"So, what's the next town with a Contest along this route?" Dawn asked Whitney.

"Well, the next town is Michina," Whitney told her. "Which sounds interesting, there's some kind of story there, but I can't remember what it is…"

Ash sent Raikou out. "Do you have any idea what might be special about Michina?"

"Michina…" Raikou said, lifting a paw to her muzzle to do a thinking pose, then tripped over because she hadn't actually stopped walking.

Picking herself up and shaking her head, Raikou blew a gust of wind through her muzzle. "Anyway. Dad mentioned something about that once but I can't remember the details. There was something about a Thunder Beast, maybe? But it was before my time."

She shrugged. "That's about all I can tell you."

"Well, we're going past, and it's supposed to look nice, so we could stop there," Whitney suggested. "After that, the next place with a Contest is… hmm, there's plenty of choice. Really, we've got so long until the Grand Festival and the Lily of the Valley Conference, we could even go back home so you can visit your mom!"

"That might be nice," Dawn admitted. "So, Michina first and then back to Twinleaf?"

She looked back at Ash, who was talking Yveltal through the use of Ice Beam. "Is that okay, Ash? I know it's kind of a long detour for you."

"It's fine," Ash confirmed. "Besides, that's a lot of what's fun about being a Pokémon trainer – whatever's over the next hill!"

Before long, it was Michina over the next hill, and it was beautiful. A wide sweeping grassy plain, rocky pillars draped in varying amounts of green, a sparkling river flowing through it, and the town itself was built into the side of some of the rock pillars without seeming to intrude – it was just how the town naturally looked, as far as any of them could tell.

"This is an amazing place!" Whitney gushed. "Don't you guys think so?"

"I certainly agree," Dawn's Riolu said. "There is a calm, mystical energy in the air… I can feel it when I breathe in, and breathe out. This area of the world is somehow more… calm, more centered than other parts of the world. That's the best way I can put it."

"This area has additional aura compared to the normal baseline," Zygarde reported. "It is not like the Tree of Beginning, but it is similar in many key respects."

"That's neat, then," Ash muttered, obviously thinking to himself. "I wonder what could cause that?"

"I'm just happy to be here," Riolu smiled. "It's so relaxing."

Then a hole opened up in space.

"Not so relaxing now!" Riolu yelped, and dove for the ground so he could cling on with his paws. Zygarde flicked their green antenna-leash around for Piplup to grab onto, and Rapidash's horn lit up as he used Psychic to catch Happiny.

Pikachu used Fly to zip back to Ash's shoulder. "What's going on?"

"Hoopa, is this you?" Ash asked, over the rushing sound of air flowing through the hole.

A golden ring appeared next to him.

"What are you saying is Hoopa's fault?" Hoopa asked. "Hoopa – yikes!"

Another ring appeared near the portal, and Palkia fell out.

"Hoopa would like you to fix that problem!" Hoopa called.

Palkia reoriented himself, then closed the portal with a swipe of his claws.

"Hoopa thanks you!" Hoopa called.

"Maybe Palkia knows what caused that?" Dawn suggested. "Or maybe Giratina has a clue. Wasn't Giratina involved with space-time portals recently?"

"Palkia!" someone called. "Please… listen to me! These people mean you no harm!"

"I'd debate that for Hoopa, but only because being dropped through a wormhole can bruise if I don't turn off gravity in time," Palkia said.

The woman who'd spoken slowed to a halt, deeply confused. "...I don't normally get more than feelings if I try to understand a Pokémon…"

"I should write a guide book," Rapidash said. "How to make friends by introducing comprehensibility into what they say – the Lokoko method."

The woman's name turned out to be Sheena, and she was local to Michina.

She was able to touch the hearts of Pokémon to convince them of her sincerity, in a way that immediately reminded Whitney of what they'd heard about how a Styler worked.

"I didn't know you could do that without a Styler!" she said. "That's amazing!"

"Oh… thank you," Sheena said, looking down slightly. "It's a talent I've inherited… one of my ancestors was Damos, the man who saved Arceus and won the Jewel of Life. Though he later betrayed Arceus and kept it for himself, and…"

She winced. "Well, the stories don't contain much detail on what happened after that. But all my life I've wanted to return the Jewel of Life to Arceus, to make up for his mistake. My friend Kevin's been a great help… we even found the Jewel of Life itself!"

"You did?" Giratina said, looming up out of the floor.

Sheena jumped.

"Sorry," Giratina added. "I forgot that I hadn't mentioned my presence yet. Ash asked for help, and I was there, so…"

He shook himself. "Anyway. The Jewel of Life is a fantastic creation, which cannot be harmed and can only be unmade by being absorbed by Arceus himself."

"Neat!" Mew said.

Sheena didn't jump, this time, but she did stare.

"How long has that Mew been there?" she asked, after a long moment.

"I turned up five minutes ago," Mew explained. "I was the Starly in the tree. Ash's Starly is back home learning how to use his Aura. Anyway, if this is the Jewel of Life, I guess that means it's as indestructible as the GS Ball!"

He used Psycho Cut, and the Jewel fell in half.

"Oops?" Mew tried.

Dawn's Buneary raised her paw, since Sheena was staring at the bisected gemstone.

"If the Jewel of Life is inviolate," she began. "And that got cut in half, then therefore this isn't the Jewel of Life."

"That's logic, right there," Pikachu said approvingly. "In that case, what actually is it?"

"It must be a fake," Ash wondered. "So where's the real Jewel of Life?"

"Don't know," Dawn's Nickit said. "Hmm…"

She closed her eyes, and flicked her tail into Sheena's shadow.

"Umm… there we go!" she announced, pulling out a gemstone which sparkled with an inner light. "Not sure where it was before, but it's here now!"

While Sheena was grateful – and confused – about what Nickit had just done, any explanation about how it worked had to wait. Only a moment later, there was a glitter of aurora and light overhead, and Arceus emerged.

"Lord Arceus!" Sheena called, holding up the real Jewel of Life. "We have the Jewel which you lost!"

Arceus descended, and examined Sheena closely. Then the Jewel.

"...that actually is the real Jewel of Life," the Creator declared. "I did not expect that. This is awkward."

They turned their attention to Ash. "I assume you were involved? Or your companions, at least."

"Dawn's Nickit did it!" Ash said. "Though she was taught by Marshadow."

"By the way, what pronouns do you use?" Whitney checked. "I want to make sure I'm using the right ones."

"I am above the concept of gender," Arceus said. "Use whatever pronouns you wish; I care not."

"Thanks," Whitney replied, giving a thumbs-up.

"It's very nice of you," Arceus resumed. "But you actually do need to go back in time and tweak history a bit. Sorry."

Then there was a swirl of light and pressure, and they were abruptly elsewhen.

"Huh," Ash said, once they'd landed – finding themselves atop the ruins of Michina, only they were not ruins any more. "That was weird."

"That's a good word for it," Pikachu agreed. "Arceus said we need to tweak history… what exactly does that mean we need to do?"

"And how far back are we?" Sheena said. "We must be thousands of years in the past, for Michina to look like this..."

"You're new!" a Pichu gasped.

She ran over, her spiky left ear twitching. "Where did you come from, how did you, you've never been here before and I was so worried I couldn't change anything and-"

"Hey, hey," Dawn said, offering her arms, and the Pichu hesitated for a moment before jumping into them. "That's it, sweetie… do you want to talk about it?"

"I… think I would like to talk about it," Pichu agreed, her voice mumbled slightly. "But not yet please."

"That's fine," Dawn assured her. "We can wait."

As it happened, it was about five minutes later that Pichu had calmed down enough to explain.

"I'm… well, I think I'm from your time," she said. "Or something like your time. I'm from the future, that is, when there were Pokéballs, and you have Pokéballs, so you must be… you know?"

She hiccuped. "And I think something went wrong, but… but anyway, I keep trying to solve it but I don't know what to do, and then I go back to the start. And it feels like I've tried everything, but it never works out right…"

"That sounds terrible," Dawn said, wincing. "I can't imagine what it would be like to have to do the same thing over and over again like that…"

"And I feel like I must be doing something wrong, because I'm here to solve something and it's not working out right," Pichu went on. "You know?"

She swallowed.

"It sounds like you've done a lot more than anyone could expect," Dawn assured her.

"Well, we can help," Ash said. "What do you know about what's going on?"

"It's all to do with the eclipse," Pichu said, then huffed slightly. "No, it's more… the eclipse is when Arceus appears, and he's supposed to get the Jewel of Life back. But Marcus isn't letting Damos do it, he's forcing him to attack Arceus or something, and then when I try to change that Marcus uses a different plan instead, and…"

"Wait, someone was forcing Damos to attack Arceus?" Sheena asked. "I thought…"

"I think we should listen to the expert here!" Whitney prescribed. "And that's Pichu!"

Pichu's fuller explanation made a little more sense of the situation.

There was someone called Marcus, a local human leader, and he was using a kind of armour that Pokémon wore in order to issue orders to Pokémon that they wouldn't be able to disobey – and then using his Bronzong to control Damos, to make his leader deny Arceus the return of the Jewel of Life – and attack the Alpha Pokémon, instead, so that Marcus would escape retribution if the attack failed.

But he had other plans, as well. There was something called the silver water that could harm Arceus greatly – Pichu had seen it happen – and even freeing Damos herself didn't let Pichu derail what was going on. It always seemed like Marcus had something else ready to go.

He'd even had a fake Jewel of Life made, which explained where the one Sheena had found in the future had come from.

"Then… we're going to need to make sure we get the real jewel to Arceus," Ash said. "Nickit, can you get hold of it?"

"Sure!" Nickit agreed. "Uh… hmm, I don't think it's associated with Sheena this time, we might need Damos to get a good connection?"

"Good guess," Marshadow nodded.

"Think you can help us with that?" Dawn checked.

"I sure can!" Pichu said. "Come on, the prison cell he's kept in is this way!"

All things considered, Damos took the explanation remarkably well.

"I have saved the one who created us all," he explained. "After that, I think my capacity for surprise is a little different from most."

He patted Sheena on the shoulder. "And I understand the conflict you must feel… it must be a strange thing to have sought to redeem my wrongdoing for so many years, only to discover that you were misled all along."

"That's it exactly, yes," Sheena agreed. "I… well, I was going to say it would make sense for you to understand me, since we're related, but it's extremely distant. I must be descended from half the people alive in this time!"

Nickit jumped into Damos' shadow, and came back out with the Jewel of Life.

"Got it," she reported, holding it up.

"Well done, Nickit," Dawn praised. "Now the next thing we need to do is to get it to Arceus."

"Arceus will appear at the height of the eclipse," Pichu said, confidently. "That's when they always appear."

Whitney got a piece of card out of her bag, punched a little hole in it, and held it in the sunlight.

"Hmm!" she said, looking at the projected solar image. "It looks like we've got at least an hour to go."

The friends exchanged glances.

"So…" Pikachu began. "Does anyone have any questions? Perhaps a board game?"

Several rounds of a trivia game – and some good-natured arguing about the answers – later, everyone headed out to go and greet Arceus and return the Jewel of Life.

"It's… hard to believe," Pichu said, nuzzling up next to Dawn's side. "I've been trying to solve this for so long, and I never really thought it was possible that I'd actually succeed… thank you all."

"We'll get this sorted out, don't you worry!" Ash said.

Then they reached the top of the ruins, just as the eclipse finalized and darkness swept over.

"There he is!" a bald man shouted, pointing at them. "There's the one who stole the Jewel of Life!"

"What – that's Marcus!" Pichu yelped. "How did he-"

Ash looked at the bald man, then at Arceus – hovering next to him. "Uh… I guess technically we did steal it, but only to-"

Arceus used Judgement, and seven wrist-thick streamers of energy blazed towards them.

Pikachu flew off Ash's shoulder, lightning blazing in a corona around his body, and lashed out with a gigantic surge of electricity. It hit the central beam of the Judgement head-on and held it back, splitting into six other arcs which deflected the other blasts away, and there was a long, sizzling moment of conflicting energy before a final explosion dissipated the Judgement.

Pikachu dropped back to Ash's shoulder, panting. "Ow."

"We're here to give you back the Jewel of Life!" Ash protested. "Couldn't you have given us a few seconds to explain?"

Arceus stared.

Then, slowly, nodded.

"You make a good point," xe admitted. "I am humbled… and quite astonished by your Pikachu."

"I can't decide if it's a good thing that the Jewel of Life has all the Plates which allow resistance to electricity in it," Pikachu mumbled, rubbing his cheeks. "That really stung."

"Damos, no!" Marcus protested. "The Jewel of Life is the only reason why Michina has survived!"

"Do you think my power so inconstant?" Arceus demanded, rounding on Marcus. "That a place I had decreed would flourish would wilt and fade just because it had only borne six of my Plates, and only for but a decade?"

"So is this what you meant?" Ash asked. "When you said that we needed to go back and change something?"

"I did?" Arceus asked, turning their attention away from Marcus again – who fell to his knees in relief as the pressure lessened. "Interesting. Well, I assume I knew what I was doing."

Xe reached out a hoof, and touched the Jewel of Life. For a moment it split into the Splash, Meadow, Earth, Zap, Draco and Pixie Plates, then all six flowed back into Arceus to join the other eleven circling around Arceus in a perfectly circular ring.

"Now, back to your own time," Arceus concluded, just as the sun began to emerge from behind the moon.

"Much better," Arceus said, as they landed back in the future. "Thank you for your cooperation. In addition, I have to ask…"

Xe leaned down. "What is with that Pikachu, I mean seriously."

AN:

Sometimes, you anti-climax something so hard that God Itself comes down and tells you "no, actually redo that please"