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Arc I, The Plate of Space

Chapter Twelve:

According to the Legends

I was not accustomed to sleep.

In fact, I had never once closed my eyes and drifted into the fogs of dreammaking. Shortly after creating the humans and Pokémon, I had grown envious of their ability to temporarily live in other worlds. In the early days, they spoke about the visions they had seen. So for a hundred years, I laid on my most comfortable beds and closed my eyes, hoping that sleep would come to me too. But it never did, and instead I remained eternally awake, watching the world in between the earthtime's dusk and dawn.

Funny how the legends claimed I had yielded to sleep.

Aurelio was more peaceful than most humans when he slept. He remained so still that I thought he couldn't possibly be asleep. But he breathed. In and out. Those heavy breaths of sleep, unmistakable. I sat on the windowsill of our hotel room and stared at the sky.

When I looked over, I saw his ninth-generation grandfather.

Generations of child conceiving should have made them very distinguishable from one another. This was not the case at all. The longer I watched Aurelio, the more I remembered his grandfather. Their faces were different, but their eyes told the same stories.

I knew it, I knew I'd find you! he had exclaimed.

I'd been dumbfounded. I'd even gotten closer out of curiosity, and despite the roar in my voice, he had never faltered. Not when I changed shapes, not when I screamed at him, not when I made to move towards him and hurt him as he had hurt me. He had smiled, even.

I definitely see a Pokémon!

Now I see a person.

I gently touched the Alterstone, brows furrowed. How had that boy gotten into my dimension, the place in which I remained dormant? The longer I stayed on the mortal plane, the more questions I had and the more desperate I became to find the answers.

Aurelio's blanket rustled. He shifted his weight, opening his eyes slowly. His face was different without the glasses — more childlike.

"Arceus?" he said, yawning. He rubbed his eyes. "What are you doing?"

"Thinking," I replied.

His response was delayed. I thought he had fallen asleep again until he said, "What does The Original One think about...?"

I looked out the window again. A strange, blinking light — a plane? — passed overhead, like a shooting star. "You," I said softly. I meant to add, "Your grandfather, the rest of humanity, how all of this will affect me after all is said and done and this temporary relationship we've established fades to dust."

But somehow, words never come out how I intend them to, if they ever come out at all.

Aurelio propped himself up, still massaging his eyes. "Can you hand me my journal?"

Raising my eyebrows, I left the windowsill and went to the nightstand, where his journal lay open, its place marked by a string of silk. I made sure he didn't drop the dusty pages onto the clean bedsheets. He took the pencil and sloppily wrote into one corner of an already filled page.

"Gotta write that down," he said sleepily, half-dozed off. Then he rolled over and fell asleep.

I wished him happy dreams.

"That man is deplorable," I told Aurelio after he had woken up. The thought of Grimmwolfe staring over my shoulder for the rest of our time on the project was dreadful. "Nothing good can come from being under his supervision. We have to go there and retrieve the Plate ourselves."

"I would agree with you," said Aurelio, "normally."

I hardened my gaze. "Normally?"

"Normally," he confirmed, obviously distracted by what he was typing into his miniature computer, what he deemed the cellphone.

I waited for him to elaborate, but the explanation never came. The sound of his fingers tapping the screen filled the silence. "There is no reason for us to wait," I went on. "We agreed that getting onto the project would be the safest way to go. But Grimmwolfe does not seem reasonable, and we should not be. Let's go to the mountain ourselves and battle our way through with brute force. I can take the shape of any Pokémon I desire. It should be simple."

Aurelio put down the phone, staring at me. "I know that Grimmwolfe is part of the Antebureau," he said. "He's completely sketchy, yes. But he hasn't done anything yet that makes him an immediate threat. We should proceed as we planned."

"He has," I insisted. I wrung my hands. "Back at his office — I meant to tell you sooner. Latios and I saw Grimmwolfe atop the train. Listen to me well, he cannot be trusted."

Concerned, Aurelio asked, "What did he tell you?"

"Grimmwolfe recognized me from the beginning," I said. The fear that I had attempted to suppress was beginning to rise in me again. My skin erupted with goose bumps. The more I spoke, the faster my words came spilling out. "He knew me on the train, and he knew me yesterday morning. The entire time we sat in his office, he knew exactly what I am. He knows I'm not Thea or Theo — and he knows my one true name. All of this — he knows. And that makes him dangerous."

Aurelio chewed on his lip. "We can't just battle our way through," he said, his voice weakening. "I mean...that's absurd."

"We're not dealing with the Devon you know anymore, Aurelio," I said. "This is the Antebureau. They will hurt us, and they will take my Plates without qualm. You and I both feel this."

"I know," sighed Aurelio, sitting on the bed with his hands kneading one another in his lap. "If I had predicted this — I would have not held you back in the first place." He lifted his head, smiling delicately at me. "I should have known better. You're Arceus, mother of humans and father of Pokémon. You should not be barred from your own Plate, especially not by humans from some stupid branch of Devon. The Antebureau should mean nothing to you. You're a god."

"Above gods," I corrected.

"And once you have your Plate of Space, you can go to the Plates of Time and Cosmos and be done with it," said Aurelio, the smile upon his face growing tight and drained. "That's what you should have done from the beginning. You never needed a human to guide you into it. What was I doing — thinking that you were more helpless than you are?"

I watched him, a dismal confession flourishing inside of me.

"I just need you," he finished. His eyes pulled at me, and I felt the urge to let myself be pulled. "I need you because I've spent my entire life looking for your traces. When I met you — and you asked me for my help — I felt that destiny was on my side for once, that we were meant to go on this epic adventure together when, really, all you needed was yourself."

The words poured from me before I could control them. "I needed you too," I replied, my voice faint. I could have retrieved the Plate myself without any issue. I had trusted him when he told me that making my presence known would be a mistake. But I had eagerly sought his help, and that was my own fault. "I have spent millennia upon millennia watching the humans. I yearned to be with them and the Pokémon, upon the earth that I created when I was born from the universe. I let my desire to be next to you and to walk amongst your kind cloud my judgment."

We endured the silence, miserably staring at each other.

"We're pathetic," he finally said, laughing halfheartedly.

"We are," I agreed.

"I'll do things your way from now on," he said. He stood up and held out his hand. "That is — if you still need me around."

The thought of being truly alone on this planet left me cold with fear. I had engaged in more conversation with Aurelio than I had with anyone over the last few centuries. He was a warm beacon of familiarity upon the world I claimed to own. I was no owner nor was I a true creator. I was only another pawn in the game of destiny, only I had been assigned a part which I had little idea how to play.

"Stay with me," I said, taking his hand and shaking. I needed someone behind me when I took back my mountain, and I knew he would never abandon me.

"For as long as you want me," he vowed. "We should leave soon. Grimmwolfe meant to send us by the boat leaving this evening. Should we board it?"

"Something calls me to it," I said. I could not shake the haunting image of Latios beneath the electric net. What other secrets did Grimmwolfe hide behind closed doors? "We would not be saving much time if we left earlier. We might face more troubles flying or swimming to the mountain by ourselves. My heart tells me that we must board the boat. Perhaps then I will uncover more of the mystery behind the death of Arceus."

I walked to the window and rested my hands upon the sill. My mind felt miles away, far as the furthest nautical point from where I stood, behind the shimmering horizon lining the sea and the sky. I wanted to believe that Grimmwolfe exuded nothing but lies and deceit, but I could not ignore how deliberate his words had been. He meant to extract what he could from my mountain, and if Aurelio and my suspicions were correct, he also meant to eradicate me from existence.

It was impossible, unless…

"Arceus?" asked Aurelio hesitantly. Mortals were impeccable at sympathizing. They were such intuitive creatures. So I knew what he would ask even before he said it. "The Antebureau are lunatics, right? Their ideas that you can be killed — it's unfounded nonsense."

I shut my eyes and inhaled steadily, seeking serenity within myself. "As far as I know."

Mortals were not so impeccable at detecting lies.

End of Chapter Twelve