The Mountain

Tha-thump… tha-thump…

Espeon sat beside her master, her mind wandering as the snowstorm outside the shelter of their small cave shrieked and howled. If she strained her elegant, delicate ears, she could hear his strong heartbeat, the pulse that made him as firm and unyielding and implacable as life itself. His beating was in perfect rhythm, a counting timer of his breath, his thoughts and deliberate movements that wasted nothing. She had always respected him for his actions, his moral compass and his heartbeat, so much more potent and well-defined in comparison to so many others of his kind, ever since that first moment when she had hatched into his warm arms and gazed into his stoic brown eyes with her amethyst ones. She knew he was worth her respect, even when her fluffy brown and cream fur and miniscule stature had twisted and warped into the elegant curves of an espeon, her tail splitting at the tip to gauge the different paths and her form growing sleek and lavender. For weeks she had been haughty and arrogant, no longer the weakest of the team; she had let the others know so well she refused to be looked down upon. Still, though, he had held her respect, and aye, even her love.

Heartbeats…

And yet…the young man lying slumped against the frigid cavern wall beside her was little more than a heartbeat, the fires in his earthen eyes dimmed to little more than the coals of a night's campfire caught in the morning light. His lips were a thin, unbreakable line; the brief smiles that had often flashed across them having surrendered to the gloom and depression that held him tightly in crushing fingers. His hands, callous and scarred, gentle and dexterous, lay limp at his sides, one wrapped around the yellow and brown form of his pikachu; his hands held the lives of his six Pokémon, herself included, and had given each of them a purpose, a meaning. Those hands had taught them to be strong for those that were not, to assist those in need, to crush evil mercilessly simply through the smallest twitch of a finger. His hands spoke for him, and imparted so much to them without a single wasted lesson.

The blaze of his eyes was gone, the purpose in his hands was gone, and his smiles... She took a deep breath, feeling the cold, dry air cut into her moist throat and lungs like a scyther's blades. Espeon couldn't remember the last time she had caught him smiling, smiling as the sun smiled upon the earth. He was a man in twilight, the sun falling away and the shadows around him lengthening with each moment, the last vestiges of the warm rays promising eternal darkness. He was the upper half of a broken hourglass, forever leaking sand; he was a sundial in the night hours. Her master was the one that had sought challenges, always seeking to better himself and his Pokémon, seeking to be the best that ever was. Having reached that goal, he was without purpose. The red and white spheres latched around his worn leather belt held nothing but souls of friends now. They held the epitome of strength and cunning, the greatest fighters in the known world.

What is a warrior with nothing to battle? What point was there to the struggles of the past, to the loss of loved ones-he had lost many, so many-and friends, to the fight for meaning, when at the end there was naught but an empty shell and a heartbeat?

Tha-thump… tha-thump…

She closed her eyes, pressing her muzzle and warm fur against the bare skin of his arm, and was unperturbed when his eyes gave no indication of her affectionate gesture, merely staring ahead into the frozen shadows of their cave. On his other side, Pikachu shifted slightly, his black eyes briefly meeting her own.

The espeon had rarely conversed with Pikachu, preferring to watch him at a distance. His eyes were like their master's eyes, piercing and brown, seeing into her very soul even as they gazed at the world with an otherworldly stare. The pikachu was the oldest of the team, and still his eyes spoke of an age far beyond their comprehension, of sights and sorrows and joys that were private to him and their master.

It was with those eyes that he glanced at her, and a shiver raced through her. It was not from the cold.

Espeon averted her eyes, swiftly focusing her attention on her forked-tongue of a tail, which she had curled around herself out of habit, sighing. It had been a few days since she had last looked into the coming times, and now would prove as apt a time as any. At the split near its tip where ethereal and temporal energies surged and ebbed, the lines of her fur flowed into other glowing lines and braiding together at each tip. The unfocused power was sharpened upon reaching her tail's ends, blurry timelines and possibilities coming into her sight for a brief moment, and then lancing and fraying into the future. Each end held a different future, and each had always kept its promise, when it came to pass.

Deliberately taking a slow breath and closing her eyes, she concentrated on the rhythm of her master's heart, sucking in a deeper lungful of air for every few heartbeats, gradually extending the period until her body was calm and rarely moved, save for a breath every minute, two minutes, three. She descended into the shimmering calm of her mind, seeking out distractions and thrusting them away; the cold no longer bothered her, concern for her master was replaced with momentary indifference, fear of what she might see overtaken by feline curiosity. When she opened her eyes, the silent cave about her was disappeared, the bitter air gone, the warmth and security of her master's presence faded.

In their places was an infinite field of golden wheat and bright sunlight, blinding white clouds hovering still in the windless sky. She breathed, more of habit than of necessity, and took in the scent of a forever summer and the unending wheat fields. Her mind was at ease here, in this constructed mental plane.

Espeon rose to her dainty feet, flicking her tail as she strolled into the rich grasses; a feeling of security and warm familiarity rose within her as her vision was enveloped by the golden stalks, and the sun above beat down upon her fur with a lazy heat. Curling up in the encompassing wheat, she closed her eyes to her internal world, the bright sun disappearing instantly, not even filtering through her eyelids as she sank into the earth and vanished from sight. A mild breeze blew across the golden fields, the stalks of the grass waving in time with the wind, and carried away the heat of the midday sun.

In the deepest recesses of her mind, in the murk of the subconscious and beyond the harsh laughter of second thoughts, and third thoughts, and hindsight, there was an abyss. Here Espeon now stood, and she could see nothing but for two pillars of light, twin towers spearing infinitely into the darkness above and below. They were the two paths of her tail.

Approaching the closest of dual timelines, she raised a forepaw to press against the luminescent surface, then hesitated, her paw halting a hairsbreadth from the temporal path. Doubts shook through her, fear and anger and pain slashing into her heart and causing it to grow fleshy arms of muscle and sinew that reached up to her throat and constricted tightly. With a soft cry, she thrust her paw forward, and a flood of information and possibilities surged against her mental barriers, the shields protecting her from the chaos outside the boundaries of time being hammered upon. Sorrow, pain, anger, loss, depression, denial, disgust, and emptiness swamped her, and images raced through her head as she was swallowed up by the storm of what might be.

…and then Espeon was once again in the cave beyond her mind, watching her own body resting impassively with the rest of the team. They were all outside the confines of their pokéballs; Pikachu, of course, Charizard, Blastoise, Venasaur, Umbreon, even Snorlax all stood around the still form of their trainer. For a moment, her mind froze, even in the midst of the vision. Was he…?

Her master rose to his feet from his place against the cave wall, and robes of imperial purple rested upon his shoulders, instead of the clothing he normally wore, that had long been torn to tatters by the howling winds of Mount Silver, his cap was a laurel crown upon his head. His brown eyes were calm and alive with a purpose, and his lips flickered into a grim smile. He was a broken man with a purpose.

Ignoring the hopeful looks of the Pokémon surrounding him, he reached to his belt, retrieving their Pokéballs one by one, until he held each in the palm of his left hand. Expanding one, he returned Charizard, who protested with a rumbling growl, then Venasaur and Blastoise, Snorlax, Umbreon and herself, until he stood alone in the cavern but for Pikachu.

Their eyes locked for an instant that seemed an eternity, before their master knelt down, caressing his first Pokémon's red cheek fondly. A glittering drop fell from his eyes, while another fell from Pikachu's.

"I am sorry," he murmured, and Pikachu's protesting cry was cut off as he was drawn into his pokéball in a beam of crimson light. Reverently placing each of their seven technical prisons on the ground where he had lain for days, Red trudged from the frosty cave and into the biting gale of Mount Silver's peak.

Stumbling in the wind that he had stood so proudly against before, he made his way to the cliff-edge, staring out over the land of Kanto, at the bright clouds and shimmering cities on the horizon. Holding his arms wide, he leaned forward, and the peak of Mount Silver was empty once more.

In the cavern, seven souls were encased by steel; five were awash with confusion and concern, one was sillent and contemplative, and one was resigned to the world and heartbroken.

The shadows in the cave grew smaller as an hour passed, light bursting through the cavern's entrance, and then a human figure stepped into the light, casting a long shadow which ended at the pile of six pokéballs. The young man, a trainer, stepped forward, followed by the fierce form of a typhlosion, the Pokémon's fire-vents casting a scorching light in the dim cave. The boy approached and kneeled at the pile of red and white orbs, slowly lifting the icy steel of the sphere containing Pikachu in both hands. His posture downcast, he placed Pikachu's ball within his backpack, then did the same with the rest, and silently walked out into cold.

More time passed, and the shadows lengthened and grew darker, the wind picking up and black clouds rolled in, stealing away the last vestiges of sunlight from the boy….

Halfway down the mountainside, he was curled up in the meager shelter of a small overhang of ice, clinging to the ailing typhlosion for warmth as the wind shrieked and bit at their every exposed piece of flesh. The trainer's eyes were closed, the melted water of snowflakes that had landed on the hot skin of his eyelids refreezing, ice crystals forming on his eyelashes and keeping them shut. Every few seconds his eyelids would twitch, as though he was trying to open them but had not the strength to do so. The typhlosion whimpered weakly, and the mountain stole the boy's life away. Outside the tiny overhang, a graceful and terrible form floated, and raised its luminescent blue gaze from the pair before it, focusing on the mountain's peak.

"I am the mountain."

With a torturous jolt, Espeon was flung screaming from the timeline, landing painfully on her side. Tears of anguish streamed down her face even as she wept with relief at the joy of being freed from the vision. Lying there, paralyzed as her mind sorted and adjusted to the vast influx of the future, she realized just how different the path had been, focusing her thoughts on the emotional shocks that had pierced her before she had even entered the timeline.

Gradually, Espeon felt feeling return to her limbs; shakily, she struggled to her feet, her chest heaving in deep, shuddering breathes, thoughts swirling in a vast hurricane. The boy had died, and then her master had died, leaving them…. Were they connected? Was her master's life, his beating heart, tied to that of the boy on the mountain? She shook her head, banishing the thousands of questions bombarding her to the back of her mind; she would worry about them later.

Staring into the radiance of the second timeline, she wondered what pain it might have in store, or perhaps some possibility to circumvent the deaths of the two young humans. Steeling her resolve, she walked past the first timeline, almost cringing away as she felt a mild pang of emotion arc towards her in an electric bolt.

Her pulse quickened as she neared the second pillar, and her labored breathing seemed to resonate around the dark space. Her whiskers twitched anxiously as she paused before the timeline, feeling no strange outpouring of emotion emanating from it, despite her close proximity. Closing her eyes tightly, she dove headfirst into the timeline.

At the mountain's peak, in the cave Espeon knew so well, her master slept, his eyes shifting rapidly beneath his eyelids, and low murmurs of protest and sorrow escaped his lips as he tossed and turned, caught in the midst of a vivid nightmare. Around his unsettled figure, the towering forms of his impressive team watched over him. Their eyes were closed, and their chests heaved slowly in the grip of slumber, and the flickering light of Charizard's tail-flame made them all the more intimidating. They were Red's brooding guardians in his despair, his friends. But there were only six forms present around her master. Espeon's future self was not there.

Suddenly, her point of view shifted, and she was dragged out of the cave, and drawn down the mountain, blurs of snow and stone and a flash of purple fur passing by underneath her to before coming to an abrupt halt next to a familiar young man, the trainer from the first vision.

The trainer was struggling against the vicious wind and snow, his arms shielding his face and eyes from the worst of the cold. His typhlosion stood in front him, roaring at the storm and melting a path in the drifts of ice-coated snow with the searing heat of his flamethrower. The flames of his back vents were intense, the wind adding oxygen to the excess of combustive materials and causing them to hiss and burn the sharp blue of a blowtorch. The air around them was so thick with snow and ice that without the blazing Volcano Pokémon's flames, both he and his trainer would have been lost to Espeon's sight amidst the obscuring snow..

In the dark of the storm, just beyond the companions' field of vision, the figure watched with implacable blue eyes, and gestured with a delicate hand. The wind coiled and hissed, screaming as it was forced against the warm bodies before it, carrying a deadly payload of ice.

"I am the ice."

Icy shards like glass were flying against them now, sharp edges slicing shallow cuts in the pair that leaked hot blood for an instant before freezing shut. Each shard rarely missed, and soon the two were covered with lacerations and droplets of crimson life stained the snow red.

"Typhlosion, we have to take shelter from this storm! There's no way we can reach the peak today," the trainer shouted, all the might of his lungs desperately trying to be heard over the howls of the wind.

The beast of fire nodded, squaring his shoulders as he prepared to melt a hole in a nearby snow drift, hopefully deep enough to give them refuge from the murderous weather. Suddenly, a beam of purple light lanced overhead, and the wail of the storm rose to a fever pitch. Arcs of purple and blue and almost black radiance burst around them, screams of the wind rising and falling.

Typhlosion growled defensively and knocked his trainer to the ground as a coruscating violet orb blazed a path through the air where his head had been. Closing his eyes tightly, the typhlosion positioned himself over his trainer as a shield, while the battling lances and spheres and shrieks ripped the world around them asunder. Explosions of snow were caught midair by the cerulean and violet light, frozen for a brief instant and then plummeting to the ground as time caught up. Minutes passed while the multicolor radiances soared and hissed, but finally the lights subsided, the wind fell and diminished to a low gust, and after a few minutes of tensely listening for the sound of a possible threat, for anything, Typhlosion let his disgruntled trainer stand.

"You could've at least let me watch," the young man grumbled, his face a mask of exaggerated irritation. "That might have been some Pokémon we haven't seen yet! Oh well," The teenager glanced up at the sky. "At least the storm seems to have passed. Maybe we'll make the peak today after all."

The young man grinned, scratching that one spot on his typhlosion's neck that the Pokémon loved so much. Rumbling in pleasure, the Pokémon nuzzled his trainer, and then resumed burning a path through the snow-covered trail. Heat surged around them, warping the air in waves, as the two continued onward toward the mountaintop, not hearing the slowing heartbeats of a savior nearby.

Espeon anticipated her ejection from the timeline this time, redirecting her mental body's forceful discharge upwards, out of her roiling subconscious, through the soil of her mental plane, which was being lashed by the massive coils of a hurricane, and into the real world. She ignored the turmoil of her mind, ignored the painful wires twisting tighter around her heart. She felt only the need to flee from the depths of herself.

The mist of her most recent exhalation was dissipating before her muzzle as Espeon's eyes snapped open, wide and unfocused. For an instant, panic rushed through her, the icy tension of fight or flight trickling along her spinal column, and the knowledge that she simply had to get away was foremost in her mind as she leapt to her feet, teeth bared. For what seemed like hours, she was still, caught up in the tidal wave of emotions that were bound to follow gazing into the timelines. The feelings began to pass, the tension flowing out of her body and draining into the floor. She knew who she was.

Her master was asleep, if the nightmare-ridden rest he had taken to over the past month since their arrival at Mount Silver could be called sleep. She clambered into his lap, curling up into an exhausted ball of fur, and closing her eyes in the hope of dreamless sleep.

By morning, her tears will have dried, and her resolve will have become steeled for what must be done.

.

Author's Note: This is part one of a two-shot I spontaneously came up with. I acknowledge that the foreshadowing is heavy, and that it's fairly obvious what will happen. Even so, I enjoyed writing it, and hope you will enjoy reading part two just as much as part one. :)