Chapter 20 – Prophecy

Just as Silas and I were about to clear up the mess that seemed to have materialized overnight in my room, the door to my dorm room flew open, and General Harding stepped into the room, twirling a huge bunch of keys with the index finger of his left hand.

"Morning, sunshine," he smiled brightly. "Having a lovely Sunday morning?"

"Say, sir-"

"You-"

He held up a hand, cutting us off. "Oh, I know what you two are about to say."

I frowned at him, whereas Silas settled for glaring at him – probably since he lacked the lips to frown with. "And you know that... how?"

"It's all very simple, really," he shrugged. "Adrienne?"

With a soft popping sound, Adrienne the slowbro appeared on my bed, slipping on the messed-up blanket. She let out a soft cry of surprise as she tumbled to the floor, but vanished and reappeared on her feet in the doorway, looking a little more dignified. Stepping into my dorm room, she dusted herself off, and shook her head as if to regain her bearings.

"Standard check, Zachary?" she asked him, as she looked me in the eye.

"Double check the seals, dear," he nodded. "This is one job we can't screw up."

He then cast a wistful glance at Silas and I. "We can't let them remember what happened last night now, can we?"

My eyes widened in shock, as did Silas', as Adrienne sighed, and a sudden, swirling sensation engulfed my senses.

xxx

When we finally woke up horribly, terribly, and unforgivably late – somewhere past three in the afternoon - it was unanimously decided by Silas and I that our first order of business was to clear up the spilt ice cream and dispose of its tub. Then, I would hunt down some decent office clothes and head to the office, since I most likely had overslept that day.

Or to put it more accurately, I most definitely had overslept.

Not that General Harding would've minded, but the fact that I might have overslept was enough to set me off on a bout of twitching-eye agitation.

"Wait, Trainer!" Silas cried, as I pulled on my uniform shirt and tucked it in. "I just realized something!"

"Silas, you know I do like you and all that, but this isn't the time," I shook my head. "Save it for the office!"

"But-"

"No buts!" I grabbed my backpack and dashed out the door, Silas held firmly in my arms.

"BUT-"

"SHUT IT!" I practically shouted, as I barrelled down the corridor of the dormitory, and sped down the stairs.

"It's Sunday," Silas said meekly.

I came to a dead stop and stared at him incredulously. "You've got to be fucking with me. I've already overslept, and now you're telling me that it's Sunday?"

"Better check your calendar," he grumbled. "I see that bitch in that itsy-bitsy teeny-weenie yellow polka dot bikini, so it's definitely Sunday."

I looked around, and sure enough, that horrible crone was parading herself in that flimsy excuse for a swimsuit. "Fuck, that's her alright... bummer."

"I told you so, much?"

"... I hate you."

When we got back to my dorm, I realized something was wrong. A quick swipe at my left trouser pocket revealed that yes, something indeed very wrong. With a groan, I slammed my head into my door, causing Silas to let out a startled squeak.

"What's your major malfunction, numb nuts?" he asked with wide eyes. "Trying to evolve into a rampardos or something?"

"I locked the key inside," I told him, unsure of whether I was going to laugh or cry over the whole deal. "And the dorm warden's not around on Sundays."

"Tough luck for you. Could you at least return me, then? At least I'd be out of the heat."

"... your pokeball's also inside the room, genius."

"What?" He glared at me. "Well, congratulations, dickhead! Now we're locked out of our own room!"

"Shut your fucking pie-hole-"

My neighbor's door slammed open, and he groggily stepped out into the corridor, garbed only in a pair of leaopard-print briefs. "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE?"

"Can it, Captain Speedo!" Silas snapped at him. "Go fuck yourself with a dugtrio!"

"What-"

"SHUT YOUR PIE-HOLE, WE'RE WORKING HERE!" I bellowed in his face, causing him to flinch. No mean feat, considering that he was a giant of a man who worked as an artillerist, and who could easily have snapped me like a toothpick if he'd been angry enough. "GET THE FUCK BACK IN YOUR ROOM, AND I DON'T WANT TO HEAR A SOUND FROM YOU, GOT IT?"

"Oh, umm... okay," he mumbled, blinking like a noctowl before stepping back into his own room and closing the door... softly.

I drew in a deep breath and leaned back against the – locked – door to my own dorm room. Silas squirmed a little in my arms, even as I began slowly banging my head against my door.

"That's not going to help, you know."

"I. Don't. Care."

"Climbing the drainpipe would be more productive," he huffed, before casting a fearful glance at me. "Tell me I didn't just say that."

I smiled sweetly at him, feeling my forehead throb slightly thanks to my short bout of head-banging. "Why of course you did, darling."

Silas actually looked genuinely terrified upon hearing me say those words. "Oh, sweet Arceus... have mercy on my soul."

xxx

As it turned out, the supplies room downstairs did have a coil of hemp rope that they were willing to loan to me for the day, provided I returned it in pristine condition. Thankfully, while the dorm warden himself was never in on Sundays, the obsessive-compulsive bastard we knew and loved as our quartermaster was always on the job.

"So, you'll be climbing up the drainpipe, and onto that ledge?" my dear shellder asked, squinting up at the window to our dorm room – it was open, thanks to the obscenely hot weather. "I do hope you're up to the task, my dear Trainer."

"Yes, we'll be getting up there soon," I nodded, as I took my shirt off and folded it into my backpack. "And you'd best hope that my arms don't cramp up when I'm climbing, because you're coming along."

Too late, he tried to clamp down on my fingers. All it took was a few loops and a couple of hitches, and he was trussed-up like a Christmas turkey. Two more loops and knots secured him to my backpack, and I nonchalantly headed for the drainpipe, ignoring several curious stares from the people who had been playing a basketball game in the hostel compound.

"You crazy bastard!" Silas shrieked, from where he was strapped to my backpack. "You could've left me somewhere else to be picked up later!"

"Shut up, bitch," I grunted, as I shimmied up the drainpipe that led to the end of the dormitory building block. "Wouldn't want me to fall now, would you?"

"I wouldn't really mind that, but only if I wasn't tied to you!"

Of course, a small crowd had gathered to see the two of us making our ascent of the drainpipe. Most of them were fellow military personnel in their Canalave summer wear – undergarments, really – but there were also a couple of people casting us curious looks from beyond the hostel's perimeter fence.

"Fifty bucks on the kid!"

"Holy-"

"... Is that a shellder strapped to his back?"

"What the fuck are you doing, you weirdo?"

I looked up – only five more feet to go. With a smirk of self-satisfaction, I continued climbing up the pipe, and finally made it onto the ledge that it ended at. All it took was an awkwardly-angled grab at the ledge to secure my grip on it, and I was set. Silas let out an audible sigh of relief once we were up on the ledge, only to squeal in fear once he got a look straight off it.

Now, the ledge itself was going to be quite an obstacle to navigate. Patches of moss grew all over it, making it slippery in places, and it was already no more than two feet wide. Then, the windows to all the dorms were about five feet apart, so that meant that every five feet or so, I'd be moving along the ledge without anything for my hands to grip.

Lastly, there was my own dorm window to consider. Being the paranoid bastard that I was, I had locked the lower half of the window, and only opened the upper half. So that basically would force me to squeeze through half of my window once I got there.

"Almost there, Silas," I said cheerfully, despite the fact that I was hugging the wall and stepping forward slowly to ensure that I didn't end up becoming a pancake on the tarmac below. "Umm, thirty more feet or thereabouts, I guess."

"You're a fucking sadist. And a complete maniac! You need psychotherapy!"

"Only for you, sweetie - twenty more feet!"

And that was when I slipped on some rather conveniently-located moss – right between windows, so there were no handholds - and fell, screaming like a schoolgirl, off the ledge.

xxx

Ironically, for all the craziness with apparently oversleeping on Sunday, I ended up oversleeping on the Monday right after that. The good part of the whole deal was that I only overslept by five minutes. However, the bad part involved Silas telling me that he'd awoken to me hugging him like a pillow and curling up such that his mouth was aimed at my crotch.

Seriously, the universe probably hated me or something.

If you've ever felt like the karmic gods or legendaries were out to get you, trust me on this – having zero recall of your Saturday night and oversleeping for two consecutive days probably comes close to it. And of course, nearly falling to my death didn't help the matter any.

Seriously, if not for that military trainer who somehow had his jynx with him – also watching my perilous climbing endeavour - I would've been killed most unglamorously by means of gravity. Being mauled by a wild garchomp or getting mutated by the injection some liquid Water Stone or something, I could live with, but falling from a ledge? Falling was hardly my idea of going out with a bang, really.

And of course, Silas would've most likely survived the fall. The natural armour of a shellder was comparable to blast-shielded titanium at its best, and some said solid granite even at its very worst. So he would've probably gotten soaked in my innards as they burst out all over the ground, soaking the bystanders. Probably could've died laughing, though, so that might have evened the score for us.

"Holy shit, I'm late!"

"No shit, Einstein. Now shut up and let me sleep."

"I need you awake for this!"

"At least grab my pokeball!"

Back on the topic of me oversleeping on Monday, I probably looked like something out of a Saturday morning cartoon as I stalked through the corridors of port control with Silas tucked under my arm like a bizarre folder of some sort, but I wasn't bothered. Sure, I got more than a few stares along the way, but several choice curses – and several Ice Shards from Silas – ensured that we made it to General Harding's office without much harassment.

I really hoped that those machop Silas froze to the wall wouldn't recognize us once they had thawed out.

For once, I didn't bother knocking when I arrived at his office; I didn't even think about what I'd do if I ended up walking in on him having a round of early morning sex with General Fen again. When I opened the door to his office, however, what I saw was something completely unexpected.

General Harding was having a cup of coffee in Linda the deckchair, but his morning coffee companion certainly wasn't Adrienne as it usually was. While the creature having a cup of coffee next to him was just as pink as she was, with an equally vacant stare, it definitely wasn't a slowbro. Instead of the slowbro's iconic shellder on its tail, it had the shellder clamped onto its head instead, and its neck was adorned with a red-striped frill.

I froze in the doorway, as did Silas, as the slowking gently levitated its cup of coffee onto General Harding's desk and fixated its blank gaze on us. Both of its hands were tucked behind its back, and only its eyes were moving. Upon closer observation, I noticed that the slowking itself was hovering several inches off the floor.

"Adrienne's not in this morning," he said, answering my unspoken question. "Instead, meet her twin – I do believe I've mentioned his name before."

"So, he is the one I've been waiting for, I take it?" the slowking said, sounding mildly curious.

"You tell me," General Harding shrugged. "You're supposed to be the psychic, Adrian."

Only then did my addled, sleep-abused brain make sense of General Harding's words – he'd mentioned having a slowking, and that he was Adrienne's twin. At least that explained the matching names...

I cleared my throat, "Excuse me, who were you were waiting for, again?"

Adrian hummed absently as he moved towards me – no, glided would have been a more accurate word – with his shellder's eyes glowing. "Prophecies never move in straight lines, my dear. Neither do they move in curves, despite the non-linear nature of time itself. But to see into the future, one must disregard the curvature of time, and look through what lies straight ahead."

"... and what is that supposed to mean?" I asked him, raising an eyebrow. Silas, in the meantime, had squirmed about and reoriented himself to direct his eyes at Adrian.

"Space and time," the slowking continued humming, as he floated about in a circle, "are two related yet dissociated entities. Note that I said 'entities' and not 'quantities' – you could quantify them, but ultimately they remain as forces closer to any living being than those which are merely bound by the laws of physics. Similarly, prophecies are both specific and vague at the same time, but yet the element of time itself remains constantly in motion."

General Harding sighed, "Adrian, have pity on the kid, would you? Just tell him what he needs to know, if he's the one you're looking for."

"Prophecies are not that detailed, Zachary," Adrian snapped. "And neither are they that generalized. He may be the one I'm looking for, yet he might also be someone completely unrelated."

"Recite the prophecy, then," General Harding snorted. "If he hears the whole thing, then you'll know he's the one."

"But we won't know just what the whole thing is, will we?" Silas pointed out. "We could all be hearing parts of it, for all you know."

"Oh, he's a smart one," Adrian glared at him for a while, his neck-frill ruffling in a nonexistent breeze, before turning back to face me. "So be it, then.

"Time, always in motion, branched like a tree and knotted like entrails. On the odd occasion, branches may bend and return to the earth from whence they came, but yet remain living and elevated at their origin. As much as the tree may desire to hold on to its fruits, it ultimately has to release its hold on them for the propagation of its seeds."

The slowking gradually began rocking back and forth, his telepathic voice reduced to a near-whisper. "There will come a time when souls will be among the currencies available for trade, child. You must then choose the price to be paid, and the means by which you shall pay for the chance to redeem more than you could comprehend beyond a lifetime. And ultimately, your lifetime shall never see any greater and fulfilling achievement than that which you shall devote your life to. It shall have purpose beyond comprehension, and impact beyond lifetimes."

I stood there, dumbfounded. General Harding looked bored, whereas Silas was glaring at the slowbro with narrowed eyes. "Is that it?"

"You tell me," was Adrian's curt answer, before he vanished with a soft popping sound. His trainer merely sighed, and shook his head.

"Learn a lesson from him, kiddo – never try to mess with things that lie beyond your understanding and ability to control."

"I don't understand, sir," I shook my head. "I heard something, but I don't know if it's the whole prophecy. And just what did you mean by that?"

General Harding stared for a moment at Adrian's coffee mug, before shaking his head again. "Adrian was always the smarter and more talented of my slowpoke twins. Adrienne was never quite as good at the psychic arts compared to him, but we loved and cherished her all the same – we were a team, that way.

"Once he evolved, though, he began asking the two of us lots of questions. Stuff about life, the universe, time, the metaphysical... it was all too much for us to comprehend, really. So, he began glancing into the future by meditating."

Silas let out a low whistle, "And he ended up seeing some possible futures?"

"Most likely," General Harding nodded. "But one day, he claimed to have seen something so... horrifying, so terrible, that he basically went insane. My team and I woke up one day to see that he had drawn all sorts of weird symbols and letters all over the place, and that he had even woken up my jellicent to ask it questions that he thought a ghost might have been able to help him with."

I shook my head. "And he's been insane ever since."

"For the most part," my boss sighed. "Most days, he sleeps while the sun is up, and spends the whole night staring at the sky. Sometimes he draws strange symbols or... crude pictures of some sort on the floor. Hell, most days he doesn't even speak coherently."

"So... what's this about the prophecy?" I asked him, hesitantly. "I heard a part of it at least, so I'm guessing that I'm involved?"

"No idea, kid – I myself have heard bits about it, but I wouldn't know if it's complete."

"I heard something, too," Silas chimed in, causing the two of us to stare at him with incredulous looks. "What? He said something about the only sure bet being the worst kind of bet."

"He never said-" I began, only to be interrupted by General Harding.

"See, kid?" he pointed at Silas. "I'm willing to bet that all three of us heard different aspects of the prophecy, all at the same time. Just ignore it, really – maybe it'll resolve itself in due time."

Leaning back in his chair, he took a sip of his coffee. "So, how can I help you today? You seemed mighty rushed just now."

For a moment, I stood there doing nothing but staring blankly at him. Only when Silas nudged my elbow using his tongue did I recall why I had rushed over to begin with, and so I placed Silas on General Harding's desk. "Well, someone or something seems to have blurred our memories of last night."

"And we don't think it's the Darkrai," Silas added, wagging his tongue at me.

General Harding merely raised an eyebrow in response to what we said. "And you think I'm capable of helping you recover those memories? I wouldn't advise it – not even those among us with psychic affinities dare to tamper too deeply with memory retrieval."

"Why not, sir?" I asked, feeling a mixture of cold fear and anger. Silas glared at him from the desk, and I got the impression that Silas was also entertaining similar thoughts.

"Well," he shrugged, "it's an old trick, really – steal someone's memories, and bury all lingering traces deep enough such that safe recovery is impossible."

"How is that so?" Silas snorted. "You can't lock up memories!"

My commanding officer smirked at him. "Oh, but you can. Ever heard of selective amnesia? Well, this is enforced selective amnesia we're talking about here."

"Wait a minute, sir," I narrowed my eyes at General Harding. "I have two questions."

"Shoot, kid."

"Firstly, you mentioned that safe recovery of the memories was impossible," I raised an eyebrow. "And two, just how do you know so much about this?"

He got out of Linda, and plopped himself down into the swivel chair behind his desk. Leaning back in it, he scratched the side of his head thoughtfully. "Well, safe recovery would be impossible since trying to force them out might induce an aneurysm or some funny shit like that in your brain. And I know a decent bit about memory alteration because... well, I've done my share of it down at the Underground."

"An aneurysm, you said?" I blinked. "How is that possible?"

"We're talking about memories here, for fuck's sake!" Silas snapped. "They aren't time bombs, so who do you think you're trying to bluff?"

"Silas!" I exclaimed, horrified at his language – well, he was normally even more profane than that, but this was my boss we were talking to!

"Alright, alright, I'll see what I can do to help," he held up his hands, laughing. "Goodness, but Silas can be such a potty-mouth... Tell me – just what can you remember from the... time period in concern?"

I frowned. "Nothing much, really."

"Alright, now I'm going to say some test keywords. You two tell me if anything comes to mind, alright?" he said slowly. "Psychic. Collude. Meeting. Venomoth. Ghost. Ring any bells?"

We thought about it for a few moments, until Silas spoke up. "Nope, nothing here."

"And you, kid?"

"Let me think for a bit," I mumbled, trying to get everything into some sort of working order. "Got something, but not quite sure what it was."

Upon hearing that, he leaned forward, interest visible in his eyes. Silas, too, turned to regard me with a curious expression. I reflexively flinched under the pressure from their simultaneous stares, and stepped back a little.

"Well, there are images. All quite blurred," I told them slowly. "Some glowing red objects? Some other vague stuff as well."

"As expected – nothing of significance," General Harding shrugged. "Nevertheless, I think I'll let a professional handle this, shall I?"

Before we knew it, Adrienne – probably the first and last pokemon Silas and I wanted to see right then – had materialized in the middle of the room. She took a look at us, and frowned. As if on cue, several sharp images sprang to the forefront of my mind as soon as I saw her. For a moment, I almost felt as if she would know something about all the mysterious happenings and our collective memory loss.

"Sir?" I asked nervously, as Adrienne gave me a curious expression. For a few seconds, I could feel as though an afterthought was lingering in my mind – definitely her working on some mental probing.

"You know this isn't right, Zachary," she said quietly, turning to her trainer. "A third round, that fast?"

"Trainer?" Silas squeaked, gazing at me with fearful eyes. "Just what is going on here?"

"It's not my fault his memory's so persistent. Just do it, Adrienne," he said, facial expression unreadable.

In the blink of an eye, everything went straight to hell, as everything went wrong and happened all at once.

Even as he spoke, my hand had gone to my sidearm. However, the shellder on Adrienne's tail let out a hiss upon seeing my sudden movement, and my pistol ended up flying into General Harding's grip before I could even blink. Adrienne's eyes glowed briefly, and Silas' shell suddenly slammed completely shut, trapping about half of his tongue outside.

Just as I was about to pounce on General Harding, Adrienne's eyes glowed once more. I froze where I stood, feeling as though my whole body had suddenly gone numb. Out of my peripheral vision, I saw General Harding removing the magazine from my pistol, and shaking his head with a regretful expression on his face – why did that look so familiar, I didn't know.

It was the last thing I saw before everything went black.