Author's Note:

Hey guys, here's the new story! This ones going to be a lot less serious, though it will have its moments. My main reason for this is that I'm starting an intense year of school soon and I may not have a lot of time to write, so I don't want to write something that's going to need a lot of planning.

Regarding the timeline, I think it's around 5-10 years after Pokésouls, but some of the character's timelines don't work with this. I hope you're okay with just ignoring that (I am). I thought it was more important for everyone to make the characters they wanted rather than having a sensible timeline. Really it's just that some of the characters have aged more than others.

Mira's book excerpts, and some other things, are going to be used to explain past events (to people who didn't read the original) and things that happened to the characters between the two stories. Hopefully it's more fun reading it that way then just me telling you.

Prologue: Not my Definition of Ready

Excerpt from Dance of Fate, by Mira Lee:

Foreword:

When I was a kid I never thought I'd live a life interesting enough to write a story about, and really my life should've been boring. Personally, I blame everything on Kai. Sure, Kirtus convinced me to be bait because Wolf got himself kidnapped, but I wouldn't have met either of them if it weren't for Kai. I was living a peaceful life as a relatively unknown dancer, then Kai came into my life and pointed out that my boss was an embezzler. Kai and I were friends ever since. Kai is probably my best friend, but I have, on occasion, dreamed about the peaceful world I'd have lived in if I hadn't met her. Of course then I'd never have met Wolf, so all the trouble was worth it in the end. The point is, I dedicate this book to Kai, because if it weren't for her I'd have lived a rather boring, peaceful life and no one would want to read my book.

A woman with dark blue hair sat on the floor of a large empty room, a Luxray sleeping at her feet. The woman appeared rather out of it, simply staring at the wall with a vacant expression on her face. The room was quite large and devoid of any furniture. It had clearly been recently cleaned, but this only highlighted the wear and tear on the room. There were two doors in the room, a small door at the back and a large set of double doors on the opposite end. Windows covered most of the walls, though the only light that shone through currently was from the moon and stars.

The double doors opened with a lout creak, startling the woman out of her daze. She tried to jump to her feet, but stumbled part way and tripped over her Luxray. The woman who had entered watched as the blue-haired woman fell over, half on the floor, half on the Luxray.

"You alright there Pecha?" Asked the woman who had just entered.

"Fine," Pecha said, though her voice was muffled through her Luxray's back. Pecha pushed herself up to look at the newcomer. The woman was pretty, with long black hair and there was a slight smile on her face that Pecha knew meant she was extremely amused but didn't want to make Pecha feel bad. A Frosslass circled lazily over the woman's head. "What are you doing here Nami?" Pecha asked. "I thought you were cleaning up the girls' dorm."

"I wanted a break," Nami replied walking over to help Pecha stand up. "Were you sleeping down here?"

"I was planning out the cafeteria, then I got really tired and sat down," Pecha said sheepishly. "Did you see Christopher on your way over here?"

Nami shook her head. "The lights were still on in the boys' dorm though, so I guess he's still there." As if summoned by this statement, a man with scraggly black hair came in followed by a Weavile.

"Hey Christopher," Pecha greeted. Nami echoed the sentiment.

"Wolf and I got most of the furniture set up in the boys' dorm," Christopher said.

"Wolf's here?" Nami asked. "I didn't think he was supposed to get here for a few more days."

Christopher shrugged. "He said a lot but I wasn't listening." He glanced down at his Weavile. "Vieara says that Mira wanted to come early so she and Wolf decided to come on over."

"Is their room ready?" Nami wondered.

"Depends on what your definition of ready is," Pecha replied. "There's no bed, but there are walls and a clean floor."

"That's not my definition of ready," Nami said.

"Sounds fine to me," said a man as he walked into the room followed by a green-haired woman. He had blinding white hair and grinned at everyone as he entered. They were followed by two Pokémon, a Gardevoir and a Sylveon.

"Hello Wolf, Mira," Nami greeted politely.

"We're here!" Wolf announced unnecessarily.

"Are you actually okay with sleeping in an empty room?" Pecha wondered. "I'm sure River has a room you could use at her house in Eterna."

"Do you have sleeping bags at least?" Mira asked, the green-haired woman looking less certain than her white-haired husband. She fiddled nervously with one of the braids that was interspersed with her free hair. At the end of each braid was a small pink ribbon.

"We do have those!" Pecha said. She disappeared through the single door at the back of the room.

"Where does that door go?" Mira wondered.

"Oh, you haven't seen everything yet," Nami remembered. "This room is going to be the cafeteria. There's a room back there that we've made into a kitchen." Nami gestured to the door Pecha had gone through. "The stairs to the upstairs are back there as well and Pecha's going to be living on the second floor of this building. That's where she went."

"She gets a whole floor?" Christopher said. "I just get a tiny room."

"Well, she's the headmistress so she can do what she wants," Nami replied. "I just have a room in the girls' dorm." Nami's room was actually quite a bit larger than Christopher's was, but she didn't see any need to point that out.

"Weren't you homeless before?" Wolf asked. "Isn't having any room better than before?"

"Just because I was homeless I can't have standards?" Christopher demanded.

"Where are we staying?" Mira asked, trying to stop the argument.

"You're staying on the floor above the gym," Nami replied. "I'm staying in the girls' dorm and Christopher is staying in the boys' dorm so that if anything happens there we'll be around."

"They get a floor too?" Christopher groused. "Why don't they just stay in Eterna?"

"I'm here as a guard," Wolf replied. "It'd be a bit hard to guard from over in Eterna."

"We have the guy who was kidnapped. That will help," Christopher said dryly.

Pecha reappeared, two sleeping bags slung over her shoulders. "Here they are!" She dropped them in front of Mira and Wolf.

"Thank you Pecha," Mira said, picking one of them up.

"Hey Pecha, you ready to start this school yet?" Wolf wondered as he picked up the other one.

"Well, the students are coming in a few weeks so I'd better be," Pecha replied.

"It's all come together pretty suddenly," Nami added.

"We didn't have time to get any real teachers either," Pecha said. "Right now I have Wyvrn teaching a class."

"I'm trying to get Blake to come and replace him," Nami added.

"He doesn't want to come?" Mira said.

"He's having trouble getting permission from the Guardian Force," Nami explained. "They're still suspicious because of his time under Razan." This was said with some bitterness.

"Still?" Mira said. "He was blackmailed and it was years ago!"

"Can't Preston do something?" Christopher asked.

"Preston can't play favorites," Wolf replied. "He has to act all impartial and stuff."

"That takes all the fun out of being in charge," Pecha said.

"What are you doing about your research?" Mira wondered. "I'm surprised you left it to come be headmistress here."

"Well the original idea was to run some classes on the weekends," Pecha said. "Then Preston and Starlight got a hold of my plan and all of a sudden I'm out here running a full time academy. So I wasn't really ready to leave my research, but since most the students are Pokésouls I can probably continue it here. I have Kai looking after the lab while I'm gone."

"Kai?" Wolf said with a grin. "Is that a good idea?"

"Well, I may come back to crazy decorations and some odd things done to my computer, but she'll keep it safe. Probably."

"Can we see the rest of the place?" Mira wondered.

"Sure," Pecha said. "It looks better in the daytime, but we can do it now." She nudged her Luxray with her foot and lightning Pokémon yawned as it stood, glaring slightly at her partner. "Let's go!"

"I'm going to bed," Christopher said. "I've seen the place anyway."

"Alright, let's head to the boys' dorm first then," Pecha said. The group walked outside into a dirt clearing. There was a ring of five large buildings and a couple of smaller structures. The buildings were clearly at least several years old and some of them had broken windows. Each of the buildings were two stories tall and were about the same size. There were lights hung on the fronts of the buildings that lit up the clearing and gave the group enough light to see by, though not enough to make out many fine details or anything outside the ring of buildings.

They wandered to a building which had a sign next to it that read, 'Boys' Dorm.' Christopher led the way and everyone walked inside. Christopher immediately ducked into a room on the right that had his name on the door.

"This is the boys' dorm," Pecha said. "Really not much to see here."

They left that building and went into the one next door which had a sign labelled, 'Girls' Dorm.' They walked inside. Instead of being a hallway with rooms, they walked into a large open room with couches, tables and a large TV. At one end of the hallway was a door leading to Nami's room and the other end had a staircase. "This is the Girls' Dorm," Pecha said. "This part's their common area. The rooms are upstairs."

"Seems like an odd set up," Mira mused.

"Well, we're doing what we can. This place used to be a raider base you know."

"It was?" Mira said surprised.

"Yeah, this was their vault."

"Why are you putting your school in a raider base?" Wolf asked.

"Apparently all the raider bases that Zyra takes over belong to her unless the raiders stole it from someone. When we needed a place to put the school she gave us this and I really didn't have a choice. Not unless I wanted to buy a place with my own money. I'm not poor but I'm not that rich. At least all the walls are fixed now. Apparently Zyra and her people don't really care that much about property damage."

"Somehow that doesn't surprise me," Wolf laughed.

"The boys' dorm was the raiders living area as well so we didn't need to do as many modifications," Nami said.

"Oh, and don't tell the kids this used to be a raider base. It's better they don't know," Pecha said.

"Of course," Mira replied.

The next building they visited was the one with the classrooms. "I honestly don't know what the raiders were doing with this building, but now it's holding our classrooms." The layout was similar to the boys' dorm, but the classrooms had numbers on them instead of names. "The upstairs is free if we end up getting more live-in teachers," Pecha added. "Don't tell Christopher. We told him that it's a very important storage area."

They left that one and went to the last major building. The interior was a large open space. "This is our gym," Pecha said. "I'm not planning to hold any organized sports, but I wanted to have self-defense classes and we can do that here. We'll probably work outside more often, but this will work if it rains."

"You get the upstairs of this building," Nami added. Pecha and Nami led Mira and Wolf to the stairwell. They walked to the second floor and showed them their floor.

"There's really nothing much up here. There's the bathroom. Bedroom over there. Not that there's a bed in it, but well…" Pecha shrugged.

"This looks great, thanks Pecha," Mira said. Pecha knew she was just being polite, but she appreciated it anyway.

"Thank you for coming," Pecha returned. "It's been really hard to get enough people together to put all this together in time. Nature's Guardians and the government can't seem to agree on anything and it's made the whole process unbelievably difficult."

"Oh, don't be surprised if you see Opal and Onyx," Nami added. "Zyra sent them to do some of the rebuilding."

"Personally I think she just wanted them away from her," Pecha said.

"She was being nice," Nami countered.

"If she were being nice she'd have sent someone less weird. Anyway, I'll let you get settled. I need some sleep." Pecha gave them a wave and vanished back down the stairs. Nami nodded to Wolf and Mira and left as well.

"Preston gives me Wyvrn and Zyra gives me Opal and Onyx. It's like they want me to fail," Pecha complained.

"You know that's not true," Nami said. "They both spent a lot of time making the academy happen."

"And making me run it. I wanted to run some weekend classes."

"I know. But this could really help some kids and isn't that worth it?"

Pecha sighed. "Of course it is. Once the kids get here I'm sure I'll feel better. Or worse. One of those."

"Don't worry Pecha. If this goes wrong I'm sure we can just blame Wyvrn."

"Yeah," Pecha laughed. "That's a good plan." Nami went into the girls' dorm and Pecha continued on to the cafeteria.

I would like to sit in on Wyvrn's class, Zap said. That should be amusing.

That's one word for it, Pecha muttered back. It's probably not a bad idea for you to sit in though. If he gets too crazy you can bite him or something.

I don't think he'd actually hurt anyone, Zap replied. Gina would never forgive him if he did.

True. I'll still be glad when Blake gets here and can take over though.

Pecha and Zap walked into the cafeteria and through the door in the back. Pecha walked up the stairs to her floor. The room right at the top of the stairs had comfortable chairs and some books as it was to act as the waiting room for her office, which was through a door with her name written on it. She opened the door and passed by her desk to a door at the back. Through here was where her real living area started. She walked past the living area and headed straight for the bedroom. Zap followed, jumping up on the bed and curling up on one side. Pecha changed into her pajamas, then flopped down next to her Luxray drifting to sleep in the comfort of her Pokémon's warmth.

A Few Weeks Later

The Town of Eterna

A girl sat at a table, waist-long blonde hair pulled into a ponytail and shifting in the breeze from the open windows. The establishment was rather quaint, but clearly well-loved by both the patrons and the customers. Blonde bangs covered the girl's left eye, but her right eye was visible and her bright blue gaze was focused on the elderly man sitting across from her. Upon her face rested a pair of frameless, rectangular glasses that actually seemed to imorove her appearance. The old man fit into the establishment with far more success than the girl, as his clothes were a bit drab and worn. The girl's on the other hand were quite fashionable and new looking. She wore a black, scoop neck t-shirt that had a blue bubble pattern covering the lower half. Over this was a turquoise hoodie which she had unzipped at the moment. Her skinny jeans were plain blue and covered by her knee-high brown boots. The boots had a flash of color as the laces were teal in color. Another spot of color in her outfit was the green loop hanging off her belt, attached to which were several Poké Balls.

The girl and the elderly man weren't the only ones at the table, as there was also a Glaceon with them. The ice-type Pokémon was sitting upon the table and would occasionally steal a bite of food from the girl's plate. She clearly was aware of this and didn't seem to mind.

The girl's name was Cassiopeia, usually called Cassie, and she was having dinner with her grandfather in the nicest restaurant in Eterna. It was also pretty much the only restaurant in Eterna, which was a very small town. Cassie was used to far fancier places as she was from the city, but Cassie liked this restaurant, mostly because it was her grandfather's favorite restaurant and seeing him happy made her happy too.

Cassie was going to be leaving for the Pokésoul academy tomorrow and this was sort of a farewell dinner, though the academy was within walking distance from Eterna so Cassie would be able to visit him often. It was part of the reason she was going really.

"I'm sure you'll make lots of new friends at the academy," her grandfather said.

Probably not, Glaceon said.

Studying is more important, Cassie agreed. Aloud, she said, "Yeah. There will be a lot of new people there."

Her grandfather sighed slightly, knowing her well enough to understand her true thoughts. "I know you like studying more than people, but please try to make some friends?"

Cassie felt bad, so she agreed. Her grandfather was always wanting her to make friends. Cassie didn't really see the point, but she'd try for him.

"You're going to the academy? Me too!" The voice was male and came from a younger boy. He grinned at her from where he was sitting at a table next to Cassie and her grandfather's.

"Yes," Cassie said finally. She glanced at the boy's dining companion, but wasn't able to make much out. It appeared to be a woman, but she was wearing a cloak that concealed most of her features. The boy apparently wasn't trying to avoid attention judging by the red scarf wrapped around his neck and the bright red t-shirt he wore. He had short black hair, unremarkable except for the single white bang that was on the left side of his face. His eyes were much more interesting as one was a dark green color and the other was much paler. It was as if someone had tried to erase the color but hadn't completely succeeded. Cassie wondered at that, but didn't care enough to try to find out.

His shirt had a large Poké-dollar sign on it which made Cassie want to roll her eyes a bit. At least it wasn't a gold coin. The rest of his outfit was much quieter, simply brown shorts, black sneakers and fingerless black gloves. There was also the tell-tale red and white of Poké Balls on his black leather belt.

"I'm Darn," he said.

Cassie wasn't sure for a moment if she misheard or not. He said Darn, Glaceon assured.

"...Darn?" Cassie said.

"Yep! Short for Daren."

Cassie was a bit relieved his parents hadn't actually named him Darn. Though he seemed happy enough about the nickname, so maybe he wouldn't have minded. "I'm Cassie," Cassie finally said. Really she would have dropped the conversation already, but her grandfather was right there wanting her to have friends, so she figured she could get through the conversation for him.

"Are you a Pokésoul?" Darn wondered.

"Yes, this is Glaceon." Cassie gestured to the ice-type who was sitting on the table and was sneaking bites off of Cassie's plate.

"Cool!" Darn said.

"You're a Ditto Pokésoul?" Cassie asked, gesturing to the pink blob on his shoulder.

"Huh? No that would be neat though! I'd probably be able to transform and stuff. I wonder how that would work." Darn got a thoughtful expression on his face.

"So what's with the Ditto?" Cassie wondered.

"I'm not a Pokésoul but he's still my friend. This is Morph Jr."

Cassie had Pokémon other than Glaceon and was friends with them too, but she didn't generally walk around with them hanging off her. "Are you not a Pokésoul?" Cassie wondered.

This seemed unlikely, why would he be going if he wasn't? He probably had a large Pokémon that had to sit outside. "That's right, I'm not a Pokésoul," Darn said. Or maybe he just really wasn't one.

"So, why are you going to the Pokésoul academy then?" Cassie wondered.

"Pecha's running it!" Darn exclaimed. "She's awesome!"

"...Right." This seemed an odd reason to Cassie, but it wasn't really her business anyway. He could do what he wanted.

"You overcharged here," Cassie heard the woman Darn was with say to their waitress.

"Overcharged?" Darn said clearly offended. "We're not paying extra!"

"Of course we're not," the cloaked woman assured. The two then argued with the waitress and Cassie slowly turned about around to her grandfather.

He seems to love money, Glaceon said.

It looks like it, Cassie agreed.

"He seems like a nice boy," her grandfather said.

"Yeah," Cassie said, not because she really thought that but because she wanted to make her grandfather happy. Personally, she found him rather annoying.

The bill came and Cassie quickly handed the waitress some of her money before her grandfather could pay. He gave her an annoyed expression and she smiled at him. He needed his money for medicine, not wasting it on her. Her work at the bakery gave her enough money to buy food, so he didn't need to use his. Of course she'd had to take a break from the bakery to go to the academy, but she wouldn't have to pay for food there either so it about evened out. And if she really needed money she'd be able to find somewhere to work at in Eterna, maybe even another bakery.

Cassie and her grandfather stood and walked out of the restaurant. Cassie would be staying here for the night, then heading to the school the next day. It was a few days early, but the academy had asked everyone to get there early to get settled.

Cassie and her grandfather walked back to his house and she immediately insisted that he go to bed. "I can stay up later," he said. "I may not see you for a while."

"Go to bed Grandpa," Cassie replied. "It isn't good for you to stay up late. Besides, the academy's only a few minutes away really." It was more than a few minutes, but Cassie didn't mind a walk. And on the back of her Tropius it really wasn't a big deal to travel between places at all.

"Alright," he relented. "Goodnight Cassie. Wake me before you leave." Cassie nodded, but she probably wouldn't. His health was more important than saying goodbye and he needed his rest. She began straightening up his house and making sure that she had everything she needed for school. Once she was satisfied, she went in the guestroom to sleep for the rest of the night. Glaceon curled up next to her, the Pokémon's cold body a comfort despite the chill. Tomorrow was the day. Tomorrow she'd go to the academy. That's where the real adventure would start.

Author's Note:

Well, here's the new story. I hope you like the beginning and thanks so much for all the characters!

Character Credits:

Cassiopeia - Amy47101

Daren - StattStatt

Here are the credits for the characters from the original Pokésouls.

Protagonists:

Pecha's my character

Nami and Blake Salem - PokeFreak45

Christopher Xanatos - negimafanman

Wolf Winters - W. R. Winters

Mira - misoriri

River - Dragon2920

Zyra - Mweep

Kai Akiyama - imafangirlforever

Kirtus - PoisonBanana

Preston and Scarlet - WereDragon EX

Eclipse and Starlight - Amy47101

Liliana - LadyLucina28

Christina - Ilypikachu

Yunyi - HakaiElementalVocaloid

Lucinda and Volke - StattStatt

Sky - PokeSpeBanette

Nevin - LinkMaster997

Gina - EllieXDreams

Wyvrn - LightvsDark99

Antagonists:

Erika - imafangirlforever

Alex - UnfitDinosaur

Xero - PokeFreak45

Altair-Millenium - Amy47101