Chapter 36 – Our Home

This place, this mansion in the middle of this dimension was now our home, a small floating island in this starry night sky with a sun in the distance allowing some sort of day and night cycle going on in the dimension. I wasn't sure how this dimension functioned, how we were able to breathe in this place when it looked like we were living out in space, how we were given food and almost everything we needed to live here till the end of days.

One thing we never had in this little world of ours was the company of other Pokemon and or people. A familiar face we would welcome, a passing traveller stopping at the mansion to rest up before moving on, a formidable foe or two posing at least some sort of threat to us. In this world, Aqua and I never encountered another within the first year there, not even the second, the fiftieth, or even the hundredth. Sure Infinite was there with us, but a week into staying there he had grown far too weak to talk to us, perhaps too weak to stay conscious long enough for us to talk to him about whatever we tried asking; his condition, knowledge about this dimension, if there was something here besides us out there, or if Arceus ever said it would one day come to this dimension. We never got him to talk since arriving in that dimension; he stayed in that small room in the mansion in silence, the ball of light that was Infinite flickering slowly until one day the light had faded along with him.

The mansion on the outside looked quite large for two Dewott's to live inside. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a maze-like library with rows and rows of thousands of books, a music room with several instruments such as a piano, guitar and violin, a home movie theater, a beautiful kitchen lined with marble floor, a green house, and the entrance hall with a grand staircase leading up to the next floor of the mansion.

Aqua whistled as she was the first to step inside the mansion and looked up at the chandelier hanging above. "Fancy. This floor is so smooth! Wow, all of this is for us?"

"It's our home now." I said walking a little further inside and looked up at the walls with paintings such as landmarks from our world hung up. I turned to Aqua and smiled. "Wow, I don't know where to begin, this place is huge. Want to check out each room first?"

Aqua took my paw and dragged me to the first room we had come across, the living room. "Sure, let's see what our home is like for us. If we finish in time, we can grab a bite to eat and finish packing before the day is out. Because I wanna check out this mansion!" We checked out each room of the mansion, interacting with almost everything we had come across, trying out chairs, the beds, and almost getting lost in our own library for how big it was.

Aqua's mood had changed since we left our world behind to this dimension, a smiling excited face as she and I checked out each room of the mansion, playing and tinkering with the little things we discovered.

After almost two hours of searching each room of the mansion, we came to the room where Infinite was in, a ball of flickering light very low to the ground. "What's that?" She asked me as she tilted her head never having seen Infinite before, or what he was now.

"That's Infinite. Remember I told you about him?"

"Is he… dangerous?"

"Maybe he is still dangerous, or maybe he is too weak to do anything. But what I do know is that he is dying, and we have to monitor him every day to make sure he doesn't try anything." I looked at Aqua. "Arceus told me how we can deal with him should he try anything. We have to use our moves to weaken him, or in Arceus words; 'calm him down'. So we got to stay in shape should he come back." We left the room and closed the door to search the last remaining rooms of the mansion.

"Exercise?" She asked, "I never saw a gym in this mansion or any training gear." And then she shrugged. "Eh, I guess we'll have to make do with what we have here to train in the yard then."

Turning the handle of the room next to Infinite open with my Psychic, we were amazed at what we had found. It was a room with a swimming pool with a huge glass window showing most of the back yard of the mansion.

"Hey, a swimming pool. Well at least we can practice on our water type moves in there I suppose." Aqua walked inside to check out the swimming pool, kneeling down and putting her paw into the water.

"Wow, this water feels great. Oh I'll definitely be swimming in this pool a lot."

I kneeled down beside her and tested out the water myself, fighting the urge to splash her with water. "Hmm, doesn't look like there is any swimming gear in here. Do you still remember how to swim?"

"Of course I do. I didn't spend all day in that safe zone sitting down until we could come out again." She shook her head. "Nope, instead I trained with the others; using my moves and swimming until I got the hang of it."

"Oh really? I thought you sat around and ate ice cream all day long." I smirked at her, almost about to splash some water at her. And then the unexpected had happened, or expected after what I said. With both of her paws placed on my back, with one good push she was able to push me into the swimming pool with a big splash. I quickly swam up to the surface and let out a gasp for how surprisingly cold it was underneath. I looked up at the ledge to see Aqua looking down at me with a big grin.

"Did that push feel like someone who just sat around and eat ice cream all day? Or was it the kind of push a strong Pokemon with years of training can do?" She asked, still grinning at me. With a quick roll of my eye, I used Psychic and pulled Aqua into the swimming pool next to me with a big splash. Aqua immediately swam up beside me, gasping due to the sudden coldness of the water.

"Ah, really Zack?" She sighed, her smile faded a little but it was still there. She swam up next to me shuddering. "This water is cold… brrr!"

I swam close to her. "Sorry about that. But in answer to your question, yeah, you have a strong push."

With a sigh, Aqua smirked, splashing some water in my face. "Good answer." Then with a growl and a scary looking glare she said. "But that apology will not do, mister! I will only forgive you if you treat me to a nice meal later, maybe a candlelit meal. With ice cream served afterwards and you must carry me the whole time."

I lightly chuckled at that, agreeing to do just that. "Oh alright then. But don't complain on what I make for you later. Deal?" I held out my paw, and Aqua shook my paw and smiled and with a nod said.

"Deal."

So after a quick swim around the pool and drying ourselves out we explored the rest of the mansion, inside first and then outside to check out the hedges and tall trees in the back. The grass never grew any longer than three centimeters, the flowers never died, and the trees never lost a leaf. It was as if time stood still there. Oddly, this dimension had different seasons never affecting any of the plants no matter what season it was; spring, summer, fall and winter, the plant life remained unaffected throughout each. Weather of most kinds came, small wind, heavy rain, snow storms, and hail, nothing too extreme like a random tornado or earthquake. I suppose that helped keep a little to track for how long we had been there. When the tour of the new house had come to an end, we found ourselves standing by the gate where the portal dropped us off.

It didn't take us long, but an hour was all we needed to gather our stuff and put it in the new rooms of the mansion. Personal belongings like photos, books we wanted to take with us, parting gifts from our friends and family, memorabilia from my days as a Savior. After that I made dinner for us after I said I would not wanting Aqua to stay mad at me the first day we where there. It was a salad I made for us, fresh vegetables topped with a dressing Yuri help me make a few times when I was a little younger.

After she ate some of the salad I asked. "So, what do you think?"

"Mmm, it's really good." She smiled. "Heh, since when did you learn how to make such delicious meals?" she asked, taking another bite out of the food I made for her with delight.

"Yuri taught me. She learnt how to cook from my mom, and her mom before her. I asked her how to cook since I would be living in this dimension, I never expected to be cooking for two, I would've asked for a cook book to make fine meals otherwise."

"This isn't fine, Zack; this is amazing what you made." She smiled as she took another bite out of the salad I had prepared for her. "The dressing is really nice, the highlight of the food. It's not too sour, not too sweet, it's just right, it is really tasty."

"If you want to make your own dishes, I would happy to teach you if you want."

"I would like that. Perhaps the library has at least one cook book or two resting on the shelves that can help us make more meals. I'll go with you to the library so I can find something to read. I do not want to get lost in that huge room and wait for you to take me back out…"

"Hmm, we might have to put up signs in there for how big it is. I'll work on that tomorrow. But yeah, we can make more things. If there isn't a cook book in there, I do know how to make other things."

Was there a cook book in the library? Yes. Was it easy to find? No. With over ten thousand books in that library and a hundred shelves to look at, it almost had taken us three hours to search for a cook book or two. Well, at least the search wasn't for nothing since we found the recipes of delicious meals we could make in the future.

That night after a long day, about to get some sleep I had stopped outside the bedroom to find Aqua inside standing beside the dresser looking at a photo of Light, Kairi and Midnight we took on our first day of vacation. I walked into the room and over towards the bed and smiled at her, about to tell her goodnight, and that was when I noticed she was crying.

"You know what is bad about my visions?" She asked, trailing her fingers across the photo. "I can see them, their beautiful smiling faces. They warn me of things I cannot do, I am out of reach from them. I can't talk to them, help them, or hold them in my arms. I saw a vision of Light getting injured by another Pokemon… but he's going to be alright. It was just another Pokemon his age fighting over something stupid." She looked at me and handed me the photo. "The good thing about my vision is it grants me a window of sorts into our world at our loved ones. And the bad things, the things I worry about are what my visions are going to be about; someone getting injured, they're in danger or worse…"

I looked at the photo and thought of our children. "Can you block these visions?" I asked, setting the photo down on top of the dresser.

"I have tried to block them, but I can't." She looked down at the floor and sighed. I thought back to earlier that day when we said our goodbyes to our friends and family, what Rose told me about how she learnt to control her ability, maybe Aqua could learn to control her ability just like her.

"Rose, before we left did tell me she did learn how to control her ability. Then I kind of did with my other ability… the one that causes me to go berserk whenever I get angry. I don't hear them as much since I had some practice keeping them at bay, maybe if you trained you could block out your foresight."

Aqua looked out the window and again sighed. "What if I need my foresight? With Infinite here we need to watch over him if he tries to rise to power again. My ability would warn us minutes should something happen granting us a heads start. And besides, this place isn't our world, anything could happen here."

"Hmm…" I thought about what we could do. This dimension was in a way still Infinite's, anything could happen here; an attack he planned should things turn out like this, or a distraction. But Arceus did tell me this dimension was safe for us. The Dark Place might've helped if I had someone who knew about the Dark Place better than I did, but I didn't want to risk taking Aqua inside not knowing what to do and harm her. I walked beside her and touched her shoulder with my paw. "Then I don't know what I can do for you other than be with you and help you get through with the visions, the terrible ones you'll see."

Aqua slowly nodded and hugged me tight. "Thank you Zack. I'll have to endure it if I can't ease the visions so I don't see them as much, or control what I see."

"Whatever kind of vision you see talk to me about it."

She turned her head up and nodded with a light smile. "I'll tell you everything I see."

"And don't lie about what you see; a vision of me making ice cream for you or me doing all of your chores otherwise something terrible will happen."

"Don't worry, Zack. I promise I won't abuse my ability and make you do everything for me… maybe once or twice." She giggled.

Obvious signs of whenever Aqua had a vision; she would stop what she was doing and stare blankly at nothing for ten to thirty seconds, eyelids half closed, and her body shaking a little with a few short gasps depending on what kind of vision she saw. Happy visions involving our friends and family she never made a sound, but the terrible visions she saw she would gasp. Those visions were the kind she wanted to escape from seeing any further.

But life within this dimension turned out well for us besides the visions she saw on almost weekly basis, that it was pretty much just us two since Infinite never talked or seemed to acknowledge us. We had movies we could watch in the home movie theater providing us with hours of action, horror, and more. We had sort of a movie night every week, a bowl of popcorn or berries and any seat we wanted. Training in the swimming pool to boost our water type moves and the occasional swimming races, while we trained in the yard using our other moves that weren't water type and run around a lot, and create a makeshift training course in the back yard using empty boxes and old furniture we found in the attic.

So that was our daily life there. An hour a day we would watch over Infinite trying to talk to him, make sure he doesn't rise to power once more, we would train for an hour to keep in shape, and for the remainder of the day we would have fun either together or do something by ourselves. Being by ourselves in this dimension was rare for us for the time we where there, often taking pleasant and calming walks around the yard and talking about anything really. I taught Aqua how to play video games, fighting games, adventure, fantasy, and other genres she might like, at least I had someone else to play video games with besides myself and the games computer.

She had visions roughly about every month about our children and our friends, most of them showed her the bad things like someone getting hurt, shown to be in danger from either a Pokemon hunter or powerful Pokemon, but rarely did her visions show her the good things. The good visions showed her our children mostly making new friends, finding love, and starting a family. We learnt from the visions sometime in the future that Light would travel with a trainer within Kanto trying to become the regions champion. Light was also teamed up with a female Pikachu, and sometime later they fell in love, and what happened after that remained a mystery. Kairi met a male Riolu in Unova still living with my Pokemon just outside Castelia City. Aqua said Kairi looked really happy to be with the Riolu, shedding a tear as she kept her eyes closed whenever she received the good visions, pretending to be there with them as she said that her visions looked so real. And for Midnight she stayed with Kairi and Maia visiting Lisa and Yuri from time to time. Visions like that set her mind at ease after seeing a terrible vision of our friends and family being hurt. In time, Aqua just learnt to endure it, telling me what her visions showed her.

Being the only two Pokemon within this dimension plus a ball of light which used to be a powerful being, it was kind of hard to get used to, but we managed somehow. I think with all that we had and all the things we did there we kind of forgot about it, the loneliness I mean.

Dewott's can live for about seventyish years, maybe a couple of years more if they are lucky. And me, injected with the Doom serum that allows me to live until I reach the age of two hundred. Aqua would die of old age long before I would reach the age of two hundred, and then after that I would live out the last remaining years alone. Aqua and I both knew this, but that didn't stop us from living a happy life in this world of ours until the end.

To be continued…

Trivia:

The dimension Zack and Aqua live in had the occasional dangers of an ambush from Infinite's minions; the Anomalies from Pokemon Dreams 02 – Till the End of Time trying to save their master and bring Infinite back to power.