He woke slowly, his eyes blinking unevenly at the harsh light. He heard a woman's voice speaking an unfamiliar language and turned to face the sound. The chains around his wrists and ankles scraped heavily along the floor. The harsh sound of metal on stone was like a shot of adrenaline to the brain, forcing him awake in a split second.

Rykker scrambled up, the chains snapping taut and jerking him back to his knees. He was chained to the wall in some sort of cell. His ball belt was gone, along with the scant few supplies that had been in his pack.

"Where are my pokemon?" Rykker asked, turning his head to look at the pair of women in deep conversation.

The taller one turned her head and glanced at him, rolling her eyes slightly. She turned back to the conversation and continued in the strange tongue.

"Hello," he repeated, more forcefully this time. "I'm talking to you. Where the hell are my pokemon?"

She turned again, sending the other woman away with a wave of her hand. "How did you follow me?" She asked, in a clear but obviously accented voice. She spoke slowly, as if she was unfamiliar with the language. "It should not have been possible. Cynthia said tha-"

"Grand Champion Shirona? She was involved in this?" he interrupted. He shook his head in frustration. "I knew she knew something. Why did she want me to stop you?"

The woman scowled. "Because she did not care for my people as I do. She bid me to leave it, to remain in your time and live out my days in secrecy." She shook her head. "As if I would deign to leave my people to their ignoble fate. The universe will survive this change. It must."

He sat back, taking some stock of the situation for a moment. He wasn't entirely sure if he could believe anything he'd actually seen. It had looked real. It had felt real. He didn't believe in Sinjoh as an abstract deity, but who was he to argue with the proof he had been shown.

"It won't," Rykker replied, glancing back up at her. "Not from what I've seen. It's already begun. Your 'Sinjoh' wants me to stop you. It says that your existence here, in this time, is an impossibility." He met her eyes, attempting diplomacy and hoping that the woman was reasonable. "It wants me to kill you, and set the universe right. Call me crazy, but that seems like a pretty good idea right about now."

She screwed up her face in rage. "It lies," she hissed. "Honeyed words of a gilded tongue. Sinjoh is as duplicitous as it is powerful. It uses you even now, the same as your dear Grand Champion used you. What is begun cannot be undone."

"Listen," he said. Rykker met her pale blue eyes with his own dead greys. She had to see, she had to understand. "I literally watched a giant goddamn mirror that was supposedly our universe break apart and shape into a hundred new mirrors. I don't understand in the slightest why you can't be allowed to stay here, nor how to get back home." He pointed at her with both hands. "But, I do know that this is all your damn fault and neither of us are supposed to be here. We're out of time, a cosmic mistake in the grand scheme of reality."

She smirked. "I was born in this time. This is my home. It is no mistake that I have returned. This city… it is mine by birthright. I am not the one who is out of time."

Rykker stared up at her, sensing that the two were at an impasse. "Then what happens now?" he asked. "You leave me to rot in this cell while the world collapses around you?"

She said nothing at first, just watching him for a moment. When he said nothing, she pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. "I don't know what I should do with you," she said. "My people wish you executed. They call you a trespasser." She scowled. "They are not wrong."

He was silent.

"I do not wish for death," she continued. "Not even for those who would attempt to stop me in their ignorance. Your only crime, as misguided as you are, was listening to a deity far beyond your understanding."

It was silent again. Rykker said nothing for a long minute and the woman studied him intently.

She wore simple leather armour like she had been raised in it. Her jet-black hair was cut short just above her shoulders. A regal cloak hung around her frame, gold trim outlining the pitch black fabric. An outfit likely denoting nobility of some kind.

"Then I'll ask again," he said, looking back up at her with a slightly reserved tone. "What do you plan on doing with me?"

The hard look of defiance on her face softened and Rykker saw fear and nerves behind her eyes. "I plan on convincing you." She smiled weakly. "I'm quite persuasive when I wish to be."

She lifted a ball belt from the pack slung over her shoulder, turning it so Jason could see it was his. "Peace and dialogue are often more effective than force," she said. "I choose peace. I know you, Jason Rykker. I know who you are, who you were. You will not choose war. You will do the right thing."

Unova in all of her bloody glory sat fresh in his mind. Ghetsis' cackling face was taunting him, Benga and his dragons leaving piles of bodies behind. Rykker exhaled and slowly centred his thoughts as his heart beat madly in his chest. She knew who he was, what he'd gone through in the bloody war against Ghetsis.

Rykker looked up at her, ghosts of the past etched clearly on his face. He was loath to trade lives, but it was something every Champion had to learn the hard way. "What would the right thing be?" he asked. "One life, or every life…"

"I'm asking you to think about it," she said. "Celebi change history all the time on whims of fancy. Why should my change be deemed an irreparable break? Why must my people be forgotten?" She shook her head. "Sinjoh is lying. Sinjoh is wrong. The change that I came back for… it's already happened if the mirror is broken." She shook her head again. "It is as I said. What is done cannot be undone. It cannot be put back as it was." She pointed accusingly at him. "This is about revenge. It wants me struck down for daring to question the grand design."

They were both silent again, Rykker contemplating the implications of her words. They made sense to him, more so than the ramblings of a creature that had torn him across time and space. If Sinjoh was truly lying then he would be leaving an entire culture to disappear on nothing more than a terrible hallucination. But if the deity spoke the truth, then the entire universe was at risk. He was at an impasse.

"I believe that you believe you are right and what I saw has already happened," he said slowly. "But I'm afraid of what that means if you are wrong and it can be stopped." He scowled. "It has to be stopped. There must be a way to set it back. For the sake of our world."

She nodded. "I understand." She raised his ball belt, lifting one of her eyebrows questioningly. "What will you do if I return these to you?"

Rykker thought for a moment. "I do not know," he replied. "I don't understand what has happened, other than it being disastrous. And despite Sinjoh's urgings, I have no wish to kill you."

She lowered the belt. "And how will you know what to do?" She asked.

"I guess I won't," he responded with a shrug. "Then I'll make it up as I go along," he replied. "I'm rather good at that."

She lowered the belt. "That is not reassuring," she said.

"Either were your assurances."

The woman smirked softly. "Perhaps we both require a leap of faith for the time being." She pulled a key from her pack and slotted it into the manacles around his wrists. She turned the key and dropped the chains to the ground. "Follow me," she ordered as she dropped his ball belt back into her pack. "I have something to show you."


They emerged from the stairwell onto a grand balcony, one that overlooked the great statues that Rykker had seen in the future. He gaped in awe, eyes tracing the intricate carvings' minute details.

The woman chuckled at him. "I would tell you to take a picture, but cameras have not yet been invented."

He refused to tear his eyes away from the grand statues. "They're stunning," he said. "I've never seen such magnificent stonework."

"And yet, you saw what will happen to them. They will be forgotten," she said. "Everything you see here will be as if it never existed." She looked down over the balcony, watching people scurry about the base of the statues. "I am not so naïve to believe that my people will never face extinction. I have seen far too many a calamity to doubt in that." She sighed heavily, her eyes lingering on the helix construct that wrapped around Almighty Sinjoh's statue. "But to see that everything we accomplished, every great feat in our history, every sacrifice, all of it will be lost…" she trailed off.

"You can't allow that," Rykker replied.

She shook her head. "No. I cannot. Not even if it brings ruin."

He looked back over at her. "Why did you bring me up here?" he asked. "To wax poetic about your people's history?"

She met his eyes. "No," she said solemnly. "To beg." The woman leaned over the side of the balcony. "My people have suffered great tragedy to get where we are. We were cast out from our homeland, banished to the sea at the point of a spear. Hisui was not kind to us, but our new home… our New Sinjoh… it was ours." She gestured out at the temple. "It has taken two generations to build this temple. Our stonecutters worked day and night for years, and yet it stands crumbling and lost in your time."

She turned to face him. "I have a plan," she said. Her hands went into her pack, pulling a dull, rusted red chain from the bag. "I can harness Sinjoh's power using this, like I did to return to my time. I can fix this, all of it. I just need to retrieve a set of glyphs, the ones that I used in your time."

Rykker raised an eyebrow. "The unknown carvings? I knew they were special."

She nodded. "They are sacred relics, imbued with power when Sinjoh created the world." She looked down at the floor. "I can use them to summon our great protecto-"

"No," he interjected. "I may not know much about myths, especially ones from other regions." Rykker turned away from the balcony, facing the woman. "But I know ghosts. I was a ghost specialist as Champion. I know that moniker... The great protector? You mean to summon Giratina."

She scowled. "And is that so wrong?" she asked. "The great dragon has protected my Clan since time immemorial. It is a protector."

"It's dangerous," he replied. Rykker's mind was back in Unova, the raw memories of Zekrom and Reshiram clashing with the Plasma-controlled Kyurem fresh as the day he'd lived them. "I've seen gods summoned to battle, I've seen the consequences of this path."

"This time is already on that path," she said coldly. "You know little of this time, of the tensions that threaten the peace I have worked for here. Do not presume to lecture me on the intricacies of workings that you couldn't possibly understand."

He stepped back, the responsibility the woman seemed to bear suddenly making sense. "Your people…" he trailed off. "They are your people aren't they. You're their leader, aren't you?"

She looked wistfully off the balcony. "I am." She turned back to him, black cloak flowing out behind her. Her voice wavered and Jason saw the ghosts in her eyes. "I am Grisaea, Chieftess of the Platinum Clan and Queen of New Sinjoh." She met his eyes and he saw again the pleading, begging stare. "I will do what is necessary to save my people."

Rykker nodded, understanding dawning on him. "I was Champion once. I know what it is to have an entire people looking up at you, waiting and asking for answers that you don't have." He shook his head. "I failed my Unova, I failed my people and let corruption fester under the surface because I didn't have the balls to stop it. My inaction led directly to tragedy, to the very worst of catastrophes."

"Then you know the guilt that hung over my head every moment I spent in your time. You know what I feel having abandoned my people to their deaths while I survived." Grisaea drew closer to Rykker, leaning in to meet his eyes. "You know that I must do everything I can. Sinjoh be damned, I must save my people."

He nodded. "I know that pain."

They both turned, facing out at the statues. "What will you do then?" She asked.

He paused, watching a pair of workers carrying a large crate on the floor below. "Gods have never been my thing," he said cautiously. "I've never liked the finality of their rules. I find that reality… it has wiggle room."

She frowned. "Wiggle room?" she asked. "What use would one have for a room to wiggle in?"

He smirked at the figure of speech that had been lost in translation. "What I mean is that I am with you. Maybe you can solve this catastrophe, maybe there is no fixing what's broken." He shrugged, his mind made up. "I failed once, and I will not let that happen again. Not when there is even the slightest chance that we can stop this. It's… it's worth a try at least."

Grisaea smiled and he saw her breathe a sigh of relief. "That boy Champion, Red… he has rubbed off on you."

Rykker smirked and rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment. "I guess he has," he said. "He just showed me that you can make a difference. That anyone, no matter how small a part to play can change the course of history." The smirk returned. "I don't think he meant to this extent, but I was never much for baby steps."

She paused and her smile seemed genuine. "How very… Unovan of you. What is it that your people say? Go big or get out?"

Rykker suppressed a chuckle. "Go big or go home." He nodded. "I suppose that's true about us." He looked back out at the statues and for the first time since he had arrived at the Ruins of Alph with Karen, he felt as if he was in some small measure of control. "So," he started, looking back at her. "Where do we start?"


The city of New Sinjoh was absolutely monstrous compared to the ruins he had flown over in the future. It was vast and stunning, gardens and fountains dotting the ancient city in all her glory. Clay facades and stunning reliefs lined the streets and more craftsmen were hard at work everywhere Rykker looked.

Grisaea led Rykker away from the temple with a dozen retainers in tow. She ignored the hushed whispers and accusing glances from the people as they passed. They did not linger, but Rykker knew that he was not popular among these strange peoples.

Rykker kept close to her, listening carefully to the strange tongue spoken by the locals. He kept hearing words that sounded similar to some archaic hisuian terms, but he was no linguist and had nothing concrete enough to make sense of their meanings. He stayed silent and kept pace with the group, noting that they were steadily climbing uphill.

They stopped at the top of the hill, in front of a low-slung building with an open roof. A building that was clearly a soldier's barracks sat beside it. Grisaea waved in her entourage, issuing orders to her people, and offered a smile to Rykker as he followed her inside.

"This place," he started. "It's larger than I expected."

She nodded. "Our most recent census counted over a hundred thousand souls in the city itself. Maybe half that again live in the settlements along the river valley. We've recovered greatly from the scant few thousand that fled across the sea from Hisui." She shrugged. "Though, we are not half as large as either of the established johtan cities are. Still, I am proud of what my people have accomplished after such adversity."

Rykker looked at her as she swung open the doors. The question that had been on his lips died and he stared in awe at the rookery. They lined the walls of the building, steel feathers shining in the light of the oil lamps.

"Magnificent, aren't they?" Grisaea asked. "They were rulers of the river valley before we arrived here." She approached one of the pokemon, reaching up to pat one of the avians on a steel beak. "So many of my people would have balked at working so closely with pokemon back in Hisui. So many did not trust them or were afraid of their power." She looked up at the largest of the skarmory. "Our Noble Lady of the Valley took quite a liking to me as a child though. She saved my life a long time ago, and I returned the favour by providing her flock with a place to nest."

"I'm surprised they stay," Rykker said, beholding the stunningly large skarmory with the appropriate amount of awe. "They're supposedly difficult to train."

Grisaea nodded. "They are." She pulled open the massive skarmory's stall and ushered the metal raptor out. "Do you have a mount?" she asked as the skarmory lowered down to her level.

"Not any more," he said with a frown. "Not for a long while."

She frowned slightly, leaning in towards the skarmory's head. She whispered something and the metal avian answered with a shrill chirp.

"Our Lady Noble will allow you to ride her," she said. Grisaea shifted backwards on the pokemon, making space for Rykker. "She will carry us both."

Her attendants bustled around her, clearing away a large space in the open-topped room as Rykker stepped up to the side of her mount. "Where are we heading?" he asked.

She reached out, taking his hand and pulling him up as a leg swung over the skarmory's back. "Alph, when it was not a ruin." She frowned in frustration. "Where I was taken from my time and my people."

Rykker stiffened up. "Are you expecting to see another Celebi?"

She shrugged. "It is a possibility. One that I am more prepared for than I was."

"Is that because you have me?" he asked.

"Partly," Grisaea replied. She pulled back her cloak and I saw a trio of battered pokeballs sat there. "I also have my own pokemon now. Before… I was alone." She shook her head and looked to the sky. "I was weak, Jason Rykker. I am weak no longer."

The woman that had been speaking with Grisaea when he woke stepped up to the skarmory's side. Her voice was low and hushed, the tongue one that Rykker was ignorant of. But he caught the concern. He could hear the fear and terror clear in the woman's voice. She was scared.

Grisaea said something back, reassuring the woman with a gentle touch. She leaned in and her voice dropped to a whisper. A warm smile crossed the woman's face. She stepped back and bowed her head, the rest of Grisaea's entourage doing the same.

Rykker looked down at them, glancing back at the time traveller. "And they're fine with me going with you?"

"No," Grisaea said coldly. "They are not happy with my decision. So don't prove me wrong."

She dug her heels into the skarmory's sides. Rykker barely had time to draw a breath before they rocketed into the sky on wings of heaving steel.


The Argent River Valley had been a cold, desolate place in Rykker's time. It was populated solely by angry wild pokemon and left to the ravages of time and nature. The frigid, dead climate of the future clashed harshly with the bright and vibrant past. Rykker couldn't help but wonder at the transformation that two thousand years had made.

They set down at the edge of the forest in the foothills of the Argents and made camp. Grisaea did not return his pokemon to him and instead ordered him to build a small fire to cook dinner. She disappeared into the woods at the base of the hills, leaving the humongous skarmory with Rykker to keep watch.

He set to work, gathering some tinder from the tree line and carrying it over to the skarmory. He looked up at the bird. "I don't suppose you'd be able to dig me a fire pit?"

The skarmory blinked once and stared blankly at him.

Rykker sighed and shook his head. "Guess not."

He turned around, surveying the edge of the forest they'd landed at. The rocky hills beyond the forest's edge rose towards the imposing peaks in the distance. He could see small flickers of light on the mountains, leading towards the pass that Grisaea was heading for. No doubt, they were the lookouts she had spoken of.

Rykker retrieved a stone from the hill and stomped back down to the earthy soil at the forest's edge. He knelt, digging away until he had excavated a small pit. The fire was crackling by the time Grisaea had returned. Rykker was reclining on the hill, looking up at the stars.

"They're different," Grisaea said, dropping a pair of pidgey carcasses in front of him. She looked up at the sky. "There's more of them. And they shine brighter than they do in your time."

He grunted an unintelligible answer as she sat across the fire from him. Silence fell, and the only noise was the dim crackle of the fire. "Less light," he replied gruffly at long last, still staring up at the sky. "Everything's brighter in the future."

She smirked, looking up at me as she began to prepare our dinner. "Brighter," she started. "but cold and inhospitable. Your people struggle for base necessities, where mine are fat and happy in their simple lives." She scowled. "The future… 'tis a bleak place."

He glanced down from the night's sky, a knowing scowl on his face. "It may not be perfect, but is that all it is?" he asked. "There is good in the future under all the bad. Good people, doing good things."

"Like Red?" she asked suddenly. "I read about your boy Champion, about the bloody mess his predecessor left him. And he yet allows the man who was the mastermind behind the most violent coup attempt in Indigo's history to stay on as Elite."

"You don't understand the complexities," Rykker replied. "Red's trying to do what's right for Indigo, what's right for the whole world. Lance's removal would be… difficult, to say the least. Lance and Blackthorn provide a powerful voting bloc, one that Red can ill-afford to lose." He shook his head. "But you had not considered political needs, had you?"

Grisaea wrinkled her nose. "I despise politics," she said. "Past or future, it's all the same. People are weak, self-serving fools regardless of time."

He let a smile come to his face. She was like he had been when he had still believed in the power of the Champion; a naïve fool who wished to rule by decree. "You are a true monarch at heart," he said flatly. "Much like a Champion."

She paused for a moment. Her expression softened and she looked up at him. "Perhaps there is some truth in that," she said. "But the future remains a cold, unwelcoming place."

Rykker watched her for a moment as she went back to preparing the pidgey. He could see the pain that she spoke with. The future was not kind, not to people from a more forgiving time. "What was it like for you?" he asked. "Being dragged to a different time?"

She looked up at him, staring in silence over the crackling fire. She ignored the question, going back to the pidgey cuts.

"I do not mean to pry," he continued.

"Yet you do so regardless," she retorted. "What gives you the right to continue asking?"

He shrugged. "You seem to know everything you could possibly want to about me." He scowled, the aspect of being a champion that he had least enjoyed heavy in his mind. "Every moment of my life, the good, the bad… it's all online. Everybody knows everything about me." He looked back down at her, finally tearing himself away from the night's sky. "Maybe I don't have a right to know these things. Maybe I should just shut my mouth and listen to the badass Queen. But I like to push boundaries, and I don't like not knowing who I'm working with."

She stared back at him, her gaze cold and hard. Her expression softened slightly. "Perhaps I can share a few things," she said. "In the hope that it sparks some trust between us."

He nodded back. "I would appreciate that."

She sat back, the pidgey finally cooking over the fire. "Then I shall consider it," she replied. "But for now, I do not wish to speak any further."

Rykker sat back, regarding Grisaea with a sad grin. "I will hold you to it then," he said. "Perhaps another day?"

She nodded in silence. Rykker took the hint and turned his attention back to the sky. They didn't speak another word, not even when the pidgey were done and they ate their meagre meal.


Sinjoh Ruins, Northern Kan-Jo

The chamber was open to the sky, entire sections of the roof caved in. Three massive statues stretched towards the sun, likely the first time in history that they'd ever seen sunlight.

The dragon descended through the roof, banking around the statues with room to spare. An echoing roar greeted them from a dragon at the foot of a statue that had been reduced to rubble. Lance angled his mount downwards and guided the dragon in.

"Where's Elite Rykker?" Lance asked as he slipped from the back of his dragonite.

Champion Shirona shook her head solemnly, looking up at him from her seat on the floor. "Gone," she said. "It is done. The die has been cast. The mirror has been broken."

Lance frowned. "Do you always speak in riddle?"

She shrugged, slowly getting to her feet. "I suppose that it is time for some truth. Rykker is gone, along with our quarry. We can no longer act proactively. From this point onwards, we are on the defensive."

The dragon master scowled. "I was not aware that we were under attack."

Grand Champion Shirona looked back at him with a grim expression. "We aren't under attack yet," she said. "But make no mistake, we are at war."

Lance opened his mouth to speak, but the question died on his tongue. He folded his arms as Cynthia turned towards the statues. "I shall alert Red."

"We'll need more than just Indigo," she replied. "Summon the Grand Council."

Lance scoffed. "Hoenn is a broken ruin and Unova is led by a bloodthirsty madman. Half the damn world is engulfed by chaos. You'll never get them all to work together!" He shook his head, the memory of his attempt to wrangle cooperation between the disparate regions still fresh. "You said it yourself after the last meeting."

She turned back to him, her face seeming a little paler than normal. "Then let us pray that I was wrong," she replied. "Else we will stand alone against forces we can scarcely comprehend." She took one last glance up at the damaged statues of the creation trio. "Not even the gods will be able to save us then."


Timelines in danger! Defiance of the will of gods! How will humanity survive?

You'll just have to keep reading!