in windows, a few arches overhead, stairs at one end of the alley, a turn at the other. Very dark, for the middle of the morning.
"My cousins live here," Grace mentioned. "We're on the far side of town. It's opposite the towers, near the very edge of the mesa."
I glanced up and my insides froze. "Guys…"
Willie breathed in sharply as they found what I was looking at. The clouds had blown away, revealing a heavy, swirling mass of coffee-colored darkness where the sky should have been. Flashes of blue and red lightning tore at the emptiness, looking for something to destroy.
The air around us suddenly shook – the magnitude wasn't unlike the earlier explosion, but the air turned slightly pink.
"Let's see if we can find Alden or Lucario," Willie said after it died away.
We chose to go towards the side of the alley with the stairs. I heard a barrage of booms in the distance that shook the entire town… Well, I guess it shook the entire town. At any rate, we could feel it from all the way on the other side of the plateau.
At the top of the stairs, there was a miniature courtyard, with small streets branching out in every direction and a fountain decorating the center.
Mira turned her head in surprise. "Lucario?" she noticed.
The pokemon in Empoleon's arms had stirred. In a moment, she opened her eyes.
"You're back!" Mira exclaimed. She ran over and hugged a very confused Lucario. "I won't let anything else happen to you," Mira promised, pulling out a pokeball and drawing her partner into it. Willie did the same with Empoleon.
A fragment of movement snagged in the corner of my eye: the transparent image of Alden had appeared at the edge of the square. He shimmered and vanished.
The Alden lying on Staraptor's back groaned sleepily.
"Alden, wake up," Joel said.
Rubbing his eyes, Alden sat up. "I'm awake…" He seemed to realize where he was. "What – oh. Darkrai." Alden called back his pokemon.
"We ought to find where everyone else in the town's gone," I suggested. "Dunno about you guys, but I haven't seen anyone since we left the girl with the tropius."
"Maybe they're over by the Space-Time Towers–"
"Speaking of the Space-Time Towers," Zoe interrupted, sounding alarmed. I looked up.
Two things – it was hard to tell what they are – hovered over Alamos Town. They'd been hidden behind the walls of the high, close alleys, but the courtyard set them in full view. One gave off a pink light; the other was blue. They looked like… some sort of monsters, huge and sharp-edged and giving off an eerie light.
"They're like the dragons in the creation legend," Zoe remarked. "Dialga and Palkia."
The blue one – Dialga – shot a beam of orange energy at his opponent. Palkia crashed to the ground, causing a boom to resonate through the streets. Maybe ten seconds later, a roar rang out and a ripple of blue energy the same color as Dialga's skin came crashing into us.
"Ah!"
"Crap!"
The ground shook. A few of us – Mira, Joel – ducked to the ground like an earthquake had hit. But the air was quaking too, and the wind was much more than the breeze we'd experienced before. I noticed a shift in the building right beside us. Was it tilting…?
"Sh*t!" Zoe, get out of the way!"
She got the message, and took tottering steps as fast as she could away from the falling house. It landed just a few feet next to her.
The shaking took another minute to stop. Arms and knees trembling, I looked around. "Are you guys okay?"
"Think so," Mira said, sitting up.
Joel's hands were shielding his head. He took them away and asked Zoe, "What happened?"
Zoe looked stunned. She just shook her head, staring at the collapsed wall lying next to her.
"The building almost fell on her," I answered instead.
Now that I looked more closely, I found that the entire building hadn't toppled over; the three-story complex had split down the side and let a chunk fall into the courtyard. The edges where the building had torn at were tapered and bent weirdly.
"Guys, look, the lamppost," Willie realized.
An iron streetlight next to one of the alley entrances had slanted to the side. Its base was twisted like a melted candle.
Distorted.
"So it wasn't Darkrai in the first place?" Grace concluded. "Cause that sure wasn't."
The two dragons flew back into the air. I got a mysteriously bad feeling in my gut. "Guys, I think we should move somewhere…"
Dialga and Palkia each fired an attack at the other – a blue jet of energy, a pink sphere of matter. The attacks collided and turned bright white.
The rush of energy that resulted was beyond anything. I thought the ripples of blue energy had been big, but then this happened, just to prove me wrong. Every one of us was blown to the ground. I swear I felt myself skid a few feet before my back rammed into the side of the fountain. For the endurance of the explosion, I huddled against the stone and tried to breathe air back into my lungs.
"Where's Zoe?" I heard Grace's voice yell.
There was a whoosh over my head just before the rush ceased. I stood up and studied the fountain: the center part, the part that spouted water was covered into purple sparks.
Everyone looked pretty battered. Willie, Mira, Grace, and Joel had wound up against the far wall, while Alden was propped up against a streetlight. Scrapes and bruises littered everyone's arms, small tears in jeans and sleeves seemed common, and a shallow cut on Grace's cheek leaked blood. And as Grace had noticed earlier, Zoe was nowhere in sight.
"Zoe?" I called out.
A footstep. Zoe came through an arch by an alley. Her face was terrified.
Zoe Philips does not get terrified.
"Zoe, what's wrong?"
She raised her hand, and I noticed her wrist had the same purple sparks that the fountain did. Somehow the fountain was now a lot shorter than it had been before. I think this was how I realized that beyond the sparks forming a bracelet around Zoe's wrist, there was nothing where her hand should have been.
I tore my eyes away from Zoe's hand… or lack thereof. "Run for it!" Zoe yelled.
At that moment the street behind Zoe burst into a surge of lavender sparks. The line of particles advanced toward our courtyard, dissolving the street behind it.
"Come on!" I urged my friends, who couldn't see what was happening behind Zoe. "Hurry!"
Zoe's whole arm was gone by the time the last of everyone else had gotten up and going. "Zoe, let's go!" I shouted.
Her eyes met mine. Slowly, Zoe shook her head.
"I'm already gone," she said, gesturing at her shoulder.
It was true – the sparks had taken half her chest away, and was moving up to her head and down to her legs. In a moment she'd be done for.
"Go! The sparks are catching up!" she yelled at me.
They were – the street was half gone. I nodded grimly and ran after the rest of my friends. They'd stopped at the end of the next street.
"Evelyn, look," Joel showed me. Across town, a black, red, and white figure sparred with the larger pink and blue dragons. The smaller pokemon attacked the two invaders with barrage of some dark type attack, but the attack was deflected by a pair of protects from Dialga and Palkia…
"Darkrai's helping us, huh?" I understood.
"Yeah. If he's singlehandedly taking on the pokemon who did this to our town, he'd definitely on our side," Joel agreed.
"Hate to disappoint you guys, though, but the sparks are still coming." I looked behind me to check. The purple sparks hadn't caught up yet, but they were definitely coming.
"Where's Zoe?" Willie asked as we kept walking.
I opened my mouth, shut it, opened it again and finally said, "Zoe… She stayed behind. I think the sparks have finished her by now."
Grace's face fell. "It's like a dream," she said. "A nightmare of a dream, but a dream."
"An illusion of some kind. In Spanish that's 'espejismo,' which is kind of funny because that's the name of the song the towers played when Zoe and Evelyn were battling. Espejismo. Illusion," Willie mentioned. He was chattering to get rid of fear.
Our paces gradually quickened. "Guys, back there," Mira spoke quickly. The sparks had caught up to the end of our alley.
"Here," Alden said, pushing a fallen potted tree out of the entrance to a narrower passageway. A roof covered this one. "Quick."
Six pairs of feet pounded down the paved stone road. Joel rounded the corner first. I was next, and I halfway collided with him; he'd stopped just around the end of the wall. My hand blocked the rest of me from hitting him. Pulling quickly away from the warmth of his shoulder, I asked, "What?"
I saw before he could answer. An iron gate that spanned from left to right, top to bottom of the corridor was in our way.
Joel approached it and tugged at the metal grate on the side opposite the hinges. "It's locked," he announced.
The others had all caught up. "Lucario, metal claw," Mira commanded, taking control of the situation. Her partner pokemon materialized from the red light of the pokeball and slashed out at the iron bars. The echoes of metal hitting metal rang through the hall. Lucario drew back – the grid of steel had cracked a little, but remained in place.
"Houndoom, flamethrower," Joel said quickly. He tossed out a pokeball. The fire type that appeared blasted a jet of flame through the gate, melting a hole through the middle and knocking the already fractured bits clean away.
"Empoleon, cool it down with hydro pump," Willie followed up with his own pokemon. With his empoleon's stream of water, the outer rim of the hole sizzled and turned from red to cool black. The boys called back their pokemon.
"It's coming! Hurry!" Grace exclaimed.
No one had to ask what "it" was. Mira went through first. Joel climbed through quickly, then Alden and Grace. A piece of metal snagged the hem of my shirt, sending me into a brief panic attack, but I made it through. Willie started to clamber through – he stuck a leg and a shoulder into the gap, then his head. He seemed to be making fast progress when suddenly he stopped.
"I'm stuck," he moaned.
Mira took Willie's hand and started to yank his arm, but Willie shook his head. "It's too close, get away!" he yelled.
"Willie, you're not being a hero by sacrificing yourself! Zoe was halfway dissolved when she stayed behind!" I told him.
"I know, but I'm seriously stuck, just run!"
At that point, purple sparks rushed around the corner. Without another thought, five of us dashed away. A clank rang from the gate's detachment from the walls, and I turned my head to see Willie, still trapped in the iron gate, drop into the void.
Now that we were through the iron fence, it was no problem sprinting down the street. I heard Joel shout, "Houndoom, get Mira!" I realized Mira was lagging behind, and the void was catching up to her. Joel's houndoom barreled into her and somehow managed to make Mira topple onto her. Houndoom's steps outpaced the rest of us, bringing Mira farther away from the edge.
The rate the town was dissolving at slowed enough that soon we had left it quite a ways behind us – far enough to walk again. First, though, we paused to catch our breath. Joel took his houndoom back.
"This," Alden said slowly, swallowing, "This is exactly what happened in the nightmare I just had."
We started to walk on. "We could see you while you had that dream," Joel let him know. "You separated from your body somehow and started running away."
Alden frowned. Then his face relaxed and he rubbed his forehead. "This day has been too weird for me to find that strange."
"The song was called 'illusion'?" Grace recalled.
"Espejismo," Mira said.
"Yeah," Grace agreed. "That's irony making fun of us."
Our group of five passed through another courtyard. No fountain lay in this one.
"Which path?" Mira voiced. There were two alleys leading in the general direction of away-from-the-edge
"Just take one… this way," I decided, choosing the left route. "Doesn't really matter which."
Dialga and Palkia kept ramming into each other with either massively powerful moves or their own bodies. Their battle had grown nearer to us as time wore on, and now, as we traveled down the street, it was very close. Dialga gave a roar and slammed himself into Palkia, knocking her into the square just beyond our street. Dialga landed nearby and tackled the other pokemon into the mouth of our alley, partially cutting off our escape. Sections of the yard and buildings around it were dissipating into particles of lavender nothingness, revealing a void where they used to be.
"Shoot… Let's see if we can sneak by," Alden suggested.
It wasn't the best of plans, but we had no better. There wasn't a chance of turning back; the purple sparks would nearly have caught up by now. One after another, we slipped by the massive pink dragon and ran toward the street on the opposite side of the square.
None of us stopped to see Dialga use draco meteor.
The yard shook with explosions. Bits of windows and walls crumbled down from where the fireballs hit the buildings. Mira cried out in pain – a meteor had snapped her arm. Another smashed the doorway right beside me to smithereens, and a third would have hit Alden if he hadn't stopped before it flew in front of him. It hit a lamppost instead, vaporizing it instantly into purple sparks.
"Mira, are you all right?" Grace called.
Palkia roared and swung her tail at the blue pokemon. Grace was caught in the path of the tailstroke. The impact smashed her to a part of the plaza that had dissolved.
Calm, levelheaded Grace picked up her pokeball and hurled it back towards safety. "Keep track of Luxray!" she shouted, falling over the burning purple cliff into nothingness.
She hadn't pressed the button, so the capsule remained shut. I scooped it up and ran to the alley where the others were waiting. Hesitating, I turned back – she wasn't gone, Grace couldn't be gone, she was one of my best friends… no way was she gone…
A hand touched my shoulder. "There's nothing we can do but keep moving," Joel reminded me.
I nodded and numbly obeyed. In a lighter situation, I would have treasured Joel's company and lingered on it for a while. Now, though, one of my best friends was gone, two more friends had vanished too, and any of the remaining four of us could turn to nothingness at any moment.
Tucking Luxray's pokeball into my pocket, I followed Mira, Alden, and Joel away from the spot where Grace had vanished off the face of the town. I tried not to think about where she was now.
"Forgot to say," Mira remembered, clutching her arm where the meteor had hit it, "thanks for saving me earlier."
Joel shrugged as acknowledgement. "That was Houndoom. Is your arm okay?"
She wrinkled her nose. "It hurts. A lot."
Joel glanced worriedly over his shoulder. "Ideally we would find a really big stick and make a splint or something, cause it's probably broken…"
Mira shrugged with some difficulty. "Later, once we're out of harm's way. Or when there's a big stick around."
We found ourselves in an even narrower street than before. Crashes echoed in the distance. Thankfully, Dialga and Palkia had taken their fight elsewhere.
"Let's run so that we'll be far away from the edge next time it catches up," Mira suggested, starting to jog. She cringed. "Agh…"
"Just take it easy for right now," I assured her, hoping it was the right choice. Alden and Joel made no objection.
The street took a turn, making way for more of the same narrow stone road. It was clear that this street had been a location of the battle. Parts of buildings had fallen off, lampposts had tumbled over, and the streets were strewn with rubble.
"Geez, they've been destroying everything," Alden scoffed.
Mira gripped the side of a fallen house with her good hand and tried to hoist herself over it.
"Luxray, can you help her out?" I called, summoning Grace's pokemon. I would have asked my own Glaceon, but Luxray was much larger.
Mira patted the electric lion's fur. "Are you okay with it?" Seeing Mira's skewed arm, Luxray growled and turned so Mira could climb on.
"Thanks so much." Mira got onto his back.
The five of us – four humans, plus Luxray – traipsed steadily through the wreckage. Alden slipped as he ascended a split drainpipe, but otherwise our progress went smoothly. And despite having four legs and no hands, Luxray journeyed through the street as fast as the rest of us.
"Ow." Joel. I looked down from the top of a large roof shard to see him. His calf was bleeding.
"Are you okay?" I checked.
"Not really," he determined. The casual, unconcerned tone to his voice confused me. Joel looked up with an expression that was a cross between innocence and humor. "I got cut on a window. It's not too bad."
"That is, though!" Mira suddenly shouted.
I followed where she was pointing: the sparks had found us again, keeping a quick and constant pace while we slowly crawled through the cramped, broken alley. The damaged street did nothing to hinder the fast motion of the mesa's receding edge.
"Go, go, go," I yelped, scrambling over the roof piece I was on.
The debris instantly seemed so much more imposing that we were pressed for time. Every previously painstaking placement of a foot or hand became a careless, frenzied scrabble at escape. Slips and drops became common, but getting up was easily and fast, knowing that much worse than a bruise or split knee would catch up if speed was disregarded. In my haste, something slipped from my pocket – Luxray's empty pokeball. Glaceon's was safe on my belt. I didn't halt to retrieve the fallen capsule.
I sprinted along a fallen section of wall, thankful for a flat surface. It sagged and creaked with each step I took, but held. Joel and Alden were close behind me on the wall, with Mira and Luxray lagging a little. The pauses between the lion's footfalls told me that Luxray was leaping, taking long strides with every step –
Crash!
I skidded to a halt and looked back. Mira and Luxray lay in a dent in the wall that had been partially covered by a cloth – a concealed window. The two had fallen through. They struggled to get out, but between Mira's broken arm, Luxray's four legs, and the added cuts and injuries of falling through a window, they wouldn't have nearly enough time to escape the edge of the void.
"Come on!" Someone grabbed my arm and I was pulled away. Swallowing hard, I ran with all my might, leaving behind Mira's scream as the void swallowed her and Luxray.
Joel had my arm. Alden ran beside him, face haunted and pale, eyes wide and unblinking.
The alley was reaching its end. We came upon a courtyard wider than the ones before. It was large enough to accommodate several trees inside it.
"There's a splint for Mira," Alden said quietly.
Joel patted his shoulder, letting go of my arm. "Let's keep going. She won't want you to give up," he told the taller boy.
Silently, Alden nodded. Joel looked back at me. "Sorry, you looked like you were hesitating," he said.
"I was," I said tiredly. "I wish I didn't have to say thank you for probably saving my life; it seems to be jinxed."
"We'll make it out okay," Joel reassured me.
Hope so.
The three of us crossed the courtyard briskly and dashed into an alley on the other side. The crashes and collisions still rang out from above, but we didn't stop to watch the battle unfold. A flight of stairs ascended to another street. As we ran up it, a strong gust blew all three of us to the side of a building and pinned us there like paintings until it subsided.
We kept going even faster now. The explosion vaporized several bits of the wall and street around us. I found myself glancing at Joel from time to time, as though he could have disappeared in the five seconds I looked away.
A downward flight of stairs, an arch… A wall. A solid, stone wall marking a dead end. A piece of the ground right behind us dissipated into purple sparks.
"Glaceon! Ice beam!" I yelled, throwing out my pokeball. Glaceon shot energy at the new hole in the ground, freezing it over and stopping the sparks' advance. "Alden, your staraptor."
Alden understood. "Staraptor, we need to get over the wall," he said quickly, tossing out his pokeball. "Take Evelyn over."
I shook my head. "If anything else disappears, I want Glaceon to be here to freeze it. One of you guys go."
"Joel, head out." I heard the soft scuffling noise of Joel climbing onto the bird's back.
With a soft whoosh of air, Staraptor took off. A few bits of a window twinkled purple – Glaceon froze it solid immediately.
Several more spots had turned lavender and disappeared by the time Staraptor came back. "Evelyn, will you be okay?" Alden checked with me.
"Yeah, go on ahead," I confirmed. "Glaceon, over there!"
Staraptor and Alden flew over the wall. I watched them go.
"Glay!"
My pokemon's yell made me look back down; the sparks were coming. They'd reached the bottom of the stairs.
"Glaceon! Ice beam!"
He kept the edge at bay, advancing only at a foot every few seconds. But it was still growing near. "Glaceon, keep it up…"
And then Glaceon couldn't hold it back. The purple glimmer rushed forward.
"Starr!" Talons dug into my shoulders, and I hurriedly called Glaceon back to his pokeball. Alden's bird pokemon lifted me away from the void and over the building.
I landed lightly on the ground beside Joel and Alden. "Thanks. The decay just sped up," I informed them.
Joel nodded. He was looking up – I followed his gaze to find the sparks already coming down the side of the wall behind me.
We sprinted down the alleyway, sparks in close pursuit. A tall wooden fence grew near. Joel and Alden reacted to it at the same time. "Staraptor, help us get over!" Alden yelled.
"Houndoom, flamethrower!" Joel called out.
Staraptor quickly took Alden by the shoulders and lifted him just as Houndoom was coming out of her pokeball. As Alden and Staraptor rose, the sparks around them on the rooftops rushed past them, so that the duo found themselves flying inside the void and not within the boundaries of the town.
"Starrr!" The bird's trill made me tear my eyes away from the flaming hole Houndoom had made. Staraptor's wings had begun to dissolve. Alden noticed and frantically withdrew the pokemon.
Which, of course, left him hanging twenty feet in the air.
Alden fell, but was caught in purple sparks partway through the drop. It was too fast for him to scream. He dissolved completely before he could hit the ground.
Joel looked horrified, but ran through his Houndoom's hole in the fence, which was mostly not flaming anymore. I ran right after him, a single word trickling like fear down the center of my mind.
Gone.
He's gone, she's gone, pokemon's gone, all gone. All but me and Joel, and that just means we're next.
"Evelyn." I followed his gesture with my eyes – a spherical blob of murky pink and blue and brown had settled in the sky, blocking Dialga and Palkia's fight from view. A ripple shot out from it, slapping us like an ocean wave. A few shrubs and trees in the surrounding streets started to disappear, turning purple and then no color at all.
"Can't see him anymore, but Darkrai's holding those attacks back," Joel explained.
We darted around a corner. "Maybe he'll stop Dialga and Palkia," I said hopefully.
"Maybe."
Up a flight of stairs. "How's your leg?" I inquired.
"Kinda stings, but I think it's fine," Joel answered.
"That's good." I bit my lip. "Really, you're supposed to rest it and keep it elevated and stuff."
He grinned. "We're kinda short on time for that."
Smiling a little, I shrugged. Couldn't argue with that.
"Anyways, if the edge catches up to us, it won't matter if I elevated it or not," Joel continued.
"Mmh," I made a noise in my throat. "I'd rather it didn't. I'm not ready to go yet."
The air shook. Joel stumbled a little, but caught himself. Bits of building vanished in purple sparks.
"Still have something to live for?" Joel asked.
"That's it exactly," I confirmed.
"Me too," he said.
I've got one friend and one love left. That's something to live for.
A second blast caused an entire house to our left to explode into violet sparks. The murky sphere in the sky was shrinking, letting some of the energy inside it escape and blast us with wind. The rear ends of two dragons popped out of the bubble.
"They're out in the open. Dialga and Palkia will probably fight again soon," I mentioned. He grimaced.
"We better hurry," he said.
He and I ran together. It could have been romantic, in a time and place where we weren't both running for our lives. Still, I had a quiet, peaceful spot somewhere inside my chest. It was very small, but it told me that Joel was with me, and that somehow we would make it through all right, because of that.
The streets led us up several flights of stairs and into an indoor corridor. Our steps rang out beneath our feet, each step taking us just a little farther from the hungry purple sparks.
We reached a fork and paused. Through glassless windows in front of us, I could see the ground, three stories down. The same airy windows lit the corridor with a pale violet light from the sparks surrounding the town. They stretched all the way down the sides of the fork's two choices. I spotted something on the left.
"There's a bridge on that side."
Joel looked, and he and I chose the left path. The bridge spanned over the street between two buildings; we could get across. By now, I couldn't look anywhere without seeing sparks. Bits of the buildings were dissolving randomly, and entire chunks of roofs were gone. Joel and I reached the iron bridge and started to cross it.
The doorway in front of us filled with sparks, dancing between us and the other side. In the corner of my eye, something violet flared up: the very edge of the plateau had caught up to us, and it was eating away at the supports on the other end of the bridge. "The bridge! It's going to break off!" I shouted. We were surrounded by the sparks.
"Grab the ledge," Joel said, pointing to the side of the arched door. The corridor's windows had narrow, shelflike bottoms to them. Our height off the ground scared me, but it was the only option. Heart beating fast, I climbed over the side of the bridge. I unlatched my hands from the iron railing and caught the ledge. My feet let go of the bridge, and now I was hanging high in the air. "Come on," I said to him.
Joel clambered over the side. Suddenly, the bit of metal beneath his foot gave way. He lunged for the ledge – he caught it – his hands slipped.
"Joel!" I reached out and somehow our arms met. I felt my hand slipping – the hand clutching his wrist.
The bridge smashed into the ground with a ringing clang.
Joel could feel himself slipping. It was etched in his face… fear. I couldn't get a better hold on him with one hand only, and if I let go of my other hand, we were both doomed. Joel's wrist slid through my fingers, leaving just his hand between him and tumbling to the ground. And still he was slipping.
"Joel," I choked, "I love you –"
And he fell.
I watched it happen, but the sound of the impact was what shook me most – a horrible, shattering snap. My heart twisted. I couldn't tear my eyes away from Joel, limp and broken on the faraway street. Maybe he'd come back if I stared long enough.
But in a minute, purple fire washed through Joel, taking him away.
Something inside me blew out. He was gone. Joel. Joel.
A tingling, burning sensation lit on my foot. It was the same feeling you get when your foot falls asleep. Looking down, I realized the sparks had started on me. Rather than feel anxious, though, my heart had resigned.
Nothing's left anyways.
As the void slowly turned my body numb, I heard one last thing. A song playing from the clock tower. It wasn't the same one that had been playing before; not "Illusion." I didn't recognize it, but a word flowed into my dejected mind.
Prayer.
Everything after that is somewhat blurred. I found myself intact again and somehow got back onto the bridge. The world had returned to normal, with its pretty blue sky and friendly white clouds. From my view on the bridge, I could see clear from one end of town to the other. It was whole again, and back in whatever world we had come from. Whispers bubbled between townsfolk about the song that had saved us – "Oracion," they called it. Spanish for "prayer." A few tourists and their local friends had saved the day.
I went to find my friends.
Mira and Luxray lay in an alley, with Luxray's pokeball nearby. Grace was wandering through the streets with Zoe. They'd each woken up in separate courtyards. Willie slept against a gate near the edge of town, and Alden and Staraptor flew down from a rooftop near us as we passed by.
Joel was nowhere. Not by the bridge, not in the streets, not anywhere. Mira's arm was broken and a few of Grace's ribs were cracked from when Palkia hit her… perhaps Joel was still dead. We looked a while longer.
And we haven't found him yet. I'm still looking. Even after his family held a memorial. Even after a lonely pokeball containing a houndoom was found in the streets. Even after everyone else gave up.
Because I still believe he's there somewhere. And I won't let the hope be just another espejismo.
Special thanks to my friends in the Original Group for inspiring the characters.
A closer look at the coverpage can be seen on DeviantArt. My username is UnderratedAmpharos. There's also an explanation of the picture on the website.
The ending is a recent development. Originally it was going to have a happy ending.
Which brings me to this: I will add something else on if either enough people want the part with Joel to be resolved, or I find Joel again in real life. I really don't know if I'm ever going to see Joel again; I wish I could.
Thank you for reading. Review to tell me what you thought.