AN: I rewrote parts of chapters 1-4, and will be rewriting most of chapter 5. Hopefully I'll be able to get back into writing this!


Alena and The Multigate

Chapter One

The dim glow of her Pokénav screen cast a cone of visibility through Granite Cave, illuminating the walls with an unnatural light. Every now and again a stray Zubat would fly out of the cave's depths and attack, but for the most part the rocky surroundings were eerily quiet.

"How much longer do you think this path goes?" a voice called out, suddenly piercing the silence.

"I don't know," Alena answered.

The Grovyle next to her made a sound somewhere between a growl and a snort. Twig was looking quite the worse for wear – after the twenty-seventh Zubat, he had lost count of how many fights he been through in this Arceus-forsaken cave. The horrible flying leeches could take a Leaf Blade to the face will no ill effects and Quick Attack could only do so much when the Zubat in question was clinging to your neck. Twig was still standing, but just barely.

"If we don't find that man in the next five minutes, we're leaving," Twig growled. Though she could understand the meaning of his words, Alena could still make out the venomous, animalistic noises that ordinary humans would hear.

"You can leave," she corrected, "but I've got a letter to deliver. With our luck, this guy is some sort of Pokémon League bigwig and the letter contains ~secrets~ about important classified stuff. I don't want to be responsible for the end of the world just because some weirdo in a cave didn't get his post!"

"You are utterly ridiculous. Do you really think that the head of an important corporation would give classified information to a ten-year-old? If you're that concerned about what the letter says, why don't you open it?" Twig made a motion to grab the slip of paper out of Alena's hands, but she deftly moved out of the way and lashed out at the Grovyle's stomach. Twig instinctively countered the attack, striking his trainer's hand with the blunt edge of one of his Leaf Blades. Too late, he realized that it was the hand carrying the Pokénav.

Twig and Alena stood in stunned silence, clinging to each other in the pitch blackness of the cave. The Pokénav's glowing screen was still piercingly visible through the darkness, but it was a good forty feet away, with who-knows-what standing between it and the terrified duo.

"We need to get to it," Alena whispered, and started to make a move for the glowing device. But Twig grabbed her around the waist, keeping her from taking another step.

"There could be an endless pit in between us and the thingy! We need to get out of here, forget the letter and the thingy. We're Zubat food unless we get out. Don't you have an Escape Rope?!" Twig tried to grab hold of Alena's backpack but only succeeded in grabbing her face.

"Quit it!" Alena screamed. "I'm not going to leave before I deliver the letter, and I'm not going to leave my Pokénav here! It was a gift!" She elbowed her starter Pokémon in the underside and dashed over to the Pokénav; but within seconds her foot caught on a stalagmite and she crashed to the ground.

She tasted blood, but wasn't sure if it came from biting her tongue during the fall or something much, much worse. Her knees stung and were probably covered in dirt, but without a light she couldn't tell if they were bleeding as well. Behind her, Twig was yelling but she couldn't parse any words. In front of her, the Pokénav's light was tantalizingly close, but Alena couldn't work up the courage to crawl over to it.

I'm going to die, she thought. I'm going to be eaten by Zubat and no one will ever find my skeleton.

It wasn't fair that she was going to die now, when she was ten years old, just starting on her Pokémon journey, killed by her own stupidity. Did this sort of thing happen often, or was she just exceptionally unlucky?

It wouldn't be much longer before she blacked out. She was already starting to see things. The Pokénav was moving of its own accord. She could feel the device in her hands, see the orange casing, feel herself being lifted off the ground by one of the cave's friendly rocks.

Alena began to question her own demise only when the 'rock' turned around to reveal a single red eye and began to make concerned chattering noises.

"(Child?)" it asked in a metallic voice. "(Is the child okay?)"

"Are you a Pokémon?" Alena asked, tentatively reaching for the creature's head (or what she assumed to be its head, given that it held the eye). The white creature apparently took that response for a yes and made a delighted series of beeps.

"(Child! This one is happy because you are safe!)" So saying, the little creature pressed its head into Alena's outstretched hand and nuzzled her.

"That is the weirdest Pokémon I've ever seen," Twig said flatly. "It's just an eyeball." Alena jumped at the sudden sound of his voice.

"Twig, are you okay?"

"I'm fine. No worries." The Grovyle placed a comforting claw on his Trainer's shoulder. Alena gave a sigh of relief and placed her free hand around Twig's shoulder as well, and the three of them sat in silence for a few moments.

Then Alena realized what Twig had said earlier.

"Twig! You can't just call someone weird looking! That's mean!"

Thankfully, the tiny metal creature seemed to find the whole thing funny and gave a laugh that sounded like two steel plates rubbing against one another. "(This one is a Beldum!)" it explained. "(Humans do not see Beldum very much because Beldum do not live in the wild!")

"Does that mean you have a Trainer?" Alena's eyes lit up. "Is your trainer named Steven?" Beldum chirped happily at the sound of the name and pirouetted in midair like the spinning arm of a compass. It snuggled up to Alena's chest and looked at her expectantly. Not sure of what it wanted from her, Alena folded her arm across its metal body. It chirped again and then started to move, pulling the others with it.

The Beldum traversed the twisting paths of the cave as through it had lived there all its life. The walls and floors of the cave all looked the same to Alena and Twig, but the Beldum read them like a map, finally leading them to an expansive cavern. Unlike the rest of the cave, this part was well-lit by a series of portable electronic lanterns, revealing the intricate carvings and paintings on the walls.

A strange Pokémon with a green body and a ring of fleshy appendages surrounding its face was guarding the entrance to the chamber. It looked at the newcomers with suspicion (possibly – it was hard to read the expression when all you had to go on was a pair of glowing eyes on a blank face) but perked up when it saw Beldum.

"You're back!" it said happily. "And you found a human and a Pokémon?"

"(These are new friends!)" Beldum beeped. "(They were lost in the cave, but this one found them.)"

"How did they get lost?" the green Pokémon asked. Beldum gave a little wiggle that was presumably a shrug. The green one turned to Twig and addressed him in a stern voice: "Did you prepare before entering? At least bring a flashlight?" It gave a pointed look at the Pokénav in Alena's hand.

"We didn't think the cave system would be so expansive!" Alena protested. "The captain told us we shouldn't have to look much further than the entrance! And we did have a TM for Flash, but my Pokédex wouldn't even recognize it for some reason!"

The green Pokémon looked a bit taken aback to be answered by a human. "You can understand me? …never the matter. You shouldn't have entered an unfamiliar cave without preparing first! You should have traveled with someone more experienced, like my trainer." The Pokémon gave a smug look, which was wiped off its face when Beldum rammed into its side.

"(Cradily! Don't be mean to the human! It is a child!)"

"Ow! Don't use Take Down on your own teammates!"

"(Don't be a meanie!)"

"You can't tell me what to do, you… spike-butt! OW!"

Alena and Twig took a few steps back from the fighting Pokémon, wondering exactly what kind of mess they had landed themselves in now. Beldum had moved on from tackling Cradily and was now trying to claw at it with the butt-spikes in question; Cradily had bitten down on Beldum's head and was shouting muffled insults at it. They only stopped when a pair of steel-cuffed hands pulled them apart, firmly but gently.

"It started it!" Cradily pouted. Beldum glared.

The silver-haired man sighed and massaged his temples, affixing the two Pokémon with a piercing gaze. They simmered down almost instantaneously, guiltily avoiding their trainer's eyes.

Alena coughed and the man's gaze shot in her direction. "Oh!" he gasped, startled. "I didn't hear you come in. Er… did Beldum find you?" Alena nodded slowly, suddenly very shy. There was something about the man, something about the way he looked at her, that comforted her and yet simultaneously sent shivers down her neck.

"(This is a nice human,)" Beldum beeped, spinning around excitedly. "(I like this one!)" Its trainer gave a small laugh and patted the strange metal Pokémon's head. Alena wondered if she should translate for it, but the man seemed to understand its intentions even without knowing exactly what it had said.

"It seems as though Beldum has taken quite a shine to you!" The tiny Pokémon chirped in agreement. Its Trainer was absolutely beaming now, petting the little robot's head and having seemingly forgotten all about the previous chaos it had caused. Cradily gave a frustrated noise, prompting its Trainer to give it some affectionate pats as well.

"Are you Steven?" Alena blurted out. The man looked up from his Pokémon and upon seeing the letter in Alena's hand, jumped to his feet with a slightly concerned look.

"Were you looking for me? Is that from my father?" Steven tore the letter from her hands with a bit more force than he probably intended to use. The fancy orange-and-black envelop was shredded open in seconds and the older man's eyes skimmed the page so quickly that Alena wasn't sure how he could possibly be reading. Finally he reached the end of the page and let out the breath he had been holding the entire time.

"Thank you," he said simply, folding the paper back into a neat rectangle and stowing it in his satchel. Alena considered asking about the contents of the letter, but the slight sense of unease she felt around the man prevented her from asking. Steven didn't say anything else for a while, instead silently looking out at the chamber walls with an inscrutable look on his face. When he spoke again it wasn't what Alena had been expecting.

"Do you know the Pokémon Groudon and Kyogre?"

Alena and Twig both stared at him blankly. Steven made a sweeping gesture towards the back wall of the chamber, where the largest of the murals dominated the entire wall. Three figures stood in triangular opposition to each other, the paint faded but still recognizable as red, blue, and green. To the right was a red monster with a squat body and a mouth full of jagged teeth. To the left, a blue creature with a round body and eye-like markings jumped out of the water. And at the pinnacle of the whole thing, a green serpentine Pokémon enveloped in a yellow glow shot towards the other two with clouds streaming behind its arms.

"The super-ancient Pokémon… the Pokémon that terrorized Hoenn in times long past. This mural depicts those Pokémon along with the protector of humankind – Rayquaza. But this depiction isn't of the same Groudon and Kyogre that we know, the ones classified in scientific records." He turned away from the mural with a furrowed brow. "These etchings suggest that the super-ancient Pokémon are capable of even more terrible destruction than we ever realized in the modern day."

Alena stared at him wide-eyed. Steven suddenly seemed to remember that he was talking to a ten-year-old and his face flushed pink.

"Sorry! I got carried away, didn't I?" Alena didn't respond, not wanting to upset him. The strange man picked up one of the lanterns at his feet and beckoned for Beldum to follow him. He wordlessly returned Cradily to its Poké Ball and gave Alena and Twig a sheepish smile. "I can take you back to the entrance, if you need." Alena nodded and he gingerly wrapped his right hand over Alena's and his left hand over Twig's claw.

The sound of their retreating footsteps echoed in the open hall, with only the murals remaining as an audience.


"I never asked your name," Steven realized as they exited the cave onto the sandy shore of Route 106. The sun was just beginning to set – when Alena had entered, it had been morning.

"Alena. My name is Alena."

Steven smiled, looking her over more carefully now that they were out in the open with a proper light source. She was clearly a beginning trainer seeing as how her sandals still looked brand-new. Her face seemed perpetually worried due to the way her thick brows hung over her eyes and her mouth curved ever so slightly down in a frown. But her eyes were as sharp as glass and betrayed an incredible intelligence and stubbornness that Steven wasn't used to seeing outside of a mirror.

"Alena… I think that one day, if you keep training your Pokémon, you'll be an amazing trainer." The young girl suddenly found her eyes flooding with tears and had to turn away.

"Yeah… I'll do that." Alena wiped the tears out of her eyes and struggled to regain her composure. Turning to Twig she said, "Come on! We'll start training tomorrow morning and fight the Gym Leader in the noon!" Twig nodded with a sly smile on his face. The duo seemed to burn with a rekindled inner fire as they headed off to Dewford Town.

"Bye Beldum! Bye Steven!" Alena called over her shoulder.

"Until we meet again!" Steven shouted back.

Alena and Twig were out of site within seconds, having rounded a corner at speeds that would make a Jolteon jealous. Steven turned to Beldum bemusedly, but the Pokémon's single red eye showed no recognizable emotion.

"Have they always been that…"

Before he could finish the question, a tremendous roar split the air. It wasn't the sound of thunder and, judging by the lack of motion underfoot, probably wasn't an earthquake or rockslide. To complicate matters further, a high-pitched wail started up, seeming to emanate from every direction at once, but most strongly from the mouth of Granite Cave.

Beldum tilted its head curiously. It may have been born only two years prior, but this was something it had never encountered before. It turned to its trainer with an inquiring beep, only to find Steven on his knees, frantically digging through his gear. Beldum floated over and made concerned blips, but its trainer hardly seemed to notice its presence. It wasn't until Steven dug out an oversized pair of headphones and jammed them on his head that he acknowledged Beldum.

"I'm terribly sorry, Beldum." He winced as he pulled himself back to his feet. Beldum nuzzled its way into its trainer's hand as its way of accepting the apology. Steven chuckled and ran his fingers across the bumpy part of Beldum's head, prompting a digitized purr. "We should probably find whatever's causing this terrible racket."

Trainer and Pokémon made their way back through the cave, navigating the familiar twists and turns with ease. Seeing as how Steven had to muffle the wails out, Beldum was in charge of navigation. After what felt like an excruciatingly long time, the pair finally emerged in the great hall from before.

As soon as they crossed the threshold to the murals' chamber, the wailing cut off. The relief Beldum felt was short-lived, however, as a gargantuan ring filled with swirling purple void had decided to make the cavern its home with no prior warning. More concerning were the two figures slumped on the ground.

Steven and Beldum cautiously inched towards the two figures – now distinguishable as a young woman and a battle-scarred Pikachu. Without warning, Beldum shot off towards the woman and gave her a firm poke in the side. Steven tried to snatch the Pokémon back, worrying about every possible thing that could go wrong (what if they were from an alternate, antimaterial universe?) but Beldum simply ducked under his nervous arm and poked the girl again.

She groaned, sounding somewhat pained, and blearily pushed herself off the ground. Beldum made to give her another poke, but stopped when it was met with a piercingly stern gaze. Beldum nervously stared into the woman's blueish-grey eyes, too afraid to break eye contact, when it had a sudden epiphany.

"(Child!)" it chirped, facial-recognition processes firing at full speed. "(Alena-child! No, that statement is false. Not-child? Alena-human?")

"You're pretty sharp for such a little guy!" Alena swung herself into a standing position, gave Beldum a warm pat on the head, and grabbed the back of Steven's collar before anyone else had the chance to react. "Don't touch it."

Steven's outstretched hand, mere inches from the golden perimeter of the mystery portal, slowly dropped to his side.

"Who are you?" he asked. (Beldum chittered in annoyance.)

She didn't immediately respond, instead turning to the Pikachu beside her and scooping him into her arms. With a flourish she pulled a bottle of medicine out of a her backpack's side pocket and shook a star-shaped piece of candy into her open hand. As she placed the Max Revive into her Pokémon's mouth, she finally gave an answer.

"I am Alena Novol-Ceres. Champion of the Hoenn Pokémon League!"