Some people, when jolted awake, snap their eyes open or flail around or sometimes even actually sit bolt upright and stare.

Morty kept his eyes closed and lay still. Ever since he was a child, he'd had a tendency to wake up several minutes before whatever was going to wake him up. It was a fringe benefit of his slight case of temporal unfocus. It was nowhere near as bad as some of his ancestors—especially Chronos, who was said by some to have spent a grand total of five minutes of his life seeing into the right century and knew the names of all of his descendants except his children—and as a result was pretty manageable. He could feel that he had about five minutes until whatever woke him would happen, which would hopefully give him time to get to the hall where the noise would come from.

He slowly opened his eyes. A lifetime of working with ghosts and spirits had given him pretty good night vision, so he didn't have to adjust to the darkness. He did have to adjust for the fact that Eusine was a clingy sleeper, and extricating himself from his husband's grip without waking him could be more of a challenge than wrangling a particularly malevolent Gengar. He managed to make it to the door just as something fell to the floor with a thump that was just about audible from the door, but probably not from the bed, judging by the way that Eusine continued to sleep happily, now hugging a pillow.

It woke me because I would be close enough to hear it… Morty shook his head with a sigh. Sometimes, it felt like time was just taking the piss. He opened the door, frowning as he heard someone groan in pain. The voice sounded familiar…

Maeg, a Misdreavus he'd recently adopted, looked up in surprise when he stepped into the hall. "Master?" she said in surprise. "What are you doing in there?"

Morty took a moment to look down at what she'd been looking at before responding to that question. A pair of legs in torn and filthy once-white trousers were sticking out of the bathroom. It sounded like someone was being violently sick inside. Morty walked in to help them, but had to stop and stare instead.

He was throwing up into the toilet, coughing horribly and trying to brush his hair back in between purges. Morty tentatively reached out, then paused.

"Goodness knows it's hard enough to keep my hair out of the way sometimes when I'm brushing my teeth, and washing vomit out is not fun," he said, trying to keep his tone level, "but if I touch y—m—well, if I help, I won't cause any space-time rips or anything like that, will I?"

"It'll… be… fine…" the other him gasped, waving a hand. "It… was… fine…" He started retching again. Morty pulled his hair out of the way, reflecting in a slightly detached way how strange it was to be holding back his own hair in a way that he could see both his hands. Somehow, your own hair feels a little different from anyone else's, he mused, wincing as watching himself puke made his stomach turn.

"Better get… Eusine… before you… puke too…" his other self got out between hurls. "It'll be… fine… though prepare… for the… jokes…"

Morty took out the band that he tied back his long blond hair with at night. His other self had anticipated—remembered?—this, and already had a hand out to take the band and use it to quickly scrape his hair out of the way before returning to puking. Morty backed out of the room quickly and went back through to his room.

"Eusine," he hissed, shaking his husband. Eusine rolled over, stared blearily at the pillow that he was clutching, tossed it aside and sat up, finger-combing his hair back.

"Whas goin' on?" he yawned. "What's happ'nin? Hassit happened yet?"

"I'm throwing up in the bathroom," Morty explained quickly. "Another me. I think it's me in the future. I'm going to go get a glass of water, because listening to me puke makes me want to puke too. Can you look after me?"

"…There's two of you?" Eusine said, grinning brightly and looking suddenly much more awake.

"Focus," Morty ordered, giving him a push. "Go rub my back, it'll make me feel better." He stepped back into the hall. "Maeg, if any of the novices or other ghosts come this way, can you deflect them? This will get harder to explain the more people I have to explain it to."

"Of course, Master," she said, bobbing a little curtsey and floating down the hall to talk to a Haunter who'd stuck its head through the wall. "Master's a little ill, Greg. You don't want to see it, you know how icky bodies can be…"

Morty headed the other way, into the kitchen, pouring himself a glass of water and wondering if he could be jealous of hearing his husband giving a backrub and making soothing noises to someone else. Except it's not someone else, that'll be me sometime in the future, he thought, staring somewhat vaguely on the calendar display on the wall. How far in the future? Will I tell myself? I suppose I would if I remembered telling myself…

He poured another glass of water for himself, reasoning the self that was actually puking would definitely want a glass of water. Indeed, when he walked into the bathroom, his other self immediately stuck out the hand that wasn't clinging to the toilet bowl. Morty put the glass into his hand wordlessly and watched him swill and spit most of the glass before getting up to refill the glass from the sink to take a proper drink. Morty stared at himself, trying to gauge how far in the future he'd come from. He didn't worry about the how; he'd probably tell himself soon, if he could.

He recognized the purple jumper and formerly white trousers as ones he presently owned and was quite fond of, but they'd clearly been through a lot more wear and tear than they presently had. His future self's hair wasn't any longer than his presently was, but maybe he'd cut it back to that length. His future self was looking very grey and haggard, which made part of Morty hope that he was coming from a long way in the future. He tried surreptitiously checking himself in the bathroom mirror and caught the reflection of Eusine grinning at him.

"Do not say whatever it is you're thinking… right… now…" he said, spinning around and trailing off as his future self also turned around and said the exact same thing at the exact same time.

"Thanks," his future self said, setting the glass down and leaning against the bathroom counter, which Morty liked doing because it was at exactly the right height to sit on a little while leaning. "I know it was weird that I said that at the same time, but I remember me doing it. I remember all of this pretty clearly… well, as clearly as I remember anything right now." He rubbed his forehead with a sigh. "Where you are now is where I was a week ago, but I think I've slept maybe… sixteen hours…? In the week in between…" He slumped a bit more, catching himself on the edge of the counter. He really did look exhausted. "You need to… get dressed and go. Now. You'll make it exactly on time…"

"Where?" Morty said, pulling one of his other self's arms over his shoulders and nodding to Eusine to take the other side. "Where do I need to go?"

"The shrine in Ilex Forest," his other self mumbled as they dragged him through to their bedroom. He looked through half-closed eyes at Morty, who was quite sure that his eyes did not normally glow green. The green slowly died down, leaving his future self's eyes a familiar dark purple, but a light green ring remained around his pupils. "Celebi is the one… Saylee will be there too. She'll… come with you… help you when… you're weak…" He sighed as they set him down on the bed and promptly dropped off to sleep.

Morty opened his cupboard and pulled out the trousers his future self was wearing, sighing sadly at how clean and white they were compared to his future self's filthy clothes. He started getting changed while Eusine started taking the dirty clothes off of his heavily sleeping other self, glancing from one Morty to the other the whole time.

"So," he began.

"I can't stay," Morty sighed, pulling his jumper over his head and grabbing his scarf and headband. "You heard me."

"I was just going to say," Eusine said quickly, "that, well… Celebi, huh? So that's the one?"

"It would explain the family proclivity for visions of the past and future," Morty said. "Who knows, my ancestors' temporal confusion could be an effect of my possession by Celebi, travelling backwards in time like ripples."

"Are you excited?" Eusine asked, beginning to fold the filthy clothes before wrinkling his nose and throwing them at the trash chute by the door. "Scared? Bit of both?"

"Irrationally, yes," Morty admitted. "I mean, I know I'll make it back okay." He pointed at himself, sleeping deeply on the bed. "But I can't help being a little apprehensive about what he meant about what will happen in my next personal week…" he frowned. "I said Saylee Pryce was with me. Where is she now?"

"I'll… ask you when you wake up, eh?" Eusine said, walking over and squeezing Morty's hands. "And as you've seen… I'll be here for you when you get back."

"I don't need to see the future to know that," Morty said, leaning in and giving him a kiss before slipping out of his dojo as dawn broke over the trees.

{}

"You," Saylee said as Charlotte dragged the two poachers towards Baoba's nearest security office, "have no idea how lucky you are."

"Lucky?" the guy said incredulously, jangling the handcuffs that Saylee had slapped on him.

"Forgive me for not leaping for joy about getting caught," the girl said acidly.

"You're lucky because we caught you before you got to the Cyndaquil eggs," Saylee said pointedly.

"Aye, some ay them Typhlosion would ay burnt yer bones tae a crisp," Mary added. "We got a mate named Chip there, and he's a nice bloke, but he's got issues wi poachers, ye ken?" The Ampharos was walking along beside Charlotte, ready to taze the poachers if they managed to slip Charlotte's grip and run. "Tends tae get a wee bit burn-happy, if ye catch ma drift."

The poachers wilted, and Saylee was able to safely deposit them with a security guard at the office.

"They've got priors," the security guard said, locking them up. "A lot of priors. I really don't know why they don't jack it in and get real jobs by now."

"Who can fathom the criminal mind?" Saylee said, signing off for them. "Let me know if anything comes up."

"Will do," the officer promised. "Safe trip home!"

"When's the next train, anyway?" Mary asked hopefully. "Are we heading straight back hame?"

"Well, I should probably head back to my grandparents' first and apologize for vanishing in the middle of the night," Saylee said with a yawn. The two poachers hadn't been terribly hard to find, but there were very few humans that were tolerated in the far reaches of the Safari Zone, not even most of the park rangers. They really do have incredible luck, to get as far as they did without being caught by anyone but me, Saylee thought, reaching into her pocket as her pokégear buzzed. Granny or Granddad probably noticed I was missing… "Hello?" she said, picking up.

"Saylee."

Saylee frowned. The voice wasn't either of her grandparents, and while it sounded like a young woman, it didn't sound like her cousin Lucy either. She pulled her pokégear away from her ear to look at the caller ID. It was the ID of the Viridian Gym phone, but the voice wasn't Daisy. "Hello?" she said tentatively. "Who is this?"

"You."

"What about me?" Saylee asked in confusion. "Who is this?"

"No, I mean I'm you. Sar Saylee Pryce."

"…what?" Saylee asked, growing even more confused. "What on earth are you talking about?"

"I'm really, really, REALLY tired, so forgive me if I don't explain this clearly… uhh… okay, so you need to go to Celebi's Shrine in Ilex Forest right now. You have to help Morty."

"Morty is… going to be Celebi?" Saylee realized. "That actually explains a lot."

"Tell me about it. You need to protect him. He's going to fling you back and forth around time, but don't worry about it, you'll make it back. I mean, I have already. Oh, and return Charlotte as soon as you get there… and hold your breath when you see the shrine flash." The woman on the other end of the phone yawned hugely.

"Is this really me, though?" Saylee asked. "I mean, the Celebi idea makes sense, but—"

"Is that really what my voice sounds like? That's what I thought," the woman said. "I'm walking with Charlotte and Mary. We found those two poachers trying to steal Cyndaquil eggs… gods, that feels like forever ago. The teenage boy with the purple hair and the snippy girl with red hair. I was thinking that they're some of the luckiest idiots I've ever seen, getting as far as they did without getting caught by any of the Typhlosion. The name of the guard in the office who signed off for them was Frank. I thought this call was from Granny and Grandad, who I was visiting… whoops. I'd better call them and tell them that I wound up back home in Kanto. Does that convince you?"

"Yeah," Saylee said, showing Mary's pokéball to her to let the Ampharos know she was about to be returned. Mary nodded, and Saylee returned her. "I guess I'd better go, then."

"You'll be just in time. And you'll be fine. Remember, hold your breath!"

The other her yawned again and then hung up. Saylee stared at the pokégear for a long moment, then looked up at a confused-looking Charlotte.

"What was that about?" the Charizard asked.

"We have to go to Ilex Forest," Saylee said, climbing up onto her Charizard's back. "I think we're going to time travel."

{}

Dawn was just breaking over Ilex Forest as Morty made his way towards the Shrine of Celebi. He hadn't visited it often; his focus had always been on Ho-oh, and he'd never spared too much of a thought towards Celebi, even though, the more he thought about it, the more he realized that Celebi's powers were obviously in line with his own powers of prophecy.

The trees rustled as something large swooped overhead. Morty reached the clearing with the shrine just as a large Charizard was landing. Sar Saylee of Kanto dismounted from its back and returned it to its pokéball.

"I heard that you'd be here," Morty said, waving to her.

"I heard the same thing about you," Saylee said, stifling a yawn. "Sorry, I spent half the night following up a call about poachers and then flew straight here… I thought about catching a nap first, since I heard that I'd be here on time, but I decided not to risk it."

"Well, here we are," Morty said, gesturing to the shrine as a green glow appeared within.

"Morty," Saylee said seriously. "Are you ready for this? You saw what happened to Silver…" she looked down, folding her arms.

"Celebi isn't as powerful as Ho-oh," Morty assured her. "Even so… even if it does hurt, I feel like… it's meant to happen, and in the end, it'll all fit together." He smiled. "My feelings tend to work out to be true, so often that sometimes I think it frankly infuriates Eusine…"

Saylee laughed. "Well, I hope you're right," she said, running her hand through her short hair. "I'm here to protect you, I understand."

"I couldn't possibly be in safer hands," Morty said, reaching out to open the shrine.

They were almost blinded by the outpouring of green light as Celebi flew out of the shrine and circled them.

"You're here!" she giggled happily. "I could say I've been waiting, but that's a lie. I never have to wait!"

"Can I ask something, Celebi?" Morty said, staring at the tiny green Pokémon as she fluttered in the air. "What happens to you? When you merge with me… I've met the boys who merged with Lugia and Ho-oh, and they still seemed… themselves."

"Oh, I'll still be in there," Celebi said with a smile. "Maybe one day, several avatars down the line, I'll fade away, but I won't feel it. And I'll be watching. I've been looking forward to it, you know. I've been all over time and space and seen so many new things there aren't any left… but they'll be new to you!" She did a happy flip in the air. "The excitement of new experiences… I can't wait to feel that from you!" She held out a hand. "It'll take a while to get the hang of it, but I promise it'll be fun!"

Saylee stepped closer as Morty held out his hand to Celebi. She squealed and hugged him. "Morty!" Saylee shouted, grabbing his shoulder as they all vanished into green light.