"You can't protect yourself from a frontal attack like that. Look at how exposed your stomach is."
A Weavile kicked the Snover square in the gut before he had a chance to give her a rebuttal. He immediately fell backwards and let out a sharp inhale. He then clutched his stomach with his thick paws and rolled onto his side.
There was a flash, and then the Weavile was suddenly looming over the Snover, pushing her claws against his throat. No blood pooled around her claws, but she knew her message had reached the Snover at her mercy. She could feel him shuddering.
The Weavile kept her glance on the Snover for a moment longer before she removed her claw from his throat.
"Try again," she told him as she backed away. "Find a stance that'll protect you from a frontal assault."
"In… In a moment…" the Snover wheezed out. "I… I can't breathe… too well."
The Weavile sighed, but knew that nothing else could be done. She had knocked the wind out of him after all. That was always something quite difficult to recover from unless the opponent had thick hides protecting their organs or lacked any organs in the first place like the ghost-types. So, after taking note of the Snover's raspy breaths, she looked at the room the two found themselves in.
They were in a circular room, a section of a dojo that the Weavile was given to train other Pokémon. There was nothing in her training room, unlike the other trainers' rooms. She had left the ground barren and covered in the dirt that had been there ever since the dojo had been built and left the walls as a blank, white canvas. The only notable aspect of her room was the hole in the ceiling that allowed the evening sun's waning rays to seep inside the room. The other dojo rooms sometimes had ivy flood into the room through the hole or covered it up with glass panes, but the Weavile had left it alone. She had never minded the rain that flooded into her room during the storms. It had always made for very interesting training sessions.
"Why… why do you have to go… all out, Master Glace?" the Snover asked. "Why can't you… go easy on me? You know… I'm not as strong as you."
The Weavile brought her gaze back over to the Snover to see that he was still on the ground, panting. He hadn't moved since she last looked at him.
"First of all, I'm not using my full power on you," Glace answered. "I'm pulling my punches. If I wasn't, I would have slammed into that wall behind you."
"Oh geez…"
"But to answer your real question, it's because you've reached the point where you can take it. You came to me wanting to get stronger, and you don't get stronger by having me go easy on you. I have to push you every time you start learning to tolerate the strength I use against you. I told you the moment I started training you that I would be this way."
"I know… but I didn't think it'd hurt so much. I feel like you broke something…"
Glace highly doubted that she had broken anything in her student, but didn't bother to make a comment on it. She only watched him rise to his feet. He staggered for a moment, almost falling back onto the ground the moment he stood back up, but he was able to remain on his feet just before his weakness could overwhelm him.
"Are you ready to try again?" she asked.
The Snover nodded. He crossed his thick arms over his body once again, though this time making sure that he covered his stomach as well. Glace noted that he was still shuddering and that there was a mark on the spot where she had kicked him.
"Better," she said. "It'll be more difficult for a fighting-type to kick you in a vulnerable spot now. They'll only be able to attack your arms now."
"And that won't hurt as much as being kicked in the stomach, right?" the Snover asked.
"No," Glace replied.
Glace then shot forward on her swift feet, and then before the Snover could even see her, she kicked him right where his arms intersected. He flew back for a moment before crashing back down, sending dust up into the air.
"But it still hurts," she then said. "It only makes it so that you can get back up again without a moment's delay. A blow to the arm is more bearable than a blow to the chest or stomach. You can shake it off much more easily."
The Snover didn't bother to get back up. He only remained where he was, rubbing his arms with his paws gingerly. Glace sighed and shook her head.
"We're done for today," she stated. "Get yourself some orans from Remedy in the refreshment area. Come back whenever you want to see me again. You know when I'm here."
"Okay… thank you, Master Glace."
Glace didn't say anything in return. She only strolled past the downed Snover and made her way to the makeshift door that was nothing more than a rectangular hole in the wall with a red drape to separate the room from the rest of the dojo. Glace pulled back the drape with her claws before exiting her room.
She soon found herself in the main lobby of the dojo. Seven other makeshift doors were within the walls surrounding her, leading to the other trainer rooms and other services that the dojo provided. Each one was covered with a drape just like Glace's room, preventing outsiders from peering into the training sessions. That had always been the policy at the dojo; grant the students privacy from others. No one wanted others to see them in their moments of struggling.
Against the back wall, in between two doors, was a doorway that held no drapes to shield it from onlookers. That was the leisure room, the area where all of the dojo masters went when they had no students to train and wanted a few moments of relaxation. It was a spacious room, almost half as large as the main lobby itself, and had a number of seats, tables, and other such furniture for the trainers to lounge around in. There was always at least one Pokémon in that room, either napping or having a meal break.
The current moment was no exception, though there were far more Pokémon in the room than she had ever seen before. The Weavile couldn't help but make her way over to doorway and peer inside of the large room. As soon as she did, she realized that many of the Pokémon gathered within were dojo trainers, along with the other employees, such as the Greninja that was the first to greet and assist the students they all trained. There were some other Pokémon that Glace didn't recognize as well, such as a young Pikachu and Torchic playing some sort of game with sticks and leaves, a Jigglypuff slumbering at a table, or an Ekans and Seviper intertwining their tails together. There was even a Noivern roaming about the party, eying Pokémon for a few moments before moving onto another group of Pokémon and doing the same thing. No one seemed to notice the Noivern, as if it were a ghost invisible to all.
Everyone was chatting amongst themselves, or eating from the large assortments of foods on the tables. No one seemed to notice Glace standing there in the doorway, watching it all from afar.
"Well well, if it isn't Glace."
Glace saw something in the corner of her eye. She snapped her head to the side to find that there was now a Marowak in her presence. He was using his bone club as a staff to lean against, all the while giving her an amused stare. Glace was certain he was smiling from beneath his mask as well.
The tenseness in her muscles eased when she fully saw the Marowak. He was another dojo trainer; he was one of the first trainers she met when she first began to work there. They had never talked much, but his name was the only dojo trainer's name she knew. She had never bothered to remember anyone else's names.
"Why's everyone in there?" she asked.
"Because we're having an anniversary party!" the Marowak answered with a small laugh. "We've been here in Granite Town for ten years. Having a dojo around that long is pretty impressive, if I do so myself. So why not celebrate for such a great milestone?"
So that was the reason why. Glace had completely forgotten that the dojo had been around for so long. In truth, she had never paid much attention to the history of the dojo or anything regarding its foundation. All she knew was that she had joined nine years ago when there had been an opening for a new trainer. Everything else she had never bothered to pay any mind.
"So are you going to join or not?" the Marowak then asked. "It'd be nice to have you around. Maybe I can even know what you're like when you're not throwing your students all over your training room. Surely there's more to you than being some nonchalant sadist. I want to know what's going on inside of that cold head of yours."
Glace scoffed. Of course, that was what parties were for. Besides having a wonderful time, it was also about mingling amongst your peers. The moment she put her foot into the doorway, Pokémon would try to talk to her. They would try to get into her head and understand why she was the way she was.
They would want to know who she was before she had become a dojo trainer and where she had come from.
"I'm not going to your party, Mar," Glace answered. "You can all have fun without me."
"Aw what? Why not? It'll be great!"
"I don't think it will be. I was never a social Pokémon before. There's no reason why I should start being one now."
"I don't think I believe that. I think that you're capable of being a social Pokémon that can talk to just about anyone, otherwise you wouldn't be a trainer. Because every day you have to talk to someone. You have to teach them how to make themselves stronger and what they might be doing wrong."
"Being a good teacher doesn't mean anything."
"Well even if it didn't, you're still a Weavile. Isn't it in your instincts to be able to cooperate with other Weavile to make perfect hunts? Like don't all of you work in some big pack and give each other signals so you can kill Piloswine?"
Glace saw an image in her mind's eye. She saw herself leading four smaller Weavile through a snow-covered forest. They were following the footprints of a large creature. Something with two long claws protruding out of each of its feet. Something that was most definitely one of the strange, ice-type Sandslash that roamed in very particular forests of the region.
She knew the Sandslash had been there recently. The footprints were quite fresh. If the pack cooperated with her, they could all have a tasty Sandslash in a couple of hours. Maybe they'd even be fortunate enough to find that the Sandslash had led them straight to her den filled with her hatchling Sandshrew.
They only needed to cooperate and listen to her. They only had to obey her orders precisely and not deviate from them in the slightest.
Glace stopped herself before her strange train of thought could go any further. She frowned as she glanced back at the party, finding that nothing had changed since the last moment she had eyed the crowd. Everyone was still talking amongst themselves, sharing stories, partaking in cold gossip, or spouting endless details about their lives and all of the grand things they had done and how great they were as Pokémon.
"Have fun at your party, Mar," Glace finally said before she turned away from the crowd. "Try not to stay up too late."
And then, without waiting for a response, she left the dojo.
It was dark by the time Glace made it home. The sun had long set during her walk from the dojo to her home, blanketing the little mountain town with calming darkness. She hadn't seen any Pokémon as she weaved her way through the town to her home, but that wasn't something terribly surprising. Here, not many Pokémon stayed out past evening. All of the shops closed up by the time the darkness snuffed out the last ray of sun, leaving nothing to do when night settled upon the land. There was not even a single torch set up to brighten the roads nor an illuminous orb.
Everyone stayed inside after dark, no exceptions. It had been that way the entire nine years Glace had lived in Granite Town, all to avoid the nocturnal ferals that would climb down the mountains and roam about the streets. Dark-types were usually the creatures, such as Mightyena and Absol, though there was the occasional Ursaring. All of them were a Pokémon no one wanted to face.
Of course, Glace had never feared them. If she ever saw one during her walks home, she would hide behind a tree or scurry home long before they could ever detect her. Though fearsome to many, they were actually very predictable once you saw them enough times. Once you saw the pattern, you always knew how to deal with them.
When Glace reached her home, a simple wooden cottage that was nearly identical to all the homes of the village, she quietly opened the door before going inside and shutting the door behind her. She found herself in the massive room that made up the entirety of her home. The dimming light of a week-old illuminating orb on a table in the center of the room barely alit the room with a turquoise hue, but it was enough for Glace. Even with that meager amount of light, she could see everything with the same amount of clarity as she could in the daylight. She could see the empty stone chimney in the corner, the bed resting against the opposite wall, the basket of berries resting near the table, and the basin of water near the bed.
But mostly, she saw the pile of wood stacked near the chimney. The moment she saw it, she made her way toward the pile. Many would have presumed it was firewood to be used during the frigid winters, but Glace had no need for warmth in the winter. She was perfectly fine with the cold that winter brought, even in the mountains. To her, even the harshest blizzard felt the same as a warm spring day.
When Glace reached the pile, she grabbed a piece and brought it over to the bed with her. Then she sat down and adjusted her seat, she set the wood in her lap and put one set of claws on the wood's surface.
She pressed her claws harder against the wood, sinking them deep, and then she slowly carved a shape. The sound of claws scrapping echoed throughout the house, but Glace ignored it as she continued carving away at the wood.
Within seconds, she had finished her work. There was now a picture on the surface of the wood, a crude circle within a three much larger circles. It wasn't anything particularly impressive, as any Pokémon with claws could have made the same symbol, but she had no intentions of showing this to anyone anyway. She only did this out of habit, to make sure her claws could still gouge wood as easily as they could before.
Make a wide circle around the prey.
When she finished creating the symbol, she made another one right next to it. This time, it was two lines running parallel to each other with a circle between them.
Follow the prey on both sides. Don't let it see you.
Glace flipped the board of wood over and made a new symbol. This one took longer to make, as it required more lines to carve out, but it didn't take more than ten seconds to complete the drawing. Now it was a single circle, surrounded by many jagged lines all very close to it, mere millimeters away from overlapping it.
Surround it and attack all at once.
A bright light suddenly went off near the window opposite of where Glace sat. She looked up from her wooden canvas just as the light faded, but she still saw the tail end of the light before it retreated back into the darkness.
Glace set the wood aside as she got up and made her way over to the window before peering out into the neighborhood.
Much to her great surprise, there was a large congregation of Pokémon outside, all of them gathered not too far away from her home. They didn't appear to be doing anything particular, only looking up at the sky and pointing at something with their paws, as well as speaking in muffled, distant voices. What they could possibly be so enthralled by, Glace didn't know. Perhaps the fabled Millennium Comet had appeared after all this time. Glace wasn't much for celestial wonders in the sky, but she could imagine how one could cause such a commotion. It was a disruption in the normally peaceful night sky, a spatial wonder that reminded those of the planet that there were things beyond that world that they could not understand.
Nonetheless, Glace knew it had to be something quite fascinating to have them all leave their homes and stand in the street when it was still dark. So, after keeping her gaze on the townsfolk for a moment longer, she looked up into the dark sky and beheld an astonishing sight.
There was a great tear in the sky that stretched for seemingly miles, as though a great hand had grabbed the very fabric that made up the sky and pulled it apart. And within that great rip in the sky, there was no darkness. There was a great mesh of various colors, all of them swirling around each other chaotically or mixing together to create brand new colors that Glace had never seen before. Great explosions of white went off within the mess of colors, and each time Glace was sure something would spill out of the hole and into the town. However, it would never happen. The flash would go off, and then the colors would continue to swirl, as if nothing had happened.
Glace found she could only stare up at the surreal wonder, unable to process what she was seeing.
It was then that Glace felt a sudden chill run down her spine. She felt something dark and heavy settle over her heart as she gazed at that tear in the sky, something that made her head spin and her claws tremble. She took in a few deep breaths in an attempt to calm herself, but they did nothing. Her heartbeat only quickened.
Something wasn't right. She didn't know what, but something wasn't right anymore. Something within her mind vehemently insisted that something was very wrong and that she should be very, very afraid.
Glace couldn't remember the last time she had felt like this. It had been too long since she had such an oppressive, foreboding feeling before, the kind one has when they find themselves staring up at a monstrous Pokémon about to snap its jaws over you.
She didn't know why she was feeling this way. So what if there was a tear in the sky? That didn't mean anything. There was no reason to feel as though she was gazing into death's very jaws. There was absolutely proof that the strange rift in the sky meant anything. For all she knew, it was a phenomenon that happened on the mountains in this particular part of the region. No one outside seemed to be screaming hysterically or running away.
There was a knock at the door before the dread could seep any further into Glace's mind. Her claws stopped shaking as she found herself back in reality, no longer thinking about the tear in the sky. Instead, she wondered who could possibly be at her door at this hour. Granted there were all those Pokémon outside, but they didn't seem interested in knocking on neighbor's doors.
Glace made her way over to the door. She stopped in front of it and then took in a breath and exhaled deeply. When all of the air left her lungs, she opened the door.
There was a Noivern standing on the other side of the door. Glace immediately recognized the Noivern to be the one she saw that the dojo's party. However, the Noivern no longer seemed like a nosy dragon that clearly didn't belong to the party but futilely tried to blend in anyway. There was something different about her.
Namely, Glace felt like she actually knew the Noivern now that she got a good look at her.
She couldn't recall if she had met this Noivern before. She certainly would have remembered this Noivern with the way she seemed to resist wrapping her wings around her body and had this shy smile on her face that seemed very unfit for most dragon-types. And when Glace really thought about it, she didn't think she had ever really talked to a Noivern before. She had seen a couple in her lifetime from a distance, but they were all male. None of them were female like this one.
"Hi there, Glace," the Noivern said with a wave of her claw. "I hope I didn't wake you up. I know that it's pretty late right now and I was going to wait until morning, but then I saw that huge hole in the sky and well… it made me remember we don't have a lot of time."
Glace had to resist scowling. She could feel her skin crawling.
"What are you talking about?" Glace asked as she narrowed her eyes. "And how do you even know my name?"
"I know this is going to sound crazy, but…"
The Noivern glanced behind her and seemed to notice all of the Pokémon within earshot.
"Actually, we shouldn't talk out here," she said. "We might freak everyone out. Can you let me inside?"
"I'm not letting you into my house," Glace growled. "You really think I'm going to let some stranger in here?"
"Aw come on, Glace," the Noivern pleaded. "Don't be like this. I'm not going to steal anything or hurt you. You know I won't."
Glace was about to refute the Noivern and tell her to leave, but she looked at the Noivern again and saw something in her eyes. Something familiar, something in her memories that she couldn't quite grasp. Something that told her she could trust this Noivern and that no harm would come.
The Weavile sighed and stepped out of the way.
"Alright fine, get in here," she said.
There couldn't be too much harm in letting the Noivern into her home. If she tried to steal anything, Glace knew she could easily take her down. Noivern were extremely susceptible to cold, after all. Hitting them with one measly snowball made their entire body shudder violently. Glace could only imagine what a gust of frosty air could do to a Noivern.
The Noivern's smile brightened as she hurried inside the house. Glace shut the door behind her and watched as the Noivern settled herself by the table. The Weavile then joined her and soon, the two were sitting opposite of each other, holding a gaze.
"Alright, we're inside," Glace then said. "What do you want to tell me?"
"Well, I think I should introduce myself first," the Noivern replied. "I think it's the only real way to talk about everything I wanted to tell you. So, my name is Sonata. I'm a spy for this… guild. It's really not a guild, but I'm just going to call it a guild because explaining what it actually is would take too long. I used to work there ever since I was a Noibat. Spent a good twenty three years there. I really liked being there. I'd do recon for the leader of the guild and I'd give him any information I'd find. He was happy with me and I was happy to serve him because he was such an amazing Pokémon. He was so kind and strong, and he was such a great leader. I was totally fine with working for him for the rest of my life.
"But then I saw that rip in the sky… and my whole world changed."
Sonata sighed as she fiddled with her claws for a moment. Glace noticed that they were impressively sharp, though covered in a good number of scratches. She imagined that they were like that from digging them into too many hard surfaces such as cave walls.
"I know why the sky is torn open," Sonata said quietly. "It's because all of the dimensions are starting to unravel. The fabric of reality that used to tie them together is coming undone and pretty soon… all the dimensions are going to collapse in on each other and kill everyone."
"… what?" Glace asked. "The dimensions are… what are you even talking about?"
"This place you live in, this universe you live in, it's not the only one there is. There's a whole bunch of them that are all connected. I don't know if they were all separate dimensions originally or if they were all one before it got split up for some reason, but the point is that there are multiple universes living right next to yours. Entire universes filled with their own little problems and rules and Pokémon that have lives just like you. You just can't see them because you don't have that power."
Glace didn't know how to respond. In truth, she had heard of the multiverse theory before. Supposedly, other dimensions did live alongside their own dimension, all of the dimensions completely unaware of the others. Glace had never believed in the theory though, so seeing Sonata spout about it made her start to question why she had allowed the Noivern into her house on a sheer whim. Why had she done that? She never did that with other Pokémon, including those that she actually knew.
"And you would know this, how?" Glace then asked, deciding to humor the idea. "You don't have any proof that's the reason the hole is there. It could be something else, like a spatial anomaly. Doesn't have to mean that the dimensions are collapsing on each other."
"But it does," Sonata insisted. "That tear is a sign that the whole multiverse is going to get destroyed. Because the truth is... I had a vision after I saw that hole in the sky. And in that vision, I saw how the tear got there. I saw what that it's going to spread and what's going to happen if it's not closed up."
"That vision doesn't mean anything. It could have been a reaction to your anxiety about the strange hole."
"I thought that, Glace. I really did. But then I saw something else in my vision. I saw what really broke my world."
"And what was that?"
"That I'm not actually a Noivern. I'm a piece of someone, someone that wanted to stop all of this from happening, but got split apart before they could stop the tear from forming. Someone who had their soul split apart and had their soul pieces scatter all over the multiverse, where each piece then took on the form of some Pokémon, totally unaware of what they really were.
"And you Glace, are also one of those pieces."
The moment Glace heard those words, that foreboding feeling came back. And though Glace told herself that this Noivern had probably suffered from a panic attack and that vision was nothing more than a hallucination, the feeling refused to go away.
"I saw all of the pieces and what they looked like, but yours was the only one I saw that also told me where you were right this second," Sonata continued. "It told me that you'd be in Granite Town, working at the dojo. So as soon as I saw that, I came here to find you. Took a little while to figure out how to hop dimensions, but I did it, and now I'm here with you. You were exactly where the vision said you'd be."
Sonata breathed deeply as she set her claws down on the table and softened her gaze.
"I know that this is all probably hard to believe, but it's true," she said. "You can feel it, can't you? Isn't that why you let me in and listen to me even though you really had no reason to trust me? Some part of you knows that we're connected.
"Plus, didn't you feel anything when you saw that tear in the sky? I know you had to have felt something. There was something off about you when you opened that door to let me in. You tried to hide it, but I saw-"
Glace had heard enough. She slammed her claw down on the table, prompting a small jump out of the Noivern. Glace pointed her other claw at the door, praying that Sonata didn't notice how much it was trembling.
"Get out of my house," she hissed. "I don't ever want to see you again."
"Glace… look, I get that this is a lot to take in," Sonata started to say, refusing to move an inch. "I had a hard time with it too. Took me a couple of days to accept everything. But it's the truth! And if we want to stop that tear from getting any bigger and getting into any of the other dimensions, we need to find the other pieces and become whoever we were before."
"No, you're just delusional. You saw that hole in the sky and it made your mind fall apart because you had no idea what to think of it. It filled your head with these insane ideas so you could try to understand what that thing is outside. We're fragments of someone that got split apart? What kind of story is that?"
"It makes sense if you think about it, Glace. Tell me… what do you remember about your parents? Go on, tell me what they were like."
Glace opened her mouth, but then stopped as a horrible realization came over her. She had no memory of her parents, whatsoever. She had memories of a childhood and being a Sneasel, but for the life of her, she could not remember the ones who had raised her since she had hatched from her egg. There were other Weavile in her memory, plenty of them, but not a single one claimed to be her mother or father.
"You can't remember, can you?" Sonata asked rhetorically. "Well, same thing with me. It's just something you don't think about for some reason. For whatever reason, you never feel like wondering where your parents are and where you came from. You wonder why that is?"
"It doesn't mean anything. My upbringing was different than most civilized Pokémon's. It was probably one of the customs to never let the hatchlings meet their parents."
Glace could taste her own lie. There had only been a couple hatchlings that were orphans, but they had been told by the others what had happened to their parents. Not Glace, though. No one had said anything about her parents. No one told her if she had been abandoned when she was still an egg or that her parents had perished in a hunting incident. No one had said anything to her.
"Get out or I swear I'll make you get out," Glace hissed.
"I'm not leaving," Sonata shot back, now returning Glace's stern gaze. "You know that I'm telling you the truth. We have to go find the others. We need to get them and stop the multiverse from collap-"
Glace swiped at the Noivern's left eye before she even knew what she was doing. A blood-curdling scream filled the air as her attack connected. Glace flinched and swiftly withdrew her claw before backing away from the Noivern. She could see Sonata hissing and squirming as she covered her eye with one of her wings.
"I didn't mean to do that…" Glace said uneasily. "I just wanted-"
"So you're not going to listen to me," Sonata rasped. "You're not going to believe me, no matter what I tell you."
Sonata removed her wing from her face, allowing Glace to see that the Noivern's left eye now had three long marks gouging deep into her flesh. Trickles of blood and tears ran down her cheeks. Glace knew that Sonata would probably never be able to use that eye again. She resisted the urge to glance down at her claw and see how much blood it was coated with.
The Noivern kept her burning gaze on the Weavile a moment longer, then released a long sigh.
"And chances are, neither will any of the others," she went on. "They're probably going to attack me sooner than believe me. I should have realized that. I was being way too optimistic, thinking that all of you were going to believe me without some kind of struggle."
The Noivern shook her head before giving Glace a sad smile.
"I was never good at fighting. Spies are good at sneaking around and being stealthy, but not so much at combat," Sonata then said. "But you're good at fighting, Glace. If the other fragments were to give you a hard time… you could stop them before they really hurt you. You wouldn't get your eye messed up like me."
"What are you talking about?" Glace asked. "Why are you talking like I'm going to help you? I already told you I don't believe a single word you just said."
"I heard you, don't worry," Sonata assured. "You said you don't think I'm telling the truth. I know that. But I know that you do believe it.
"And I think I know how to make you admit you believe, too."
That was when Sonata sprang at Glace. Glace instinctively darted to the side, but much to her surprise, found she wasn't fast enough. Sonata suddenly gained a tremendous boost in speed, as though she had become a lightning bolt, and collided with Glace before the Weavile could take one step.
However, instead of Sonata knocking Glace down, something else happened. The Noivern's body turned into a mass of iridescent light, light so bright that it drowned everything in her vision with its brilliance.
All she could see was the light seeping into her body, becoming one with her.
A horrible pain suddenly shot through Glace's skull, as if a bolt of lightning had struck her head. She grabbed her head as she staggered backwards before tripping over her own feet. The pain only grew as the back of her head smacked against the ground, soon turning into a sensation of someone slowly driving a claw into the back of her skull.
All sound left her ears as darkness sprouted of the corners of her eyes and flooded the rest of her vision. She could no longer feel the ground beneath her as she slipped further and further away.
But just before she could completely fade away and become one with the black shrouding her vision, she saw something within that darkness.
It was a creature of ambiguous shape. No matter how much Glace stared at it, she could not discern its shape. Every time its shape seemed to take on an identifiable form, her vision would warp and the creature would be an unidentifiable mass once again. All she could tell was that bluish-white light surrounded its entire body like a radiating aura, making the creature a tiny beacon of light amongst the sea of darkness surrounding them.
A flash of light suddenly went off. Everything became an all-compassing white, taking the creature with it and throwing Glace into a world of absolute nothingness. She would have shielded her eyes if she had the ability to.
When the light faded and the darkness returned, Glace found that the creature now had a gaping, black hole in its midsection, about the size of an apple. The creature looked down at the hole and for a moment, did nothing.
And then it happened.
One moment, the creature was whole, gazing at the hole with a vacant expression.
And then the next moment, it abruptly shattered into several pieces, as though someone had thrown a mirror to the ground. The second the fragments formed, each one of them went under an instantaneous metamorphosis. One of the fragments sprouted wings from the sides of its body. Another had multiple tendrils crawl out of its shuddering form before sinking low to the ground. Another produced four legs and ears so sharp, it could pick up on even the subtlest of sounds. Multiple fragments produced four limbs, only to stand up and change their front legs into arms moments later. There was even one that didn't change at all, remaining a blob of no discernable shape.
However, amongst all of the fragments, there was one Glace noticed the most. One of the upstanding fragments that held a rather nasty set of claws, which she was quick to realize was a Sneasel.
That fragment was her.
Its face was shrouded in darkness, but Glace knew that the clawed fragment was her. The way it stood with its shoulders slightly hunched and the way it subtly held its claws up, ready to strike at a moment's notice, was far too similar to her own posture.
Before Glace could study the apparent doppelganger any longer, multiple tears suddenly ripped through the darkness above them. Within each of these tears, there lay a location. In one, a forest blossoming with life. In another, a stone castle towering over a prosperous city. Each one was unique to the others, holding places that Glace had never seen before.
Each of the fragments looked up at the rips as they suddenly started to grow closer and closer together. All of the locations within the tears fell to ruin, the forest now a rotting wasteland in the midst of a harsh blizzard and the castle now falling to pieces as its city burned.
All of the fragments gazed at a single tear, not a single one of them gazing at the same hole as another fragment, watching them with the same vacant stare that their whole form wore.
Then, all at once, they leapt into the tears. Each one of the fragments disappeared into a single tear so that not a single tear was unoccupied. They scrambled through the collapsing worlds, hurrying about in what appeared to be a frantic search.
There was a flash of light, and then, all chaos within the tears stopped. The destruction had ceased and life was slowly returning to normal. Pokémon carefully rebuilt their world, returning forests back to their former glory, nursing the injured back to health, putting out the ravaging fires, all of these things.
All of the tears then closed up and disappeared into the darkness.
The only thing that remained was the original creature Glace had seen earlier before it had split up, towering high above her and gazing upon her with its luminous eyes.
Find the others, Glace.
Become one.
Glace suddenly found herself back in her house, collapsed on the ground. She was sweating, shaking violently, and had tears in the corner of her eyes. The Weavile rubbed at her eyes with the back of her claw before she slowly stood back up. Her head no longer throbbed with that horrible pain, but she could still feel a dull ache in the back of her skull.
She breathed in slowly as she looked around her home. Sonata was nowhere to be found. Her blood was still in a small puddle on the floor, along with being stained to Glace's claws, but none leading to the door. There was no trail. It was as though Sonata had abruptly stopped existing.
I'm not really gone, Glace.
I'm still here.
The Weavile jumped at the sudden voice. She knew that voice. That was Sonata's voice. And yet, she was nowhere in sight…
"Sonata? Where did you go?" Glace asked, quickly composing herself.
In your head. I'm you now.
Glace saw something flash in her mind's eye. It was quick, but for just one second, she saw Sonata looking at her in the very darkness Glace had just escaped from.
It was only then did Glace realize how much Sonata's voice sounded more like the thoughts in her head rather than noises from the outside world.
"How did you-"
I merged myself with you. I let you assimilate me. You don't remember how I turned into that light? That was me, merging with you.
You finally going to admit you're a fragment now?
Glace's knees started to feel weak. Standing was becoming very laborious and tiring all of the sudden.
Memories that weren't Glace's own leaked into her mind and meshed with hers. She saw the supposed guild leader that Sonata worked for, a Suicune of all Pokémon. She saw how everything Sonata did was to impress him and to be his most prized member. She wanted to be the best of the best, the greatest spy of all his other spies.
Glace saw how Sonata had gained her current status with the Suicune. She had gone on a mission to see if the enemy was hiding out in a secluded area someone had told them about. During that mission, Sonata figured out that those enemies knew about the guild and were planning on attacking it after returning to their home base and rallying up their allies.
Glace saw how she had made a mistake and the enemies spotted her. She saw how the Noivern accidentally destroyed the entire place in an attempt to escape, killing everyone inside. And then she saw her frantically flying back to the guild as demonic ghost-types stalked her through the night...
And then, she saw the tear in the sky open up in Sonata's dimension. She saw the Noivern's entire perception of reality fall apart, thrusting her into a full-blown existential crisis where she questioned if anything she had ever believed was true. Maybe there was no such thing as Arceus and that all of the universes were created by a great explosion in the void that was every universe there ever was and ever would be.
But within days, Sonata knew what really mattered. She had to abandon the only one that mattered to her, to tell him that she could no longer be his spy, and find her other selves in the other dimensions. She knew it would hurt. She knew how much the Suicune depended on her. She was the most reliable of all his members. She was the one who never failed him, no matter how dire the situation was.
But she knew she had to leave.
Even though being with her leader slowly drove away the malicious influence oppressing her homeland and terrorizing the denizens within, there was a much bigger threat now. Something that would wipe out the entire dimension if she didn't act.
So the night before she departed, she wrote a note to her leader. She struggled and her claws wouldn't stop shaking, making her writing borderline illegible, but she didn't know how else to tell the Suicune what she had to do. She didn't have the courage to tell him all of this to his face. She couldn't bear the sight of his pained, bemused face that begged her to explain why she had to leave so abruptly and never come back.
She knew it would prevent her from ever leaving behind her dimension.
Hey, stop looking at my memories! Those are private you know!
The memories promptly ceased, leaving Glace with a view of her wall instead. However, Glace did not move. There was no longer any denying what Sonata had said. Everything that seemingly delusional Noivern had said was true.
Glace was a fragment. She was a piece of a whole, and now she had one of the other pieces inside of her mind.
"Why? Why would you do this?" Glace whispered. "Why did you merge with me?"
You saw the vision, you know why. We have to stop the dimensions from collapsing on each other. The only way to do that is to become one again.
"But… why did you merge with me? Why didn't you absorb me into you? You can do that, can't you?"
Well hypothetically yeah. I'd have to do some things I wouldn't want to do… but I could. But I didn't because you ruined my eye. If I absorbed you into me, then I'd have to go after the others like this. And if it went down like how it went with you, then I'd probably end up getting killed. And then we wouldn't get anywhere.
But if you were the one to go find the others, then I wouldn't have to worry about that. Like I said before, you're good with fighting and you're a Weavile, which makes it better. And maybe they'd feel less threatened by you since you're smaller than me.
"So you merged with me because you want me to do your job."
I wouldn't call it that, but you can if you want. I can still help you, though. I might not have a body anymore, but I can still tell you what you need to know. I know what the others look like and what dimension they're in. And I can help you get to those dimensions. I'll help you all you want.
Because you really do believe me now, don't you? You know that we have to find the others and become one.
Glace sighed. She tightened her claws into fists as she forced them to stop trembling and looked outside. She could still see the tear in the sky along with all the unsuspecting Pokémon still outside, completely oblivious to how much of a grim omen it was.
Glace, Sonata, and their other selves were the only ones who could stop the destruction that was soon to befall the entire multiverse.
Alright Sonata. Tell me where our first fragment is.