Chapter 25: Holy Diver

Everything seemed to move in slow motion for Ed, Varney, and Lopendra as the three fell dozens and then hundreds of feet from the underground complex's emergency exit, plummeting toward the ocean. Lopendra, of course, had devised a plan to make use of her trusty Protect technique to create a shield that would cushion the three of them against the impact of a fall from such a height, but even if she managed to time that just right so that nobody was hurt in the process there was nothing she could do about the problem of being stranded in the ocean afterward. Varney was too disoriented to take flight just yet, and even if he snapped out of it before impact his wings likely wouldn't have anywhere near enough strength in them to counteract the speed of his fall and pull away before hitting the water. Even Ed, who would be far more at home in the water than the other two, would likely run out of steam long before the three of them would be able to reach dry land if he had to carry both of them on his back.

The young Wartortle just stared down and clutched the Mega Stone tightly in his hands, screwing his eyes shut and cringing at the sight of the ocean's waves growing closer and closer with every moment that passed.

Overhead, dark clouds were beginning to roll in, and the first droplets of a building rainstorm started to fall. For just a moment, Ed was overcome by a wave of dizziness, and as Lopendra's barrier shimmered into existence around the three a split-second before they splashed down into the ocean, his vision blurred and then everything went black.

Ed felt water all around him; not furiously churning ice-cold water, like that of the northern ocean he had just been falling toward, but an odd sort of still, lukewarmish water that felt unlike any water he could remember feeling before.

It was almost as though it was less "there" than ordinary water, if that made any sense; the sensation of it was almost more reminiscent of cool, moist air like that of a foggy morning. There was a quiet humming sound somewhere, but all sounds around him seemed to be strangely muffled. For a moment he thought to open his eyes, but something told him he must not do so －that all he needed to know was what his ears could tell him.

"Looks like this is the only one who made it through," a voice called out through the muffled half-silence, somehow reaching him loud and clear when nothing else could despite the fact that it didn't seem to be addressing him at all.

The voice paused, and muffled footsteps reached Ed's ears.

"Just one out of thirty-one test subjects," a second voice spoke up. "All of them great warriors, trained in the secret techniques of the Eisernschild clan since birth and managing to get a reaction out of the Mega Stone... and only one managed to come out of the resulting transformation without being crippled for life."

"Though even he suffered some... unusual side-effects," the first voice added. "His eyesight has degraded considerably, but compared to the way that half of the others went blind the moment they transformed that's nothing to worry about. His other condition, though－"

"Will not be mentioned in the records," the second voice interrupted. "This shouldn't be possible, according to everything we've seen before. Do you realize what might happen if word of this gets out?"

Ed had the distinct impression that the owner of the first voice would have nodded at this point, though he couldn't see them to confirm this.

"All of our research redirected toward a way to duplicate it," the voice said. "Yes... point taken. When the records are put into the system, the only reported side-effects will be moderate vision loss and... ah, let's describe it as 'an easily reversible degree of muscular degeneration.'"

The second voice chuckled slightly.

"So... do you think this 'muscular degeneration' is going to happen every time he makes use of the stone, then?"

The first voice mumbled something, then paused for a moment.

"If I had to guess... I would say that all of the side-effects we observed － not merely the 'degeneration' but the loss of eyesight as well － were caused by the process we used, not the power of the Mega Stone itself."

There was another pause, and a sound of pacing footsteps.

"So if the subject were to willingly activate the stone, rather than having its power forcibly applied, then..."

Lopendra and Varney bobbed to the surface of the ocean, with the Zubat thrashing wildly in an attempt to keep afloat. Lopendra was a bit calmer, but only barely; her antennae were going into overdrive as she glanced around for any sign of a rock or small sandbar that they might be able to direct themselves toward. For a moment, she didn't even notice that Ed had not yet resurfaced. And then, just as that realization drifted into her mind, shafts of many-colored light began to rise up from below, illuminating everything in a six-foot radius. The source of the light continued to rise closer and closer to the surface, and then with a sudden, blinding flash something hard and dense surged up beneath the two small Pokémon.

When Lopendra opened her eyes again, the light had cleared and she was sitting atop something that appeared to be a slightly slippery brown rock at first glance. Her soggy Zubat companion was draped across the surface nearby, wings sprawled out and panting for breath.

Before either of them even had time to react to their unexpected rescue, a voice that seemed oddly familiar called out from beneath them.

"Hold on tight, you two," the voice said, "I don't think this is going to last very long... I've got to hurry!"

Lopendra blinked. That voice... It was a little deeper than she was used to, but there was no mistaking who it belonged to. Varney stopped panting for breath for a moment and perked up his ears at the sound.

"Is... Is that you, Ed!?"

The "rock" they were sitting on － which Lopendra now realized was in fact a Blastoise shell with the water cannons that usually poked outward from its upper half tucked inside － suddenly began to move, forcing both of them to cling to it more tightly than before in order to maintain their grip. A pair of pointed blue ears became visible above the surface of the waves for a moment as the now much larger turtle raised his head to speak again.

"Yeah － it's me all right," he said, "I'll have to explain later... like I said before, we can't stay out here too long!"

With that, two panels on the upper half of the giant turtle's shell popped open, allowing the shiny white metallic cannons to protrude outward. Ed spun around and slowed to a stop for just a moment, then aimed the cannons back out toward the open ocean. There was a rumbling from within the Blastoise's shell for a moment, and then jets of pressurized water erupted from both cannons, propelling him and his passengers back toward the island.

"It's high tide!", Lopendra shouted, "If we get close enough to the shoreline, then..."

Varney grinned for a moment, then got a slightly worried look on his face.

"Then we might be able to make it back up there..."

"We're gonna make it," Ed said, just barely loud enough to be heard over the roar of the water cannons. "All I've got to do is aim down, and then..."

As they drew closer and closer to the rocky cliffs that surrounded Eisernschild, the Blastoise suddenly tipped back, dunking his head completely under the water. Lopendra and Varney each let out a yelp of surprise, and the Venipede instinctively called forth another barrier around the three of them, just barely large enough to surround the Blastoise's body along with his two passengers. A split-second passed, and Ed pumped all of his strength into the twin cannons; they were only going to get one shot at this. Peering up through the water at the cliff ahead of them, he was just barely able to make out one of the lower ledges through the ocean's surface as he tilted back so far that he was floating upside-down in the water, his body positioned almost vertical as if doing a handstand. And then, he finally let loose with both cannons at full power.

All at once, the three Pokémon sped upward into the sky in a way that was almost more frightening than their initial drop from the emergency exit. A seemingly-endless stream of water burst forth from Ed's cannons, aimed downward in such a way that it launched them high above the surface of the ocean. They sped upward － ten, then twenty, then thirty feet and still rising － passing the small ledge they had spotted from below and rising a few more feet above it before finally the Blastoise's strength gave out and the jets of water sputtered to a stop. Lopendra's barrier lasted just long enough to protect them as they crashed down on top of the rocky platform, the feather-like green wisps of energy that composed it fading away moments after Ed and his two passengers came to a stop just inches away from the cliff's edge.

Lopendra and Varney climbed down from Ed's shell, moving as far away from the cliff's edge as they could and catching their breath. The newly-evolved Blastoise just laid there motionless, arms and legs splayed out and breathing heavily. His right hand was still clenched tightly around the Mega Stone, but when he unclenched that hand the stone did not roll free across its rocky surroundings; it seemed that it was actually embedded into the palm of his hand. For a moment, all three were silent aside from the sounds of their breathing; then, Ed began to glow with rainbow-colored light that swirled up around his entire body before fading to various shades of blue and spiraling back into the stone in his hand. As the light faded, his body rapidly shrank back to its usual Wartortle size; in a matter of seconds he was back in the form that Lopendra and Varney had gotten used to.

The Venipede twitched her antennae and blinked.

"You... de-evolved?"

Ed turned toward her and nodded slightly.

"It's the stone," he said. "Evolving with it... it's just a temporary transformation. It's not quite the same as a regular evolution at all."

He sighed, then pulled himself to his feet, wobbling a bit at first but quickly regaining his balance. The Wartortle glanced up at his rocky surroundings, looking around for a few moments before spotting a path that would lead them back up onto the island. They probably weren't far from where they had set up camp, from the looks of things.

"I'll explain everything I know when we get back up there," he said, taking a few steps past the other two Pokémon and heading over toward the path leading upward. "After we get some food. I might be back to being a Wartortle now, but I feel like I've still got a Blastoise-sized appetite..."

Later that night, after everyone had dried out both themselves and their campsite (which, thanks to the storm that had passed through earlier, had gotten rather soggier than they had been expecting) and eaten their fill (which, in Ed's case, was nearly twice as much as what would usually be a decent meal for him), the three Pokémon sat around a roaring fire at their campsite. Ed reclined back against a good-sized rock － which they had made absolutely sure was not a Pokémon in disguise this time, unlike their first night camping out － and let out a deep sigh. Then, after a brief pause, he cleared his throat to catch Varney and Lopendra's attention.

"Hey... You guys wanted to know more about what happened out there today, right?"

The other two paused for a moment; they had gotten so distracted by their meal that they had almost forgotten to ask for more details about the Mega Stone, how the young Wartortle could've figured out how to use it, and why he had turned back into a Wartortle again so soon after apparently evolving into a Blastoise. They felt so lucky to be alive, considering the situation, that the question of how they had been saved never quite wandered back into their minds once a full belly and a warm fire had caused them to drift off into lazier thoughts.

"Yeah," Varney said, propping himself up on his wings and leaning forward a bit. "Evolving into a Blastoise and then... changing back? How the heck does that happen?"

"That's obviously the stone's doing," Lopendra snapped. "Thinking about it now, I'm more curious about how you just seemed to know... well, how to be a Blastoise, I guess you could say. Not many people would be able to think of jet-propelling upward like that in the heat of the moment like you did."

Ed laughed a little as Lopendra shot Varney a glance, causing the Zubat to flinch away a bit.

"Well... It's a little hard to explain. I'm still trying to figure things out myself," Ed began, "But I think Elder Lukhan was onto something － that using the stone to draw out my power might also bring some memories to the surface."

He paused for a moment, closing his eyes and thinking back the that moment when he blacked out just before hitting the water, hands clenched tightly around the Mega Stone for fear of losing it beneath the waves.

"I still don't quite know how I got the stone to activate... Maybe it's one of those things that only works when you desperately need it, or something. But right before it happened, I kinda blacked out for a few seconds, and..."

Lopendra's eyes widened.

"You blacked out? When you were about to fall into the ocean!?"

Ed nodded.

"Yeah... I felt really dizzy for a moment and then... Well, I think while I was out I might have had some memories from my past pop back up, somehow."

Lopendra's antennae twitched, and Varney leaned in to listen a bit more closely once again.

"I don't really know exactly what was going on, but... there were these two voices, talking about how they'd been making a bunch of Pokémon evolve with the stone. Warriors from the old Eisernschild clan, who'd been taught some kind of secret techniques. Apparently one of them ended up with bad eyesight, and..."

He opened his eyes again and glanced down at the Mega Stone in his hand, then back over to the other two, before continuing.

"...they kept talking about how there was another side-effect, one they thought shouldn't have been possible. They ended up calling it 'muscular degeneration,' but it was pretty obvious that wasn't really what happened."

Varney frowned slightly and reached up with a wing to scratch one of his ears.

"So, uh... what's that have to do with you? I mean, I guess you do have pretty crappy eyesight, but... are you saying you were the one they were talking about or something?"

Ed nodded.

"I didn't make the connection right away, but thinking about it now... one of those Magnemites was convinced I'd been there before. The only problem was, according to their records I was supposed to be a Blastoise," he explained. "And when I heard those two voices talking about testing the stone... they said that whatever side-effect had happened wasn't going to be put in the records."

The Wartortle sighed slightly, then added on one last thing.

"This sounds a little crazy I know, but... I'm starting to wonder if I really was that Blastoise, and the side-effect those two voices mentioned was turning back into a Squirtle and having to start all over again."

The next morning, while a welcome change from the chaotic day that preceded it, was still a fairly eventful one from the start. Almost as soon as their meal was done, their camp had a visitor －the very same Pidgeotto mail-carrier who had brought them their first letter from the mysterious, frozen-over northern lands had arrived with a second one. He had looked a bit lost at first, circling aimlessly overhead and probably wondering why he had been directed to deliver the letter to an island that was supposed to have been abandoned for centuries, but upon spotting the smoke rising from the island's lone campfire he swooped in low and ended up right on top of their tent.

"Ah, you guys again," he said, pausing to catch his breath before hopping down from the tent and rummaging around in his bag. Plucking out a single letter, he handed it over to Ed. "It's from that Fat-Head guy, I think. Should've come in yesterday, but things got held up a little since it was addressed to Elder Lukhan's place..."

The Wartortle glanced down at the envelope in his hands and blinked, then immediately tore it open. Though the paper itself was a bit ragged around the edges and had clearly been soaked and dried at least once before making it to them, the handwriting was clear, and both he and Lopendra (who had crawled up onto his shell to read it over his shoulder) could tell it was undoubtedly Fatheade's. The Pidgeotto watched the group for a few seconds, then fluttered off without a word, rushing back to the mainland to deliver the remaining contents of his bag.

"Sounds like he's met up with Sylveon now," Ed said, eyes darting back and forth rapidly as he scanned the contents of the letter. "They've set up camp not even a mile off from the tree that she's been looking for."

Varney fluttered over and perched on Ed's shell as well, causing him to lurch forward a bit; if he had been a Blastoise like he was in those fleeting moments the day before, having two smaller Pokémon perched on his shoulders would have been easy, but in his current state he would have preferred that they stand beside him. Groaning for a moment, Ed shooed them both off of his back, choosing instead to read the entire contents of the letter aloud to them.

Ed, Varney, Lopendra －

Thought you three oughta know that I finally made it up here. Came across Sylveon just the other day, and now we're camped out maybe twenty minutes' walking distance of the north pole. It's just like she said, there's this tree up here that doesn't quite look like it belongs. Weird branches going up and up at two different angles, not a single leaf on the thing. Looks like a doorway in the trunk. Actually a lot more trees up here than I expected; once you get past the ice fields, you're back in a forest again for a couple miles right up here at the top of the world. Not sure how that works, but eh.

Sylveon's brought a couple friends along. Didn't catch their names just yet, but it sounds like she's known 'em for a pretty damn long time. Can't hardly tell what either of 'em look like for how bundled-up they are. One of 'em ain't much of a talker, mostly just pants a lot when we've been walkin' around. Eats a ton, though. The other's a little chattier, but she's a little too prim 'n' proper for me. Speakin' of old friends, I'm thinkin' that's the way we're gonna take down the tree's guardians all at once. Not talkin' about you three, of course － this is way too dangerous for that. Whatever you do, don't try to follow me up here. Nah, I'm gonna try and get in touch with the old gang from ten years ago － that bunch's probably itchin' for a fight right about now, so I figure I'll give 'em a big one to bring 'em out of retirement. If those guys haven't slacked off too much, I figure we'll bust our way into that tree in no time flat when we make our move. Those guardians won't know what hit 'em.

I figure the mail ain't gonna reach us this far north now that the storms are blowin' through, so don't bother tryin' to send me anything back. I'll be headed back down south again once we're done up here, don't you worry. Though... I might not be the same ol' Fatheade you guys have gotten used to when you see me again.

At this point, Varney and Lopendra both visibly shuddered, and Ed's eyes widened. For a moment, they were reminded of the repetitive, babbling rants of the various Pokémon that had come under the influence of the strange power that now seemed to loom over their world, always saying that Fatheade would become like them; Ed in particular couldn't help but think back to that night in the old Alakazam's tent, when one of the many bizarre visions had included a Jigglypuff wearing a familiar-looking hat walking with that same jerky, awkward motion that the others all showed.

And then, reading one line further, the Wartortle let out a sigh of relief.

"He's evolved," Ed said, immediately picturing a Wigglytuff with Fatheade's hat － the tall, rabbity ears rising up above the top of it － and smiling at the thought. "Fatheade's a Wigglytuff now."

He didn't mention the thought to the others, but he briefly wondered if this meant that the future that Foudin had seen － where Fatheade did become like the others, but was still a Jigglypuff － had already changed and things were heading down a different (and hopefully better) path now.

"Huh," Lopendra muttered, antennae twitching for a moment. "Wasn't expecting that one... the way he used to talk about it, I figured he'd end up celebrating his hundredth birthday still a Jigglypuff."

Varney laughed.

"Guess gettin' smacked around by that Machoke knocked some sense into 'im," he said. "Who'd wanna spend their whole life unevolved, anyway?"

"Well," Ed added in, "Maybe those Pikachus back in Yellow Forest..."

Lopendra rolled her eyes and snickered for a moment.

"A hundred Machokes hyped-up on Rare Candy couldn't knock any sense into those idiots."

Ed finished off what little remained of the letter and then tucked it away in his backpack for safekeeping, leaving the pack open so that the three could load it up with their supplies for the trip back to the mainland. They had already found what they were looking for on Eisernschild Island, after all; when the Lapras who had given them a ride came around later that day, they planned on being ready to go.

"So... where are we headed, now?"

Ed glanced over at Lopendra and shrugged.

"Good question... I guess we should head back around to Polunk for now," he replied. "At least long enough to let Elder Lukhan know that we found the stone out here. I figure he might want his book back."

With that, all three commenced with packing their respective backpacks; once the tent was taken down and everything was put away, Ed extinguished their campfire with a Water Gun and the three strapped on their packs and headed to the cliffside to await their ferry back to the mainland. None of them knew what the future would hold now, but with the recent news from Fatheade, for once they were a bit more optimistic about the possibilities.