A/N: Hey guys, the next chapter is up! Although I do come to you with some bad news, if you're a dedicated reader. I leave for my trip, which I mentioned a few chapters ago, next week, which means this coming week will be filled with saying goodbye to all my friends one more time, making lists and organizing everything I need to pack, and overall just making sure that I am completely prepared for my journey across the sea. I am literally going to be on a plane for a full day! But this also means that I am going to be too busy to update next week, sorry! But before you get too disappointed, to make up for the week delay, I plan to post 2, that's right, 2 CHAPTERS the week after next! Hope you guys can wait till then.

Okay, onto the journey to search for the time gears!

Chapter 10: Forgotten Places

My memories of the future used to be so clear. Every time I closed my eyes, the image of the sky in the world of the planet's paralysis would continue to haunt me. Every time I walked along the sand, I remembered the silence of the world I had come from.

But the more time I spent here, the duller those memories became.

This world was awakening something in me that had been asleep for a long time. My whole life I had only been surviving, but in this world, I was learning how to live.

The citizens of Treasure Town welcomed me. They made me feel like one of them. Even though I was a different species, they treated me like they treated Torchic. Like just another Pokémon.

The more time I spent here, the more I found myself forgetting. My memories of the future, my present, were slowly starting to slip away. It was like I had dreamed up that whole world and now I was finally awake. I wanted so badly to believe that. More than anything, I wanted to believe that the planet's paralysis was just a nightmare that my subconscious mind had created, and that it hadn't been real. But I knew that wasn't true.

Every time I saw fear in the citizen's eyes, I remembered. Not everyone in this village had accepted me as I was. They were still anxious around me. They were still afraid. And then I would remember that I wasn't one of them, no matter how much they treated me as such. I wasn't born into this world of life, love and trust. I didn't belong here, and I never would. But that didn't mean I belonged in the world of darkness either.

Ever since the day they found out, I hadn't seen any of the members of Team Skull. It seems that their plan to run me out of town backfired, and they ended up being run out of town themselves. The citizens of Treasure Town recognized them as the ones spreading the rumors about me, and kicked them out. Not only were they not allowed in town, but they were banned from the guild as well. It had become well known that they were untrustworthy. I was glad for that, because now they wouldn't be able to con or trick anyone else, at least not around here.

We had spent the next few days preparing, and now it was time for us to go. The members of the guild all stood at the entrance to see us off.

"I wish you would reconsider our offer." Wigglytuff said.

"I'm sorry, but I can't. No one can know about the mission. It would be too obvious if your whole guild went with us." I explained with a heavy heart.

"We understand. Please be careful though." Chatot said.

"We will, don't worry!" Torchic answered for me. Even though she knew the risks, I could tell she was still excited to go exploring. Her innocence in a time of seriousness made me smile.

The guild still offered to come with us, even after I explained the situation. They were concerned more Pokémon would try to hurt me like Team Skull had. But I knew this was the right decision. The guild was famous after all. If they all left on an inexplicable exploration, people would hear about it. My presence in town might have been revealed, but my mission to save the world would stay a secret from the masses for as long as I could keep it that way.

"We better get going." I told Torchic. I had strapped the bag we had gotten in the explorer kit on my shoulder. We were all ready to go.

"Wait!" I heard from behind us. We all turned around to see two blue Pokémon coming up the guilds steps. The smaller one flung himself into my arms.

"Don't go! We said you could stay remember? Why are you leaving?" Azurill questioned sadly.

"Azurill…." I trailed off. What am I supposed to say?

"Azurill stop. If they have to go, we need to let them." His brother reasoned.

"NO! I want June to stay!" Azurill wailed as he tried to wriggle himself farther into my arms.

This broke my heart. Azurill had really grown attached to me in the time I had been here. In fact if it wasn't for him, I don't know if the town would have changed their minds the way they had. But I needed to go, I had already spent enough time around here. I couldn't forget about my mission no matter what, but how could I make him understand that?

I knelled down closer to the ground and made him look at me.

"I'm sorry Azurill, but I need to go. There's something very important that I need to go and find." I explained.

"You're….looking for something?" Azurill questioned,

"Yes. It's very important. But you know, I won't be gone forever. Maybe when I find it I can come back and see you." I suggested.

Inside my head I was questioning myself. If I kept coming back to this town, enemy agents would surely find me, but this was the only place where I felt safe. Everyone here was on my side. Despite the sense of foreboding that told me to leave this town and never come back, I couldn't help wanting to return none-the-less.

"Really?" Azurill asked.

I smiled my most sincere smile. "Really." I said.

I put Azurill down on the hill next to his brother.

"Say, if you're going on a journey, could you do us a favor?" Marill asked.

"A favor?" Torchic questioned.

"You see, we lost an item called a Water Float a while ago, and it's really important to us. So if you could just keep your eyes out for it on your journey, we'd really appreciate it!" Marill explained.

"A Water Float?" I asked.

"Yes, it's an item made specifically for Azurill. It looks like a gold ring with a blue gem on it." Marill explained.

"After all you guys have done for me, it's the least I could do." I assured them as I petted Azurill's head. I stood up then.

"Shall we go?" I asked down to Torchic.

"YEAH!" Torchic cheered as she walked in front of me.

I looked back at the brothers and the guild members. While the brothers smiled, the guild members looked worried.

"Thank you." I told them before turning back around.

I followed Torchic down the stairs and to the edge of town, where we immediately started on our journey.

"Hey June? How long do you think it will take us to get to this place?" Torchic asked as we walked.

"I think it will take about 3 or 4 days, depending on how fast we move." I responded. I went into our bag and pulled out a red scarf. I knelt down to Torchic.

"Here," I said.

I tied the scarf around her neck and tucked in the cord with her precious Relic Fragment into it. I tied the knot off to her right side, letting the triangular side hang in front of her life a neckerchief.

"What's this for?" she asked.

"I learned about it from Chatot. He said it's called an Attack scarf. It will help make you stronger." I explained.

"Oh, well in that case…" she said while rummaging her head through the bag hanging off my shoulder.

"You should wear this!" she said, pulling out a cerulean blue ribbon.

"The blue bow? What for?" I asked in confusion.

"Wigglytuff said it will give power to anyone who has a blue aura. For some reason, he thought it would help you." She explained..

"But I'm not a Pokémon, stuff like scarves won't work on me." I pointed out.

"I think you should wear it anyway. Who knows, maybe it will bring good luck!" Torchic stated optimistically.

I took the bow from here and held it in my hand. It did kind of remind me of Treasure town, which was comforting at least. I wasn't one to believe in luck, but in this dire situation, I'd probably need all the luck I could get. I took off my hat and tied it onto the blue band that already decorated my white hat. I put my hat back on my head after tying the ribbon into a bow.

"How does it look?" I asked.

"Great! I even matches your eyes!"" she said.

From there we pressed on. I took out the wonder map and looked at the locations we'd need to pass through in order to get to our destination.

"Looks like we need to head to someplace called Drenched Bluff first. If we get through that, it should connect us to the coastline."

"Alright! Then let's get moving!" Torchic said as she charged on ahead of me.

Drenched Bluff was rather close to the guild, so it didn't take us long to get there. It resembled the Beach Cave that Torchic and I explored on my first day in this world. It was cave like, and the opening was covered in lush green moss. Torchic and I headed in.

The inside greatly resembled the damp stone walls of the cave on the beach, but it had its differences too. There was a lot more vegetation growing on the inside of this cave than the other one. And although this cave was damp, it wasn't dripping with saltwater the way the Beach Cave had been.

On our journey, I spotted some Pokémon that I had thought to be extinct. They were called Anorith and Lileep.

In my world, those Pokémon had died out a long time ago. Although I had heard rumors of the world before the earth was split, and how man had developed a kind of technology that could give life to the DNA extracted from fossils. I had heard that once enough of the Pokémon had been resurrected, they had started to breed on their own, but it seems that without the resurrection process the humans invented, breeding alone wasn't enough to keep there species alive, and they became extinct again in my time.

It was sad really. The world had been split in two to protect Pokémon from my kind, yet some Pokémon were dependent on humans to survive. It was a shame that they had to suffer because of my people's mistakes.

We had gone pretty deep, and Torchic was getting pretty good at battling on her own. She had defeated many rock types all on her own, despite her type disadvantage. She was growing stronger all the time, and that scarf really seemed to be helping.

We were on the 5th level when we heard a shrill cry for help deep from within the cave.

"What was that?" Torchic asked.

"Don't know, but we may find out if we go deeper." I suggested.

We traveled around the 5th deepest floor of the bluff before we heard the scream again. Torchic and I ran towards it, and saw a grey Pokémon surrounded my some Lileep.

"Torchic, use Ember!" I commanded.

Torchic spit out her tiny flames at the prehistoric Pokémon, burning them lightly.

"Now, Scratch!"

Torchic's claws glowed white as she scratched the rock/grass type Pokémon. They went down quickly. Torchic walked over to the grey jumping Pokémon.

"Hey, are you okay?" Torchic asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Thank you so much!" said the little pig-like creature.

"Why are you here alone?" I asked, having the little spring creature freeze up when he noticed me.

Oh right, I thought, not in Treasure Town anymore, everyone is afraid of me again.

"Don't worry; she's not going to hurt you. She may be human, but June is really nice!" Torchic assured the little spring creature.

"R-Really? I've never seen a human before." He said, looking rather amazed at me.

"Don't worry; you're not the first one to react like that." I assured him.

"So who are you? And what are you doing here?" Torchic asked.

"I'm Spoink. And I'm here to retrieve my precious treasure!" Spoink exclaimed.

"Which would be, what?" I asked.

"My pink pearl! It supposed to sit atop my head, but someone stole it! I heard rumors that it was at the bottom of this bluff, but I've never been able to get that far without fainting." He admitted.

"Well we're going that way. We're trying to get through to the coast, why don't you come along with us?" Torchic said.

Usually I'd say we didn't have time, but we were headed in the same direction. Helping out Spoink didn't seem like a task that would take up too much time.

"REALLY!? Thank you so much!" Spoink said as he bounced up and down with excitement.

"Come on then, we'd better get going." I stated as I walked ahead.

Spoink didn't cause too much trouble for us as we went deeper into the bluff. He seemed overjoyed to not be traveling all alone anymore. I wondered if this treasure of his was really worth risking his safety for just to get it back.

As we got deeper into the bluff, I pulled out the wonder map again and stared at our next destination. When looking at the map, I couldn't help but notice that the location of the coast looked very familiar. It's possible that I might have been to this Craggy Coast before in the future, but that the terrain had changed.

While I was thinking about that, we made it to the 7th floor of the bluff, which I understood was the last floor of the dungeon. I put the map away to look around. In the middle of the cracked, moss-covered floor was something round and pink.

"There it is!" Spoink proclaimed as he bounced towards the object.

He went up to the pearl and placed it on his head. He started to bounce up and down with his returned treasure.

"Thank you both so much!" he said, bouncing up and down a little happier than he had before.

"You're welcome!" Torchic responded.

Maybe it was just me, but I didn't feel like we did anything all that important. We hadn't even run into any enemy Pokémon, we had just led him to the place he wanted to go. It hadn't been that hard at all really. But when I looked back at Spoink again, he was acting like he'd been reunited with an old friend. He looked so incredibly happy, even after we only did something so small.

I realized then that what we did might not have seemed like much to me, but it had meant the whole world to Spoink.

In a way, I was the same. Most Pokémon in this world took what they had for granted. The rising sun, the spring breeze, the love of their family and friends. All that was completely normal to the creatures of this world, but to me, it was astonishing.

Like when Torchic had acted concerned for my well-being when I washed up on that beach. It might not have meant much to her, but it meant the whole world to me. That was the moment when I had connected with her. That was when I realized how important my mission truly was, not only to me, but to Pokémon like her as well.

"Be careful going home okay?" I warned Spoink.

"I will, thank you both. Goodbye!" Spoink said as he headed off the way we came.

Torchic and I looked around the dungeon floor. The cracks that decorated the bottom of Drenched bluff also extended into the walls. There were some larger fissures that let in quite a bit of sunlight. Torchic and I moved towards the back wall of the dungeon to investigate. The cracks were just large enough to fit through. I was able to squeeze through first, Torchic following close behind.

Outside the bluff, was a walkway made of stone. The dungeon ceiling had now disappeared, leaving nothing but sky left above our heads. Now that we were outside of the cave-like dungeon, we continued along the path of stone.

I took out the map again. Craggy Coast didn't look like it was that far away. If we kept moving forward, we would hit the coastline in a short amount of time.

"Hey June? You okay?" Torchic asked.

I realized then that I had gone off in my own little world again. Whenever I was in deep thought, I usually got really quiet and didn't pay attention to whoever was with me.

"Yeah, just thinking. The coast isn't that far away, so we should hurry." I responded.

We walked along the path for half an hour before I started to notice things. This place, I got the feeling I knew it somehow. It had looked familiar on the map, but I couldn't place it until now. I had definitely been here before.

"June look! The ocean is right up this way!" Torchic shouted as she ran ahead of me.

I followed her to the edge of the path. Looking down, I realized the stone walkway had shifted to that of a cliff, surrounded by nothing but water.

I got an uneasy feeling being so close to the ocean. The night of the storm still haunted me.

But the terrain, it was so familiar. I combed through my memories, trying to place this location in my mind.

My mind traveled to long ago.

"Are you sure this is the right way?" I asked Grovyle as he led me along the broken path.

"Positive. It's just a little further!" he assured me, jumping from stone to stone with quiet grace.

I had never liked heights much. Especially when there was nothing but pieces of stone cliff suspended in mid air separating me from falling to my doom. When time collapsed, they had said it was like the last great earthquake that shook the whole world before time stopped forever.

Some places had been hit worse than others. And this was definitely a worse place. Apparently this had once been a cliff, but it had been hit so badly from the cosmic quakes that nothing remained of it but floating sections of rock. I looked down and saw nothing but black. The oceans of this world reflected only the colour of the endlessly empty sky.

"Hurry! You're so slow June!" Grovyle commented from far ahead.

"Hey, I'm just being careful! If the fall doesn't kill me, then I'll drown in that ocean of ink!" I yelled back.

"Relax, if you fall, I'll dive in after you! But you know, I really should teach you how to swim later!" He called to me.

"If I don't get frostbite first from that water! Besides, when am I ever going to have to swim?" I asked as I jumped to the next floating stone.

"You should always be prepared." Grovyle said as I made the last jump onto his floating section of stone.

"I know. How did you even find this place anyway? And why did we take this route to Dark Hill when the Dark Wasteland would have been faster?" I asked.

"Dark Wasteland is too close to the Stockades. Primal Dialga's followers are already tracking us. We need to throw them off as often as we can, and no one has known about this place for a long time." Grovyle explained.

"This is another ninja thing isn't it?" I asked.

Grovyle just smiled.

"This way." He said. "And try to keep up."

"Not if it costs me my life. Besides, no matter how slow I go, you'll always wait for me, even if you complain about it."

"Of course I wait, you're my partner." He said.

"And your best friend. I don't know what you'd do without me." I jumped again and landed on another rock.

"Hopefully we'll never have to find out." He said darkly as we continued on.

I touched the face of the stone cliff with my hand. That memory seemed like it happened a long time ago. That was when Grovyle and I had first started looking for the locations of the time gears. Looking at this place now, it just looked so different.

"June, your spacing out again." Torchic said, causing me to face her.

"Sorry, it's just; I think I've been here before."

"You have?" Torchic asked.

"Yeah, a really long time ago. But it was really different in the future." I explained.

"What was it like?" Torchic asked again.

I didn't want to answer that. If all went as planned, Torchic would never have to learn of that awful world. I didn't want to scare her for no reason.

"Let's just say, it goes by a different name in the future." I told her.

"Well if it isn't called Craggy Coast, them what is it called?" She questioned.

"…..Forgotten Coast." I whispered.

Torchic gulped when she heard me.

"But let's not think about that. We have to concentrate on getting through." I assured her, changing my attitude.

We walked up to the opening in the side of the cliff.

"Look June, there's two paths." Torchic pointed out.

I looked closely, and surely enough there was a fork in the cave opening. One was much bigger than the other.

"Which way should we go?" Torchic asked.

"I think we should stick to the main path. The side path could be a trick." I reasoned.

"Okay! Then let's get moving!" Torchic said before charging a head again.

I just shook my head and smiled at her enthusiasm as I followed her into the cliff's cave.

A/N: Grovyle may be far away for the moment, but I can still enjoy writing for him in flashbacks! Again, sorry for the two week delay, but you guys will get to read two chapters when I'm all settled into my new place. Also, if you look at the map of the area in the game, Drenched Bluff is right next to Craggy Coast, and they never tell you how you got to Craggy Coast from the guild, so I just assumed you went through the Drenched Bluff because they're so close. Can't do that in the game, but I think it's a good assumption for the story. Until next time lovely readers!