The sickly crunch echoed across the battlefield, a shockwave not of energy but a lack thereof. The raging winds and thundercracks that rumbled around Temporal Tower's perimetre grew dulled, as if drained of volume. Flame, breathing laboriously, vision clouded by the trickle of blood dribbling from the gash in his forehead, didn't at first register what had just occurred. He was leaning heavily against Julia, who in turn was leaning heavily on him, both attempting to catch their breaths out of reach of Dialga's lashing tail and his steel-clawed feet. Neither were out of the range of his inescapable time-shattering roars, but as long as Lucky continued to keep him distracted with his repeated blink-and-you'll-miss-it strikes, Flame and Julia would be safe.
Flame and Julia were lucky.
Lucky was not.
From beneath Dialga's massive foot spurted a starburst that grew and flowed outwards and painted the stone beneath him. The angry red clouds above found their vibrant reflection in the pool.
On the other side of the spire, Perry screamed.
Ice shot up Flame's spine as he started to make sense of the scene. Dialga swung his head down to look at the mess he'd just made. When he slowly raised his leg, the ground clung to the underside of his foot, strands hanging thickly off his claws like plant tendrils before they dripped to meet the rest of the puddle. Julia grew limp against Flame.
Faintly, Flame asked, "Lucky?" As if he expected an answer. As if he expected him to cheerfully pop up from behind Dialga's back to laugh at Flame for falling for the joke. As if he was hoping for someone to come shake him from this dream.
"Ohhhh," Julia said, sinking to the ground, "ohhhhh, no no no no. Oh my gods. I'm—" She wrenched her eyes away and turned around to vomit.
The world drowned in an all-engulfing numbness. A ringing sound settled over Flame's mind, comfortingly silencing Julia's retching and Perry's anguished, broken birdsong. He drifted farther away, away from Temporal Tower, away from his body, away from his thoughts. Nothingness consumed him.
He couldn't remember where he was, and that was okay. Gravity had long ceased to exist. It was okay. This was okay. He was okay. He was okay.
A blast shattered Flame's protective veil of unreality and he was cruelly ripped back into the present moment. The stone floor threw itself at his forehead and he choked on a squeak as the impact reverberated through his bones. Somewhere nearby, Julia was crying out. Time halted, sped up, then reversed. Flame's agony replayed and multiplied and trying to comprehend any of it was tearing his very being into shreds.
Then the Roar of Time attack ended and Flame was released from the torturous loop. Battered but newly-lucid, he shoved himself to his feet and did a quick survey of the scene. Julia lay a few feet from him, groaning and clutching her side. The blurry, twitching brown shape further away must have been Perry. And then there was Dialga, squatting before the three of them in front of the dias, chest heaving. His back spines began to recede from their splayed position.
If the last few Roars of Time were anything to judge by, now was the time when he'd remain motionless for just a few precious seconds as he recovered energy. They'd been using that time to take a short breather or quickly discuss a change in tactics or dive towards Dialga and land a few powerful hits before he resumed his attack.
But nothing they'd done had halted Dialga's onslaught. No amount of flames or lightning or Focus Blasts could slow the beast down, nor did any of Perry's aerial diversions keep him mentally occupied for any useful length of time. What were four undersized mortals to a god?
Three, now.
The grim reminder crippled Flame again and he fell to all fours, shaking. The dark, glistening footprints Dialga had tracked on the floor around himself, those were...that was…
"No!" Flame yelled, squeezing his eyes shut, forcing the image from his mind. "We have to keep going! We're almost there!"
Who was he kidding? Maybe himself, if he didn't think about it too hard. That was all that mattered—fooling himself into believing they had a chance. The moment he stopped believing that, he would have already lost. If he didn't believe they could still change the outcome of this battle and save the world, why would he bother to keep fighting? And, worst of all, why would he believe all they'd lost to get to this point was worth it?
"Flame," Julia croaked. Flame shot a glance to the side and saw her standing unsteadily on all fours, one eye squinted shut and blood leaking from her taut lips. "We can't win this one."
"You're wrong!" Flame shouted back at her, tears blurring his vision further. "We can win! We HAVE to win!"
"Lucky was the one doing most of the work." Julia stared at Flame grimly. "We need to change our goal."
Hearing Lucky's name in the past tense almost plunged Flame back into dissociation, but he could hear Dialga's metallic body clanging as he rose back up. Their window of time was almost up. Flame couldn't afford to lose himself again.
"Get your bag," Julia instructed, unsettlingly calm. "Get the time gears, and put them in the dias. I'll cover you."
"Wh-wha?"
A heavy stomp shook the floor and a huge chunk on the edge of the tower dislodged itself and fell the unimaginable distance to the ground far below. This was enough to spur Flame into action. Blindly, he ran in the direction of where he'd discarded his bag by the stairs at the start of the battle, tripping on rubble and stumbling around gaps. Behind him he heard the crashes characteristic of Julia's electric attacks and he thought he could detect the faint fluttering of wings. The sound dredged up the old memory of his fight against Drowzee on Mount Bristle, where he and Julia had fought the criminal alongside the two pelipper brothers. Why the fuck hadn't they come along with them?! If they really cared about stopping the destruction of time, why would they go back to delivering mail like everything was okay? Shouldn't they have known as well as any other future pokémon how dangerous Primal Dialga was?
Or was that the very reason why they didn't come along?
Flame reached the bag and threw the strap over his shoulder. Dialga was roaring something unintelligible and there came sounds of rock colliding with rock; when Flame turned to look, he saw the blurred shapes of stone levitating around Dialga, hurling themselves wherever he looked. In spite of the beating they'd taken, Julia and Perry still flitted around the barrages, untouched. Flame thanked the gods for that—at least, the ones who weren't Dialga.
But when he began to head in the direction of the dias, he immediately sensed something was off. He'd had to lug this bag all the way up the arduously long staircase and he was certain beyond a doubt that it had been heavier than this. His fur prickled as he lifted the flap and looked inside to count the time gears. There were four.
"Oh fuck." Flame whipped his head around in search of the fifth. His eyes, watery and unfocussed, couldn't spot the last blue gear anywhere.
"Shitshitshitshitshit," he hissed as he sprinted back to Julia, careful not to let any more drop. Four couldn't be enough. There were five slots for five gears. That was what would save Temporal Tower—and the future—from certain ruin.
A few yards from him, a yellow blur zipped around Dialga, crackling with lightning. Dialga lumbered around, stomping the ground as if frustrated. Even with Flame's bad vision, he was able to see his back fins opening back up in preparation for another devastating Roar of Time. Within moments, they'd be engulfed by the time-warping blast yet again. There was no avoiding it.
"Julia!" Flame yelled as he ran, praying his voice would reach her over the raucous thunder. "There's only four time gears! We lost a gear!"
Julia landed on the ground a short ways in front of Dialga and looked back. "What?!"
"I said—"
And then the earsplitting roar threw them both back and time ceased to make sense. Flame struggled to hold onto his senses as he was hurled to and fro, his actions and mind repeating endlessly, all parallel timelines folding in and converging on this one point and compressing him into irrelevance.
But then the barrage came to a sudden halt and Flame found himself blinking, dazed, sitting on the ground with his bag on his lap. Dialga stood several yards before him, mouth agape in a roar as his tail whipped about. Near him was Julia, who appeared to be glitching severely. It was almost mesmerizing how she was repeatedly bashed against the ground yet following the same exact path each time.
Is this...how Roar of Time looks like from the outside?
Above his head, Perry gyrated in the air, caught in the blast radius as Julia was. He surely wasn't sustaining damage from it, but he'd be incredibly dizzy once the attack ended. None of this answered the question of how Flame had been released. But the glowing bag on his lap probably did.
Bewildered, Flame took a quick peek inside the bag. All four time gears shone vividly, pulsating their green-blue light brighter than Flame had ever seen before. And when he looked up, he could just barely spot that same glow emanating from between Dialga's legs.
The fifth time gear! Flame realized. How the hell it had gotten all the way under there was anyone's guess, but now he knew where it was...which happened to be the last place Flame wanted it to be. Not only was it lying beneath the belly of a two-ton deity, it also appeared to be coated in...well. He tried his hardest not to think about it.
Flame suddenly felt a pair of eyes on him and his gaze travelled up until it reached Dialga's face. The titan was glaring hideously, clearly aware of Flame's transgression. A stare like that would be enough to freeze a pokémon to stone, but then Flame looked at Julia again, caught in the time loop, and he forced himself to get up and go, banking on the hope that Dialga couldn't attack him while he was busy maintaining his Roar of Time.
It seemed Flame's hunch was right—Dialga continued to glare at him, stomping ineffectually on the spot as he held the drawn-out note of his roar, but he didn't move to attack. Flame didn't want to push his luck too much, though, and made a beeline straight for the dias. He could go back for the fifth time gear after he'd ensured the first four were set in place.
Flame clambered over a downed pillar and scrambled up the steps of the dias. He heard a meaty splash behind him and panic seized him, but when he spun around he saw it was only Dialga dropping to a knee in the macabre puddle of what he had already spilled. Perry fell from the sky, just barely catching himself before he hit the ground, and Julia too had broken from the grip of the attack, skittering backwards out of Dialga's immediate reach. Having confirmed his remaining friends' safety, Flame looked away quickly and slotted each of the time gears into the gaps in the vertical stone tablet. Their glow only seemed to intensify, too bright to look at directly.
Now only one time gear remained and the only thing standing in the way of it was Dialga, hunched over it as a dragon would guard its keep. Dialga was beginning to look almost as haggard as Flame felt; the god's head and tail drooped like they had gotten too heavy for him, and the fury in his eyes had dulled. They were beating him, after all!
Before Flame could get too excited, however, the ground below him heaved and the tower swayed. Flame had to drop to all fours and grip the floor to avoid sliding back down the steps. When the tremors stopped, several more cracks had opened up in the floor, revealing the darkness of the tower below.
That's right, we can't celebrate yet! We need to get the last time gear in place or else Temporal Tower will continue collapsing! But how am I supposed to get it from under Dialga?
As if in answer to his question, Perry suddenly dropped from the sky and dove under Dialga's body. A moment later he emerged with the wet-slicked gear gripped in his talons.
"Bring it over here!" Flame called desperately, waving both paws. Perry swooped towards him, flapping extra hard to keep airborne.
Just as Perry was nearing the dias, something moved behind him, catching Flame's attention. Flame had barely opened his mouth to cry a warning when the airborne objects—felled rocks and stone that had been dislodged by the battling and quakes—were lobbed at the spearow. A split-second too late, Perry glanced back. Flame saw his surprised face only briefly as one of the rocks struck him dead-on and sent him hurtling past the dias and over the edge. Stone, bird, and time gear alike sailed down the side of Temporal Tower and vanished into the rust-coloured clouds.
"Perry!" Flame screeched, leaning as far over the edge as he dared, but it was too late. Perry—and their last hope at saving the world—were gone.
"You!"
Flame whirled on Dialga, back exploding into flame. Dialga, taking in deep and shuddering breaths, bored a hole into Flame's skull with his stare. He had launched that attack that had gracelessly offed their friend. And now he was just sitting there...gloatingly.
"Wasn't one enough for you?!" Flame took a step towards Dialga and balled his fists. "You really had to kill Lucky's brother, too?!"
Julia flanked Dialga's other side, crouched on all fours and uncontrollably sparking electricity with all her fur on end like a bloodstained electric cottonball. To call her livid would be an understatement. She looked positively feral with rage.
"YOU FOUR," Dialga addressed, "KNOW NOT WHAT CRIMES YOU COMMIT."
Flame was taken out of the moment both by the fact that Dialga could apparently still communicate and that he'd called out four of them when there were only two left.
"You're one to talk!" Julia spat. "You just murdered two people! All we wanted to do was save the tower!"
"YOU SOUGHT MY DESTRUCTION FROM THE VERY START!" Dialga roared, getting to his feet only to collapse again. "HOW DARE YOU BRING THE COGS OF DESTRUCTION TO MY DOMAIN?"
Another tremor shook the tower, violent enough that Flame expected the entire floor to fall through. The storm around them grew worse; lightning crashed down and struck indiscriminately while the wind picked up, stirring the clouds into a swirling cyclone. Flame pressed himself against the ground and covered his head with his paws.
"You've lost your mind!" Julia's voice was thin, smothered by the storm's clamour. "The time gears were supposed to stop the destruction of this tower, not cause it!"
But Dialga appeared to be done listening to her. His back fins grew and with difficulty he lurched to his feet. As his jaws began to glow with energy, Flame came to the horrible realization that he was going to use Roar of Time again—and he was aiming it right at Flame. All Flame could do was lie there and tremble like the coward he always knew he was.
Finally, with a mighty roar, Dialga let loose the full force of his attack and Flame prepared for the end. Except nothing happened. No blast of energy, no temporal chaos, nothing. Dialga stared forward, gasping for breath, then slumped over with a heavy crash that shook the floor.
Only he hadn't been looking at Flame. He'd been looking above him.
Green light poured down the steps of the dias, illuminated from behind. Flame risked a glance back and had to shield his eyes. The four time gears pulsated brilliantly, drowning their surroundings in energy. It was almost too much to bear.
Did they absorb the attack somehow...? Flame began backing away from the gears, picking his way down the stairs with shaking paws. That's a good thing, right? There should be nothing to be afraid of.
The red veins of light patterning the five panels that made up the dias's wall began to dull as if draining of power. Dialga, immobilized on the ground, gave a weak, pitiful growl. Like the panels, his glowing streaks had begun to ebb and dim, reverting to a diamond blue. The swirling clouds whipped up faster yet, blurring into a singular crimson mass. Flame stumbled and fell and could vaguely feel a warm body pressed protectively against his, rumbling as if saying something, and Flame swore he could hear his name faint on the wind. And then the light ate the universe.
Sound ceased to be. Darkness engulfed Flame's vision. Existence wrapped around him, cradling him gently even as it pushed the air from his lungs. He was back in that void, falling away from the world.
Am I dead? Or am I dreaming? Is this all that's left?
Voices swirled past as though carried on a breeze. Some he recognized and some were unfamiliar, in a language he'd never heard before. Try as he might, he couldn't strain enough to hear the words or understand the names. All he knew is he loved them, hated them, cared about them, needed them. On a deeper, visceral level, he knew that all of them—those he had met in the past and those he had yet to meet in the future—they were all irrevocably linked. They were a part of him, and he was a part of them, and above all they were part of a greater whole, and they would surely see each other again…
A single light clicked on and he instinctively reached for it. It was his salvation and some part of him deep inside knew he needed to grasp it. That was his purpose.
But the closer he reached, the more the wind pushed back against him, forcing him ever-backwards. The light grew brighter, driving away the comfort of blackness. He could no longer see or feel but still he clawed forwards desperately. He could reach it. He would. He had to.
And as he felt something shaking his shoulder, the sound of pleading echoing distantly in his ear, one of the foreign voices struck him like a gale, spiralling around him and blowing him off course. In the moment before he awoke, the words suddenly made themselves comprehensible.
"Next is the fire-type pokémon, cyndaquil."
"Flame!"
Flame gasped awake and sat up suddenly, blinking in the daylight. He was on Temporal Spire, surrounded by the rubble that used to be architecture. Next to him, breathing a sigh of relief, was Julia.
"Arceus, Flame, I thought I lost you!" she exclaimed, throwing her arms around his neck. "Are you okay?"
"Y-yeah," Flame stammered, hugging her back despite his awkward angle. "I just had...a weird dream." Even as he said it, the last few wisps of the dream faded like a sigh. Whatever he'd just experienced he no longer remembered.
After Julia pulled away from the hug, Flame took a moment to look around himself. The stormy red clouds were gone, replaced with dusty yellow ones that hung lazily in the air. Temporal Tower still lay in broken ruin, but the shaking had stopped. And there, steeped in the pool of his mindless rampage, lay Dialga like a sleeping mountain. Flame forced himself to look away. In the softer light shed by these gentle clouds, the gleaming fluid contrasted even more starkly. It was too hideous to bear.
"Flame," Julia said again, quiet. Tears stuttered down her cheeks and she trembled as she visibly fought back sobs. "W-we did it. We won."
The time gears, fixed in their rightful place on the tablet, shone with a sliver of the intensity they had had before. The lowermost fifth hole remained vacant.
"How…?" Flame looked back at Julia, knitting his brows. "I thought...we needed all five of them to stop the destruction."
Forcing himself to his aching feet, Flame staggered up the steps and placed a paw upon the stone circle. It hummed softly. Behind it, the five panels radiated a faint glow, their veins replenished with bright green. Everything looked as it should be.
As he tried to make sense of how any of this should be possible, his gaze landed on the stone's upper indentation that had been filled with rock. The legend of the sixth time gear came back to him and a fuzzy understanding began to take shape in his mind.
There were once enough spots for all six time gears, but then when that one was destroyed, the hole got filled up. Now there's just four. Does that mean that we never needed all the time gears in the first place?
"YOU TWO."
Flame squeaked in alarm, lost his footing, and tumbled down the stairs, banging that one painful spot on his head again. When he peeked up, rubbing his injury with a paw, it was to see Dialga rising up to his full stature. His eyes remained red and menacing, but there was no malice behind them. Despite everything, Flame found himself in awe of the god and wondered if he ought to be bowing. Julia, too, was rooted to the spot, though tears continued to streak down her face.
"WHAT YOU HAVE DONE IS BEYOND WORDS," Dialga spoke, loud enough to give Loudred a complex. "AND WHAT I HAVE WROUGHT UPON YOU IS ALSO AS SUCH. MY ACTIONS HAVE BEEN BEYOND FORGIVENESS."
The silence after his words was punctuated by the plink plink plink of the drips that fell off his torso where he'd been laying. Flame could no longer look away. That had been his friend. That grotesque red on blue was all that remained of Lucky. A living being, who had been born and lived and existed, reduced to a smear on the floor.
All of a sudden, the weight of it hit Flame as strongly as if he'd been the one caught beneath that immense foot. Once the first choked sob escaped him, they wouldn't stop coming. He bawled, not just for the fact that he'd never see Lucky again, but for how cruel it was. How near to the end they were, how close victory had been when it had happened. How insidious it was that his death was what changed their minds about fighting, and that if he'd been allowed to remain alive and kicking they would have just kept wasting their energy in combat against a god far outclassing any of them in power.
And then there was Perry, who had died for nothing at all. They never needed that stupid fifth time gear. Against his ideology and without second thought, Perry attempted to aid their goal and paid for it with his life. Why couldn't he have been more selfish and left the time gear there beneath Dialga's body where the god may have ended up shattering it unintentionally?
By the time Flame felt Julia's paw alight on his shoulder, his throat was raw and his eyes were burning, having long run dry. After another minute, he was able to lift his head, hiccoughing, and he made an attempt to wipe his face. It was all tears and snot and spittle, mixed into a pale pinkish mess by the blood that still leaked from his wounds. He didn't feel like a hero who had just saved all of time. He felt like a child.
"Can't you bring them back?" Julia asked. Her voice was a deadpan; she'd already given up. Dialga closed his eyes and bowed his head.
"TO RESTORE ONE WHOSE TIME HAS PASSED ON THIS PLANET IS TO REND A TEAR IN SPACETIME, AN ACT OF INFINITELY MORE SEVERE CONSEQUENCE. IF THERE WERE A CONSCIONABLE WAY TO BRING HIM BACK, I WOULD."
Once again Dialga had miscounted the casualties, but this time it was more insulting. "Perry was our friend, too!" Flame snapped, voice breaking. "Don't act like he was less important just because you're not wearing him like a fucking coat of paint!"
The words that came out of Flame's mouth were more callous than he'd intended, but nobody called him out on it. Julia just turned her gaze down, ears drooping. Dialga, on the other hand, shook his head.
"YOU UNDERESTIMATE YOUR FRIEND." He looked past Flame into the clouds and Flame followed his gaze. When he saw what Dialga was looking at, his eyes widened. Against the pale amber backdrop of the clouds flitted a dark little speck.
"Perry?!"
The spearow stumbled through the air and collided into the ground, panting rapidly. When he took to the air again, a bird-shaped splat of blood was left behind on the stone. Julia extended her paws in offering of a hug but Perry flew right past her, landing instead right in front of what was left of his brother.
Nobody dared to speak for what felt like an eternity. Perry remained silent where he stood, motionless. Flame's heart twisted in knots inside his chest. He'd never understood what kind of bond the two had had, and he suspected he never would. To what lengths would they have gone to ensure the other's safety? Would Perry simply dissolve where he stood to join him now?
"I'm sorry," Perry finally said, so quiet Flame almost missed it. "I lost the time gear."
"D-don't be!" Julia responded hastily. "We didn't—four was enough. All that matters is you're okay."
Perry didn't look back. His little body quivered, whether from cold or something else. There was no comfort Flame could offer him.
"Four is enough," Julia repeated, now looking at Dialga, "right?"
"EVIDENTLY," Dialga replied. He gazed upon the dias's stone circle, thrumming with the same veinlike lines as the panels, feeding out to them. Something in the way he studied it made Flame nervous, and he recalled how Dialga seemed to have been aiming his last attack at the time gears themselves.
"Um, Dialga?" Flame began hesitantly. "Back when you were, y'know, all primal like that, you said something about the time gears, and then it looked like you tried to attack them… What was that all about?"
Dialga hummed, pensive, then said, "I WAS NOT IN A LUCID STATE OF MIND. ANYTHING I PERCEIVED AS A THREAT, I BELIEVED I MUST DEFEAT. TELL ME, WHEN YOU CARRIED THE TIME GEARS, DID YOU FIND YOURSELF IMPERVIOUS TO MY ROAR OF TIME?"
Flame nodded slowly. "I got hit with it at first, and then I kind of...broke out of it." He glanced back at Julia, who raised her eyebrows.
"So that's how you teleported all the way over there," she said, incredulous.
"IT IS THE FUNCTION OF THE TIME GEARS TO DISPERSE THE TEMPORAL ENERGY I CREATE," Dialga explained. "THUS, WHEN THEY WERE STRUCK BY MY ATTACK, THEY ABSORBED THE ENERGY, THEREBY FREEING YOU. AS SUCH, IN MY STATE, I MAY HAVE THOUGHT THEM IN MY WAY OF STOPPING YOU. THIS WAS CERTAINLY WHY I ATTACKED THEM."
That made sense. And then, when Dialga had hit them head-on, they must have absorbed the energy again and healed the tower...somehow. It was clear Temporal Tower was still in a half-destroyed state, even if it was no longer actively breaking apart.
Dialga must have picked up on the way Flame was looking around because he added, "REPLACING THE TIME GEARS HAS ONLY HALTED THE TOWER'S DESTRUCTION, NOT REVERSED IT. THE BURDEN OF REPAIRING THE DAMAGE FALLS ON MY SHOULDERS. HOWEVER, I CAN SENSE ACROSS THE LAND THAT TIME HAS RETURNED TO NORMAL." He gazed upon Flame and Julia with an unreadable expression—perhaps pride, if Flame squinted. "YOUR ACTIONS HAVE PREVENTED THE PARALYSIS OF THE PLANET AND FOR THAT I OFFER MY SINCEREST THANKS. IF I WERE CAPABLE OF DOING MORE FOR YOU, I WOULD."
"I understand." Flame exchanged an unhappy glance with Julia. They both caught his meaning perfectly well.
But then a small voice piped up, "Actually, can I ask something of you?"
Everyone looked at Perry, who still stood with his back turned.
"I APOLOGIZE, BUT I CANNOT—"
"I know!" Perry chirped at what must have been the top of his lungs. He flapped his wings furiously and glared at Dialga, a drop of water facing down the sea. "I'm not stupid! I know you can't bring him back!"
Flame couldn't remember if he'd ever seen Perry angry before but it surprised him. He must have already expended his sorrow during the battle.
"THEN WHAT IS IT YOU ASK FOR?"
Perry settled down, folding his wings. Blood streaked his chest, staining his underbelly to match the natural colour of his wings, though they too looked a shade darker than usual. Just how much damage he'd sustained was anyone's guess.
"I won't last for much longer." His chirps were flat, emotionless. "I came from the future, acting on little more than mythology and assumptions. And after all this time, I still don't know how the time gears really work." He gazed up blankly at Dialga. "Would you tell me all you know about them? Just for closure's sake."
"Perry…" Julia murmured, clasping her paws together. Flame leaned in towards her and placed a paw on her back. He would let Perry know that they still had a few oran berries left and he could heal himself, but this was clearly an important moment for him. He'd wait to offer the berries until the time was right.
Dialga seemed to consider the request, then at last nodded. "YES, I SEE NO REASON TO WITHHOLD THIS INFORMATION FROM YOU. AS GOD OF TIME, IT IS MY DUTY TO ENSURE TIME MAINTAINS ITS FLOW IN THIS WORLD AND AS SUCH I UTILIZE THE TIME GEARS TO DISTRIBUTE POWER ACROSS THE LAND. TEMPORAL TOWER ACTS AS THE MEDIUM THROUGH WHICH I SUPPLY THEIR ENERGY."
"Until it started to collapse, right?" Perry asked.
"CORRECT. WHEN THAT HAPPENED, THE POWER SOURCE WAS CUT OFF AND THE TIME GEARS COULD NO LONGER PERFORM THEIR TASK. AT THE SAME TIME, THE POWER ACCUMULATED WITHIN ME, CLOUDING MY MIND. NOW THAT THE TIME GEARS HAVE BEEN RETURNED HERE, THIS TOWER ACTS AS A CONDUCTOR MORE POWERFUL THAN EVER BEFORE. IF I SEE FIT TO SOMEDAY RETURN THEM TO THEIR PLACEMENTS ACROSS THE LAND, I SHALL DO SO."
Flame's ears were starting to ring from Dialga's sonorous voice and he hoped Perry was done questioning him. Julia, too, looked antsy, fidgeting and staring distractedly at her paws. Unfortunately, Perry wasn't quite finished yet.
"Who made them?"
"THAT ANSWER IS NOT MINE TO GIVE. THEIR ORIGIN REMAINS CLOUDED IN MYSTERY, EVEN TO ME. HOWEVER, I CAN CONFIRM THEY ARE CRAFTED FROM ADAMANT, THE STRONGEST ORE IN EXISTENCE. THEY ARE IMPERVIOUS TO ALL DAMAGE."
Perry made a noise like a sharp exhalation and Flame frowned. Was that a chuckle?
"One last thing, then." Perry looked and sounded exhausted, like it was an effort just to keep talking. "What of the mystery dungeons?"
"AN UNAVOIDABLE BYPRODUCT."
The answer made no sense to Flame but it seemed to satisfy Perry. The spearow sank down into the pool, head slumping. "Thank you. That's all I needed to know. Brother, I'll see you again soon."
"Perry?" Flame said, thoroughly unnerved. "We—we have oran berries. You can come home with us. You'll be okay."
Perry finally met his gaze and smiled sadly. "Thank you, Flame, and Julia, but I promised Lucky we'd disappear together. I'm going to stay here." His last chirp was unnaturally clipped, like something had caught in his throat, and he looked sharply away.
"But—"
Julia cut Flame off by taking his paw and shaking her head. "Let's give him some space for now. I think he needs to be alone."
Flame wanted to protest but he knew Julia was right. Perry's wording was concerning, but he needed his time to grieve.
"I hope we meet again," Flame said uncertainly. Perry laughed again even as a tear rolled off his beak and splashed down.
"Me too, Flame," he replied. "Me, too."
Flame and Julia both looked up at Dialga, who nodded to them. They were free to go.
Making sure his bag was on properly, Flame walked back to the stairs with Julia, glancing at Perry one last time. Perry stayed put, quivering and avoiding their gazes. Not a minute after Flame and Julia began their descent down the decimated spiral staircase, the distant sound of tinny, desperate wailing wafted down to them from the top of the spire. The two exchanged a look and Flame squeezed Julia's paw in hollow comfort. The sound of Perry's heartache followed them down the first five minutes of stairs before fading into the distance at last.
With Flame's adrenaline dissipating, he soon grew weary. The stairs carried on for an eternity, spiralling forever downwards. He and Julia remained silent, holding paws except for when they had to jump to clear a gap in the stairs, and when they took a break to rest halfway through and split an oran berry for a snack, neither said much. Julia had this faraway look in her eyes like she was deep in thought about something and Flame didn't want to disturb her. She was still processing the events that had just transpired, just as he was. He could wait.
Orange rays snuck in through the holes in the walls as they drew nearer to the tower's base. Flame felt numb, as though his consciousness was drifting just above his body. His feet dragged and he tripped a few times—a net neutral in his books, since falling carried him down faster. Although his stomach was hollow, he didn't feel hungry enough to eat another oran berry or an apple. He didn't feel much of anything, really.
Finally, the two emerged from the arching entrance and stepped out into the dying light of day. One of the metallic spikes that framed the entryway had fallen down.
"Gah, finally!" Flame exclaimed, sitting down heavily on one of the steps leading down from the tower and leaning back. "I'd rather eat my own bag than ever go in this stupid tower ever again!"
Julia nodded her assent, flopping down next to him. Her eyes drooped and she looked like she'd fall asleep if Flame didn't intervene; but after another short rest, the two picked themselves back up and continued down the rocky pathway. A gentle wind kicked up, weaving around them and blowing on their wounds that had already begun to heal. Paired with the sunset, it had a calming effect. Perhaps too calming.
Flame began to notice Julia slowing down gradually, feeling the tug on his paw as she fell slightly behind. He did his best to slow down for her—he was exhausted, too, so he understood—but she only continued to grow more languid. Eventually, she came to a stop altogether.
"Hey, are you feeling alright?" Flame asked her, squeezing her paw. She didn't respond right away but Flame kept silent for her.
"Flame…" she began, but before she could say more, her body took on a faint but unmistakable glow. A fragment of light, like a tiny ember, escaped from her and floated upwards before vanishing. Then it happened again. Flame dropped her paw and took a startled step back.
"What—what's happening to you?!"
Julia's ears sagged as she tilted her head back to watch more lights fly from her body. "I guess...I can't hold back telling you any longer."
"What do you mean?!" The way she said it, so calm and resigned, was setting off alarms in Flame's mind. "Tell me, what's going on?"
"I'm a pokémon from the future," Julia said, meeting Flame's gaze. "Now that we've changed the future, the one I came from doesn't exist anymore."
At those words, Flame instantly knew where she was going with this, but he refused to believe it. "Wh-what does that matter? You're not in the future right now, so it shouldn't affect you, right?"
Yet more sparks trailed off her body, dancing in the sky like the volbeats and illumises at Fogbound Lake. As it continued, she began to look almost translucent, like she was losing her form. Flame desperately grabbed her paw, to hold onto her, and found that even that felt thin and fragile. That gentle wind now felt like it could blow her away.
"Flame, I want you to know…" A smile broke on Julia's face, accompanied by the tears that were forming in her eyes. "...I love you more than anything. I'll keep on loving you, even when I'm gone. Loving your courage, loving your vigour—"
"No!" Flame shook his head, squinting his eyes shut tightly. "I won't accept it! You can't be leaving! I won't let you! Please, Julia, you can't leave me!"
Her paw slipped out of his grasp and he thought she'd pulled it away, but when he opened his eyes he saw it remained clasped with his, immaterial and untouchable. The sickly clouds showed right through her body like she was merely coloured glass.
"Flame, listen to me."
Julia's voice was far away despite her proximity. Flame stared into her face, an unspoken plea in his eyes.
"I want you to live your life, even when I'm gone." There were now more glowing lights than Julia left and it was difficult to even make out her facial features. "Go on living, knowing our lives ensured a brighter future for the whole world."
"How am I supposed to do that?!" Flame was sobbing but his eyes refused to shed tears, having already wasted their supply earlier. "You were supposed to be my mate! I wanted to grow old with you and have a family and—and—!"
"When we meet again, in another life," the distant echoes of Julia's voice said, "we'll be together. I promise."
"I want you in this life!" Flame screamed. "Julia, no!"
But when he reached towards her, trying to catch her in an embrace, the remnants of her body burst into tiny lights, encircling Flame one last time before floating away above him where he couldn't follow.
Then they, too, dissipated, and Flame was alone.
How long Flame lay there, unable to bring himself to stop weeping his dry tears, he didn't know. Darkness had fallen and his only companions now were the faraway stars above and the pointed boulders that hung suspended beside the path, and none of them were coming forward to comfort him. He was sure he would have laid there forever if the cold wind didn't shake him from his singlemindedness. Slowly, he rose to his feet, turned away, and began plodding down the path towards the rainbow stoneship.
It was all more than he could take. He had first lost Grovyle, a mentoring figure and guiding beacon. Then it had been Lucky, reduced to an indistinguishable puddle of viscera. Perry, he now realized, was gone just as Julia was—he, too, was a pokémon from the future, after all. Now that Flame knew the consequences for changing the past, he understood Perry's nihilism at the end.
"I promised Lucky we'd disappear together."
Everyone knew. Everyone else knew, and nobody told him. Somewhere in the back of Flame's mind, he understood why they'd really done it: if he'd known what was to befall his companions, he never would have gone through with returning the time gears. Or, failing that, his morale would be depleted to nothing. Either way, the mission would have failed. Everything they'd been through would have been for naught.
But a less rational and more vocal part of Flame's mind had a more cynical view of the matter. The real reason they didn't say anything, it told him, is because they all knew what a weak-minded pussy you are. They knew you'd break down and become this stupid, snivelling, good-for-nothing wreck. And look at you! They were right!
Shut up, Flame told it, marching steadily ever onwards. You just want me to be more miserable than I am. I know they valued me. They didn't tell me because they cared.
But what if I'm right?
Shut up!
You can't deny it forever. Eventually you'll realize I'm right.
SHUT UP!
The rainbow stoneship loomed ahead, humming with blue light. Flame ran for it, desperate to leave this place. He wanted to go home, to return to the guild and put all this from his mind. The Hidden Land was proving bad for his mental health.
As if by his will, the rainbow stoneship began to move once he'd sat down on it. Its bright rainbow trail cut a shimmering path in the darkness, warm and friendly. He watched it, even as Temporal Tower grew more distant beyond the end of its tail. Left alone with his thoughts, his mind wandered, picking its way around different musings. Did disappearing hurt? Where did they go, now that they were gone? Were they with Arceus in the afterlife, or had being unwritten prevented them from passing on? Had Lucky gotten out of it...well, lucky?
Other discontentments, trails of thinking that Flame had never before ventured down, began to appear. Who was Flame? What had he done with his life? Was this really the person he'd wanted to become? Had he really developed as a person at all? Who would he be without Julia by his side?
At some point Flame must have slept, for he awoke some time later, curled around the relic fragment he'd set into the rainbow stoneship which had already docked back on the pyramidic temple's peak. Daylight was breaking and hunger clawed at him, a restless beast ready to tear him apart. Begrudgingly, he ate, finishing off the last of his apples before the beast was satisfied. Before Flame left the pyramid, he pried his relic fragment back out of its indentation and put it in his bag. If he had to trek through the perilous Hidden Land without four other companions, he at least deserved his personal treasure back. It had already served its purpose, anyways.
Flame entered the ruins and traversed down the hall, the sound of his footsteps bouncing off its ancient walls. Though the murals remained just as he'd left them, they looked older somehow. His paw carved through the thin layer of dust that coated them as he walked by.
On the other side he paused, looking at the outer drawings one last time. There were those sickly-looking humans arranged around the volcano's mouth, and there was the time gear in the process of falling in.
Dialga said they're impervious to all damage, he recalled. Does that mean the sixth time gear survived being drowned in lava? Or did those ancient humans really find a way to destroy it?
But it didn't matter anymore. They hadn't needed six times gears or even five to save the tower. And because Julia disappeared, Flame could be sure the future had changed. Doubt niggled in his mind, but he shoved it aside. He had no room for doubt. It could go sit in the corner alongside Self-Hatred.
From atop the hill, Flame could see all of the Hidden Land spread out ahead of him. There was no telling how long it would take him to return to the other side where Lapras would be waiting for him—if he was waiting for him. What difference did it make whether or not Flame would ever be able to return home? There would be no Julia waiting there for him. He might as well live and die here without ever seeing anyone ever again.
And yet Julia's words clung to him, nudging him forwards. It didn't matter how he felt; if he gave up here, it would be spitting in the face of Julia's last wish for him. She'd wanted him to live his life, with or without her. So, alone and despondent, Flame trudged towards the valley, bleeding away the last remnants of his heart.