Chapter 3: "Dissonant Harmonies"

Eleven hours later, the meeting had finally reached its conclusion. Word somehow reached Mewtwo, who returned to help draft more precise plans as everyone in attendance contributed their knowledge and experience constructing a plot that would, with exceptional luck, save the planet without the need to abandon it. A precise timeline was written, names of important people were compiled… and over the course of a remarkably short time, most of the planning that would take place was completed. Erica became the most important voice at the conference, and what she said was taken very seriously now. It was her species, after all, that would be largely responsible for what would become of Earth.

But almost everyone was gone now, the hall was dead silent. Had it really existed, it would probably be in shambles by now, litter covering the floor and temperature lifted well into uncomfortable by the sheer heat of all the bodies. The eldest alone remained sitting at the empty table, maintaining a global link that nobody was using anymore. Or… almost nobody. "I see you back there." He said, quite calmly, looking up towards the highest row of seats. Human eyes would not have been able to make out shapes at such a distance, but this was not a real building, and the Eldest wasn't trying to use his eyes. Distance seemed equally illusory here, as the figure responded by transporting immediately to stand across the table from the Eldest, her arms gently folded in a peremptory manner. She was dressed conservatively, and had an appearance many humans would've recognized. She was an older woman, and probably would've been leaning on a cane if any of this were real. Still, much about her had remained inhumanly young. Many in the public suspected her powers somehow helped keep her dark-blue hair so long and healthy, and some thought they were what turned her eyes deep red. It wasn't as though either of those colors were natural, and Sabrina's family was much too well-respected in the psychic community for one of their own to use dye to alter their appearance artificially.

"I'm surprised you didn't eject me." She said, after a brief pause. The eldest only smiled lightly, and she continued. "I don't believe /you/ wouldn't have noticed me. If that were true, I'd petition for you to be replaced."

"The position's open." The Eldest said, leaning back in his chair, feet propped up on the table. His eyes reflected how upset he really felt about all of this. "I've been sick of it for a century already. I'm sure they'd all accept you. David would be a little disappointed, but she'll understand. Brave, but she could never lead the planet through an invasion."

Sabrina sat down, relaxing a little. "You know I couldn't either. Maybe better than David… but there very nearly wasn't going to be a resistance. I expected better from you… Eldest giving up on earth? Even with the odds as bad as they were, I admit I didn't believe it at first. If your species were known for its humor, I would have suspected a joke. And here you nearly had everybody's vote when that little girl… your handpicked replacement, too… stood up and argued with you." She chuckled, though all humor had vanished from the Eldest's face. "Wishing you'd left her human, maybe?"

The eldest didn't answer, glaring stubbornly back at Sabrina. After a silent moment, he spoke. "I gave up on Logan succeeding me decades ago." He said, slowly. "When I found her, I told her one of the reasons I'd done it was so that she could help us procreate. She's had much too much enthusiasm on that mission, and not nearly enough of what I wanted to teach her-"

"You don't think helping to find new recruits to a dying species is important?" Sabrina interrupted, though she had long since broken eye contact. Not even Sabrina, the greatest human Psychic who ever lived, could meet those eyes for very long.

"Of course it's important! And it's even more important for us to get a self-sustaining and genetically diverse population again. Genetic engineering can only solve the problems of inbreeding for so long. But it's more than that. Logan was never discriminating enough. I'll admit she sometimes had a point… I had never considered artificial life would ever amount to anything more than they'd been for us before the fall. Miya was a stretch… she was so old when she finally passed those tests, much older than our recruits usually are. And what did we get with her? Stagnation. That was bad enough… but not enough for Logan. She needed to go and find someone who wasn't even prepared to make the transition. I hadn't ever seen a younger mew… like some twisted premature birth. I was thoroughly astounded when Logan told me she'd taught the runt to fly. What good would a mew like that be against the Exarchs? She'll probably survive us all… they'll spare her for a lark, I'm sure. A testimony to why we lost, after millions of years of killing them."

Sabrina's eyes narrowed, and she looked back briefly. "So you think that little accident should've been left alone to die? Let gravity do the killing… humans find her, and she's some horrible accident they'll never understand?" There was a little anger in her voice, very subtle. Just the lightest touch of harshness, like a public debate between a pair of politicians from different parties. "How'd you end up so cold? First Jamie, then the whole planet. It… it couldn't have been me, could it? Innocent little girl: Best you'd ever seen, and you couldn't win her? All these years, nothing. That primitive little body of hers is starting to fall apart now… soon she'll be dust, and still you can't get her to agree. I must be quite the conundrum. Or maybe I'm an example of how you think humanity has failed. The way we won't recognize what you see as simple logic."

There was no anger in the Eldest's face, despite being insulted. Just silence, for several long moments. Sabrina might be old, but this intellect was far older. All of modern society had arose during his lifetime. He'd seen civilizations wiped away. He'd seen technology develop from simple metal-smelting. He'd watched as the last generation of mew slowly rotted away to nothing, leaving only the few children they'd had behind. He was one of those, one of a very few. Much too few. "I don't understand you." He eventually said, quite reluctantly. "Despite seeing all your memories, your thoughts… unless you've somehow managed to discover a way to hide them from me. Maybe you have." He leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes weakly. "I might not understand you, but I do know you. Human technology won't be advanced enough to keep you from dying of old age before the war even begins. Even if you /did/ somehow manage to survive that long, would you really be able to contribute with that frail shell?" He shook his head, smiling, sneering back. "You won't say no for much longer. And somehow… I doubt you'll end up like Miya."

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Fifteen years after the meeting that decided the fate of the world had drawn to a close, Alvin pounded on the invisible barricade between the worlds, cursing louder than he had in his life. This accomplishment was most impressive due to the trainer's complete lack of lungs, or any sort of body. "Damnit!" He finally screamed, relaxing against… something. It looked like a piece of the volcanic mountain he'd just been standing on, twisted and pulled and stretched as only this reality could do. Did this place have a name? He remembered David had said it, but much of his memories had drifted away when he first came to this place, and his body ceased to be made of matter.

"Time's quite the current, isn't it?" The voice of the Fisher King came quietly in Alvin's mind, and though he didn't turn around, he could feel the presence behind him. His hands shook in anger and frustration, but he knew there would be no venting it on the Old Man. Not if he wanted to survive, at any rate. "An effective eddie's hard to come by. That's ultimately what pulls you back here. It's not the conversion between this world's non-substance and that world's matter that stresses the connection, or you wouldn't be able to spend any time there at all. It's time. Being back in four-dimensional space is taxing, even for you. Whatever… you are."

Alvin couldn't help but snap at this remark, even if it was just a little. Sparks protested vainly in one of his arms, which caused him to bite back the words he was about to say. After biting back several more little insults, he settled on a genuine question, one with a faint passive-aggressive bite implied in it. That would have to do. "But if all time is one for you here, shouldn't you already know what I am? Or what I'm becoming…" He stared defiantly into the man's face, a little ounce of triumph in his eyes. A fatal flaw in the man's absurd idea that time didn't flow here.

The only response he got was a faint, somewhat satisfied smile. "Yes… I suppose I would. Guess you're catching on. But… there's no time for that. Time in your universe hasn't stopped moving, and you've got to get this next jump precisely correct. I don't have the strength left to make you another eddie." The king whose nation was a universe showed Alvin where to go, just as he had before. This time, the young trainer was wandering through the twisted reflection of some sort of large manner-estate, each building a gigantic, disfigured monstrosity. But he wasn't here to admire the reflection of his world's architecture, though he had to climb inside one of the largest structures to reach his destination. After making several jumps between universes, he had begun to feel the weakness in the air, the thinning of the borders as the right temporal-spacial coordinates aligned. There were several doors in the estate, but Alvin did not desire them to impede his progress, so they did not, and soon he was at the far end of one of the building's many wings. "This is the last jump you'll make where civilization as you know it survives, so enjoy the sights." The man spoke to his mind as he traced his finger along the huge wall-size mirror, the only object that had an unaltered reflection here. The glass rippled at his touch, shining like water. "traveling through a reflective surface should help minimize the stress on your body… not that I would be too worried, with as near as the end seems to be."

But Alvin had stopped listening, eyes widening at the sensation of pushing through universes on his own. His unnamed guide, the being that was at once an injured old man, a powerful and unbelievably ancient pokemon, and an allegory for a mythological story… could not help but smile at this, the second genuine smile that had ever crossed his lips. But Alvin didn't see that either, as he concentrated, maintaining the flickering, reflective echo as he wrapped his arms tightly around Sparks and stepped through to the universe of his birth.

The transition was as it had always been, unbelievably painful, but considerably less than his first three crossings. The Fisher King had been right about less stress on his body, which he watched his subconscious quickly assemble from stray atoms floating somewhere in the void between worlds. At last… when it seemed thousands of years had passed in silence, he seemed to make progress, stepping out of the endless whitewash into the infinitely brighter electric lights of an ordinary bedroom.

For a few seconds, Izzy did not notice the strange intruder, who had stepped into her space with a much less spectacular fanfare than he had on his previous appearances. Izzy was too absorbed with what she was doing, straightening her flowing pink hair, and singing a song whose words she had never been taught.

"Once there was no sun, for all space was a star. The ocean once was new, taken from the dead. We were once all alone, a whole planet for ourselves. But now a sphere of tiny friends, and every one loves you."

On and on the little lullaby went, a repeating singsong melody that no human ears but Alvin's had ever heard. He couldn't help but stare as he heard the words, slightly confused by the unfamiliar bimodal school of music that had produced it. So he did the only thing he knew to do at a time like this: He cleared his throat, tapping lightly on the mirror with his knuckles. Izzy did not turn around, didn't even stop singing for several more moments. When the song was done, she went right along straightening. Only her tail betrayed her real emotion, unmoving and stretched rigidly behind her. In that instant, Alvin realized he and Isabella were now the same age.

"I knew you'd be coming soon" she said, her movements a little stiffer than they had been before she noticed him. Was it frustration? "I was hoping I'd be more ready. Still…" she stood up, turning to face him with a nervous smile on her face. Alvin felt his cheeks burning, and he couldn't quite place why. Izzy didn't notice. "Let's try not to waste your time. I've got an idea to keep you here, and it's complex." She hurried forward, taking his hand and tugging him through the door. Alvin's cheeks were now redder than her hair, but he didn't say anything to object. Not at first.

"C-complex?" Alvin repeated, sounding more nervous than Izzy looked. He had been the victim of more than his fair share of complex plans in his life, many of them at David's behest during his several years as a pokemon. To his great dismay, it was to this time Izzy next referred.

"I've been doing my research." She said, nodding proudly as she walked him down an empty hallway, whose various decorations and fixtures were nothing less of exquisitely valuable. Even at his most wealthy Alvin could not have afforded one of these priceless objects. But he didn't have the time to appreciate them. "I know all about you now. Or who you used to be. Your age doesn't match the records. If you'd been frozen in ice the day you vanished you should be almost forty. But aside from that… I know all about you. And about him." She pointed at sparks, who was perched on his shoulder. "I don't really understand most of it, but apparently he's really smart or something. Not as smart as you for making him, or somehow living… years… as a pokemon? That must've made life really difficult. I heard of something like that happening with a pokemon specialist, but that was for a few hours, not years."

Alvin nodded, though his amazement was growing with his embarrassment. How could she know about his secret teenage disaster? Not that his entire family was in agreement about that. Erica in particular was quite thankful for it: She wouldn't exist otherwise, after all. Alvin's feelings were more mixed. He loved his daughter deeply, but at the same time, he'd also never fully recovered from the damage. "Can we… can we not talk about that? I've really tried not to think about it since I escaped. I think we've got enough to worry about, besides…" His grip on her hand slackened, almost as though he were about to let go. Her grip was too strong for him to escape without major effort though, and he didn't want to attract attention to himself in a place like this. It was so quiet, like the inside of a church. Had he not noticed the extreme value of everything here, he would wonder how big a family would need to live in a place like this, and how they could be so quiet. "What's this plan of yours, and what does it have to do with me being a pokemon?"

Izzy was already dressed like a trainer. She'd been wearing a larger version of the same belt she had several years before, complete with pokeballs. She took one of these… obviously empty, and held it out meaningfully. "Daddy let me talk to some of the best scientists out there. They made this special pokeball just for you… though I had to lie about what it was really for. Only problem is it's still got that chip that stops pokeballs from capturing humans and stuff. So…" She grinned meaningfully as she used one foot in combination with a flick of her tail to open a large door. The room inside was small, but sterile and white. The equipment was already on, huge table-top apparatus whirring and spinning and flashing faintly. "Don't worry… it won't be any worse than what you did to me." She released his hand, flicking her tail in front of his face, briefly. Alvin blushed deeply, but didn't argue. After all… she was right. And if it could help him stay here…

"I see the logic in storing Sparks and I digitally, but what I don't see is how that could help. Won't I have as much time as before, just… spread out over whatever I get between being released?"

Izzy shook her head calmly, rubbing some sort of clear gel on a pair of electrodes with one finger. "I don't really understand how it works, but the scientists said that even really unstable matter would be stabilized by being… reintegrated? I think that's how you say that… released. Cuz' the pokeball makes you from scratch each time or something. All we have to do is not keep you outside it for more than (she counted briefly on one of her fingers, which move rapidly in some simple counting mechanism Alvin hasn't seen before) "Thirty minutes? Yeah… thirty minutes or so. And even if we do forget, you should just get recaptured by the pokeball instead of vanishing back to… wherever it is you go. Last time all I had was my pokedex to record what happened, and the scientists weren't really sure. Anyways… this stuff's a lot more advanced than it was back when you were my age… or… I guess you're still my age. However that works."

Alvin thought about fighting back, struggling out of her grip… but then he thought about what he might miss if he vanished again. Hadn't the Fisher King told him that this would be his last chance to see civilization the way he knew it? So instead of fighting as she placed the diodes, he just gripped the side of the table, climbing into a chair at her prompting. "I'm guessing you must already have a species picked out, since it would probably take a lot more resources to have options."

Izzy nodded. "I'm sure you can guess what it's gonna be. Got to be sure we don't mess up your genes or anything. And since there weren't any public samples of your genes available… Otherwise I probably would have chosen something like mine. Something a little more elegant. But it doesn't really make a difference, so long as it helps keep you here. Apparently that's important." Were her cheeks redder too? It was difficult for Alvin to tell, but for at least a moment she looked as self-conscious as he felt.

Alvin was quite a bit older than he looked: It didn't take much of his mental capacity to realize that Izzy had ulterior motives. And to think about them made him feel slightly less self-conscious about his own. "Just… warn me before you start, alright? I'm not really sure what you're using, but I hope it doesn't hurt."

Izzy looked sheepishly away from him. "Well, I… it doesn't hurt, but… it's a little late to warn you. Sorry! It's already started, look…" She twisted a small mirror towards him, gesturing to the little polished circle. Alvin looked with horror as the color faded from his eyes, as his already bright-yellow hair changed to fur, and spread swiftly down his back, his front, with a sensation of faint warmth rippling along with it. And strangest of all… he wasn't the only one to be growing fur. For Izzy the sensation was clearly painful, because she dropped sideways out of her chair, moaning and whimpering.

"Izzy!" He exclaimed, standing shakily as his feet twisted into what were effectively paws, and he stepped out of his shoes without realizing it. It was so hard to split his thoughts during a transformation… so hard to follow his ears up the side of his head, the growing lengthening feeling behind him, and the little girl squirming in pain on the ground, with fur growing in bloody spurts that tore bits of her skin. After seeing what had happened to her during his previous visits, Alvin knew immediately what must be causing it, just as he knew that he was the one responsible. It didn't surprise him that such an extreme transformation had taken longer to get going, but… that didn't make it very pleasant to watch. "Can I do anything to help you? Should I-"

The girl used one of the table-legs to pull herslef into a sitting position, in complete defiance to the pain she felt, and the blood trickling gently from her mouth. But she shook her head, fighting back the tears as she did so. "N-no… I expected it. Every time you visit… things get worse. I just expected… have you ever used painkillers before? Real ones?" At a positive response from Alvin, she continued. "There are some ready-to-inject morphine hypodermics in the medical kit attached to the wall there. Could you get me one of those?"

The trainer-pokemon did everything he could to comply, trying to ignore the energetic squeaks of protest coming from the pichu at his heels. "You look halfway like a pokemon, Alvin!" Sparks called up, sounding both worried and extremely excited. "Like you said you used to be! I don't think you should do this… but if you do, you've gotta play with me! I haven't had a real pikachu to play with in forever!" The pichu was going to be disappointed, as Alvin's transformation did not progress much further. He did find handling the hypodermic somewhat more challenging than expected, and doubly so locating a suitable vein in somebody who's body was actively and visibly changing with the moments. But he found it, and holding Izzy's neck still for a moment, he was able to administer the drug, after which she appeared to gradually relax.

Alvin had only just started to relax himself when he heard the door to the hallway swing open, and he turned to face a young boy accompanied by several armed maintenance-staff, looking extremely angry.

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Present Day

Adam couldn't imagine his life getting any worse, not for a moment. His body and will subjected, almost at random, forced to watch his body rot before his eyes. He won… or at least, he thought that he had won, but the fact that the next several hours were missing from his memory might indicate his victory had been short-lived, what he could remember after that seemed to indicate that the contagion had been purified.

Until he had started to transform. The "him" he had spoken with didn't seem to be under the influence of the entity that had invaded his body, but couldn't it have learned to mimic his behavior? It /had/ been inside his mind. Maybe his note was a lie… maybe all of it was a lie. There was no way for him to know. On the other hand, he was completely sure about what had happened afterwords. This tiny body, surging with electricity that occasionally sparked across the short distance between him and his companion, causing them both to shiver involuntarily. Animal-control had used stun-spore to contain the two of them, and it still hadn't worn off. Adam's companion got together the strength to speak before he did, a faint squeak he could barely hear over the sound of the engine so near their gigantic ears.

"I know what you're thinking…" The plusle on the other side of the cage said, with the faint sound of disdain plain in its voice. "I /promise/ it's worse for me. At least you're just a pokemon… I'm a female pokemon. And probably some sort of clone. Unless you're the clone, and I'm the real Adam… I bet we could find out if we could use our equipment. Except we're in a stupid cage, on the way to the stupid shelter, so I doubt we'll get the chance."

Adam tried to look at the speaker, but only one of his eyes would properly respond. It wasn't as though there was anything unexpected to see. One plusle was much like another so far as Adam was concerned, but he'd never seen one that used to be him. He also knew the word "clone" wasn't the right one, probably just as well as that other version of him did. A clone was an intentional copy, not… was there even an organic way to describe this? Mitosis? Except that multicellular organisms couldn't… not on the scale of their whole bodies, anyway. Speculating on what it might've been seemed so pointless now. "It doesn't matter." He said, after a short pause, during which he struggled upright into a weak sitting position. "All that stuff that /thing/ said about the disease… all those missing people. I think I- we… know what happened to them." He didn't even think at the time that he wasn't speaking in english anymore. "I just wish I knew why it took so long to incubate…"

"Maybe it didn't." His companion was sitting up too now, looking back with an expression of serious consideration. "Think about how many people were in the hotel that night… few thousand, maybe. How many people have we all met since then? How many people have those people met?" They both shivered in unison at the thought, and the female continued. "I think the disease is a tool. I don't know how, but the entity seemed to be centrally controlling it. The time since the impact was probably just to give us all time to infect as many as possible."

Their conversation was interrupted as the vehicle came to a stop, and after a moment, the cage was detached from the car, and carried inside between two wildlife workers. Irrational fear at the motion of his entire world briefly overcame Adam, who found himself clinging to his companion as they were walked inside, the female clinging just as tightly back. He didn't really pay attention to the conversation of the workers outside the cage, whimpering. One thing he couldn't ignore were the hands that reached in, prying him apart from the plusle and lifting him into the air.

"Adam!" He heard her shout from inside, obviously terrified, and he responded in the only way his instincts knew how: releasing every bit of the electrical energy dissolved into his body. The energy did not go into the hands of his attacker as he had hoped: the young man was wearing rubber gloves. Rather, the attack went to the next-most direct route to ground: Through the cage Adam had yet to be completely removed-from. His clone, or his copy, or whatever she was, whined a little as the energy coursed through her, but didn't seem particularly hurt by it. More annoyed than anything else.

"Careful little guy… your friend probably doesn't like being shocked like that." A voice boomed overhead, causing Adam's ears to droop at the volume, and squeak vainly in protest.

"Q-quieter… I can hear you just fine without shouting." He muttered, squirming in a vain attempt to escape from the man's grip. But the veterinarian was obviously much more experienced with pokemon than Adam himself was with being one of them, and the stun had only just worn off. Fear mingled with equal parts of self-conscious embarrassment… when he was alone with another "Pokemon" it was easy not to think about modesty, but now that he was being painfully reminded of how small he was, and how bare he was… it was impossible to forget. A little relief came when he was deposited in a large plastic box with cloth coating the floor, raised smooth sides erasing any illusions he might've had about escaping. A few more weaker shocks were equally fruitless, and it was then that Adam entirely gave up, standing up on tiptoe to try and look into the vet's face, who seemed busy recording the details of the scale the box had been placed on. "Listen… I know it's probably going to sound crazy, but you have to listen to me." He said, as calmly as he possibly could. "My… f-friend and I used to be human. You've got to let us go right now… if you don't, we won't be able to warn anyone… lots of people might die! Maybe even the whole world!" He made a gesture with tiny paws, emphasizing the seriousness of the issue.

Unfortunately, the gesture did not have the desired effect. The vet smiled down at him, chuckling a little. "Energetic little guy, aren't you? Don't worry, we won't take you away from your friend. It's just that I've got to weigh you separately. She'll have her turn once I've finished with you. Here…" He reached down into a drawer, pulling out a huge piece of gummi candy that was in Adam's mouth before he could protest. He chewed, only to find the sugary substance had congealed, making all future speech impossible. This annoyed him a great deal, but his electricity was all spent, and both of them knew it. Adam started chewing furiously, but he stopped after only a few seconds of the effort… what was the point? He was a pokemon, and humans had never really been able to understand them. Words wouldn't get him out of this, and he was too new to this body to escape physically.

Adam tried his very best to close his eyes and ignore what was happening to him during the rest of his health inspection, wincing at the pain of several immunizations but trying to seem as dignified as possible. Even when he'd finished eating he didn't try to talk again, and even when he felt some measure of electrical energy returned he didn't try to attack the vet again. There was no point in a fight he knew he couldn't win, and he felt completely naked without his companion. (to say nothing of how physically naked he actually was). Even when the vet briefly turned away, or stepped out of the room for a moment… he didn't try to escape. He wasn't going anywhere without his companion, his friend, his twin… whatever she was.

After a good twenty minutes of being measured and injected and humiliated, Adam was placed inside a fairly large clear-plastic cage in another room, and he pressed himself to the edge until about half an hour later, when the plusle was slipped inside beside him, and the latches atop the box were snapped closed.

The girl relaxed without hesitation, slumping into a sitting position with her back to his. Adam couldn't help but smile as sparks briefly connected them, completing a circuit that'd been broken for nearly an hour. The energy invigorated his mind and body, and clearly did the same for her, because she spoke up almost immediately. "I hate you, you know." She said, growing less exhausted as the moments passed, just as Adam did. "Trying to shock him when he hadn't pulled you out of the cage yet? I thought we were alot smarter than that."

"I wasn't thinking! I've never had to deal with animal instinct before, and neither have you! I doubt you did better… bet you kicked and squirmed and tried to shock the doctor just like I did."

His answer was clearly unsatisfactory, because the other Adam had stood up and struck him hard on the head with both forepaws simultaneously. "Well, that's for shocking me. So now that we're square, we can work on a way to escape, get back to the school, then somehow save the whole planet from a disease we don't really understand."

Adam shook his head, standing up too. He didn't strike his… "but before we do anything like that, I need something to call you. I don't want to call you Adam, that's my name. I don't even know how to think about you. Are you my… sister? My clone?"

The other rodent was looking down now, away from him. "Let's go with twin. Twin sister." She spat that last word, a mixture of annoyance and frustration at it. "I don't really agree that Adam's more your name, but I don't want to waste time arguing about it. How about… Sam? If I remember Sam, you've got to." Samantha had been the name of Adam's first pokemon ever, a pachirisu that had been old when he got her, but still loving and clever. He'd cried for a week when the squirrel finally died, and left fresh flowers on the little mound in his backyard several times a year thereafter. As he'd grown, he eventually let her memory fade. Eventually, he had even stopped leaving flowers. But thinking about Sam now made them both want her back, and thinking about that made them think about Ion, and…

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A/N: Well, thus ends another chapter. I'm sorry about two weeks of hiatus… what with finals week and then returning home from my first two semesters at college, I just totally lost track of things. I do intend to be timely in my release schedule from now on. Nothing's gonna stop me now! I've got to keep writing… for science (you monster)! And so I can finish this project before I vanish from the internet for a few years (scared).

As before, I'm gonna respond to reviews now. Please don't be offended if I don't talk about your review here… I greatly value everybody's input, and as always it's your reviews that keep me writing (quite literally). Though there isn't much I can say about it in a place like this, even single-line reviews are appreciated. Bring me your worst/best criticism… I deserve it!

Oh, and nobody yell at me for writing the little bit from the meeting in Logan's human perspective, even though Logan isn't there. It was just easier for readers/writer alike if I could write that little scene from a perspective we could all easily understand. I think this story's trippy enough without me going into the finer points of direct conciousness-to-conciousness communication.

Azure Butterfly: Yeah… sorry about that. I think I've confused quite a few people. I can only hope this chapter helped clarify just a little of your confusion, and that by the end of the story, you're left feeling satisfied.

DPL: I wouldn't count Miya out of the story yet. There is a world-crushing enemy on its way after all, and I'm sure she'll have her part to play with that. Unless she's somehow been infected with the same thing that Adam caught… Also, sorry about not explaining things, like the Arceus motherships. I wish wish wish wish Nintendo would hire me to write for them, so I could write this stuff legitimately and do it full time. But there's so much content I have to get through that I really have to concentrate on what's important. Hopefully by the end of the story all your curiosity will be satiated. Sorry there haven't been any Emolgas yet. I had thought to make Adam one, but going for something new and different won the day in that department.

Another Interested Reader: Your review this time brought to light a very important and serious flaw with my writing thus far: My horrible horrible lack of the ability to stay immobile in time. Every post is jumping years forward or years back so that I've even lost track of what's what. But don't worry: I'm not doing it anymore, or at least trying to rapidly put an end to it. So for the sake of everybody's sanity, here's the timelines explained once and for all.

At least fifteen years in the past, the events of PD. We know this from what the mirror-world voice tells to Alvin. But before Alvin does anything, the meeting with the legendaries takes place. In it they discuss what's going on in the future and what they can hopefully do about it. The outcome of this meeting isn't entirely known. Alvin meets Izzy sometime 15-30 years after PD. He begins to hopscotch through time, jumping several years forward each time he vanishes, until he reaches Izzy a year or two before present day and she enacts her somewhat convoluted plan to keep him in physical reality. A year or two later is the story with Adam, considered "Present Day" for the purposes of this story. Once Alvin and Izzy catch up to "present day", the story will move forward through time in a much more linear fashion, and hopefully people stop having their heads explode due to my bad writing.

I'm sorry for confusing people with all my time-travel. I should've learned from Dr. Who how dangerous it was.

So, you noticed my dubious inclusion of another legendary character, and my reference to a rather unhelpful character during the meeting. Perhaps we'll meet one or both of these individuals (if they're the same person, meeting one would do for both I think) later in the story. Only time will tell. Unless we timeskipped…

KA: I hope I clarified the timelines up there to your satisfaction. As for the interface, well… the simplest answer is that Adam was "rationally self-interested' with regards to the device. He discovered it in a ruin, told nobody until now, so that the people at the university think that it's his prototype invention. It's there because they think he's the inventor and he's getting it ready for a wider market.

Kirby Oak: I had really hesitated to use mewtwo in this story, the same way I try to avoid cannon characters if I can: I don't really think I can write them the way they appeared in their mediums: I'll always taint them somehow with my own ideas. I have no doubt that happened here. But where Korina is a mew and the one that inspired UA, someone easy for me to write, mewtwo thinks in a way quite different from me, and is very difficult to write. I did my best, but I'll be limiting his appearance as much as possible, so as to despoil such a great character as little as I can. Oh, and I'm sorry if I ruined any of your mew. All the more reason to look up above and check out that little bit about me not liking to use cannon characters.

Sooooooooooooooooooooo many long reviews last chapter, always very much appreciated. I hope this chapter is as good as its predecessors. Here's to hoping the next one will be even better. With any luck (reviews notwithstanding) the next chapter should be here this time next week.