Humming the song that was comming from the little radio on the shelf, Augustine left the shower and opened the small window in the bathroom. Cool air hit his hot body, drops of water were running down the mirror.

Still singing the mostly wrong lyrics to the melody, the professor walked to his bedroom wearing only a white fluffy towel around his waist. Today was his first day in the labortory again after he had finished his report for a local paper. And it didn't even bother him. Actually, he was quite happy having people around him again. A quick peek at the clock on his nightstand told him that he probably would need to call a taxi, otherwise he would not arrive at work in time.

Black underwear, a jeans, the typically blue shirt and a warm jacket, the lab coat in a bag and he was ready to head out of the grey, lonely apartment into the bright city.

Everyone in Luminose seemed be in a rush to their work place, the coffee shops were packed with weary people, necking their drink as fast as possible before they jumped into a cab. Augustine was glad he had not forgotten about his scarf, winter was near. Especially the last days have been unusually cold.

At least a heating made the cab#s inside fairly warm and it was bitter that he needed to get off so soon.

He hurried to the office entering the warm building.

"Morning, Lily", he greeted the receptionist, giving her his jacket.

"You are expected in the conference room, Professor", she said with a hint of hectic in her voice.

This was kind of uncommon. Meetings were usually held in the afternoon after the regular paperwork had been done.

Augustine made his way to the elevator to the second floor, not sure ehat to expect.

And just in the moment the elevator's door slid open, the professor was confronted with five of his assistants discussing in an unnecessary loud voice.

Augustine sighed, maybe home wasn't such a bad place at all.

He cleared his throat, but remained unheard as his assistants were still arguing. The professor had never been someone who yelled at his co-workers or backbite at them (at least not in front of them). Fortunately one of barking men noticed Augustine's presence and rushed over to him, thus saving him from involuntery screaming.

"Professor!", he shouted even if he stood right in front of him just to drown the crowd behind him. "Something unbelievable happened!" Bis panic was clearly visible.

"Calm down, Mortis , everyone", he said loud enough for everybody to hear. The room went silent.

"And now, please, one at a time, tell me what exatctly happened." He looked to the man in front of him.

"W-We arrived here, about an hour ago. And when we wanted to-to get the mail, the door was already open and... and the glass of the showcases was broken..." The hands of his assistant were sweaty and shaky.

Augustine gulped. "What has been stolen?" The tension was almost touchable.

"...One of your stones, Professor", a young woman answered, looking worried. "We know what they mean to you and we know how often you've told us how rare they are, their worth is invalueable! We are so sorry, Professor Sycamore..." She looked down to her feed.

Augustine's mouth went dry. He bit his lip, unable to move, staring right through the girl in the lab coat. Then he spoke in a low voice.

"...Which one?"

"The dark one, the light one is still in the showcase. Which seems, well, not logical. Why just takipe one if you could make twice as much money", a man at the other end of the room said.

Augustine gulped though his mouth was still dried-out. He had made sure nobody in the lab knew about the real meaing of these stones, his notebook was safe at home and all they had to knew was, that they were unique and of not calcuable value.

What their real ability was only two persons knew, he was sure about that.

One of them was himself, and the other one...

(xXxXx)

"Come on Augustine, or do you want the Zubats to attack you again?!", the young, orange haired man laughed climbing up the stones through a hole in the wall.

This wasn't Augustine's day. He and Lysandre had camped in this cave for three days now and he couldn't hold on one day longer. He needed a shower. He needed a warm and fluffy bed and he needed the sun. The only light they had were lamps on their heads and an oil lamp, just in case.

With a lot of effort he climbed behind Lysandre through a tiny tunnel.

"I hope for you that we will finally find something", Augustine grumbeled, struggeling with the hard and sharp stones beneath his hands. The light of Lysandre's lamp slid into nothing, behind a few meters of brown and grey mud there was nothing but darkness.

"No, I swear, I can feel that we're getting nearer", the taller one claimed.

"That's what you've been saying the last two days..."

"And you can't prove that I'm wrong, can you?"

Augustine was sure he heard a grin in his voice. It was usually him who annoyed his partner like hell and obviously Lysandre took his chance to pay him back.

"I'm not in the mood", Augustine mumbled, his hands were hurt and the blood made them sticky.

"How come, sunshine?"

Augustine blushed at that nickname. Of course it was just another try of Lysandre to mock him, but it made his heart beat faster. His thoughts were cut of by a victorious scream.

"I can see the end! There's light!"

"Don't go inside, it's a trap! Follow my voice", Augustine kidded in a badly played hysterical voice, his mood getting a lot better from the look he earned from Lysandre.

"I forgot how annoying you are when you're happy", Lysandre sighed.

The dark haired man looked by Lysandre to see the end of the tunnel and a bit of daylight. Climbing, rather say falling out of the tunnel, Lysandre helped Augustine by grabbing his hands and pulling him out,resulting in the younger scientist bumping against him. Augustine looked up to him with a shade of pink in his cheeks.

"You okay?", Lysandre asked with a casual grin, the other one just nodded and pushed back, his hands sliding trough his messy hair.

Then he took his first look around and was not really surprised.

"Lys."

"Yeah?"

"This is just another hole. I mean, this is room with absolutely nothing but another tiny tiny hole to the surface." Augustine would have liked to explode if he could have.

This "research" or "chance of our lives" how Lysandre called it, was nothing but a pure waste of time. Augustine would have been happy to find a fossil or maybe something similar, maybe a Pokémon but there was nothing down there.

And Lysandre was fanatic to find what he was searching for. He had told Augustine about myths of legendary Pokémon and how they have created Kalos thousands of years ago with the help of life and death. Of course they were all fairy tales, stories from villages far far away from urban- or modernisation, where grandma was scaring the kids with her dark stories about deer and birds of prey.

Lysandre, however, was convinced of the idea and made the younger one read all the books that existed about legends of Kalos. Some parts had been really dark, about abusing their powers to fight wars and control the nature's will.

"I understand that you're angry with me, but you promised me 4 days, okay? So we will be back for the weekend."

"I hope so", Augustine puffed. "My dissertation isn't going to write itself." He let the bag fall of his back, sat down to relax his musceles. He took out the watch from his dirty pants.

"It's already 8 p.m.", he told Lysandre who was also sitting against a wall.

"Want to eat something? I'm literally starving." The older one did not wait for an answer, but Augustine would not have argued anyway. There was still bread left, three bottles of water and an apple.

They had lived at their limits, drinking much not nearly enough and only eating in the evening. They were walking the whole day, only a few pauses were made until they carried on. It was hot in the cavern, both of them were sweaty and breathing wasn't that easy. It was a gift of Arceus that wind piped through the hole and cooled the room down.

"Would you like to have the apple?", Lysandre asked, searching for something else in the backpack.

"No, go ahead, I'm fine with the bread." Augustine closed his eyes, trying to regain his energy. This was one of his hardest days by now, he noticed that his body was getting less and less energetic with every day. He wasn't used to this, he did not even work out at home, one chocolate less could help out with weight problems.

"Hey, handsome."

Augustine opened his eyes right to see the apple flying into his direction. He caught it in the last second. He recognized that it was just half of the apple, the other half was stuck between Lysandres teeth.

"Stop that", Augustine was red again. "I already struggle with the girls calling me like this at university."

"Well they are not wrong", Lysandre mentioned after he had swallowed his piece of apple. Augustine could feel his face melting. "But you could do something about..." Lysandre moved the hand with the apple in it around his head, pointing at his hair.

Augustine rolled his eyes. Surely Lysandre wasn't that good looking at the moment either.

"You could shave, bear", the young man shot back, smiling and biting into the green fruit.

"Maybe", the other one felt his hair on the chin. "Or I thought about letting it grow anyway. A beard could look nice on me."

"Gross."

"You're gross."

Augustine laughed and crawled over to Lysandre who smirked back at him. He rolled off the two sleeping pads and laid down on one.

"You don't know how happy I will be when we finally leave this place", Augustine yawned, stretching himself, eyes closed again.

"Me too", he heard Lysandre say as he laid down next to him.

"This was your idea after all."

"Don't you think this is hard for me as well? My legs burn."

"Tss, idiot."

"Old man."

"Pardon?", Augustine gave Lysandre a confused and disbelieving look.

"You want to be a professor and study all day, making researches and experiments and all this stuff."

Augustine laughed. "But that is exactly what we do now."

"Yeah but this is... it's fun, doing this because your job says you should isn't fun."

"Lys, we're both in the twenties now, you sound too childish."

He just got a huff as response.

"So what do you want to do? Since you're in the same science projects every time, I thought you might be interested in Pokémon studies."

"Of course I am", Lysandre admitted. "But it's definitely more the technologically progress I'm aiming at. Designing Pokéballs or improving the PC depots, I want to make life easier for human beings and Pokémon."

"That would be great", Augustine smiled. After a few moments he spoke on. "Isn't it strange that we have been partners for such a long time now but never talked about the future?"

"It is."

The scientist's gazes met and they stared at each other for a while, slightly smiling.

"I'm tired", Augustine yawned again and took the light blanket to cover him and Lysandre. Sharing had never been a problem for them.

"Okay, sleep tight. We will find something tomorrow, I feel it."

"Lyyyyys..."

"Stop calling me that name, handsome."

Augustine sighed loudly and Lysandre laughed.

"Good night, Lys."

"Night, Sycamore."

Augustine was about to drift off when Lysandre spoke again.

"You're a good partner, Augustine."

The young man smiled to himself. Lysandre was usually colder to people and showing his emotion, especially sympathy, was uncommon with him. This fact made him even happier.

"You're a good friend, Lys.", Augustine mumbled and blushed at Lysandre's response.

"You, too."

(x)

The next morning was warm and uncomfortable, as every morning had been. The last day Augustine thought gladly and stretched himself before he got on his feed. Lysandre had already took the blanket and his pad and tidied up the place.

"Morning", was all he said, sounding sleepy. Augustine always thought that he sounded cute like this.

"Good morning. Are we already on the way?"

Lysandre nodded. "We will check out this last route and then we will head home."

He sounded sad, which depressed Augustine as well. They worked hard and even if he hated it, he whished for Lysandre to find just a hint of something.

Sometimes when they were walking in silence, Augustine thought about the stories of the legendaries and what would happen if they find out that they are real. Would they attack and kill them?

He shook that thought off rather quickly, the chance of finding Pokémon living down here was quite low.

Augustine followed Lysandre back through the tunnel into another hall which they had ignored before.

"Smells like water", the dark haired noted after a while and Lysandre agreed.

"We should follow the scent."

They did until they met another wall.

"Dead end", Augustine mumbled, but Lysandre hushed and listened.

"There is water behind this wall."

"But there is no way to go throu-"

Before Augustine could end his sentence Lysandre was trying to get the stoned barrier away by pulling out one rock after the other.

"This is insane, Lys. You don't know how thick the wall could be."

"Stop talking and help me", Lysandre grumbled and reached for another huge stone.

"Lys, please, be careful you could hurt yours-"

After the big rock slipped aside, a bright light came from the inside of the cave. It felt warm and welcoming to Augustine. Lysandre took a look on the inside.

"Oh. My..."

Augustine was nervous. "What is it, Lys?"

The older man looked sternly at him, then he spoke.

"It is true..."

"What's true...?" Augustine's eyes went wide. "You- You mean...!"

Lysandre stepped aside and Augustine took a look through the hole.

It was beautiful. This word was created to describe this place and only this place. The light came from a huge, no giant tree that shined in a bright blue-green color. Right next to it, there was an object of the same size, dark and in the shape of a cocoon. Right in front of them laid a hill of stones with two shiny rocks on top of them, glowing in the same color as the two objects.

"This is..." Augustine had no words to describe this glory.

"Let's get inside", Lysandre said, still disbelieving but certain to unravel the secret and Augustine decided to help him.

(xXxXx)

The professor sat in his office chair, his face in his hands.

Could this be true? Had he been lied to by Lysandre? Did he steal the dark stone to...

He was shaking his head, tears building up in his eyes. No, no, no,no...

Lysandre had used him to get what he wanted. Augustine meant nothing to him. The night they shared was nothing but a trick.

There was no love between them like Augustine had felt. How could he have been so dump?

He was angry with himself, thinking that Lysandre had something else on his mind than his brainsick ideas. He didn't hear himself sob or cry, he just heard Lysandre's voice in his head.

You're a good partner, handsome

Hello there! Forget everything I said about short fanfic, this will need a few more chaps. And maybe Lysandre is a bit OOC but I believe in a cheerful young Lys. And to quote my beta: sassy Lys is best Lys :D