A/N: We have a lovely blend of English and Japanese names for Generation 5 Pokémon at the moment... I've used the English name if it has been released, but otherwise, my fall back is still the Japanese. I'm sorry! I'll switch all names to the English versions when all the names have been released. If I've missed some, I apologize. Also, I just have this fascination with the name 'White' over 'Touko'… Hopefully this isn't too annoying. =3

Warning: Major spoilers for the end of Pokémon Black/White lie herein. You have been warned.

Disclaimer: I own the scenario. Other than that, I've gone and taken a bunch of characters owned by other people, and stuck them together to see what would happen. It's like one big party.

On Earth as in Heaven

Chapter 1 – Seems Like You're Fading

The Pokéball rocked once…

My heart started to hammer a tattoo in my chest, blood pounding behind my ears so loudly I could hear nothing else. I was shaking with anticipation, ecstasy already running through my veins like wildfire. I could barely keep my glee in check.

Oh, I was going to do it this time. I was going to catch this Blitzle.

And about bloody time, too.

I'd only spent my entire day, from breakfast until now, tracking her down Route 3. And when I say tracking, I mean good, old-fashioned tracking. On my belly, crawling through mud, tracking. Through thick and thin, tracking. Through tree branches that had ripped half my hair out, tracking. None of that high tech tracking equipment some trainers used for me.

I was never going to get the mud stains out of my shirt, I was pretty sure I'd need to disinfect the gash on my leg at least twice, and my hair… well, it was never going to be the same again.

But none of that really mattered, because this time, I was going to catch her. That seventy-five dollars' worth of Pokéballs I'd run through? Yeah. Best investment I'd ever made.

The Pokéball rocked twice…

This was the high I lived for, right here. Better than any drug. These were the moments I lived for. These moments, these moments between ultimate triumph and failure, between the life and death of a dream, between the dawn and ruin of reality. These moments between black and white.

These moments took my breath away. They made time freeze, made my heart hammer, made adrenaline race through my veins, made the whole world make sense, made me feel alive. These moments that culminated all my hard work – all my Pokémon's hard work. These moments that summed up everything I'd spent two years working for.

Everything came down to these moments. The whole world – or my whole world, anyway – shrunk down to this place on Route 3, the Pokéball rocking in the grass, this moment. This one moment. Today. The now.

This one moment defined who I was. It defined who my Pokémon were. I lived for it. I lived for this moment, this high, these Pokémon. That's right. I lived for Pokémon. And sometimes, they lived for me, too.

Such was my life. And I didn't regret a minute of it.

The Pokéball rocked three times…

This was it.

I could feel my heart already begin to soar.

She was mine, all right.

My Serperior was coiled up around himself in the grass beside me, watching the rocking Pokéball unblinkingly with his sharp snake eyes. He looked as though he was willing it to stop – I wouldn't be surprised if that one look from him made it stop, either, such was the intensity of it.

Serperior had been through the thick and thin of things with me today and was no doubt looking for a snake-nap. He was even more anxious than I was to have this Blitzle caught. Sometimes I wasn't sure if that was because it was what I wanted, or what he wanted. Maybe it was both.

"Here it is," I hissed excitedly between clenched teeth as the Pokéball just started to tip back for the fourth (and, fingers crossed, final) time. Any second now, it would stop, and Blitzle would be mine. Any second now…

Briiiiiiiiiing. Briiiiiiiiiing.

I was shocked back into reality all at once, and I blinked stupidly, looking around, stunned, to see what had made the noise. Then it hit me. I was making that god-awful sound. Or my Xtransceiver was, anyway…

It was ringing.

Oh, no. Oh, no. No, no, no, no! This kind of thing did not just happen when I was about to catch a Pokémon. It just didn't. It couldn't. It… it defied some physics law or something. It had to. It must have been a figment of my imagination. No one could possibly be calling me right now. The thought was simply ludicrous.

Briiiiiiiiiing. Briiiiiiiiiing.

Damn. It really was ringing, wasn't it?

Frick.

I did not want to have to pick it up – I was busy for god's sake! – but I also knew that it was probably Professor Juniper. She was the only one who ever called in the middle of the day. Usually to ask me to do something for her.

Sad fact numero uno: I couldn't really refuse to help her. The woman had given me my Snivy two years ago. I owed the woman. I owed her my life, really. If it hadn't been for her decision to give me Snivy, I'd be wasting my days away in college, studying. Instead, I had this life. This amazing, wonderful life I adored. Where every day was a new adventure, every day I had I duty, every day ended in an accomplishment.

The short and narrow of it was, if she asked for a lung, I'd give it to her.

If that weren't enough, I also knew she'd flay me alive if I didn't pick up. I'd been on the receiving end of more than one responsibility lecture from her, and given the choice, I'd avoid any in future. She'd want to know how Serperior was doing, how 'Shram was doing, what I'd been up to, what my plan was for the next fifty years…

She was kind of motherly like that – and not in a good, I-need-to-cry-my-eyes-out-and-be-babied kind of way. In the why-haven't-you-done-your-laundry-yet kind of way. I got that enough from my own mother, I didn't need it from Juniper, too.

Not that I could blame her – if I'd given a fourteen-year-old a Pokémon, I'd want to make sure it hadn't died of starvation, too. One too many goldfish had gone that way.

Juniper never called me for no good reason – it was always something important. After all, she never knew just what she could be interrupting. One Gym match had taught her that well enough (though from what I'd gathered she'd gotten worse from Cheren once… but that's beside the point).

"Frick," I swore. I didn't have a choice. I'd have to pick up.

Swearing fluently, I dug one hand into the back slung over my shoulder, feeling around blindly for my Xtransceiver. My bag was like one big black hole – everything went in it, but nothing ever really found its way back out.

I fingered a deck of playing cards… then a broken poker chip… lip gloss… nail file… Aspirin… Pokédex… I started identifying things by feel. It was really the only hope I had of finding my Sceiver. Next was the Vulpix lighter Black had given me for my birthday… the pack of Marlboro smokes my mother didn't need to know about… a few crumpled up dollar bills… guitar pick… a Leaf Stone (was that where I'd put it?)… a stack of post-it notes from N…

Aha!

My hand curled around what was unmistakeably my still-ringing Sceiver, and I yanked it out of my bag. I hit the answer button at the same time, holding it up to my face. Anything to make that accursed ringing stop.

"Yo. What do you need done this time, Juniper?" I snapped a little impatiently before I even looked to see who it was calling me. The caster hadn't even connected properly yet. "I'm in the middle of something important, so make it quick," I added as an afterthought, keeping one eye on my Pokéball, which was still teetering indecisively in the grass.

"Juniper?" A very not middle-aged woman's voice sounded through the fuzz of my Sceiver. Evidently it had been more than a little damaged when I'd slipped and fallen on it this morning chasing after my Blitzle. "White? Is that you? Why don't you have the video turned on?"

Now that was a good question. All I had was a lot of black and white noise on my screen, and not a lot of anything else. I shook it as hard as I could, as though that would somehow help it connect, but the screen continued to be a field of static. Damn. How much would this cost to replace? Juniper would be royally pissed…

"I think I might have broken it," I admitted feebly, pursing my lips. I checked the one side to make sure the video was turned on, and my heart sunk. Yep, definitely broken. The whole button was missing, and little short-circuited wires were sticking up through the hole the button had left in its place. Great. Just great.

"I swear, White," the voice chuckled bemusedly over my officially broken Sceiver. "Your technology rep is a thing of legend. You were going to break it at some point. I could've called it. This must be a new record for you – it's lasted what, two years? Longer than any flashlight you've ever owned."

Okay, so maybe I'd broken one or two things in my life. The blender had not been my fault, and that iPod was broken when I'd gotten it. The digital camera was the fault of one (okay, maybe more than one) poorly placed rocks. N's flat screen was an accident – how was I to know he had a Kecleon on the floor? The laptop was an honest mistake, and everyone knew flashlights were made in mass and poorly designed, so was I to blame if they broke? I didn't think so.

So maybe I was a little clumsy at times. And maybe I avoided electricity like the plague. But wasn't that just better for everyone? I was an energy-saving machine. That's right. It was all intentional. I was saving the planet.

… That was my story and I was sticking to it.

"Way to kick me when I'm down," I replied crisply with an indignant little sniff. "So maybe the video's out. It doesn't hurt to remember the days when vid calling didn't exist. It's a blast from the past. Speaking of, who is this, anyway?"

"It's N," my mysterious caller replied with a laugh. "Thought you'd be able to tell. How many people have your number, anyway? It can't be many," he continued. Oh, if only he knew how many people had my number. A hell of a lot more than should would be a reasonable guess.

N. Oh, N. Why were you calling me now of all times? Maybe, in a life or death situation I could avoid talking to Juniper, but you? No, I could never not talk to you. We were too closely linked for that now. If I had to pinpoint one moment in my life I regretted, it was the moment I'd agreed to becoming a Hero like you.

"Not many," I lied through my teeth easily, using the chirpy little voice I always used when I talked to N. He didn't need to know he was the biggest regret of my life. "But it was a late night last night with Bianca, and I'm tired."

That wasn't strictly a lie. I had been with Bianca. Or we'd been at the same party, anyway. And I was pretty sure she'd hailed me a taxi back to Nuvema Town once I'd gotten a little too tipsy. ... Or maybe that was Cheren… or Black… had Black come home with me? Something told me he had. But I couldn't remember the details.

"I see," he bought into my little white lie easily. He tended to do that, automatically assumed I was one hundred percent honest with him. Maybe sometimes I felt guilty about lying to him all the time – but it was for the best. N was… well, as far as guys went, he was pretty dang innocent. I felt like this was saying something as he was two years older than me.

He was happier not knowing that maybe sometimes I was a little less than perfect. He was happier not knowing that maybe sometimes I smoked a cig or two when I was stressed. He was happier not knowing that maybe sometimes I got plastered on nights out with Cheren, Bianca, and Black. He was happier not knowing that once and a while me and Black maybe got a little too close. Because those were things I was sure N would never, ever do.

There were other things, too, but the other things he could understand. He could understand that I caught Pokémon, even if he didn't like it. He could understand that I made them fight, but that they wanted to fight for me. He could understand those things. Because those things involved Pokémon. It was the relations between humans, and the things I needed as a human, I knew he wouldn't accept.

So was it so bad that I just didn't tell him?

I didn't think so.

"Anyway, you said you were busy with something important? Is it really all that important or can I borrow you tonight?" He continued, completely unaware of the expression of pure disdain that had fallen over my face at his very suggestion.

I bit my lip at N's request and raked a hand through my tangled hair. Could he borrow me tonight? What kind of question was that? It wasn't like I had a choice. When he said jump, I didn't have much choice but to ask how high. But tonight? I needed to be out training my new Blitzle –

… Oh.

When I looked back up over my Sceiver, it was to see a very open Pokéball lying in the grass, with no sign of my Blitzle in sight. Serperior was giving me a disappointed kind of look that just screamed, You should know better, White. Next time, don't answer that stupid little piece of metal you insist you carry around with you.

"Fu – damn it," I caught myself, but still snapped angrily. "Damn it, damn it, damn it." I could kick myself. Why the hell had I picked up? I could've phoned N back right away (if I remembered, that was), but no. Instead, I'd lost my shot at catching my perfect little Blitzle. Why not, right? It wasn't like I'd spent my whole day trying to catch her or anything.

"What happened?" N asked over the Sceiver, and it took every ounce of self-restraint I had not to snap right back, You happened. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep myself from screaming and balled my free hand into a fist so hard I could feel my nails begin to break the skin.

It's not N's fault, it's not N's fault, I told myself like a mantra. Don't you dare snap at him, White. You were the one who was a complete and total idiot, not him. You can take all the credit for that one yourself. But damn was that ever hard.

"Nothing. It doesn't matter," I replied instead. My jaw clenched despite myself, and I felt ready to hurt someone. Still, my mind was screaming, Why the hell did you have to call now of all times, N? Why now? "And no, it isn't important. At least not anymore. What did you have in mind?"

I could practically hear the smile in his voice. He was such a child. Happy over the smallest of things, I swear. It wasn't like he didn't know I would make time for him if he asked for it. "You, me, Nimbasa City, amusement park, half an hour?"

"Deal, so long as you're buying," I replied easily. Now that I had no Blitzle to show for my hard spent cash, I was feeling a little bitter. Not to mention broke. Besides, I'd just seen N three days ago; there was no way I needed to see him again so soon. I usually had at least a week between visits. What had happened to that, huh?

"Don't I always?" He replied rhetorically with a little laugh in his voice. "Anyways, bring your Sceiver. I'll see if I can fix it. And Reshiram, bring her along too."

I thought these were two of the stupidest comments I'd ever heard. Bring my Sceiver? Of course I would. If it was on me now, it was going to be on me in half an hour. I'd barely be able to get to Nimbasa City in half an hour as it was. What was I going to do, stash it in an old tree log en route or something?

And bring along 'Shram? Wasn't bringing her along kind of the whole point of this little venture? Besides, he knew she was my only Flying type. She was the only way I was even going to get to Nimbasa City in half an hour.

"And… I'll see you there, White. I miss you when you're gone, you know," he finished.

I felt a blush work its way into my cheeks despite myself. N could be brutally honest sometimes, but at the same time, I was sure he didn't mean anything by it. There was something just plain different about N. It made him incredibly difficult to read. What exactly was different about N? Well, if I tried to put words to it, it would be that he didn't always act… well… human.

"Sure thing," I muttered back halfheartedly, but he'd already hung up.

I sighed heavily, raking a hand through my hair again, working my fingers through the knots. This was not part of the plan for the day. Not at all. Especially now, when I looked like shit because I'd spent all day tracking that stupid Blitzle. I didn't want to go out now, thanks. I wanted a shower, that was what I wanted.

But that really wasn't an option – not anymore, anyway. Oh, no. If I had known being a Hero would screw up my life so badly, I never would have taken that Light Stone from Lenora all those long months ago.

There wasn't much point in dwelling on it now. What was done was done. All that was left was the price to pay.

"Return, Serperior," I muttered in a defeated kind of way, shoving my Sceiver back in my bag and grabbing hold of both Serperior's and Reshiram's Pokéballs from my belt. Serperior was still looking decidedly unimpressed with me for having let the Blitzle get away.

"Don't give me that. You know the situation," I told him defensively as I recalled him. "When it comes down to Reshiram and Zekrom, you've got about as much choice as I do. And that's none. When the Lord calls, we can't do much but answer."

I don't like it either, I added mentally. If I could get rid of 'Shram, stick her back in that stupid little Light Stone, bury her hundreds – no, thousands – of feet down in the ground so she could never come back again, believe me, Serperior, I would. I'd be the first one to do it. But it would never work, and she'd just come back thousands of times worse than she already is.

"Come on, Reshiram, the Lord calls," I continued quickly, wiping the thought from my mind as I threw Reshiram's Pokéball out. I'd played over more scenarios than I could count, on how I could get rid of Reshiram. I felt terrible for having these thoughts, but I couldn't help it. I hated her. Truly, truly, I hated her, and I hated everything she stood for even more.

She was marvelous to look at, Reshiram; easily the most exquisite Pokémon I'd ever seen. I mean really stunning. She looked like a swan, snow white and pure, with a regal look in her eye and stature. She moved like she walked on air, all flowing and graceful. In fact, I wouldn't be exactly surprised if she did walk on air. Like a little angel, all pure, and pampered, and perfect.

But damn, did she have one hell of a temper to contend with.

"Looks like we're off to Nimbasa City this time," I told her easily as she materialized a few feet away. She was watching me closely with her too-bright eyes. It felt a little as though she were glaring at me. Sometimes I got the feeling that she liked me about as much as I liked her: not at all.

"Going to go see your old pal, Zekrom. I know how much you just love that," I continued, ignoring the piercing look I was getting. I was pretty sure she hated Zekrom about as much as I did, too. But what did I know? Maybe she loved seeing Zekrom.

It just seemed about as likely as that Celebi myth my mom used to tell me at bedtime.

Reshiram snorted and tendrils of flame leapt from her flared nostrils. Evidently, she agreed. Seeing Zekrom was not exactly her idea of a great time, either. She ruffled her wings a little, like the very thought made her feel dirty, and gave me a look that said the same thing. Luckily, I was plenty used to her attitude.

Nevertheless, she did turn around and lower her wings a little, glancing back at me expectantly over her shoulder as if to say, Fine. You might as well get on, foolish little two-legger.

"Thanks, 'Shram," I acknowledged with a little bob of my head. I knew she probably expected me to get down on my knees and worship her for her benevolence. Or at least curtsy. But I'd shoot myself before I did anything like that.

As it was, I bit my tongue hard having to thank her at all. While I was willing to flirt with her temper, I wasn't quite prepared to just ignore her. Even if I did have control over her, technically, I doubted that would stop her from incinerating me to a crisp if I put another toe out of line.

Thank God Reshiram understood the whole situation with N and Zekrom as well as I did. Otherwise, all of Unova – no, probably the whole world – would be in deep, deep shit by now.

All things considered, you'd think she'd give me a little cooperation. But no. She just acted like a spoiled brat. I guess being a legendary dragon gave you some kind of rights I didn't know about. Right to burn down entire forests on a whim, right to drop your trainer from hundreds of feet in the air (don't laugh; it's happened… more than once)… that kind of thing.

Did I want to ride her all the way to Nimbasa City? No, not really. That would be like wanting to break all the bones in my right arm.

But I didn't have much of a choice, now, did I? So it was that I didn't hesitate to vault lightly up on her back, despite my obvious qualms of trusting Reshiram with my life. I was doubly careful not to bend any of her feathers the wrong way (I knew from experience that she'd throw me right away if I did) as I settled on her back, my legs in front of her haunches and just behind her wing joint. I leaned forward and gripped the glass-like loops around her neck to anchor myself.

No matter how regal she looked from the ground, I always felt like I was riding a giant chicken.

Don't tell her I said that.

"Giddy on up, 'Shram," I clucked, and with a sudden lurch, Reshiram spread her wings and took flight. I didn't exactly understand how she did it. Fly suddenly, I mean. She didn't exactly take a running start. She just kind of opened her wings and took off. Legendary dragons evidently didn't need to follow the laws of physics either.

I didn't exactly like these sudden starts. They always made me feel sick. This one was no different.

Things never got much better when she'd finally settled on an air current. I was pretty sure she did it intentionally, but she was constantly throwing me. She'd veer sideways for no apparent reason, do a loop-de-loop mid-air, or tuck her wings in tight and dive so suddenly I didn't think she'd have enough time to lift up again. So it was that I'd gotten into the habit of holding on so tightly my fists were white, and by the time we'd land, I'd have one hell of a time unclenching them again.

Other than those small, insignificant details, though, she was a smooth ride. Not that I'd had much experience with any other Pokémon. Black had let me fly his Hydreigon once, and I supposed Reshiram was smoother than that, but that wasn't much comparison.

Besides, if I couldn't hold up to a twenty minute ride on a Pokémon, how the hell was I going to survive a night at an amusement park with N? I wasn't, that's how.

Had I mentioned how deathly afraid of heights I was?

No? Well, I was. They'd never really sat well with me, and let me tell you, being hundreds of feet in the air on a Pokémon who would feel no remorse if she chucked me down those hundreds of feet only made me feel worse.

I closed my eyes and pressed my face into Reshiram's neck so that I wouldn't have to see how high up in the air we were. This probably wasn't the best of plans, given how often she'd tried to throw me, but I did it anyway. I wasn't afraid of much, just needles and Scolipede mostly, but I really couldn't handle heights.

I was pretty sure N knew this about me, so I had to wonder why he'd picked Nimbasa City of all places to meet up. I knew he really didn't like having both Zekrom and Reshiram in the Castle – his Castle – after everything that had happened there, and all the Team Plasma activity still happening there, but still. That's where we'd been three days ago, and I didn't understand what wouldn't work about it this time.

Now that I really thought about it, meeting in Nimbasa City didn't make any sense at all. Wasn't the whole reason we met up at the Castle because no one would see us there? Hadn't that been our agreement? To try and keep Reshiram and Zekrom as much of a secret as we could? Or at least… whatever it was happening between them a secret?

It was pretty wildly publicized, what N and I had done. Everyone knew we were the Heroes for which the legendary Pokémon Zekrom and Reshiram searched. Everyone knew that, not only had we released the dragons, but that we controlled them. Everyone knew that, in taming the dragons, we had saved Unova.

That was easy enough to say, but I was pretty dang sure no one knew just what we had saved Unova from. And N and I planned to keep things that way for as long as we could.

Zekrom and Reshiram were the Pokémon of balance, of ideal and reality, of black and white. I was sure N had known that when he'd released Zekrom, just as I'd known it when I'd accepted the Light Stone from Lenora. Indeed, that was the whole reason Zekrom's presence was enough to awaken Reshiram from the Light Stone that fateful night in N's Castle.

Black could not exist without white; Zekrom could not exist without Reshiram. The darkness calls to the light, and the light calls again to the darkness. It all made sense. They were two halves of one whole, after all.

What we hadn't known was that that would carry on out after we'd captured them. That it would carry on out after we'd, more or less, put a seal on their destructive powers.

It made sense to me at the time. When N had released Zekrom, he'd released only one half of the whole. There was an imbalance. But when I'd released Reshiram, then that balance should have been likewise restored.

As it turned out, things didn't work out quite that nicely.

The balance, once broken, was not so easily restored.

Everything was fine. For two months, everything was fine. I had every reason to forget all about N and Team Plasma and being a Hero and the whole mess with Zekrom and Reshiram, and I was happy to do so. That small happiness just didn't last long.

Things started to get a little… strange after that. More unusual than strange, in the beginning. I might not have noticed for the first month or so if I didn't live so close to Professor Juniper. If I didn't hear the new trainers complaining for weeks on end about how there were no wild Pokémon straight from Nuvema Town to Nimbasa City, and even then they were rare. I usually did my training closer to the League, so I hadn't noticed, but when I'd gone out to see for myself, it was to find nothing. Not even a trail of a Pokémon.

Researchers across Unova had called it a natural phenomenon that happened every few hundred years or so. Pokémon would suddenly up and leave and make some sort of great migration – no one really knew where exactly they were migrating, but it was definitely happening, and it was definitely somewhere very reclusive for humans not to know about it. Apparently there were all kinds of evidence to support this.

I could buy that. Professor Juniper was on board with the theory, and Pokémon did migrate. It was a little strange that only Pokémon from one area were doing it, but I figured those hotshot scientists knew what they were doing. I'd never make that mistake again.

So it didn't seem all that unusual a few weeks later when Pokémon started appearing again en masse. It didn't even seem all that strange that they were traveling in packs – huge packs, of hundreds or more. Maybe it was a little peculiar that they were attacking in threes, fours, and even fives, but maybe they were just settling back in and taking their time to do it. Reclaiming territory or something.

Then the link to the Dream World suddenly failed, for no apparent reason. Poor Fennel had no idea what had happened, and was having a horrible time trying to restore it. Nothing she did seemed to be having any effect – Bianca had even taken her Musharna out to see if it could help. It hadn't. The whole incident seemed totally unrelated at the time – though I'd felt terrible for Fennel.

It wasn't until a month later that the seasonal cycle had fallen apart. And I mean fallen apart.

It started when Cubchoo stared to appear in the wild, miles away from snow. The poor things were dying, left right and center, in the heat. It was horrible to see. I'd come across one or two, well beyond saving, and it made me sick. No one was sure why they were migrating so suddenly in the summer, either. No one could seem to stop them from walking aimlessly out, in the height of August, to their deaths.

Then baby Deerling were flowering all wrong, too. As summer turned to autumn, they were blossoming. The weather just wasn't right to support it, though. In most places, when the sun wasn't quite right, the days were too short, and the temperatures were too low, the Deerling quickly became sick. PokéCenters were full of them – wild and tame alike. They almost couldn't support the trainer population, they were so busy.

Then the seasons themselves fell apart. I woke up to snow in the middle of September. It had all melted by the next day, and the cherry blossom tree in our back yard was blooming. Then, two days later, leaves were falling off the trees, and the next day, it was blisteringly hot. There was no rhyme or reason to it, just one extreme following another.

After two weeks of this, after more bodies of dead, innocent Pokémon then I ever cared to count had been buried, we had a night without a day.

The moon was out, and the stars were twinkling up above in the abyss of the heavens, but the sun never rose. Night reached across all of Unova; from peak to governing peak, there was nothing but a blanket of eternal blackness. One the sun would not breach.

That night without day stretched into two nights without day, and quickly time began to lose its meaning. People were panicking; things were burning in the distance in an attempt to bring forth light once again, but to no avail. We were still in darkness. Ever encroaching darkness. The world felt frozen over.

By the third night, people were resorting to paganism. I didn't look, but my mother had seen it. Someone had suggested that we had angered the ancient gods. Someone else had suggested sacrifice as the remedy. Human and Pokémon alike. There were carcasses hanging from doorsteps and on pikes around the town. Everywhere. The willing and unwilling alike would never see the light of day again. They were dead.

Those were dark days. As the third day-that-was-not-day started, there was only one word on people's tongues: Apocalypse. The Apocalypse had finally come to claim us all.

Maybe the Apocalypse would have come, if N hadn't appeared at my doorstep that night, Zekrom in tow. I'd always remember the look on his face when I'd opened the door.

Maybe it was because I saw him first in candlelight that he looked so striking – the power had gone out at the end of the first night without day, and no one had yet been able to restore it. The shadows made his face look oddly angular, his features somehow more defined. His eyes looked too dark for him, where they had always held a sparkle before. He looked… skeletal, somehow. Dead.

He'd asked me one thing, and I could still hear the desperation in his voice. It had chilled me.

Where is Reshiram?

It took only two hours.

The moment I'd released Reshiram, she'd roared at Zekrom, and the two had taken off, racing, over the line of trees; they were gone in seconds, not so much as a flicker of flame or a spark of lightning to show us just where they'd gone.

And N and I were left standing in my front yard, me in my pajamas and him in a dirty shirt and ripped jeans, trying to understand what was happening.

We'd stood there for a very long time, gazing unseeingly into the darkness, waiting for some sign of our Pokémon. We hadn't spoken. What was there to say, after all? For all we knew, our last hope had just run away from us, and we were waiting for the earth to awaken and swallow us whole.

Just when I'd lost all hope, it happened.

Zekrom and Reshiram lit up the sky.

I'd seen it enough to know Reshiram had used Cross Flame. Zekrom must have used Cross Thunder. The spark in the sky was so bright; I had to cover my eyes. It burned into my mind terribly, like a brand on the inside of my eyelids, and I couldn't watch it.

It went on for about twenty minutes before the light slowly died, but by then, there was a touch of pink in the sky, over the mountains. As the light from our Pokémon faded, the sky started to light up all on its own.

The sun was rising again.

I watched the sun rise with N that morning. Just stood there, shaky and unfeeling, as the sun rose on that fourth day. It rose in autumn. The leaves on the trees were red-orange, and as the day passed by, they fell in the gentle breeze coming from the west.

Eventually Zekrom and Reshiram returned, as though nothing had ever happened. The same day, the Cubchoo and Deerling fell back into their natural habits, and the Dream World link was restored. Pokémon started to behave normally again. Everything fell back into place, as neat as could be. As though it had never happened…

And N and I had a very long talk about what had happened, why it had happened, how we could stop it from happening again.

Word of mouth was that the gods had given us another chance. N and I were the only ones who knew the truth. Pokémon ruled this world, not gods.

Every week since that day that wasn't day, I would fly Reshiram out to N's castle. Zekrom and Reshiram fought, more often than not, or sulked in opposite sides of the sky and refused to look at one another, but somehow… somehow that kept everything right. That alone kept the balance. That kept Pokémon were they ought to be, that kept the world turning on its axis, that kept the sun in the sky.

We didn't want people to know. We didn't want people to know that it was us, just us, keeping the world spinning and the nights turning into days. That was too much pressure added to an already heavy burden.

So we kept it a secret. I'd told Black, so he would understand when I said, No, not today, but that was all. Cheren didn't know, Bianca didn't know… my own mother didn't know. And I wanted desperately to keep it that way.

That was why we used N's Castle for our little meetings. It was remote enough that people wouldn't notice two dragons at war with one another in the sky. Even if they did, they probably wouldn't question it, the Castle was so far off into nowhere. I'd thought we both understood the necessity of it.

But apparently not, if we were meeting in Nimbasa City.

It didn't feel right to question N, though. He was the one who always felt the turn in the currents when the balance started to break again. He was always the one to call me and tell me to bring Reshiram. I'd never noticed – the only time the imbalance had gotten out of hand, I hadn't noticed until it was almost too late.

That was why I'd always listened to him when he asked me to come. That's why I always had, and always would, drop everything, fly halfway across the country, just to see him. He was in tune with the balance. And I was not.

That's what got me on the back of this dragon trying to kill me, despite the fact that I lost all my nerve the moment we were half a foot off the ground. I didn't have a choice in this. I was already written into the fabrics that kept the earth going, and I wasn't going to be able to write myself out again. Not now.

As I opened my eyes, just wide enough to gauge how close we were to the bubbling city life that was Nimbasa City, Reshiram started to descend. We were far, far too high up for my liking, and I felt my stomach give an unpleasant lurch, but I bit my tongue and dealt with it.

We were somewhere over the desert wasteland that was Route 4 now. We would be in the heart of Nimbasa City any minute. Or on the outskirts of it, anyway, where I'd be able to recall Reshiram in peace. Which was really great, because I was going to lose lunch any second now.

A minute or two later, Reshiram touched ground. She landed like she took off – all at once. I also landed like I took off – totally unprepared.

As Reshiram landed, I flew off over the top of her head, did a kind of twist midair as I tried to figure out which way was up, and landed hard on my back. It hurt like hell, and I winced as I tried to move again. I was pretty sure Reshiram was laughing at me in her own way.

Foolish little two-legger can't fly, I was pretty sure she was saying.

"Frick, 'Shram," I moaned, wincing as I pushed myself up to a sitting position and turning to glare at her. She sure looked like she was mocking me, a little sort of half-smile on her face and a glimmer in her eye. "You're trying to kill me," I acknowledged sourly as little tendrils of pain licked up my spine. "You are honestly trying to kill me."

Standing up hurt. A lot. Hissing between my teeth, I recalled Reshiram, swearing at her beneath my breath. I threw her Pokéball in my bag rather than clipping it back on my belt. I never wanted to see her smug little look again. If I was lucky, I'd never find her in my black hole of a bag.

Looking around, I realized she'd dumped me in the same little clearing to the east of Nimbasa City we always used when we flew here (which wasn't often; but it had happened a time or two before). I'd heard the city was clearing it for a National Park or some such nonsense. A little unfortunate, as it made a great landing strip.

Dusting myself off, I started off to pick my way through some of the underbrush bordering the clearing. It wasn't very thick. I thought they'd probably already started thinning it. It did make it easier to get through, though, and after my day spent crawling through forest much thicker than this, it was something of a relief.

A few feet in, and I could already see the lights of Nimbasa City flashing up in the sky. The lights moved unnaturally on the rides of the amusement park, and above the line of the trees, they looked a little alien. The fact that the sun was setting rapidly in the west only added to the effect. If I'd been younger, I probably would have thought we were being invaded.

There was a fence not far from the clearing, separating the forest Reshiram and I had landed in from the rest of the city. I wasn't really sure why it was necessary – what was out there the public needed to be protected from? I shrugged the thought off.

It was just a few two-by-fours nailed together. A bit of a blemish on the rest of the upbeat, techno city, I thought. Point was, it wasn't very difficult to scale, even if my back was protesting, and I reached the top of it in a couple of seconds, swinging myself over, and landing neatly on the sidewalk on the other side like a cat.

No one really paid much attention to the roughed-up girl that had just jumped the fence, but there was a little boy with an ice cream cone in his hand across the street giving me a funny sort of look. I gave him a funny sort of look right back, and he quickly averted his eyes again. It wasn't polite to stare.

I ran my fingers through my hair, trying to work out some of the knots. I didn't care what people in Nuvema Town thought of me – they'd known me in diapers, after all – but people in Nimbasa City were a little different. I didn't want to look like a total savage to them. I knew people here. Cool people.

But there was no helping it. My hair was beyond fixing at this point.

Compromising, I looped it into a kind of messy bun, to hide the really terrible knots, and put my hat back on to hide the rest of it. Now all I had to do was pray the rest of me looked reasonable. It seemed a bit of a stretch.

Yet another reason I shouldn't even be in Nimbasa City, I supposed.

Sighing, I tried to wipe some more of the grime off my shorts and legs, but it was really beyond hope. I had a lovely layer of caked mud from my combat boots up past my knees, and it wasn't coming off any time soon. It would probably be best if I just started off now and got this whole surprise meeting with N over with.

I looked around, trying to gauge just where I was in the city's limits. The amusement park was usually visible from every corner of the city. The Ferris Wheel in particular could be seen from across town it was so tall, the lights bright enough to light the streets at night. Indeed, the few nights I'd stayed here, the light from it had actually kept me awake at night.

The park was only maybe a block or two down the road from where I was.

Great. That meant less people were likely to see me dressed like this.

I ducked into the shadows a little, just to be sure no one saw me too clearly, and jogged up the street towards the park. It was probably around six – most people would be having dinner. I didn't see anyone other than the little boy with the ice cream, but he was gone now.

I was glad the amusement park was free and I didn't have to try and dig out a few precious dollars from the bottom of my bag. Instead, I just jogged right in, under the banners, slowing down to a walk so I could look around and find N. Knowing him, he'd probably already been at the amusement park when he'd called me. I'd bet Reshiram on it.

The amusement park didn't look half as flashy at night. You couldn't look at the interesting architecture or the funny bushes cut into the shapes of Pokémon. All you could see were the lights, and while those might be interesting to watch for a few minutes, I knew I'd lose interest quickly.

There weren't many people here. Maybe two or three stragglers, wandering around watching the rides run. Then, it was a Wednesday night, and when you lived in a city with its own amusement park, its appeal probably dropped off pretty quickly.

N wasn't very difficult to find – even in the dark.

Crazy tall, lanky guy, long green hair, pretty attractive, kind of shadowy… he was difficult to miss.

He was leaning against a tree just across from the Ferris Wheel, his arms crossed, watching the ride circle 'round and 'round. I couldn't begin to understand his fascination with dynamics and quantum whats-its, but just by looking at him it was easy to tell he loved it. Loved the laws that governed the natural world. I thought maybe it gave him something solid to hold onto. Something that never changed.

"Hey, N," I called out to him as I jogged up, dropping into my cheerful little voice almost out of habit. He turned at the sound of my voice, and his face broke into a wide smile as he saw me.

He was crazy tall – the top of my head just reaching his shoulder – and lanky in an elegant kind of way. I mean, I could understand why Team Plasma called him Lord, or even King. He could pass as royalty easily; just by the way he carried himself and the striking set of his features. What I could appreciate was that he acted so carefree, like it wouldn't have mattered even if he did have blue blood.

"White," he grinned as I stopped beside him. His smile lessened a little as he took in my disheveled appearance. "What happened to you?" He asked, obviously concerned.

I felt my face flush a little despite myself, suddenly self-conscious, and I started trying to dust more of the mud off my legs. "Nothing. I was just out with my Pokémon. Things got a little… messy. You know how it is."

"Ah," he acknowledged with a little bob of his head, but he had a curious expression on his face, like he didn't quite understand what I'd said. "Anyway, shall we go up?" He continued forcibly after a moment of awkward silence.

"Up?" I asked, feeling confused as my eyebrows knit. "Up where?" Weren't we just going to release Reshiram and Zekrom so they could do whatever it was they did to keep the balance? I mean, why else would we have come here?

"The Ferris Wheel?" N prompted, nodding towards the ride across from us. He gave me a curious look again, like I was some mathematical equation he didn't understand.

I blinked. We were going on the Ferris Wheel because…? I mean, sure, rides, fun stuff to help us pass the time while our Pokémon went out and saved the world or whatever. But Reshiram and Zekrom always took their time before they returned, and it made way more sense to release them first.

"Are you feeling alright, White?" He asked gently when I didn't say anything, putting a hand under my elbow as though I were about to tip over. "We can postpone this if you want."

"I'm fine," I muttered a little more brusquely than I would have liked. What does he mean we can postpone? Of course we can't postpone! This is Zekrom and Reshiram we're dealing with! "The Ferris Wheel. Yeah." I finished lamely.

"If you're sure," he conceded, but was still watching me closely like I was about to spontaneously combust.

The hell was his problem? Did I have something on my face or something? Something that screamed this girl needs to be quarantined right now?

"Let's just go up," I brushed aside him and stomped across to the Ferris Wheel, feeling a little put-out, and leaving him to catch up to me. First, I looked terrible, and then I looked sick. Gee, thanks, N. Not like I missed my chance at a Blitzle for you, or came storming out here on 'Shram to have her try and kill me as we landed or anything.

No one else was on the Ferris Wheel. I could tell, looking through the glass of each of the separate carriages. Maybe N was just taking a risk and thought we could release the dragons at the top or something. I didn't like the idea, but fact was, no one was out to see them anyway.

The entire amusement park was on-demand, and I hit a button hard with a fist to stop the ride so we could get on. A few seconds later, and the wheel had stopped, the door to the nearest compartment sliding open for us.

I stomped over to it and slid into one side of the compartment, crossing my arms a little irritably. N followed close behind me, sitting across from me with the odd look still on his face, as he pushed the door closed again with a foot.

I didn't look at him as the wheel jittered back into life and started to rotate again. Couldn't we get on with it? I felt a little grumpy. It wasn't because of the little tendrils of fear working their way through my veins at being up in the air, either.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him lean forward a little and set his elbows on his knees, watching me carefully. The wheel spun once, and neither of us had yet said anything. Neither of us had even moved. I was concentrating hard on my breathing, feeling my chest expand and contract.

The compartment wasn't lit internally, by the moonlight let me see him well enough. As we reached the bottom of the wheel's path for the second time, I finally turned to him and asked, "So what did you want to talk about?"

Only he'd asked the same thing at the same moment.

My eyebrows knit again, and I was pretty sure I was giving him the same look he'd been giving me before. "What are you talking about? You asked me out here," I said not so much as a second later. "You, me, Nimbasa City, amusement park, half an hour." I repeated.

N looked about as confused as I was. "I didn't ask you out here, White," he replied, shaking his head a little. "You called me and asked me to meet you here. You said you wanted to talk to me somewhere private. You said to meet you at the Ferris Wheel in Nimbasa City."

…What?

"I – " I started, but was cut off when the Ferris Wheel suddenly jerked to a stop. I was thrown forward hard, but N caught me neatly in his arms before I hit the floor.

"The hell…?" I heard N start, and I realized with a shock that it was the first time I'd heard him even come close to swearing. I looked up at him from where he was holding me off the floor, but he was staring up at the ceiling of our compartment, his eyebrows knit and a frown already setting in over his features.

I pushed myself to my feet and out of his arms, looking up at the ceiling, too. Of course, there wasn't much to see, except for an escape door mounted in the center of the ceiling.

"We… stopped?" I whispered quietly, looking now out the window. A few stars were starting to twinkle into existence, and just looking at them, it was easy to tell we weren't moving anymore.

I leaned forward a little and looked out over the edge of the window. I immediately wished I hadn't, and my stomach did flip-flops. We were at the very top of the wheel's path, maybe a hundred feet up, and we were definitely not moving.

No one knows we're up here, I thought suddenly. We're practically the only people in the park.

How were we going to get down?

I felt panic start to gnaw at my stomach.

There was a thud behind me a second later and I jerked around to find that N had fallen over. He was on his knees, head bowed and gripped between his hands as though he were in pain.

"N…?" I asked a little shrilly, my eyes wide. I dropped down to my knees beside him, not sure what to do. His eyes were screwed shut like he was hurt, and he was clenching his jaw hard. Something was wrong. Really, really wrong.

"Screaming, screaming… they're screaming…" he whispered to himself, and then gave a little agonized cry, pressing his fingers so hard into his temples his skin turned a sickly off white. "They're screaming. They're screaming."

"Who's screaming?" I asked desperately. My hands felt all clammy and I rubbed them against my thighs. I really didn't know what to do. "Who's screaming, N? Are you okay?" What a stupid question to ask, a rational part of my mind barked back at me. Does he look okay? "N? Talk to me, N. Who's screaming? What's wrong?"

What if he's seizing or something? The not-so-rational part of my mind screamed at me in a panic. What if he's seizing and he dies right here right now because I don't know first aid?

His eyes opened wide again all at once, and he jerked around to stare at me with wild, green eyes. He gripped my arms, so hard it hurt and I tried to jerk away. He stared into my eyes with such fierce intensity it actually scared me.

"We have to get them out of here, White. We have to get them out of here," he said quickly, and then released my arms, springing to his feet again. His eyes darted around the compartment like quick-fire, and then back up at the ceiling, at the escape door.

"There's only one way out," he muttered to himself, gritting his teeth and climbing up to stand on one of the seats in the compartment. He looked back up at the ceiling, and I could see the silent calculations working themselves out in his head.

"What's going on, N?" I asked urgently. I stood up again and gripped the hand rail beside the window of the compartment to keep myself from shaking. "Who do we have to get out of here? Why? What's going on?"

"The Pokémon," he replied tersely, his jaw still clenched in concentration. He seemed to come to some sort of decision, and gripped a rail protruding from the ceiling hard enough for his fists to turn white. He pushed against it a little, testing it. "We have to get them…."

He took a deep breath, jumped up, and then somehow managed to anchor himself on the bar well enough to flip himself up and over so he could kick once against the ceiling hard. "Out of here. Now."

With a squeak the escape door suddenly flipped open, banging against the roof on the outside.

I stared up at the open sky stupidly.

Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no, no. I was not getting up on top of this ride from hell. I was not. Especially when I didn't even know why I had to.

"What's going on, N?" I asked again, as he jumped back down onto the floor of the compartment with me. "What're you talking about? Why do we have to get our Pokémon out of here? Who was screaming, N?"

He looked at me quickly like it was for the first time, or as though he were shocked I could be so oblivious. "No time. Just trust me on this one, White, please. We need to get out of here. Now."

His intensity was scaring me again. I'd only seen him act like this once before, look like this before, talk like this before, and that was the third night-without-day. He was being serious. We needed to get out of here.

Hadn't I just been thinking that he was the one person I would always listen to? That he was the one person so in tune with the world it was disturbing? When he said jump, I didn't have much choice but to ask how high.

I swallowed back the fear rising in me, and nodded once. "Good girl, White. I'm going to get on the roof and pull you out, okay?" He whispered quickly, and I nodded again, feeling suddenly numb and detached.

N got back on the seat and jumped easily up to the window, catching onto the lip of it and hauling himself out. A second later he leaned back in through the window and offered me both his hands.

My heart hammering against my chest, I gripped his arms with either of my hands around his wrists, and he did likewise. A second later he was hauling me up, and I kicked up hard against one of the seats to try and help him. I was pretty sure I wasn't a lightweight.

When my upper body was out, N let go of my hands, and I managed to push myself out. I sat on my knees, on the roof of the topmost compartment of the Ferris Wheel. I kept my eyes screwed shut. I didn't want to know how high up we were.

N gave me a moment to catch my breath, but then said brusquely, "White, listen to me. This is going to sound crazy, but you need to release your Pokémon. Now. All of the ones you have on you. Can you do that?"

My eyes snapped open at his suggestion, and I stared up at him, my mouth open in surprise. "What?" I squeaked, breathing hard. Do what with my Pokémon?

"Release your Pokémon," he repeated quickly. "You need to release your Pokémon. On the ground. Tell them to run. Back to Nuvema Town if the can. Come on, White! We don't have much time. They're coming. We need to get the Pokémon out of here."

"Release my…" I shook my head at the inane idea. I couldn't just release my Pokémon and tell them to run back to Nuvema Town. I just couldn't. "Who's coming, N? What's going on? Why do I have to release my Pokémon?"

"I'll do mine first," he replied quickly, picking his five Pokéballs off of his belt. Without another second to waste, he released all five of his Pokémon, chucking the Pokéballs down to the ground as they started to open.

He had his Zoroark, Liepard, a Zebstrika, a Stoutland, and, of course, Zekrom, I saw, teetering nervously off the edge of the roof. He'd actually done it, released all of his Pokémon. "Run. All of you. Now. As fast and as far away as you can get." N commanded them brusquely, and I stared at him in disbelief.

This wasn't happening. This was not happening.

I couldn't believe it.

"White, now!" He turned back to me, and I could hear panic in his voice now. He was being utterly serious. I opened my mouth to protest, but he cut across me easily. "Please, White. Just listen to me. We need to get them out of here, and then we can try and get ourselves off this thing. But them first. Please. I'll explain later when there's time."

I couldn't believe I was listening to him.

I couldn't believe my hands, shaking, were reaching for my belt and pulling off all my Pokéballs.

They were, though, and with just the briefest moments of hesitation, I chucked my own Pokéballs down to the ground far below, releasing my Serperior, Liligant, Chandelure, Mienshao, and Simipour.

But before I could tell them to run, the sky was filled with such an intense light it blinded me, and I had the sudden sensation that I was falling.

Then I blacked out.