Zar's question only prompted blank stares from Blizz and Fanita, until the former broke the silence.

"…Who the hell is Celebi?"

Rather than try to explain, Zar took a few steps back, before Transforming into a small green fairy.

"This is Celebi," Zar explained, her voice slightly lower pitched than normal. "He's another legendary Pokémon."

"What does Celebi have to do with our current situation?" Fanita asked.

Zar jumped into the air, Transforming back into the shiny Grovyle form she took earlier. "A lot. Celebi has a really powerful ability to travel through time. Do you remember what happened before you guys fought Absol?"

"Yeah, you were acting really weird," Blizz summarized. "You looked terrible, and you said you tried to fight-"

Fanita interrupted Blizz. "You battled Celebi and lost, correct?"

Zar gave a solemn nod. "Yeah, I lost track of how many tries I made… Each time he would almost kill me, then would rewind time to just after the fight started. I don't even know why, he'd always get the first hit in, and each time I just get a new scar…"

"Hold on, you said Celebi could travel through time," Fanita pointed out. "That sounds very different from rewinding time."

"That's... the other problem," Zar admitted. "None of the other legendaries know Celebi exists. Usually Dialga could stop them from manipulating time that much, but every time I tried to tell Dialga, Celebi rewinds things and makes him forget. He's way stronger than a Celebi should be."

"When was the last time you tried talking to another legendary about him?" Fanita asked.

"…Yesterday. But Celebi did something before I got there, and as soon as I entered the Hall of Origin all of them started trying to attack me. Thankfully Arcy wasn't there… The only reason I made it out was because I could use Teleport. Otherwise they… probably would have gotten me." Zar shuddered as she recalled the experience.

Blizz was slowly starting to come to a conclusion he didn't really like. "How come you can remember everything about him though?"

"He came to me first; he said he wanted to help me. That he would make sure I get to meet all the humans."

"Then that was your big secret, right?" Blizz asked, his eyes locked with Zar's. "The thing you said you couldn't tell me about."

Zar gave him a guilty nod. "He walked me through writing the rescue mission that let you meet Rune, and the one where you found me."

"...That was you?" Despite being so long ago, Blizz could still recall the way Beartic broke his leg on that mission, and the very strongly written letter Chansey had for Scizor when she heard about it. Obviously if he knew that it would be saving another human, he would've jumped at it in a heartbeat, but that didn't change the fact that he and the Prince were absolutely not ready to take a mission like that.

"There were a couple other small things he told me about, like making sure Apex and Terrae went into the dungeon at Breach Mountain at the same time, or that Fanita took the mission to kidnap Blizz."

Suddenly Fanita felt a little less confident in her ability to pull one over Celebi now that she knew she played right into his goals. Still, she supposed it was ultimately for the better. Though that did tie into her other question.

"How come you were immune to him rewinding time?" Fanita asked. "I had no idea anything went on to make me kidnap Blizz, but I immediately realized this reality was wrong. Blizz fully bought into it, but was able to be snapped out of it. Then there was Leaf, who almost remembered but had his memories reverted. I fail to see any trends here."

"I... don't really understand all of it," Zar admitted. "I do know that if you're aware of what he's doing, your memories don't change— it's why I was mostly fine. But that doesn't explain why you remembered without any help..."

"What caused you to start fighting him then?" Fanita asked, moving the conversation along. "It sounds like up until now he was relatively helpful."

"Well..." Zar brought a hand up to her neck. "I asked about using his powers to make the Absol fight go better for you guys, but he refused. He said that Absol needs to win, and that we shouldn't interfere."

That immediately fired off alarm bells in both Blizz's and Fanita's heads.

"So, he was working with Absol then?" Blizz asked.

"That might explain how Absol managed to make it to the lakes without anyone knowing," Fanita stated. "If he could warp through time using Celebi, then the lake guardians would probably have forgotten about him. Not to mention that Absol was somewhat fond of us— if he and Celebi had the same goals, it would make sense he'd want to ensure we meet each other."

Zar slowly nodded. "I figured that out too, which was why I tried to fight him. But no matter what I did, I couldn't win. I just kept reliving the same couple hours over and over again. I tried fighting him, tried talking to him, tried getting your guys' help. Even if we managed to beat him, Absol would just destroy us right after."

"But we ended up winning, right?" Blizz asked. "Knocked out the conduits and was returned to Earth for like, five minutes."

"The last attempt you guys made was different," Zar explained. "Normally Blizz would always be really mopey going into the fight, and after Zygarde uses Land's Wrath he gives up. While you were preparing for the last one, something changed. You were way more fired up, and that was the only version where I saw you guys evolve."

"Then what changed?" Fanita asked, floating closer to Zar.

"I was trying to figure that out. Maybe you guys just said the right things?" Both Zar and Fanita's gaze shifted to Blizz, who was struggling to process this.

"…Okay, so usually we lose the fight with Absol but we won this time because I was feeling better. Why didn't Celebi just rewind things then?"

"Probably the same reason why he didn't rewind after you snapped out of it," Fanita pointed out. "Perhaps you have something that makes Celebi's job more difficult?"

Zar looked over the other Grovyle in a new light. "...That could be it. I don't know what was going through his mind when you guys won, but he didn't rewind anything until all this started."

"But if I was actually immune, wouldn't I have not bought into it?" Blizz pointed out.

"Didn't you say that you made a deal?" Fanita asked with a coy smile. "Would it be that hard to believe you agreed to having your memories altered? Even if you didn't exactly know it."

Blizz thought back to the voice that spoke to him as a human, and the deal he made. Looking back, it was pretty obvious that every single part of it was suspicious as hell. But even knowing that, he stood by his decision. He was not going to let all the others slip away from him in exchange for the fragments of the human life he remembered.

"That… could be it," Blizz admitted. "Then Celebi specifically needs me to mess with time? Or at least time stuff involving me?"

"It's possible, I was never offered a deal like that," Fanita pointed out. "And even if I was a special case, do you think everyone would have agreed to the terms? I doubt the Prince and the Duke decided that returning to Varin was a better outcome than staying on Earth.?"

Fanita was probably correct, but that only made Blizz more confused. What was special about him? He knew he was the first human out of the 10 of them to wake up as a Pokémon, could that be it? It didn't make very much sense, but neither did literally anything else about this situation.

"Okay then, so I'm mostly immune to it, Fanita's immune because of some Fanita bullshit, and Zar's safe because she knew what was going on ahead of time. But does that mean the others are… not?"

Zar gave Blizz a slow nod. "I… Yeah, probably…"

"That means we won't have many allies then," Fanita summarized. "If we can't rely on the others, it will be just the three of us against Celebi."

"...Celebi is really strong," Zar said. "He's stronger than me even without time travel. But when you consider that he can rewind just about any injuries he takes..."

"Fighting him would be fucking terrible," Blizz finished. "But what else can we do? I'm not about to let this reality stay."

"That's the problem," Zar sighed. "I'm only a minor legendary, and my special ability is that I can transform. Compared to traveling through time, that's nothing."

"What if we got support from beyond the ten former humans?" Fanita proposed with a smug grin on her face.

Blizz and Zar both turned their heads towards Fanita, wondering what she was getting at. When neither asked any questions, she took that as a cue to continue.

"We're outlaws now, so we can't exactly get any help through the legal avenue. Even if we talked to someone from the underground, Celebi could just alter the timeline and turn them against us. What we need is someone who is immune to this effect, have some rapport with, and has the firepower to actually be useful."

Blizz looked at Fanita as he started to piece together what she was suggesting. There was only one person he could think of who fit the bill, but why the hell would they ask him?

"There's no way you're talking about-"

Fanita's smirk grew. "We need to find Absol."

Silence filled the dungeon chamber, as Blizz and Zar's gazes shifted from interest to bewilderment.

"Fucking Absol? The guy that tried to end the world like, two days ago and I almost died trying to stop?"

"Exactly him. Since he most likely warped through time to make it to each of the three lakes, he should be immune to Celebi's powers."

"Just to reiterate, he tried to kill fucking everyone and was collaborating with Celebi, why would we work with him?"

"That's... not as bad of an idea as it sounds," Zar pointed out.

Now Blizz's confused glare was directed towards her as well. "What do you mean?"

"If Absol and Celebi really were partners, don't you think you would have at seen something from him by now?" Fanita asked. "Conduits, husks, I don't know how much attention you were paying to him before the fight, but he seemed to have a lot of unresolved problems with Lucario."

"Absol doesn't exist, sorta," Zar cut in, before they could dive any deeper into the dark type's romantic life. "No amount of warping the timeline can change the fact that all ten of you guys came here specifically to stop Absol. Even with all your memories wiped, if Absol tried to keep going with his plans, you would get involved somehow. So Celebi would have to choose between keeping Absol around or giving you guys the fake memories."

"Then what happened to Absol?" Fanita asked.

It took Zar a solid minute to think that through. "He's incompatible with this timeline. He couldn't have just been erased, but he also can't be let free…"

Blizz knew it was a very bad sign when he was the only reasonable one left in the room. "Let's go back a bit, because a lot of this conversation is hinged on finding Absol and him deciding to work with us. Like yeah, maybe he's annoyed that Celebi took him out, but there's a big jump between having the same enemy as us and abandoning his whole 'kill everyone' plan."

Fanita looked right at Blizz, her smug grin fading for a moment. "I know it is a major risk, but I think we're at the point where we need to take chances. He's the only person in Varin who even could help us out."

"...You should consider it," Zar said. "The three of us won't be able to take him on our own, but with him and Zygarde on our side..."

"He literally talked about how he wanted to kill everyone."

"People can change," Fanita suggested, her smug grin having returned. "Not that I would know anything about that."

"...Even if we wanted to, how the fuck would we do it? We don't know where he is or what happened to him."

"...I don't know," Zar admitted. "But there has to be a way, Celebi doesn't have the same level of control over the timeline that Dialga does. He might be able to alter memories, but he can't just erase someone from existence like that."

Blizz took one last glance between his two teammates. It was the three of them against a time traveler capable of warping reality itself. Obviously, any sense of reason was cast aside long ago. Their odds of winning as-is were pretty much nonexistent, and Blizz did sorta know Absol. Maybe, if he could get through to him…

He sighed as he shook his head. "Fuck it, let's go find him."

Fanita's grin widened. "What a great idea. And I think I know just where to start our search. Could I borrow your map?"

Blizz stuck out his Wonder Map. At this point he's resigned himself to going along with whatever scheme Fanita cooked up, so he might as well put his all into it.

Fanita floated it open, and set it on the ground between Blizz and Zar. She then lifted a small pebble off the ground, using it in place of a finger so she could point to locations on the map. "I can think of two places where we might want to begin our search. First, we could check Absol's old house in Nova Town."

The pebble drifted a short distance north of Nova Town, where Blizz knew his house was.

"That's easy to check," Zar said. "I'll just fly you guys right into the building, that way no one will see you."

"Sneaking in isn't a concern for us," Fanita laughed. "In any case, the other option is his last known location." She floated the pebble towards the mountain range at the center of the map, resting on a dungeon marker.

Breach Mountain

Blizz sighed. "I'm gonna say we should check out his house first, but does anyone here honestly think we won't end up going to Breach Mountain anyways?"

No one spoke.

"Yeah, that's what I thought."

The trip back to Nova Town brought with it some much-needed familiarity. This took the form of Zar Transforming into a flying Pokémon since she didn't want to bother walking the entire distance.

Blizz wasn't about to complain though, staring at the landscape as it rushed by from the back of the faux-Pidgeot.

Fanita was trailing right behind them. While Blizz didn't really understand the logistics of how a ghost type managed to hold on to a flying type traveling much faster than they reasonably could, he wasn't inclined to question it. Especially with how Fanita's body looked like streamers in the wind— Zar was going too fast for her to keep her body intact, and Blizz made sure to commit the visual to memory.

The group slowed down as they approached the northern suburbs of Nova Town. Blizz had been to Absol's house more than a few times by now, so he was able to give directions to Zar.

Once they were directly over the house, Blizz jumped off, followed shortly by Fanita and a shiny Grovyle. He walked up to the door and knocked on it a few times. While yeah, Absol was kinda a terrible person who almost definitely didn't exist at the moment, it would still be rude to enter without at least trying to knock.

When there was no response, Blizz tried the door. It was unlocked, and creaked open with a slight nudge.

The inside was just like Blizz remembered it. The maps hung up on the walls; the table at the center that he's pretty sure only himself, Absol, and Mira ever used; even the scent of baked apples lingering in the air. However, there was no sign of Absol himself.

The three gave the house a quick look through, searching for any journals or other hints about what could have happened to Absol. Aside from some old photographs of Absol and Lucario, they couldn't find anything.

"We should hold onto these," Fanita stated, placing some of them in the bag. "Apparently Celebi can't affect photographs of people who are immune either."

"...How long have we been looking here?" Blizz asked, after he slammed the last cabinet shut.

"About 10 minutes," Fanita answered as she finished zipping her bag up.

"Good enough to give up and go check out Breach Mountain?"

"I would say so, it doesn't look like he kept anything interesting here anyways."

"Zar! Let's go!"

The Mew, currently disguised as a Joltik, scampered out from under Absol's bed. "Got it!" She ran out the door, before turning into a Corviknight. "Next stop, Breach Mountain!"

As Fanita floated behind Zar and prepared to grab on with Psychic once again, she noticed a blur of blue, white, and red out of the corner of her eye. But before she could give it any more attention, they took off, zooming out of Nova Town.

Blizz had to admit that being able to fly to the top of Breach Mountain was much easier than taking the day-long walk to base camp, having to spend the night, then taking on the mystery dungeon to get to the top. With the goggles protecting his eyes from the 60 miles an hour wind and the temperature just cold enough to be comfortable, the experience was almost relaxing.

Unfortunately, it had to come to an end. The snow capped mountain top came into sight, and to a sick sense of joy in Blizz, it was still just as battle scarred as it was after they fought Zygarde.

Zar landed at the spot where the portal to the Hall of Origin once was. It was the only area that was clear enough of debris for Blizz to comfortably get off.

Immediately the Grovyle delved into the remains of the battle, looking around for more hints that the battle had actually happened. Aside from the obvious spires of torn up rock, there were also pieces of metal debris lying around which Blizz could immediately recognize: fragments of Absol's conduits.

"Why did all of this stuff not get changed…"

Fanita phased through the wall of rock next to Blizz. "Not to disrupt your archeology expedition, but Zar and I found something you might want to look at."

Blizz climbed back over the rock walls surrounding him, following behind Fanita. He didn't need to walk for very long before he found what she was talking about.

Floating about 10 yards off the ground was a transparent blue and green sphere, constantly pulsing as the colors shifted around.

"…Huh."

"Blue and green are Celebi's colors, so this probably has something to do with him!" Zar explained.

"Is it supposed to be that obvious?" Blizz asked, as he wiped the lens of his goggles.

"I don't know, I've never seen one before," Zar admitted. "But doesn't that look time travel-y?"

"I mean, yeah, just… What do we do now?"

"That's what we were trying to figure out," Fanita stated. "I tried firing a Shadow Ball at it, and it just phased through like nothing was there."

Blizz felt a pang of pride for Fanita when her first instinct to a pulsating time distortion was to launch an attack at it. "…Maybe try more attacks?"

"I got this!" Zar shouted, as light enveloped her once again. When the Transform ended, she was in her true form as a Mew. She flew up to the distortion and closed her eyes. Soon, a ball of pink psychic energy formed at the tip of her tail, expanding outwards.

Blizz recognized the attack from back in Cascia; it was what Mewtwo used to try and stop him and Zar from getting into Zero Isle South. Psystrike.

After charging it up, Zar flicked it at the blob, exploding with a massive blast of psychic energy right at the epicenter. Despite the force of the attack, nothing happened.

As Zar Transformed back into the shiny Grovyle form, she pouted. "Aww…"

"...So attacking it won't work," Fanita commented. "Is there anything else we can do?"

Blizz studied the distortion, trying to figure out if there was anything left for them to do. The fact is they can't really manipulate time-

That thought caused something to click, causing Blizz to pivot to Zar. "Can you transform back into Celebi?"

"Well sure, but just because I've transformed into Celebi doesn't mean I can control time like he can."

"Still worth a try... probably." Blizz shrugged— this was more of a 'throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks' thing.

Zar seemed to pick up on that vibe, Transforming anyway. After a brief glow, she took the form of the same Celebi she showed off to Blizz and Fanita earlier. It took her another few moments to fly up to the distortion in the sky, cursed by a species biology that required her to use stubby wings over pure psychic energy.

Still, she persevered, sticking a hand into the paradox. Once again, it just went straight through as if there was nothing there in the first place.

"Sorry guys," Zar apologized as she fell back to the ground.

"...It is an odd situation," Fanita pointed out. "I don't think any of us have the ability to-"

"THERE YOU FUCKERS ARE!"

All three of the explorers' blood ran cold. There was exactly one person who would consider that a normal greeting, and no one was particularly interested in running into them right now.

Yet despite their wishes, Lucario stood at the exit of the Breach Mountain mystery dungeon, Scizor not far behind him.

"I would hope our reputation precedes us," Scizor began. "Grovyle and Mismagius, you are under arrest for assault, assault with an illegal move, robbery- what Pokémon is that?" Scizor's list of charges was cut off by seeing Zar, still disguised as a Celebi, sitting on the ground between the two outlaws.

Lucario seemed to be surprised as well, but his confusion was directed at the assistant guildmaster. "How the fuck do you not know what a Celebi looks like?"

"I have never heard of this Pokémon before," Scizor admitted, studying Zar from a distance.

"That's a fucking legendary, can do time manipulation bullshit, why do you not know that?"

While Lucario and Scizor argued, Blizz, Fanita, and Zar were equally confused. Fanita floated closer to Zar so she could whisper among themselves without the guildmasters overhearing.

"Didn't you say that no one else knew Celebi existed?"

"Well that's what I thought," Zar responded. "None of the other legendaries do."

"Usually Scizor is the one who knows these things," Blizz pointed out. "Weird for Lucario to know something Scizor doesn't."

"I'm telling you, I had to beat one up five years ago," Lucario continued explaining to his assistant. "I was with... fuck, it wasn't you or Hydreigon-"

"Absol, perhaps?" Fanita offered, floating closer to the duo.

"Yeah that's the guy. Was with this... Fuck I already forgot who I was talking about."

"...Guildmaster, don't we have more pressing matters to deal with?" Scizor asked, pointing a claw towards Blizz and Fanita.

"No hold on, this is kinda important," Blizz said, backing up Fanita. "Isn't it kinda weird you just forgot who we were talking about?"

"Exactly," Lucario agreed, turning back to the former humans "You guys know what the hell is going on here? Did some outlaw or whatever fuck up my memories?"

"It's complicated," Fanita said. "Do you see the green blob over your head?" She made a gesture to the distortion, still floating up in the air.

Lucario looked in its general vicinity for a moment, before shaking his head. "Nope, don't see a thing."

"It's likely just a trick…" Scizor complained, still annoyed that the guildmaster was humoring the outlaws.

Fanita wasn't done making Lucario humor them. "Would this be a trick then?"

From Fanita's bag, some of the photographs she took from Absol's house floated over to the guildmaster. He grabbed them out of the air, and looked over them.

"See?" Lucario said, holding the photos featuring himself and Absol to Scizor. "I told you something was fucked up, I have no idea who this is or where these were taken."

"I would like to reiterate that we have finally tracked down two S-Rank outlaws," Scizor pointed out as he pushed the photos away. "If there is something 'odd' happening and they know about it, we can interrogate them in prison."

"Fine..." Lucario wasn't pleased with that, but Scizor did have a point. "You guys gonna come with us easily, or are we gonna fight?"

"While I have nothing but respect for you, we still have some work to do here." Fanita backed up to Zar. "Perhaps we may consider that once we're done."

"That's exactly what I wanted to hear." A grin spread across Lucario's face as he turned to the Celebi in the back. "You gonna help the outlaws?"

"They're my friends!" Zar shouted. "And I don't really think we have the time to go all the way back to Nova Town and get things sorted out anyways..."

"Fuck yeah, been a while since I got to bring him out." A blue aura surrounded Lucario, and all three explorers knew exactly what that meant. Soon enough, a blue figure appeared on Lucario's side, taking the form of a large deer with a complicated set of horns.

Blizz, Fanita, and Zar all recognized the Pokémon from their fight against Hydreigon.

"Xerneas, LET'S FUCKING GO!"

Technically, this was the third time Blizz had fought Lucario. The first was the training exercise where he learned Double Team, and that was a fun experience. The second was while they were trying to escape from Nova Town, which was significantly less fun on account of him dealing with a crippling headache that made it impossible to focus.

This was, however, the first time Blizz had fought Xerneas as well. Immediately, the fairy type legendary charged up a white sphere above their head, while Scizor and Lucario darted forward with Bullet Punch and Extreme Speed, respectively.

"I'll deal with Xerneas!" Zar shouted, as she flipped through the air and let the Transform revert back into her normal form. Not needing any confirmation from Blizz, she flew forward and launched a Psystrike directly into the Moonblast Xerneas was charging.

Blizz gave a nod anyways, before being slammed by the full force of his former guildmaster. The impact sent him flying into a rock wall, causing stray pebbles and piles of snow to fall down on top of him.

Lucario wasn't done with his rampage though, continuing to draw closer to Blizz and readying a Close Combat. Right as he was poised to slam a fist into Blizz's head, the Grovyle disappeared, causing Lucario to punch at solid rock.

Dozens of Blizz copies surrounded Lucario in a Double Team.

"So you're one of those evading motherfuckers!" Lucario lunged at the closest duplicate with his fist covered in steel energy. The Meteor Mash only managed to cause one of many doubles to vanish, but he didn't stop there. The barrage continued as he worked his way through every copy, slowly whittling down Blizz's numbers.

This continued for a while, until the Meteor Mash managed to catch something that wasn't air. The real Blizz intercepted it with a Leaf Blade, temporarily stopping the guildmaster's attack. They remained like that for a moment, before Blizz used his other arm to slash out at Lucario.

The attack might as well have been paper. Even with the debuff from Close Combat, it still wasn't very effective, and now Lucario had him right in melee range as he recovered from his last attack. Lucario capitalized on this, using Close Combat once again. Blizz couldn't evade this time.

When the flurry of punches and kicks stopped, Blizz found himself flying through the air. He took the chance to review the rest of the battlefield.

Scizor looked to be using Hyper Beams in just about every direction, which Blizz took to mean that Fanita managed to hit him with a Confuse Ray. He couldn't actually see the Mismagius, but that was typical for Fanita, so he didn't think twice about it.

Zar and Xerneas was a much more interesting encounter. The two appeared to be locked in a battle of will, both sides shooting a beam of energy at each other. The center of impact slowly shifted towards Zar, then back to Xerneas, then back to Zar…

Blizz didn't think that fight would end any time soon. Meanwhile, the ground was catching up to him pretty quickly, and he had to focus back onto his fight with Lucario.

He landed on a snow-covered patch of the mountaintop, lessening the impact of the fall. However, he could still feel the aches from the Close Combat, and given the blur of blue and black that was rapidly closing in on him, he didn't have much time to recover.

Blizz spread out with another Double Team to buy himself a little more time, as Lucario started bashing the doubles in with a Bone Rush. Past experience made it pretty clear that trying to take on any member of Team Breaker in terms of raw strength was a bad idea. While he was evolved and much stronger than he was before, this was effectively a one on one.

However, unlike every other time, he didn't have some trick up his sleeve he could use. Reinforcements were unlikely, there was not a chance in hell he's trying his luck with the Z-Crystal now, and another Fanita explosive would be a pretty bad idea here.

So he doubled down, pulling a Violent Seed out of his bag. Under normal circumstances he would give it to literally anyone else on his team, but right now he was the only one who could feasibly use it; Fanita always relied on confusion or manipulating her environment, and Blizz really did not want to see what Zar would act like while she was on Violent Seeds.

Right before he popped the seed, he felt the dull pulse of a headache come back once again. It wasn't enough to distract him from his goal though, so he downed the seed.

He felt the familiar surge of energy course through him, along with a newfound desire to do as much damage to Lucario as possible.

"HERE WE GO!" Blizz shouted, breaking out of his Double Team formation to rush Lucario head-on with another Leaf Blade.

"THAT'S WHAT I WANTED TO SEE!" Lucario seemed to appreciate the change in strategy as well, dashing for the real Blizz with the Bone Rush club still in his hand.

The attacks clashed for a moment. Typically, Blizz would be no match for the guildmaster's sheer strength. But the combination of the two Close Combat debuffs and the Violent Seed amping him up meant that not only was he holding his own, he was gaining ground.

The club snapped in two as Blizz finished his attack, this time being able to send Lucario flying. He kept up the momentum, going after Lucario with a Quick Attack.

Lucario was more prepared though, nailing the inbound Treecko with a right-hook Meteor Mash. And while Blizz's attack power was massively increased, his defense was not.

After bouncing a couple times, Blizz used the snow to slow him down, skidding to a stop just in time to jump out of the way of Lucario's Extreme Speed.

"THIS IS A FUCKING BLAST!" Lucario shouted. "ONCE WE ARREST YOU I'LL SPAR WITH YOU IN PRISON!"

"You think you can take me in?" Blizz taunted, feeling similarly to the guildmaster. Despite the numerous injuries he's taken since this fight began, he had to admit there was something thrilling about it— leaving it all out there against what is probably the single strongest Pokémon he knows, Zar included. All he wanted to do is give the fight everything he had, and no matter how much that dull headache intensified-

…Oh.

In a brief moment of clarity, Blizz took stock of the battlefield. While it was hard to say for certain given how all the snow and rock had shifted, he was pretty sure some broken pieces of the conduit were missing. That, the headache, and the fact that Lucario seemed even more hyped up than normal meant that there was only one real conclusion to draw.

Abandoning the fight, Blizz leaped to the top of a nearby stone spire, trying to see what his teammates were up to. Zar and Xerneas were still stuck in their beam attack exchange, Scizor was Hyper Beaming the air, and Fanita was nowhere to be seen.

Also concerning was that the green and blue blob floating above the mountain seemed to be pulsing much more frequently now than it was when they first got to the mountain.

As Blizz ducked underneath an airborne Lucario's Meteor Mash, he traced the battlefield for any sign of Fanita. Now that he knew the Resonance was in effect it was easier to resist its influence, but he could still feel the urge in the back of his mind to unleash everything he had on Lucario.

He ran around the perimeter of the mountain top looking for Fanita. As he sprinted, he noticed a blue explosion in the corner of his eye, followed by Zar getting launched to the air. Xerneas didn't give the Mew any chance to recover, immediately following up with a Dazzling Gleam that sent Zar even further away.

Thankfully, Blizz at least managed to find his teammate. Fanita was hidden between a series of rock outcroppings, holding together a conduit with Psychic.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Blizz shouted, shooting an Energy Ball behind him to slow down the guildmaster still chasing after him.

"Making sure we can actually win," Fanita responded. "Do you really think we can beat them on our own?"

"I mean maybe? But making them husks is a fucking terrible idea."

"Well if you have any alternate plans, I would be more than happy to- Lucario's coming back."

"Thanks." Blizz leaped into the air, jumping over an Extreme Speed from Lucario, before firing off another Energy Ball. "But can you not try to use that?"

"Like I said, if you have a better idea of how we can win, then I am more than willing to listen. But given that we know how to reverse the effect and that Zar is capable of-"

Fanita's sentence was cut off by an explosion of blue and green, temporarily blinding everyone on the battlefield. It was one of those moments that made Blizz glad his goggles were tinted, since he was able to stare into the light before everyone else.

What he saw was the silhouette of a four legged Pokémon standing atop the mountain. It didn't take much detective work to figure out who it was.

"Come to me, Zygarde!"

A/N: So fun fact, we've just passed a year since I first started uploading this fic. It's changed a fair bit since then, but thanks to everyone for sticking with it this long! For better or worse, the end is in sight. As of posting this I have started writing the final chapter, and it just feels surreal. Gonna wait till I finish it to set things in stone, but it looks like I'll be able to nail down the final chapter count sooner than later.

Also, just a heads up for those who don't know, FFN no longer sends you emails for updates on stories you follow by default, you have to manually enable that in your account settings.

Ch 41: Since You Been Gone - 12/3/22