A/N: This is more of an explanatory chapter than anything, but the knowledge will likely prove useful in later chapters.

Pokémon, Celebi, and all related official material are copyright to the companies that own them. However, any original characters and the personalities I have imposed onto existing characters do belong to me.

Same formatting rules as always.

Chapter 3 - In the Beginning

+Diego+

"So... Now what?"

I was still sitting in Mew's abode, paws resting on top of the table and staring down into the reflective wooden depths.

I honestly didn't know what to do--Mew had seemed so comfortable in her job and had apparently done whatever she felt like doing. But apparently she'd been doing that job for several thousand years and was in somewhat of a routine. Mew had left no instructions--indeed, the whole thing was rather sudden--and Arceus had enigmatically left me to figure it out for myself. I could think of several things Mew had done, but looking back on it I could determine no pattern.

...This omniscient thing wasn't proving nearly as helpful as I'd imagined it would have been.

"Hey, Mew, I-- Oh!" Celebi's head poked around the half open door and spotted me. "Hey, Diego. Where's Mew?"

"Er..."

"Wait... You're glowing." Celebi floated fully into the house and stared at me. "Why are you glowing?"

"I'm glowing?" I looked down at myself as best I could, and then glanced at my tail to make sure. I saw no glow. However, looking back at Celebi I noticed for the first time a pale green glow around her. "Oh. Right, uh..."

I explained the situation to her as best I could. I still felt rather dazed myself, and felt that what explanation I was able to give was less than helpful, but Celebi seemed to understand.

"Right," she said finally. "It's true. Mew's never taken a vacation before. Or, not this Mew, I guess."

I stared at her. "This Mew?"

The Forest Guardian blinked, seeming confused. "You don't know?"

"Arceus promised omniscience, but it's not answering nearly as many questions as I'd like... As paradoxical as that sounds."

Celebi nodded. "Well, it does take awhile to get into." She landed softly on another chair, which instantly began sprouting leaves and branches.

"...So what did you mean?"

"Huh? Oh, right... Well... Aren't you curious as to why you, a Raichu, were able to take on the full role of the Progenitor without actually being a Mew, as the Progenitor is supposed to be?"

"That's another question--What exactly am I supposed to do? And aren't I supposed to be doing something, like, right now to prevent the world from falling into chaos?"

"What do you want answered first?" Celebi responded, sounding somewhat exasperated.

I fell silent, looking sheepishly at the Forest Guardian.

She sighed. "I understand how you feel, Diego. Believe me, I do. I was in your position once."

"Huh?"

"Maybe not exactly, but..." Celebi looked away for a moment, apparently thinking. "What's the best way to explain this? We work in what are called Offices. Like, for example, the Celebi that initially held this Office handed it off to another. And another. That's why you were able to assume Mew's job."

"But I'm not a Mew."

"Ah--Not wholly. But when it comes down to it you are part Mew--and so is nearly every other Pokémon on the planet. How about a history lesson, just to make sure you know everything right off?"

"Uh... Sure."

"Well, you know the basic foundation of Pokémon mythology, yes?"

I nodded.

"In the beginning Arceus created the world and everything in it, and he created the first Pokémon."

"A Mew."

"More than one, but yes, Mew were the first Pokémon. Now, originally the Mew knew all about Arceus, 'cause he used to actually walk around on the planet with them. They worshipped him, and they enjoyed doing it because to them there wasn't an alternative. Arceus was there, Arceus was the one who'd made them--it was pretty obvious.

"Now eventually, Arceus got tired of this. You know, he's got legendary patience, if you'll pardon the joke, but even he has his limits." Celebi smiled, apparently at her own joke, and I grinned slightly as well. "Just to see what would happen, he stopped visiting the Mew. This had several effects, and some of them even Arceus did not fully predict. One, once away from the life-giving power of the Creator Pokémon, the Mew became mortal, though they had extremely expanded lifespans--upwards of five hundred years, to begin with. And two, as they bred, they began to change... The process took several millions of years, but eventually the Mew became nearly extinct as they evolved into nearly all of the Pokémon species that exist today."

"Third, as the new generations of Pokémon had never known the Creator, they soon forgot about him and created several entities to explain some of the phenomena in their world. From this spawned the basics of the Pokémon pantheon--and Arceus, though he was initially angry at the Pokémon who had forgotten him, he noticed the advantages of having partners. So he created nearly all the entities that the Pokémon envisioned as gods and gave them their duties and, as it were, retired to the sidelines.

"There was one deity that he didn't create from scratch, however, and that was..."

"Mew?"

"Mew," Celebi said, nodding. "But even then, Mew were rare creatures, and had passed into legend. The Pokémon of that day had forgotten their ancestors and regarded the pink feline Pokémon as more of a nuisance than anything, because the Mew were renowned troublemakers. They were so rare, however, that no one was ever sure they existed. So they became legend, and in time that legend turned Mew into a god of mischief."

"A god?" I noticed her phrasing. "That's male."

"Indeed it is," said Celebi. "And Mew was nothing more than a troublemaker for several thousand years after that. And then..."

Celebi looked out the window into the white void that was between-space. "And then the humans came."

"Came? What do you mean, came? Didn't Arceus create them, too?"

"Ah... It appears that particular detail has passed out of modern mythology. No, Arceus didn't create humans--Humans came from another world, a far away place, where there were no Pokémon. They were fleeing their own world, torn apart by petty wars and weapons that could leave deep, infected scars in the planet that killed anything living, even the plants." Celebi looked momentarily distressed, but relaxed, and continued, "But the ones who came here were peaceful ones who had left in the wake of one final war and had traveled the void of cold space between galaxies for thousands of years, using strange powers to keep themselves asleep and to avoid the ravage of time.

"When they landed, Arceus was angry at them..."

"Wait--We're going off on a tangent."

Celebi glared at me for interrupting. "This isn't a tangent, as much as it sounds like one. This is important. Arceus was angry at them for coming and spoiling the world he'd made, and he sent down some of the lesser deities, Mew included. But there was something strange about the humans, in that they already knew about Pokémon. They knew names, abilities, even the fact that Mew was the First Pokémon."

I stared at Celebi in shock. "What? How would they know that!?"

"It seemed that fate had played a cruel trick, letting the humans come to our world. We--Pokémon--had existed on their world as an idea, created by their imagination. And what should they find when they leave their own world, but a world that they themselves had imagined?

"Arceus wouldn't hear of it, and he was initially tempted to destroy them all and wipe their coming from the minds of all Pokémon. But Mew had grown fond of the humans, and so had some of the other legendary Pokémon, and they talked Arceus out of it. However, he wasn't going to leave them alone--He wiped from them all of the memories of their previous world, and made them believe that they had always existed on this world. But one thing that had resulted from the humans' coming he did not eliminate--the knowledge of Mew as the first Pokémon. This fell into legend, as such things are wont to do, and compounded the idea of Mew being mischievous. Mew was now also the Progenitor--the ancestor of all Pokémon. Mew didn't feel comfortable in this new job, because he'd been created as only the Mischief-Maker. So he stopped doing his job and faded out of existence.

"This perplexed Arceus, but he understood what had caused Mew to grow tired of his job. So he took a Mew from the world, a female, and a mother, and she became the Progenitor and the Mischief-Maker, and the idea of Offices was born. Soon all of the original Pokémon gods except for Arceus, Dialga, and Palkia had faded out and replacements found."

"But I thought you said the rest of the deities' species didn't exist in the real world?"

"They didn't, originally, but because each deity served a purpose and had a native setting Arceus took the purest essence of what that entity represented and created the Pokémon species himself. Only the legendary breeds are not created from Mew, and that, Diego, is why you would never have been able to fill in for anyone else but Mew."

My head was buzzing: I'd never heard such a long story. But it all made sense, in some odd way.

"What about the job I'm supposed to be doing?"

Celebi floated up into the air. "Oh, little mouse, don't you think Arceus thought ahead? There are forces that do your job for you when you're not actively doing them yourself. Even if you are omniscient, you aren't omnipresent." She smiled. "But don't worry--eventually you'll have to do something, or the world will fall into chaos as the natural forces that compose it cease to operate."

"But what do I do?"

"Do what you feel like doing, Diego. You're the Progenitor, after all, even if you're just filling in. Follow your instincts. They can't be too far off."

Still smiling, Celebi floated back out through the door. I was alone again, but now I wasn't nearly so confused. I headed out the door too, heading for a very specific place, and knowing exactly what I had to do.

And don't worry, we'll find out exactly what happened to Mew next chapter.

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