AN: Side stories are a set of 5 short stories that happen before, during, or after the main story based around either the main characters or characters that were cut from the main story.

Side Story 01/05 – Midnight

Northeast of Castelia City

The place was different, it wasn't inside a building filled with furniture and had many rooms, a kitchen, or a living room. North of Castelia City there is a forest area where my dad's Pokemon, my brother and sister, and my grandmother live Instead of a bed we had bundles of leaves laid down neatly on the ground to sleep on inside the cave we found unoccupied. Neither me or my brother and sister knew anything about living out in the wild, but thankfully my grandmother knew how after spending many years without a trainer or living within a building.

It was clearing deep within the forest, a cave we used to sleep inside, a small river a little away from our home, and many bushes with berries very close behind the cave

"Is this… our home now?" I asked Maia while looking around at my new home, unsure how I felt about all of this. I had gotten used to living inside buildings, never having any experience living outside in the wild. "It's outside…"

"Of course it is." She laughed. "There are no TVs, computers or the kind of beds you and your siblings are used to." She wrapped her arm around me after she noticed I still had a worrying look on my face. "But do not worry my dear, I have experience living out here in the wild. And I will teach you, Light and Kairi how to live out here. You three will get the hang of it after a week, believe me you will. I'll teach you how to survive, how to move around in the forests, what berries you can and cannot eat, how to tell what fresh water is and what's not, how to handle other Pokemon from other clans, trainer's Pokemon, oh and of course how to make sure you can avoid trainers from catching you. I'll have to teach your three how to do that since Light and Kairi are starter Pokemon of this region, and rare to find out in the wild, and there's you; a legendary Pokemon many trainers would try to catch."

I groaned. "Can't we live with Lisa and uncle Ren?"

"No. It'll be too crowded with all of us living in there. And besides, this will be good for us. We'll be in the way over there; out here we can learn to survive on our own."

I looked back at the other Pokemon, some gathering leaves carry inside the cave to be sued to sleep on, other gathering berries and other kinds of food for tonight's meal and tomorrow. They all looked as if they were used to all of this already. My brother and sister however were like me, not yet used to this new way of living. I turned my head and nodded, kind of hoping she was right about us liking this new way of life. I got up and levitated over to Light and Kairi, wanting to cheer them up.

"Hey you two, so how do you like… this?"

"It's alright." Shrugged Kairi. "Although I would've preferred an open space rather than this enclosed one."

"Ooh, 'enclosed' using big words." Light teased. "Did you get that from listening to Gardevoir read from her book? You must be a fan of her reading hour."

"Oh shut up." Kairi said.

"At least we have a place to sleep in rather than having to sleep outside." I said pointing at the cave. "I haven't been inside yet, but Totodile and Bayleef did tell me it was big enough for all of us. But it's uh… slightly dark, a little bit of light so we won't be completely blind in there."

"But will it be warm in there?" Kairi asked as she turned towards the cave.

"We'll be fine. At least it beats living outside without a roof over our heads… or cave ceiling."

We watched as the other Pokemon had got to work on our new home, placing the food inside the cave, setting up the many beds for all of us living here, and cleaning up the clearing so we could walk around it without stepping on something sharp.

The cleaning up had taken some time, a little after the sun had set did all of us cheer for getting our new home comlpeted did we enter the cave and celebrate their, sharing the food we had gathered and talked about mostly what we would do tomorrow to fully settle in, find berries and other sources of food and water in the area, know what kinds of Pokemon are in the area and if they would be a danger to us.

Later that night after a good meal we had to decide where everyone was sleeping. It was decided that me with the other younger Pokemon would stay at the back of the cave while the fighters would stay up front to make sure no one would try to attack us. We had trouble sleeping that night. The cave provided us with plenty of warmth and some light peeking in from the entrance due to the moonlight, the bedding however was not so comfortable.

"Hey, can you sleep?" Asked Light as he gently nudged me with his paw.

"No." I shook my head, trying to find comfort on this leaf bed without having pieces of rock digging into my back or neck. "Can you sleep?"

"No. I miss home."

"Me too. I miss mom and dad."

"Why did they leave again?"

"They said that Arceus wanted them for a special task." said as she turned to us.

"I don't know what kind of task it was."

The three of us lie there in silence. With our parents on our minds and wanting to see them again. None of us wanted to be out here, sure we were with Pokemon we knew well, but we still wanted to be with our parents again. "Grandma told me it was an important task. I asked, but she told me they won't be coming back and we can never speak to them again."

"Why couldn't we go with them?" Asked Kairi as she turned to me.

"That thing they walked through was too weak to allow more than two to enter, I think." Light sighed, he too turned towards me. "At least we're not alone."

I nodded in agreement and looked at Kairi and Light lying beside me. "Yeah, it would've been worse if we were alone, way worse."

"How so?"

"Everyone else here seems to be used to all of this outdoor life. Kairi, Light and myself are not. It's nice having someone else with me that isn't used to all of this instead of being the only one that has to learn all of this."

"Yeah."

"Grandma says she'll be teaching us how to survive out here… what I would do to go back inside again…" groaned Light as he slowly drifted off to sleep, followed by Kairi soon after.

"Me too…" I whispered, drifting off to sleep not too long after.

The next day Maia much to the dismay of me, Light and Kairi very early in the morning woke us up to learn about how to survive out in the wild. Very soon once we reached early adulthood we would have to contribute with doing our part to help out, gather food, and help protect our clan.

Maia took us out into the forest, she showed us berries and told us the names of the ones we found, what they tasted like, if they could be eaten, what effects did the berries have once consumed. That was Kairi's favorite thing to do when we lived in the clan; gathering berries to take back for us to eat and to be used as medicine just like our mother Aqua did. It was how she contributed to the clan, and I say without her this clan we had built wouldn't be the same without her. To our surprise, life there wasn't all that bad.

Maia took us out here to help us learn how to survive, to help us find some way we could help in the clan. Kairi had found something she could do, I was happy for her. However as for Light and I we couldn't find anything to do. Well, I suppose Light was the fighter type after taking an interest in it after watching Dewott and Golurk fight off a wild Pokemon a week after Maia had taken us out. He wasn't old enough to actually fight yet but that didn't stop him from training, he wanted to get out into the world.

Life was hard here at first, learning to adapt to this new lifestyle proved challenging, some trial and error on how things worked out here, but we managed through all seasons. Two years after our new life there, Maia took us to Castelia City to see our aunt and Uncle Rose and Ren who are now parents to two female Vulpix's, our cousins. Not too long after staying, Light was given an opportunity to leave the clan and go out into the world with a trainer from the Kanto region, the trainer was in the region of Unova for a while with their parents before heading back. They had wanted to look for a lab top get their child a new Pokemon to start things off. The parents contacted The Savior's and asked for help, and since Light wanted to get out into the world Ren asked us if he wanted to leave. After some time, it did take a while for Light to decide and left the clan a week later, promising to come back to us one day.

Years passed and Kairi and i grew up and become young adults ready to help contribute to the clan a lot more, going out on our own, gathering food, protecting the clan we had built over the years. We accepted new members to the clan, wild Pokemon looking for a place to live each providing some way on making this clan better and stronger. And one of the new Pokemon was a male Riolu who helped out protecting the clan with others, including an aged Dewott soon to retire. The Riolu had taken an interest in Aqua, and she had taken an interest in him, and love was in the air and the two had fallen in love and got together.

And then when another set of Pokemon came into our clan, I met a young Latios who had come to the region with his dad. The Latios introduced himself to me, his name was Blue, we became friends very fast but romance between us happened after six years of being friends. It had taken us a while for us to get from being friends to being an actual couple; I suppose together we were still getting used to life out here.

Originally Maia was the leader of the clan for many years, but once I had reached adulthood, Maia had granted me the position of leadership saying that I was ready to lead after I had defended the clan from a past rival clan of ours from attacking us after they wanted to move in on our territory. I protected all of us from them, willing to risk my life to save the clan. My grandmother stuck around for a long time, watching over not only me, but Kairi, her children and mine. She never left the clan; this was her home until her end of days.

When I became clan leader, my brother Light returned to us with a family of his own, but they never stayed with us, he had a home with his trainer in Black City. Seeing that the clan and his sisters were alright made him happy after years of worrying about us out here. He returned many times after that. He even came to see Kairi when she about to die due to old age. And I came to see him when he was about to die of old age while I remained young.

It was hard watching my brother and sister dying like that, harder to carry on after their deaths. I had my clan, my family there to be with me, supporting me whenever I needed someone there. Many years had passed since their deaths, almost a hundred years later that one day something remarkable had happened to me.

I had a vision one night in which the legendary Pokemon Arceus came to me and spoke to me about my dad. Arceus asked if I wished to see him again, one last time on the day of his two hundredth birthday and his final day alive. I was more than happy to see him again, I was excited that I would see my dad again after all these years, and so I accepted. Arceus then gave me instructions on how I would arrive there, where this portal to that dimension was and that I would have to leave immediately once my dad had died otherwise the portal would close for good.

I couldn't take anyone with me, the portal was too weak to allow anymore than one to enter through it. I wanted Zack to meet his grandchildren, his great-grandchildren on Light and Kairi's side.

I explained to my family and my clan about the vision and where I would be. I wouldn't be gone for long, give it a full day at best. I flew towards where the portal would be; beside the tree on top of the hill at the edge of Nuvema Town, excited to see me dad again.

The end of side story 01/05

Trivia:

This side story was originally a deleted section from chapter 38 of the main story.