Chapter two! Hurrah! I think the way I've been writing this is fine for me. Now I'm going to have fun about writing how Grovyle and Gale communicate. :) If you remember that note Grovyle left the hero and his partner, it was written in Footprint Runes. Gale's gonna have some fun learning how to write them in this chapter, which will be useful later.

I'm changing the original story of Mystery Dungeon 2 a bit. It's been a while since I played through the whole game so I forgot some things, and when I played the game over, I realized I'd changed some things but I think the story is turning out the way I want it. I knew I was going to be changing the game events anyway since I made up how the main character and Grovyle met.

Anyway, hope the story is still fun!

Pursuit

I leaned against a tree and swung my backpack around front so I could pull out the map and examine it. Grovyle and I had been walking all night, and just now the sky was beginning to brighten. Streaks of clouds dyed with pale pink and yellow were sifting calmly across the sky as dawn neared. I watched as Grovyle waited nearby, glancing all around him, and then at the sky as if he were nervous about something. He'd stopped walking a couple minutes ago, and I thought it had been to rest, but he had hardly rested since we'd set off from Nacrene City. Shrugging, I focused my attention on the map of Unova I'd just unfolded and took out a pen so I could mark it up. I circled Nacrene City, then drew a dotted line to mark the route I thought we'd taken. We hadn't gone so far that I didn't recognize the area, but I was still having trouble figuring out where we were. We were in a forest, so it was hard for me to find any landmarks if there weren't signs or buildings. "Hey, Grovyle," I called, and the Pokémon turned and trotted over. I held the map out to him and showed him the markings I'd made. "Do you know where we are on here?" Grovyle studied the map, then looked up at me with a bemused expression. "Guess you don't really use maps, huh," I noted, and looked at the map one last time before folding it and stowing it away. "I'll just follow you. Maybe I learn how to find my way without a map." I wasn't really counting on it, though. I was good at finding my way around Nacrene City, but I hadn't been outside of it very much, so now I had no idea what I was doing. I only knew that we were heading to Striaton City because of the map and a sign I'd discovered earlier.

Grovyle seemed to smirk and he finally sat down, taking a seat next to me and leaning against the tree. I glanced sideways at Grovyle and frowned. "I was five when you lived with us, and that was when my family lived in Hoenn. Did you really travel all that way?" Grovyle caught my eye and nodded once, then looked away towards the sky again. "That's a long way. You've gotten strong...and you evolved, too!" Grovyle glanced at the ground and began drawing in the dirt at our feet. It looked like he was drawing Pokémon footprints. "You know...I'm sorry." Grovyle stopped drawing and looked at me. "Whatever happened, whether it was my doing or not, I abandoned you. I didn't want to. My parents didn't tell me about you, but I don't know why." Grovyle leaned closer to me and pointed at the footprints in the dirt, and I glanced at them. "What's that?"

Grovyle lifted his gaze towards the sky, then brushed away the footprints he'd drawn. He reached a finger out and drew a single footprint, and then a shaky symbol that I eventually recognized as the first letter in the alphabet. "Is that footprint like that letter?" Grovyle met my eye and nodded. "Is that how Pokémon write?" Another nod. I felt excited and copied the footprint as best I could. It looked like a Meowth footprint. I could at least tell that since Sam's Meowth left prints like that all the time when he played outside. "This is unrelated," I said, "and probably a bad question, but...are you a he?" Grovyle looked at me and glared fiercely. "Sorry, sorry...I wondered...so I just..." Breaking off awkwardly, I looked back at the footprints. "Are you trying to teach me these?" Grovyle nodded and sniffed as if irritated. "I'm sorry about that question. Really. But I didn't want to be wrong and make you mad." There was silence for a moment. "So you are a male?" Grovyle raised his right arm and thumped me over the head as he nodded angrily. "Okay! I'm sorry!"

Grovyle snorted and wrote six footprints in the sand, and I watched closely while rubbing my head, but couldn't tell what he might be writing. Then, slowly, Grovyle wrote letters under them and I studied them for a second before making out a name: C-E-L-E-B-I. I pulled out my mini-notebook and wrote the footprints in it, then which letters they represented below them. "Celebi is that Pokémon people say can time travel, right?" I asked, and Grovyle nodded eagerly. Despite the fact that no one had ever seen Celebi, people were still familiar with it. "Why is Celebi important?" The Pokémon's expression became troubled, and he looked away. "Would there be a reason we had to time travel?" Grovyle glanced at me and nodded. I felt a pulse of unease but didn't say anything as Grovyle wrote in the dirt again. I made out an I and an L, but couldn't read any other part of it. "I can't read it. I'm sorry. Do you know any other letters?" Grovyle hesitated, then shook his head and seemed to be anxious. "What about Unown letters?" Again he shook his head, then crossed his arms and stood quickly. "Time to go? Alright then." I put the notebook away. "I can learn them somehow. You've been a good teacher already." Grovyle seemed to smile faintly at me before turning to lead the way again. "I don't understand yet, but I'll follow you wherever you need to go. I don't want to be separated again." We walked without a spoken, body language or written conversation between us for a few more hours, and during that time, the sun had risen fully. It was already hot and I was glad that I had brought a hat; I pulled it from my backpack and situated it tightly on my head.

"Do you need water, Grovyle?" I asked, holding out a bottle of water, but saw him shake his head without turning to look at me. Another hour passed and finally Grovyle stopped. I sat down against a rock and massaged my feet, noting that my white and blue shoes were pretty dirty, but they were holding up alright. Grovyle still seemed to be keeping watch for something. I took out a granola bar and opened the package; Grovyle turned when the plastic crackled. "You should eat something. Sorry I don't have Pokémon food, but you should try this." Grovyle wandered over to me and took the bar that I was holding out. I took a bite of mine and watched him sniff his warily. "It's just oats and honey. Nothing weird." Still wary, Grovyle nibbled part of the bar, and sniffed it again, then took a bigger bite. A glint came into his eyes and he began chewing it eagerly. "You like it? I have a lot more." I gazed off at the road ahead of us. "We have a long way to go, huh?" Grovyle nodded once, then sat down once he'd finished eating, and began drawing again. He wrote Celebi and a few more footprints I didn't understand, and finally the word with the L and I in it. I pulled out my notebook and matched up the footprints with the letters that were in Celebi, and began to vaguely fill in the blanks. "So is he—" Grovyle crossed his arms. "She?" He nodded, appearing a little surprised that I'd understood so quickly. I laughed and Grovyle smirked a bit. "Is she going to help us? Where is she?" The Pokémon pointed off ahead of us, where a dirt trail navigated through the woods, far off into the distance. I could see a large patch of green far in the distance bigger than I'd ever seen. It stretched far to the left and right, and off towards the horizon, farther than I was able to see. "Wow." Grovyle stood and beckoned to me, and I quickly followed. Even at this early stage in our trip, I wondered if I'd ever go home again. I thought about my parents, and felt a little ache in my chest, but I became angry when I thought about how they had kept Treecko a secret from me.

"Grovyle," I muttered as we walked, and his head twitched around a little, so I knew he was listening. "When I was a kid...was I the same as I am now?" Grovyle's head inclined once and my breath caught. "The...visions? Do you know about them?" Another firm nod. I lowered my head a bit. "So I've always been this way." I thought about the medicine the doctor had given me, and decided that I wouldn't take it again. It hadn't stopped the visions, and it hadn't made me normal, like my parents had wanted. The visions had made it hard for me to make friends, so that was why my family had moved the first time, and thankfully we hadn't moved again afterward.

Nacrene City was a nice place to live, so I'd been glad when my family had started fixing the house to withstand earthquakes. That meant we wouldn't think about moving anytime soon, not after putting all that effort into renovating. I'd tried to not mention the visions to anyone, and eventually, I made a few friends. The friends I'd made when I'd been younger had moved away, but when I'd turned twelve, I'd met Sam and Brandon and we'd been best friends ever since. They knew about my visions, and they'd been awkward around me at first, but when they saw that I didn't have any other weird abilities and that I was the same as I'd been when we'd met, they calmed down and warmed up to me again. I remember asking them if they cared that I might be crazy, and they'd convinced me they didn't. But they had explained that they didn't think I was crazy, and that had meant a lot. Sam and Brandon had made me a less distant person. If I'd never met them, I don't know what I would have done. I took a breath and brought my attention back to Grovyle. "When did the visions start? Around when you came to live with my family?" Grovyle nodded, and I exhaled sharply. I'd been different almost from the get-go, but I guess that didn't matter now. I felt better now that I was with Grovyle, even though I had only known him for a short time, and even though I hardly remembered our time together. I felt guilty for leaving, and I missed Sam and Brandon most of all, but I knew that I wouldn't go back now. Maybe I...couldn't go back. I didn't know where Grovyle was taking me, or what he wanted to do.

I glanced at the sky, shading my eyes as I did so. The sun had passed its highest point and was starting to angle towards the horizon, though it was still pretty hot. I pulled out a bottle of water and caught up with Grovyle. "Let's take a rest. You need to eat and drink something, and so do I." Grovyle gave me a long look, then walked off the path and sat next to a tree. I took a spot in front of Grovyle and handed him the water bottle after unscrewing the lid. "It's not cold anymore, but it's still water." He took it after a pause and started drinking from it.

While Grovyle drank, I started tracing a finger in the dirt, and tried to remember the footprint drawings I'd learned. I spelled Celebi with some difficulty, but when I looked up at Grovyle, he nodded. Apparently I'd gotten it right, so I kept writing it over and over until I was comfortable with those footprints. Grovyle set the water bottle down and moved until he was on my left, and started to write different footprints. He paused for a moment over one, and wrote a P. I copied the footprint and then took out my notebook and wrote it down, then studied the letters I'd learned so far. Grovyle had said he didn't know many letters, but he only had ten more to learn before he mastered the whole alphabet. It was strange, I thought, that we were teaching each other to write. I was teaching him the letters humans used, and he was teaching me the letters that Pokémon used. I wondered if anyone knew about these footprint letters. "How am I doing?" I asked Grovyle, and he met my eyes with a sly grin. "That bad?" I scoffed. "I'll get better...eventually."

I wrote Q, then wondered what the footprint for Q looked like. "This is after this footprint," I said, pointing to the one over P, and watched Grovyle's finger stretch out to write a footprint over the Q. It looked like a large clawed footprint, maybe from an Empoleon or a Charizard. I quickly wrote it in my notebook, and we finished the remaining nine letters like that. I felt a little confused, the way I did when I sat through math, but I was looking forward to learning the footprints more than Algebra. "Thanks." Grovyle stood and offered his paw; I took it and stood, then returned the notebook and pen to my backpack. I picked up the water bottle and offered it to Grovyle again, but he shook his head, so I took a drink from it and screwed the cap back on before placing it in my backpack. "Grovyle...you can't speak human, but you learned how to write human words. You know a lot more than you said. Did anyone teach you?" The Pokémon shook his head and I let out a breath, impressed. "You're really clever. Wish I could learn math like you learned to write." Grovyle shrugged and motioned for me to follow, so I did, but I noticed him lifting his head a little higher and wondered if he liked the praise more than he let on. As we walked, I checked my map a couple times, and concluded that we were reaching Striaton City, the town that came before Nacrene City. Its population was just a little lower than my town, but it was almost the same, since a forest surrounded it too. It looked like we'd have to go past the city to get to the big forest where Grovyle seemed to be leading us. I didn't mind stopping there, since I was beat. We'd been walking since last night and Grovyle showed no signs of slowing down.

"Hey, Grovyle," I panted, running a bit to catch up with the speed walking Pokémon, "think we could rest in Striaton City for while? Maybe even until tomorrow?" Grovyle wrote something in the dirt and I studied the footprints. My heart sank; he'd only written two letters, and it didn't take me long to figure out what his answer was. "Come on, please? I'm really tired." Again, the answer was no, but this time Grovyle looked a little annoyed. "Alright. Just for a couple hours, then. How's that?" Grovyle nodded, apparently satisfied, and I let out a deep sigh and started following Grovyle again. An hour or so passed and we finally reached the city, and Grovyle let me lead the way. I knew this town somewhat well, since the layout was similar to Nacrene City, and I'd been here a couple times. I led Grovyle through the town for a few minutes and turned a final corner to see the tell-tale red roof of the Pokemon Center. Some trainers kept didn't keep their Pokémon in a Pokéball, but it wasn't very common, so I hoped no one would be suspicious. The Pokémon Center staff usually were helpful, so I walked in confidently with Grovyle by my side, and headed to the counter.

"Excuse me," I said to the woman behind the main counter, "do you have any rooms available?" She nodded and smiled at me, then at Grovyle, who looked back at her with interest. "They're just over there." She gestured to the right of the room, and I saw a door on the far wall. "Stay as long as you like. You both look exhausted," she added sympathetically, and I nodded my thanks.

"We appreciate it, ma'am," I said, and headed towards the door, ready to get some sleep after a day and a half of hard walking. "You should rest too, Grovyle," I told the Pokémon quietly, since there were a few other trainers sleeping here. A few even had their Pokémon out, and the creatures were curled up either beside their trainer or at the foot of the bed. About twenty or so beds were here for trainers to use when they passed through towns, and there was no charge to use them, just like the Center. Grovyle shrugged as I located and settled into a bed near the door so I could get up later without waking anyone up. I set my backpack under the large white pillow on the bed so I wouldn't lose or forget about it. I had just about fallen asleep when I felt a weight at my feet; I glanced up and saw Grovyle lying there on its back, arms under its head, eyes closed and chest rising gently. Smiling a bit, I laid my head back down on the pillow and closed my eyes, wondering if Grovyle had slept on my bed when I'd been a kid.

I woke to someone shaking me roughly, but as I woke up I knew that no one was around. Tremors had started shaking the room, and I sat bolt upright and looked around for Grovyle. He was still sleeping at the foot of the bed, and I shook him firmly. He sat up sharply and shot me a glance, then looked around and sprang from the bed. The room was flooded with light; someone must have flipped the switch on. I saw that all the beds were empty and wondered how long we'd been asleep. Instinct took over and I grabbed a pillow and threw it to Grovyle; the Pokémon caught it swiftly and I grabbed my backpack. "Put that over your head and lie down," I said, and once Grovyle had done so, I lay on my stomach and put the backpack over my head and neck.

A few moments later the tremors stopped, and after a moment I rose to my knees and slipped my backpack on. "Let's go see if anyone needs help," I told Grovyle. He tossed the pillow away and nodded, then hopped off the bed and followed me to the door. Just as I turned opened the door, I felt a sharp yank on my shirt and felt Grovyle pulling me back. "What—" I exclaimed, startled, but broke off when I felt a powerful strike to my stomach. The force of the hit sent me sprawling backwards to the ground, and I landed with a choked gasp. Holding my stomach with both hands, I stood shakily and stared at the doorway, wondering who had hit me. I widened my eyes in alarm as Grovyle lunged for the figure hovering there and recognized the attacker as the Pokémon Dusknoir. There weren't any Dusknoir around these parts, but Brandon had lent me a couple of his books about Pokémon from other regions.

Grovyle slashed at it with an attack I guessed was Leaf Blade—that bit of knowledge thanks to Brandon's books—but Dusknoir blocked the attack and struck out at Grovyle, sending him flying. I yelled in alarm, but Grovyle righted himself in midair and charged across the room again. Dusknoir glanced at me, and I stared back, heart beating heavily against my chest. It raised both arms towards me, and a dark ball formed in front of its hands, and all I could think to do was try and rush Dusknoir and stop the attack. Grovyle slashed Dusknoir with Leaf Blade at the same instant I ran into him, and our momentum sent the Pokémon crashing into the wall. One of Dusknoir's hands smacked me in the face and I felt a dull burning sensation in my forehead. I backed away, stumbling a little from the impact, and saw Dusknoir's hand flash out too quickly for me to avoid it. Its hand was big enough to grab my head and I grappled at the arm, panicked, trying to make it let go. I heard a cry from Grovyle and suddenly Dusknoir's arm went limp, allowing me to shove the hand away.

I saw Grovyle motioning urgently towards me, and I glanced briefly over my shoulder at Dusknoir, then ran after him out into the Center's reception area...and stopped in dismay. Dozens of people were lying unconscious on the floor, some with blood trickling from their foreheads, and all with cuts and bruises. "Grovyle, we have to help!" The Pokémon shook his head and urgently gestured for me to follow. "But they're hurt!" A crashing from behind made me whirl, and I saw that Dusknoir had recovered, but still looked a bit stunned. It didn't seem to have noticed we were still here, so unfortunately, that made up my mind. If I didn't run now, Grovyle and I would end up like these people, so I nodded at him and tried not to look at the terrible scene as I sprinted as fast as I could out of the Center. Adrenaline jolted through my body as I saw more injured people lying outside, but that made it a bit easier to push myself; before I knew it Grovyle and I had left the town far behind. My heart pounded painfully and I panted out a question. "Grovyle...why was that Pokémon after us?"

Grovyle shook his head rapidly as he ran, and didn't look back at me. And why did it hurt all those other people? What did it want? Without warning, Grovyle came to a halt and grabbed my right arm, and the pressure caused me to wince for some reason. But there was no time to focus on it, as Grovyle was tugging me deeper into the woods with urgency. Eventually, we stopped, and Grovyle glanced around the clearing we'd arrived in, and sniffed at the ground a couple of times. I didn't see anything special, but I kept quiet and watched. Grovyle tugged at the ground, and I saw that it had covered a large hole in the ground with a sheet of leaves. It motioned for me to climb into the hole, and as I moved closer, I wondered if I'd fit. I didn't weigh too much, but still. Grovyle gave me a push so I hoped for the best and began to crawl down the hole. It was wider than it looked, and I didn't have much trouble getting inside. After crawling for a minute or so, the tunnel opened up into a wide space, and I found that I could stand up without hitting my head.

The burrow looked like a secret hideout, and I noticed a large furrow in the far wall that had berries and apples neatly piled up. There were also bowl-shaped rocks that had been hollowed out under the furrow, and I saw that they had water collected inside. I turned when I heard shuffling behind me; Grovyle had crawled down the hole and was approaching me with a wary expression. I ground my teeth nervously, taking a stab at what he might be angry about. "Look, I'm sorry...it's just...I didn't want to ignore those people." I sighed. "But that Dusknoir would have gotten us too, and it would have been my fault." Grovyle eyed me a moment longer, and its yellow eyes seemed to soften. It knelt and began writing in the dirt, and I stepped closer and sat to see what he was writing. I made a couple mistakes but eventually translated what Grovyle wanted to say.

It's fune...fine, I read along in my mind. We got away. Just, next team...time, don't hesitate. I know Dusknoir, and he never hesitates. As if I hadn't seen that already. I had almost gotten us caught, though, I remembered guiltily.

"Why did he attack those people?" I asked, feeling a pang of sympathy for the people Dusknoir had injured, and guilt, because they'd been hurt on account of me. I waited for Grovyle to sweep away his previous sentences, and watched as he wrote out a new one.

He wants to feed us...find us...and call us...kill us. I don't know what I'd expected, even after being attacked by Dusknoir, but it definitely hadn't been that. I jolted in alarm and gaped at Grovyle.

"Kill us? Are you serious?" Grovyle snorted impatiently and nodded, then scratched some more footprints in the dirt and sat back as I read them.

He's after Celebi, too, because only the three of us can stop the planet's paralysis. I had almost gotten the hang of the footprints—only by constantly checking my notebook to compare them to the human alphabet—but even though I'd translated this sentence I had no idea what it meant.

"What's the planet's paralysis?" I questioned curiously, and Grovyle quickly wrote some words in the dirt.

Time is going out of control because Temporal Tower is starting to collapse. Once it does, the planet will freeze in time. I nodded when I got the meaning and watched as Grovyle brushed the footprints away to write a new sentence. There are some important objects called the Time Gears that can restore time and prevent the planet's paralysis.

"So...let me get this straight...time is out of control?" I asked blankly. "And Temporal Tower is real?" Grovyle nodded and swept the words away again. "Is that where you're taking me?" Grovyle shook his head and began to write. "It's that place I saw in one of my visions..." Grovyle paused in his writing for a moment, catching my eye briefly before he finished scrawling footprints in the dirt.

We're going to meet Celebi because she can send us back in time to find the Time Gears and prevent Temporal Tower's collapse. That place controls time and keeps it in balance.

"Back in time?" I asked, feeling a little uncertain at the prospect of time travel. "And from there, we're looking for the Time Gears." Grovyle nodded. "I don't get all of it, but if time's out of control, isn't it a good thing you want to fix it? Why does Dusknoir want to kill us?"

Because if we find the Time Gears and get time back on the right track, then it will change the future we're in now. The humans and Pokémon that exist now will disappear if you and I stop the planet's paralysis. That's because, since we're changing the timeline, certain things won't have happened. I set down my notebook and looked straight at Grovyle, heart beating heavily as I tried to understand.

"So...it'll be like everyone alive now won't have existed?" Grovyle gave a sigh, then nodded, and began to write more footprints.

Do you want to go back home? I gulped; this seemed like a challenge to see if I had the courage to keep going.

"I don't like the idea of disappearing...not at all...but if I go back home, that won't help anything. Dusknoir will find me there, and he'll hurt more people." I swallowed, and felt a little shiver run up my spine. "And time stopping everyone sounds really bad."

It is, Grovyle wrote in the dirt, his expression resolute. Imagine the sun and moon never rising or setting again. The seasons will never change. Time will never move forward again

"Is Dusknoir the only one that wants to stop us?" I asked, hoping he was, since he was powerful enough. But Grovyle was shaking his head and writing more footprints in the floor.

Dusknoir isn't working on his own. He's receiving orders from a Pokémon called Dialga.

"Dialga?" I said in disbelief. "He exists?" I'd read about Dialga, but knew that no one had ever seen the Pokémon. The book had said that Dialga, along with Palkia, was just a legend.

He lives in Temporal Tower, and knows that if the past changes, he'll disappear. Grovyle's expression was grim as he wrote, and I had to read my notes quickly to translate before Grovyle swept the dirt and erased his writing to begin a new explanation. He's gone mad with the instinct to survive, and anything that is a threat to his existence, he gets rid of. Dusknoir doesn't want to disappear, either, so he follows Dialga's orders.

"And if he catches us, he'll kill us." I felt a painful throbbing on my right arm and glanced down; a long, red line stretched from the back of my wrist and ended just short of my elbow. It hurt a lot, and was still bleeding a bit, but it was luckily pretty shallow or I'd have been in trouble. I pulled my backpack off to get the first aid kit, and suddenly noticed that Grovyle had a similar scratch on his right arm. I gently held his arm in my uninjured left hand and took a flat square package out and tore it open. Grovyle pulled his arm away and looked at me suspiciously. "This is an anti-bacterial wipe, and it'll help your arm heal." Reluctantly, Grovyle held his arm back out to me, and I dabbed at the cut and made sure it was clean before I wrapped a bandage around it. I tied it off carefully and made sure it was tight enough to stay on, and that it wouldn't cut off Grovyle's circulation. When I was sure it was alright, I pulled out another wipe and dabbed at my own arm, then wrapped a bandage around it and started to tie it awkwardly off. Grovyle reached forward and tied it for me. "Thanks," I told him gratefully. "How does your arm feel?" Grovyle wrote four letters in the dirt, waited until I'd read it, and then began writing more footprints.

Fine. But you should rest now. Dusknoir won't find us here. But let's leave early tomorrow. I nodded and patted Grovyle on the head, and smiled. As I stood and picked up the first-aid kit to return it to my backpack, I felt a jolt of pain in my middle and forehead. Almost at the same time, a wave of dizziness came over me, and I felt myself falling over as the ground dipped beneath my feet. I closed my eyes as a jumble of images appeared in my mind; I saw Grovyle running and then leaping to avoid a dark ball of energy coming for him. It was the same attack Dusknoir had used earlier. The ball of darkness came a few more times, and finally one of the attacks struck Grovyle and brought it down. But he rose shakily to his feet, shook it off, and continued running. I cracked open my eyes as the vision ended, but I still felt dizzy, and my body suddenly felt weak. Grovyle was leaning over me, and I saw he was holding the first-aid kit.

"He attacked you before," I mumbled weakly. "Dusknoir has been chasing you for a while, hasn't he?" Grovyle nodded and popped the first-aid kit open. He held it out to me, as if asking what to do, then held a paw to his forehead. I remember the stinging pain I'd felt when Dusknoir had hit out at me, and wondered what I looked like. I managed to raise my right arm and pointed at a large band-aid in the white box. "Just use that...it'll be fine after that." Grovyle set the box down and picked the bandaid up. "Take the white pieces of plastic off. It's sticky underneath. Put the sticky side on my head." Grovyle nodded and I watched tiredly as he unpeeled the band-aid. I finally couldn't keep my eyes open anymore and felt Grovyle pressing on my forehead a moment later. "Thanks," I murmured, and felt Grovyle nudge me, and I opened my eyes halfway. He was staring down at me with a worried expression. "I'm just going to rest." I suddenly thought of something and opened my eyes, feeling panicked at the thought of Dusknoir following us with the intent to kill us. "Will Dusknoir find us?" Grovyle shook his head. "Hey...I'm not going to leave you, Grovyle..." My eyes drifted shut and the last thing I remembered was Grovyle curling up next to me as I fell asleep.

In the game, Grovyle uses Dig to get the main character and his or her partner out of trouble, so I decided on a whim that Grovyle could dig a hideout to use if Dusknoir found him...like the hidden base the player can make with Secret Power in the Sapphire and Ruby games.

I'm having fun with the footprint-rune communication. It may seem that Gale learned it quickly but that'd be too boring. He's just using his notebook for help. Soon he'll be pro, though. He is taking Latin after all, so he's good at learning seldom-taught languages. Just kidding, he's not. :3

At this point, I want to write a couple more chapters, and I might end right after Gale meets his new partner Pokémon on the beach. My idea was to write a prequel to Explorers of Time and Darkness and not go into the main story, but if I'm eager enough, I might. I'll have to see.

Oh, and the people Dusknoir attacked are alive and well...there's a human hospital right behind the Center. Dusknoir was looking for Gale, and attacked everyone that was in his way...but when he found Grovyle with a human he knew he'd found the right person.