"Speaking."

'Thinking.'

"Telepathy/ astral state."

-"Electronic communication"-


He had reached an apex of his abilities as a human. At this speed, the landscape melted into a blur of brown stone, black shadows, and dangerous outcroppings of jagged stone. Violet-eyes flickered from bone-breaking wall of stone, to gaping hole that would bind his fate. He wove like a serpent escaping from a certain unpleasant demise.

Humans reach their apex when their lives are on the line.

His body released a fresh wave of fear when the path ahead became overcast. Even if the behemoth behind him was capable of hiding its shadow, he would've known anyway. The presence was... not wrong, but... horrible. The sensation it caused was the primal rejection of that which was alien, the feeling a person gets when their most sanctified and most holy of places is invaded, the place desecrated by the presence of the alien material alone.

The fear he felt was not from the presence of the eldritch horror, and not the fear of death. His was the fear of knowing the world around you had seized upon your existence. The horror that the very reality of the place he called home was rejecting his very existence, and had manifested in a draconic visage of platinum spines, wings of oozing darkness, and body formed from miasma into a hellish mimicry of a lethally venomous insect.

Once the pursued young man found a moments respite in a shallow pit, he amended his last thought. The dark draco-bug trying to eat him was no manifestation of the world he found himself in, but the other way around. Giratina, the distortion pokémon, was chasing him to death. His situation was made all the more seemingly hopeless given his location: the Distortion world, Giratina's stomping ground.

Time flowed oddly within this world. Not just slower or faster relative to Earth based on your own coordinates within the Distortion world, but in circles, loops, and vague runes. In short, getting lost here may wind you up in laces you wished weren't even places. Mastery over such a space, acquired over centuries of study and practice(or just being an eldritch entity), gave one some semblance of control over where and when they breached into reality.

He poked his head above the ground, straining some 6th sense for the warden of this dimension. Giratina's nature made it an excellent warden, but difficult friend. The dragon of demise was obsessive, possessive, territorial, reckless, and chaotic by nature. This world was meant to contain the other, and everything that world couldn't take. While nothing could heavily influence either world from the Distortion world, both were easily affected(Giratina's more so) by what happened on Earth.

Because of this, Giratina had used the Distortion to mold the core of its domain into a prison for beings who were too much of a risk to leave unchecked. She would also know this, and that made it that much more important to reach an optimal gate before she gave up the hunt.

He left the reprieve of his hole to make another mad-dash for a gate. Just like he could sense the legendary dragon, he could also determine the placement of wandering portals. He sprinted through a forest of fossilized Distortion world 'trees', petrified by her pervasive influence. The gate had the size, shape, and appearance of a puddle. He knew the time for this one was right, just not the place. On the other hand, if he tried to engage against the witch now, he'd be quickly eliminated.

He reached toward an immaculate red tie part of an immaculate suit obsidian black. "Well, it won't be completely hopeless." He grasped from behind the tie one of six jet-black pokéballs, and rolled it around in his right hand. "After all, I'll need some allies anyway." He smiled a grim smile, and took one step forward.


"Use Hyper Voice!"

Dawn blinked(do astral projections blink?) and braced herself just in time.

"eeEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

Empoleon's attack was forced back by the sheer force of the attack. He knew that eevees possessed the potential to learn the technique for really loud noise, but that was no reason to suspect this little one had it. The pain from the concussive noise blasting into its skull far exceeded the actual damage, but it would have to distance itself from the walking foghorn until it recovered.

While Empoleon shook itself of the ringing, Dawn studied the trainer and his 'mecha eevee'. She was as shocked as Empoleon was to see the pokémon's state. She knew of terrible things happening to pokémon, but to alter an innocent pokémon into a literal weapon? What the heck was wrong with this guy!

...Wait a sec.

The eevee was quivering... in joy.

Dawn was confused again. No spite against this trainer, nor offense against Empoleon's presence. No cruelty, no pain, no nihilism, but the simple pride and joy a child might have at a minor accomplishment.

Dawn nodded her head, and reaffirmed her past conviction. 'No need to be too aggressive them,' she had a wicked grin, 'but all the more reason to End it quickly!'

"Empoleon, Whirl island tactics!"

Empoleon readied metal claw, but, rather than attack, he dug his wings into the ground and traced a trench diagonal to the little fox.

Delta tracked Empoleon's movments. That path would curve behind Ko-Ai, but there was something else...

"Uh oh. Ko-Ai, yell at the ground!"

Ko-Ai didn't get it, but used hyper voice on the soft ground.

Soft, muddy ground.

Soft, muddy, moving ground!

Empoleon was circling eevee, not searching for an opening, but just increasing the centripetal spiral force of his whirlpool attack. It was a sequence that would remake the terrain into a traphole.

Ko-Ai escaped the trap by using the force of its own attack, but was now helpless in the air.

Dawn saw the opening. "The finale! Use a Flash Cannon!"

A shining sphere of flickering silver lights and iron dust materialized in front of Empoleon. It breathed in, then blew the energized payload on a near collision course for the falling foe. The attack didn't hit, but the shockwave that came from the stream's edge was enough to put the forged pokémon down.

The eevee was spun through the air straight into the trainer's waiting arms, apparently unconcerned by his absolute defeat. Why would he mind the loss? He certainly couldn't expect Ko-Ai, a youngish eevee, to take down a fully evolved pokémon, especially an empoleon. Besides that, these two (3 counting the empoleon) weren't aggressive. Empoleon only attacked to relieve Ko-Ai of her bloodlust, though he himself didn't understand why she was so enraged in the first place.

'How long was she in the pokéball? For that matter, when did I become her trainer?' His memories were still covered in black, but he had a few. All of them were with his partner eevee. Being chased around a greenhouse somewhere, talking to her while she was in the tank, playing with her so she got the hang of her mechanized form, and Her. In each of his memories, there was that woman there...

"Po-olee!" The royal pokémon snapped him out of his reflections. If his newfound ability of having a general idea of what pokémon were saying, the empoleon wanted to give him a ride. Seeing no other way to cross, took him up on his offer.


-"Donner, what's the hold-up? Did you locate the lair of Mespirit?"- An annoying voice bothered his observations of the battle between pokemon.

The one called Donner was hidden between two thick trunks at the edge of the lake, on a mission to procure the legend. His job was to verify the pokémon remained in the lake, and keep an eye out for strange-going ins and interlopers.

The mecha pokémon was strange.

He pressed a button on the side of his helmet. It vaguely resembled a beedril, or other ugly bug pokémon's face. It was camouflaged to blend in with the leaves and bark, as was his skin tight body suit. As he spoke with his link to command center, he appeared like an outstandingly threatening bug pokémon himself.

"Check the Northern shore. A trainer just appeared, and has engaged into battle with trainer Dawn." He replied in a monotone.

The woman on the other end was unsatisfied. -"What do you mean, a trainer appeared! The cameras you placed are acting u- wait, they're back online! Who is that guy!?"-

Donner sighed in contempt. In a perfect world, the woman who called herself his 'Commander' would be worm food, and he would be in his natural habitat. This was not a perfect world though, and the one to whom he pledged his allegiance assigned him to this woman. And while he feared and loved his master, Commander was simply awful to hear.

He wasn't upset about trying to catch Mespirit, a so-called sacred pokémon. He scoffed at meaningless words like 'sacred' or 'moral'. He didn't even care that much about the sheer boredom of surveillance, or taking orders from another. Rather, it was that the one he was being talked down to was inferior to himself in every way he perceived, which was therefore every possible way.

He decided to continue his report before commander got louder, and blew his cover. "Trainer appears to have only one pokéball, therefore one pokémon, but there may be more in that satchel of his. He is currently riding Empoleon to the southern shore. Also, he has some sort of...compulsion."

For three blessed moments, Commander was silent. -"What do you mean, compulsion?"-

He adjusted his long-range listening device to pick up the stranger's voice. "Just listen. He seems to do it withy every pokémon he encounters..."

The technicians in the command center listened through Donner's mike.

"...Name: magikarp, Typing: water pure. Rank: larval. Notes: its only redeeming qualities stat wise are its somewhat decent defense and relatively high speed. Its power is deplorable, though it's said the ancestors were significantly stronger in ancient times. they are impossibly numerous, and swim in huge schools. Evolution chain: magikarp, gyarados."

Donner's mike was silent for several seconds. An old man's voice was the first to break the silence. -"That was an...odd pokédex entry?"- He seemed unsure of what he was supposed to think.

"Incorrect. He used no pokédex. Rather, he simply recited the speech after seeing a magikarp, and did the same when he saw empoleon and his own eevee. It's as if he memorized a pokédex himself." He didn't bother focusing on that term he used. Rank.

He ranked the empoleon a paragon, and his own eevee a demi-paragon. And magikarp was larval. He knew those terms, paragon and larval. He seemed to perceive a pokémon species basic potential for combat situations. A perfect person to size up unknown foes.

Logically, even that idiot Commander could see the big picture, and worth of this boy. "Donner! Send out a couple of your pokémon to discreetly follow him. Perhaps we can capture him later, but for now, we need you at Lake Verity."

"Understood." He unclipped two pokéballs from his belt, then let 'em fly.


"Are you alright, Dawn?" Professor Rowan was mildly alarmed when his apprentice went into a trance, but was relieved when Empoleon didn't panic either. Truly, Sabrina's efforts at empathetic technology were progressing faster than before, thanks to Silph Co's funding. The effects were unsettling, but once Dawn opened her eyes and refocused , he knew she was unharmed.

"Professor, do you recognize that guy at all?"

The professor shook his head. "Never, though it seems unlikely his appearance here is mere coincidence. Although, it feels like I've seen that face before."

Dawn nodded her head in agreement. "Professor, how does the heart rope work? Things went a bit...odd...during the battle." She gave a quick recount of her astral battle.

The professor furrowed his brows, more puzzled then upset. "I can't say. Sabrina developed it for Silph Co. 'To tie together the wills of pokémon and humans, so their voices can reach each other beyond any obstacle or phantasm of the world or soul', was the wording she used in her letter. This was apparently a successful prototype she gave to help our search, though I never contacted her about it before."

As Dawn tried to puzzle out how that made sense, the professor raised another question. "Dawn, how do you feel about the eevee you saw while astrally projected?"

Dawn chose her words carefully. "It seemed like a normal eevee. When it attacked, it just wanted to show off and burn energy. It wanted to prove it could stand against whatever was thrown at it, and it did that pretty well! The closest comparison would be a baby pokémon that learned it had power, and wanted to see how they worked."

Rowan nodded. "Indeed. That boy is quite a suspicious character, but I feel he's trustworthy. In fact, I believe he could help us make a breakthrough in revealing Lucas's whereabouts."

Dawn spoke slowly."You think this boy...and Lucas...are somehow connected?"

He gave no answer, but simply gazed onward, his mind working like a thousand gears in preparation for even greater machinations.


"Huh?" He had awoken from dark dreams, and shook of the ghosts of the in the middle of a flower patch. In front of him was the puddle he had used to crossover, and he could see his reflection framed by the light of the rising sun. From this point of view, it appeared like a halo, or even a hood spun from gold.

'I may have hit my head, my thoughts are flying around.' He got on his feet, and took a breath of flowery air. "Millennia later, and I could never forget this place." 'Of course, I can no longer forget anything. Ever.'

He shrugged off those depressing thoughts, and decided to get moving. He palmed another smoky-looking pokéball. A person who saw him do this would assume, mistakingly, that he was a pokémon trainer. A person who found themselves observing this man would in the five miles north of nowhere would guess his age to be the early twenties, but would still be wrong. A person who saw the pokémon he commanded from it would know that the pokémon was foreign, but would be correct naming it garchomp.

A person seeing this dragon would probably assume, correctly, that it was over 2x the size of most garchomp. They could feel, even at 3 dozen meters away, that it was ancient beyond compare. They would feel the raw power as it carried its master through the air like a draconic fighter jet.

A person seeing this, just a young girl really, would return to the shrine until a time as to contact her fellows. The person would review, question themselves into the night, until coming to coming to the same conclusion as her counterparts would.

Enki had left Distortion world.

The warden dragon has become renegade again.