Saylee—Pokémon: 18 Deaths: 12
Key—Pokémon: 9 Deaths: 7
Archie—Pokémon: 5 Deaths: 3
Blue—Pokémon: 6 Deaths: 1
(See the bottom of the chapter for team rosters)
{Darnua 22nd, 11:459pm}
{Mt Coronet}
"SAYLEE!" Silver screamed as he saw his sister sucked into the pillar of darkness in the blink of an eye. The Pokémon around them, wild and trainer alike, were all untouched, but humans were all being sucked in. Lance, Looker, Archie and Key went flying over his head and into the void in an instant.
"No!" Dawn shouted, clutching her head. Silver turned and glared at Entei, Suicune and Raikou as he saw the three Beasts pausing to watch with their horrified demi-human passengers. "Where did they go?"
"I don't know!" Silver yelled angrily. "You three, STAY!" The Beasts whined in protest as Silver turned and ran towards the black void, vanishing as soon as he touched the pillar.
"Hey! HEY!" Barry yelled, flopping down on Raikou's back. "Guys… what do we do?"
Lucas radiated uncertainty and concern; images flashed through Dawn and Barry's minds of the stones in their foreheads, of Michael telling them how their essence was rescued from Galactic. The feeling of concern intensified.
"You're right," Barry agreed. "They saved us! We gotta at least try and save them!"
"You don't want your master to go in there alone either, do you?" Dawn asked Suicune, stroking her blue ears. "I know you want to go help him, don't you?" Suicune nodded uneasily. "I know you were ordered to stay, but… you want to go, and so do we."
"He'll be grateful in the end!" Barry encouraged them, sitting up and patting Raikou's head. "Besides, he loves you guys! We can tell! He wouldn't get mad at you!"
Lucas tapped the red stone in his forehead, and Dawn and Barry's hands went to their stones unconsciously. "We… can help, can't we?" Dawn asked, turning to face Steven even though she couldn't see him also standing untouched, with Riley clinging to his Metagross' back behind him, the aura master and his Lucario staring in open shock at the Unown swirling around them, more and more of them congregating around the black hole in the air. "You know, don't you?" Dawn added, somewhat more accusingly. "Can we help them?"
"I'm sure you can," Steven agreed, bowing with a flourish towards the black hole. The three Beasts needed no further encouragement to dive into the darkness with their riders.
"Steven!" Riley yelled as Steven himself stepped towards the pillar of darkness.
"Riley, you should stay with Bozider," Steven said, looking over his shoulder at his friend. "Oh, and keep an eye on those tablets for me, will you?" he added, gesturing to the flat stones that had spilled out of his bag.
"Steven, what the hell's going on?" Riley demanded, climbing down from Bozider anyway and running over to Steven. He pointed up at Dialga and Palkia, who were still floating over the battlefield and watching the black hole. "What happened? Where is everyone? Why did that only suck in humans, but not you, me or those kids?! What's—" He looked at Mewtwo. "And who or what are you?"
"I… came to offer my help," Mewtwo said, staring at the black pillar, which was beginning to sink back into the ground, the red-edged beast inside gone. "I do not know where they are… I cannot feel them. I could before… I could feel them when they disappeared into…" He looked at Steven, tipping his head to the side slightly.
"Yes, but the Missing One's pocket dimension was formed from the same power as yours, wasn't it?" Steven said, crossing his arms and staring thoughtfully at the shrinking gap. The Unown were almost entirely gathered around it, aside from a few flitting around Dialga and Palkia, who were watching the tiny one-eyed Pokémon with something like caution.
"Yes," Mewtwo said, staring at Steven. "It was unnatural… like me…"
"Don't say that like it's a bad thing. That unnaturalness allowed you to snap the red chains, and as bad as this looks it would've been a lot worse if Cyrus still had Dialga and Palkia chained when that opened," Steven said, stepping towards the void. "Although things are always messy when Giratina gets involved…"
"Hold it," Riley demanded, running after him. "What the hell's going on here, Steven? You're acting… even weirder than usual."
"What are you?" Mewtwo interjected.
Steven grinned at him. "Of course," he said. "You're a Pokémon, so you can see. But you were made by humans, so…" He smiled at Riley. "Forgive me, my friend, but explanations must come later. I was hoping not to get this involved, but… can you all keep the portal from destabilizing this reality until I get back?" he asked, holding a hand out to one of the Unown. Several of the little black-and-white Pokémon gathered around his fingers, buzzing to each other and then to Steven. For some reason, Riley couldn't understand a word that they were saying, but Steven smiled. "Thank you. I really am sorry. I should've just gotten involved a long time ago, but I'd hoped… never mind. I'll be back soon!" He ran and leaped into the wavering black portal, grabbing the edges and pulling them behind him, causing the portal to shrink down to almost nothing. Dialga and Palkia leaned forwards, as if watching a movie that had just gotten interesting, while the Unown as one circled the hole, giggling to each other.
"What the…" Riley muttered, staring at where his old friend had vanished. "What the hell…?"
"Sure looks like Hell," Rashad muttered, staring at the way the stones of the ancient temple had been burned and warped around where the pillar had been.
"What did you mean?" Luke asked Mewtwo. "When you asked Steven what he is?"
"Good question," Riley said, staring at the tall grey Pokémon. "What are you, for that matter? You didn't answer before."
"Oh, he's a clone of Mew," Rashad said brightly. "Blue knows him. Made in the final days of the Kanto Civil War. Blue was very relieved that you've gained more control over your powers, by the way." Mewtwo nodded.
"I mean, Steven's always had an odd aura," Riley continued, "like nothing I've ever felt in another human, but—"
Mewtwo cut him off. "Does he look human to you?"
"What? Steven? Of course!" Riley said in surprise. "He is human!"
"And you?" Mewtwo asked Luke.
"I've never seen this weird aura Riley's always going on about," the Lucario said with a shrug. "He's never had much of an aura at all, really."
"Of course," Mewtwo said, looking from Riley to Luke. "Because you are a human, and you are a Pokémon. And I… am something in between."
"And what does that mean?" Rashad demanded. "What does that guy look like to you?"
Mewtwo's eyes glowed purple as he showed them.
Luke and Rashad fainted.
{Darnua 22nd, 11:49 pm}
{Mt Coronet}
"I can't thank you both enough," Gardenia said, untying her headband and using it to wipe sweat from her face and neck before the exertion of the battle faded and the liquid froze. "I don't know if I could have held out until the rangers got here without you… I'm just sorry you got mixed up in this. I'm the Leader around here. This is my job." And it's about time I started doing it, she thought guiltily. Sabrina hadn't meant to hear the other woman's thoughts, but Gardenia felt guilt and regret so strongly that it was impossible for the overstimulated psychic not to hear.
"It was our pleasure to assist," Erika said with a little bow, scanning a politely disgusted look over the Galactic members that were being cuffed and dragged into police helicopters—or ambulances. "There is no shame in accepting help… allowing your pride to make you unable to protect the people for whom you are responsible is a far greater shame."
Sabrina couldn't help reaching out to squeeze the older woman's hand; attuned as she was to her former teacher, she couldn't help seeing the strong memories that flashed behind Erika's eyes, the ways that Rocket had abused their power over Celadon City. "We must go to the peak," she said softly. "That's where they wanted to keep you from—"
The psychic stiffened sharply as the world around her tore. She grabbed Gardenia's shoulder with her other hand the instant before all three women fell from a snow-covered mountainside to muggy, damp darkness.
"What—what happened? Where are… BAKULA! OLEANDER!" Erika called. Sabrina could hear her turning back and forth as she called for her Pokémon. "TAFOTILA!"
"I'm here," the Tangrowth said, her searching vines spreading across the floor and curling gently around Sabrina's legs when they found her. She heard Gardenia gasp, her shoulder tensing slightly under Sabrina's hand, then she relaxed with a sigh. "I don't think any of the others are, though. I had a vine around Lady Erika's wrist to keep track of her…"
"That's how you were taken here with us," Sabrina said with a nod.
"Where are we?" Erika asked. "Sabrina, why did you—?"
"I didn't," Sabrina said, shaking her head. "I didn't perform that teleport. Something is very, very wrong." She gripped a little tighter onto Erika's hand and Gardenia's shoulder. "Abdul and Aziz should have found me by now… they should have followed me as soon as we vanished into that warp. But everything feels… strange…"
"I think we're in the Underground," Gardenia said at length. "This feels underground. Tafotila, right? Can you find any lanterns? If we're in the official tunnels, there should be lanterns…"
"Hmm…" Sabrina could hear the slithering of the Tangrowth's vines, and was slightly glad that she couldn't actually see it. As no more than a Tangela, Tafotila had commanded half of the wall of vines that had once surrounded and mostly protected Celadon City until enough Rockets disguised as refugees had rotted it from within. It had been reduced not long after Rocket's defeat in Kanto and was now gone entirely, but Sabrina still shivered to remember the unpleasant mass of writhing, thorn-covered tentacles, a vicious mass that could not be more different from the demure gardener who tended them. "Sorry, ma'am, I can't find anything," Tafotila reported a minute later.
"I hope we're still in Sinnoh," Erika murmured, and Sabrina didn't need to be able to see her to tell that the older woman was frowning. "If we don't know what that warp was or what caused it, we could be anywhere…"
"Give me a minute to meditate… perhaps, if I can make a link to Abdul and Aziz, I can get them to teleport us back," Sabrina suggested, letting go of Erika and Gardenia and slowly kneeling on the floor, placing her hands on her knees. It made little difference to shut her eyes, really, given how all around her was pitch-black, but she did it anyway, the physical action helping her to retreat into her mindscape and extend it, connecting to the minds around her…
She carefully skirted around Gardenia's, not wishing to be intrusive, even though the woman radiated the fear that she was violently trying to suppress…
Tafotila's mind extended all around them, in a view of their immediate surroundings created by the touch of her tentacles…
Erika's mind was tucked in on itself, tightly restrained, but still felt like a warm light, almost welcoming to being read rather than being forced to speak her feelings aloud…
Other minds flared in the darkness of the solid earth around them, strange burrowing Pokémon sharing the same knowledge…
"We are under or near Mt Coronet," she said, hoping that she was speaking loudly enough; she dared not retreat from her mindscape to her physical senses enough to hear her own voice. "There are wild Pokémon nearby who have been called to war by the Fire Lord."
Then there were more and more wild Pokémon, their mindscapes melding as they fought together, clashing against others, Pokémon and human, and every so often a mind would suddenly vanish, leaving an aching gap…
Then she felt another mind reaching out towards hers, another psychic…
She gasped sharply, opening her eyes and managing to reach out and snag the edge of Gardenia's cape and Erika's skirt just as the world shifted around them and, in a pink flash, they appeared on the peak of Mt Coronet.
The second thing that Sabrina noticed was that it was chaos, or recently had been. A gigantic Gyarados was lying in a lightly smoking heap with a large Togekiss sitting over it, talking quietly to a pair of Togetic. Various other Pokémon were lying in the snow around a curiously bare stone plaza, some of them being tended to by a number of Clefable, others appearing to be guarded. A tall Infernape with their fur in a long white cape and blood all over their face was standing on the steps leading up to the plaza, staring up at what hovered above them, which was the first thing she'd noticed and which quickly recaptured her attention.
Two gigantic Pokémon were hovering in the air above them, one near-indiscernible through a haze of blue, the other glowing so brightly pink that it was almost impossible to make out. Beneath them, a black disc hovered in space. It appeared flat, but when they started to move up the slope that they were standing on, it seemed to move so that its flat side was always facing the viewer.
"…Sabrina? Where are we?" Erika asked. Tafotila reached out tendrils of vines around all three women's waists to keep them stable as they climbed up the crumbling stone strewn with snow and blood.
"Well, I sought out a familiar psychic signal, and… MEWTWO!" Sabrina cried, pointing at a tall grey figure in the distance. In a flash, the most powerful psychic Pokémon in the world stood before them.
"Hello, Sabrina," Mewtwo said, carefully reaching out to touch Sabrina's outstretched hand with his own bulbous fingertips. Sabrina smiled, patting his hand back. "I am pleased to see that you are safe. I knew that you were in Sinnoh, and I was concerned that you were caught in the dimensional anomalies that have developed."
"We were, but nothing dangerous," Sabrina said, looking back at Gardenia, whose shock she could feel hovering behind her. Erika looked unruffled, but she always did. "Gardenia, this is my friend Mewtwo. Erika, Tafotila, I haven't introduced you to him before…"
"I have heard rumours," Erika said, holding out a hand with a pleasant smile. "Pleasure to meet you, sir." Mewtwo's eyes widened slightly and he stared at Erika for a moment as if seeing a human for the first time before he tentatively reached out and touched her hand.
"Uh… is he…?" Gardenia asked shakily. "I mean, I heard rumours when I was a kid that people in Kanto were all, y'know, mutated, but I thought that turned out to be…"
"Mewtwo is a Pokémon," Sabrina cut in, slightly more sharply than she'd intended. "He is the only one of his kind."
"Is he the one you teleported to?" Tafotila asked, offering a vine to the powerful psychic in lieu of a hand.
Sabrina nodded. "Mewtwo, what is…?" she asked, gesturing to the glows of black, pink and blue above them.
"The Gods of Space and Time were called to this place," Mewtwo said, looking up, "and nearly all of the humans who were in this place at this time were drawn into… some other place. Followed by the humans who were not fully human, and… I am very confused."
Sabrina rested her hand on his arm again. "I am sorry, Mewtwo," she said softly. "I came here in the hope that I could take your place in the fight against Galactic, so that you would not have to…"
"That's why you wanted to come to Sinnoh?" Erika asked, raising an eyebrow. "Not to examine your prospects at Hearthome University?"
"That too!" Sabrina protested quickly. "But I… didn't want you to have to fight if you didn't want to, Mewtwo."
"Thank you, Sabrina," Mewtwo said, smiling down at her. "That is very kind of you. But I was not the only person who fought here though I did not want to, because I was needed. I think I made a difference. I am not sure. I broke the red chains, which is what I was called here to do, but I am unsure if that made things better or worse. None of the Pokémon, not even the Fire Lord, know whether the humans trapped in the other world will return alive, and the only human left is uncon…" He trailed off, looking up over his shoulder sharply.
"What human? Who is here? Who was taken?" Gardenia asked sharply.
"Saylee Pryce, Blue Oak, and many others I do not know were taken," Mewtwo said vaguely, holding out a hand. "More humans have arrived, and they are… strange." Erika checked that Tafotila's guarding vines were still around hers, Gardenia and Erika's waists before taking Mewtwo's hand, allowing him to teleport all of them.
They didn't go far; they appeared to have simply moved to the far side of the plaza, to a different stretch of broken columns and stained snow, but there were humans in sight this time; four of them, adults, all wearing shapeless grey hoodies and loose trousers to make their features hard to discern.
"—started before they'd even released the Red Chains," one of them was saying quietly to the others as Mewtwo materialized.
"So just by setting foot in the—what?!" another yelped, noticing the new onlookers and whipping around. Her hood slipped as she did, and while she grabbed it quickly, they caught a flash of bright blonde hair before she pulled the hood down to hide her eyes, making only a bronzed chin visible. Another one of the four imitated her, pulling their own hood lower, while the third didn't turn around and the fourth just sighed loudly and flipped his own hood off, revealing more bronze, blond and a pair of bright eyes that flickered between different shades of blue.
"What?" he said defensively when the other three turned to him. "We're kinda busted anyway, don't know if you noticed. That's Mewtwo. And I'm pretty sure that girl there's Sabrina… wow, she was hot when she was young."
"That's not—I mean, not that he's wrong," the imitator said quickly, turning Sabrina's way briefly, "but come on! This is why we didn't want to bring you, R—" She cut herself off sharply. The blond guy rolled his eyes.
"Who are you?" Gardenia demanded. "Are you Galactic?"
"What? Oh my god, no," R gasped. "That is actually the worst thing anybody has ever said to me, and it's not even true. Ew. Is it because of the grey? Because if so, I will never wear grey ever again. I mean ever."
"We're just here to observe," the first one said, still holding her hood over her face. "We needed to see what happened when Cyrus attempted to unmake the world first-hand."
"Wait, Cyrus tried to what?" Gardenia gasped.
"What do you mean 'first-hand'?" Erika asked suspiciously. "Did you know what Cyrus intended to do? How did you—"
"We came here from the future," R said with a shrug.
"Ray!" the blonde and her imitator said in unison. The fourth one, who had yet to speak, just sighed.
"What? I hate all this vague shit," Ray grumbled. "We can tell them we're from the future without telling them anything about the future, y'know."
"It is pleasant to know that there will be a future," Sabrina said lightly. Ray and the imitator both laughed. "But you are saying that these events will repeat themselves someday?"
Ray shrugged and opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, the other blonde said, "we can't tell you, we're not going to tell you, and we've seen what we need to see so we're going now." She grabbed the arms of the other two and looked to the silent fourth, who stood up and reached out to the other three.
"May I ask… what are you?" Mewtwo asked. "You are… like those other humans… human but not human…"
"That's exactly what we are," the other blonde said, clapping her hand over Ray's mouth.
"And that's all for today," the other woman said with a little bow. "Pleasure to have met you!"
"Hey, wait!" Gardenia demanded, starting forwards before flinging an arm up over her eyes against a flash of brilliant green light.
When the light died down, the four strangers were gone.
"…Am I gonna understand anything that happens today?" Gardenia moaned in despair.
{}
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August is such an absurd month. In the last seven days I've worked six, seen seven shows (all of which were good? What kind of Fringe is this where I don't see one thing that's hilariously shit), and been to the movies three times, once to see Suicide Squad (better than expected) and twice to see Ghostbusters (I AM SO INEXPRESSABLY HAPPY THAT THIS MOVIE EXISTS AND IS AS GOOD AS IT IS). I think I've had more drinks than I've had hours of sleep. That is not responsible for how strange shit is getting in this and upcoming chapters, though :P
SAYLEE
Fire Lord Caelin the Infernape, Sally the Luxray, Zoe the Crobat, Ferne the Floatzel, Shanks the Gengar, Elsa the Glaceon
KEY
Terra the Turtwig, Tashigi the Togetic, Maya the Azumarill, Ephraim the Leafeon, Raiden the Rotom, Gareth the Gallade
ARCHIE
Prince the Empoleon, Star the Luxray, Warin the Beautifly, Pegasus the Rapidash, Basil the Floatzel
BLUE
Sam the Blastoise, Gary the Arcanine, Adam the Alakazam, Eira the Electabuzz, Girish the Gabite, Rashad the Lucario
CYNTHIA
Godiva the Garchomp, Titania the Togekiss, Lewin the Lucario, Mira the Milotic, Senka the Spiritomb, Raisa the Roserade
LOOKER
Donna the Deino, Amy the Aggron, Rory the Lucario, Grace the Arcanine, Ace the Azumarill
