Chapter 13: Welcome to Heck

The infirmary was almost empty. A bad kind of empty; one could almost hear the suffering of the Pokemon who had spent their last hours here. There were only two in now. One was a Treecko struggling through a fever induced by an infected wound, which was being stubborn about not healing right. The other was a Shaymin, quiet and anemic.

There was a soft shuffle of curtains as someone flew in. Celebi stopped to land by the Shaymin. "Hey Shaelin. How are you doing?"

"I've been dreaming again," she said. "But the meadow battles with nightmares. I find it harder and harder to wake up."

"Shaelin," Celebi said sadly, putting her head against the Shaymin's.

"I'm sorry, but this world is not listening to spring any more." She was the last remenant of spring, and she was being driven towards death in tiny measures.

"It's openly hostile to spring, and to all Grass types. If you go, then it's just me and him…" She was quite upset for a moment, but brushed it aside. "How is he doing?"

"His fever hasn't broken yet," she said, reluctant to cloud any hope. "But I think his name is Trey."

Celebi looked over at the Treecko. "Trey, huh?"

"He's lost his friends. It seems they were killed by Primal Dialga's cronies. It makes me wonder how he survived to show up at that beach."

"It can't be a coincidence that I was the one to find him," Celebi said. "Primal Dialga might have tried to kill him, but it's through his power that this one escaped."

"By accident?"

"Maybe. Or maybe… there's an oddity about him I can sense. He's stopped going forward in time and has started going backwards."

"Backwards?"

"Like he's caught on the back turn of a loophole," Celebi said, her mind seemingly distant from the infirmary. "He may seem to be going forward like the rest of us, but he's going backwards even if he sees himself moving forwards."

Shaelin wrinkled her nose. "Are you talking time travel again? It always confuses me."

She smiled apologetically. "Sorry. I don't mean to."

"I know. How is the training going?"

"Everything looks good. I have to keep tight reigns on using my abilities, though. I don't want Primal Dialga to locate me." She started thinking on something again. "The cycles just seem to get tougher, though. I try to smile and keep everyone's spirits up, but I have a hard time doing that to myself. And those two are going soon. I know it's important to find her quickly, but that's just less support in our management. I'm not used to leading an army. I was just taking care of my forest, but now we're planning on me taking care of the whole world… "

Shaelin nosed her gently, feeling too weak for anything more. She knew Celebi's trouble. With the sun gone and the waters ruined, the Grass Pokemon had slowly but surely died out first. Shaelin surived because her powers as a legendary Pokemon kept her going just a bit longer than the others. However, Celebi's power was inextricably linked to Dialga's power. So long as Dialga survived, even as a hollow shell of his former self, Celebi would survive as well.

But Celebi could travel through time in many different directions. If she let that darkness take hold of her as well, then the world of darkness would have always existed. For that reason, Celebi was firmly in the fight against Primal Dialga. However, the loss of her fellow Grass types, with the decline of her fellow Psychic types, was taking a harsh toll on her heart.

Shaelin was almost sure that she was still alive because she struggled to keep Celebi company. But she was sure that it couldn't last much longer. While they visited, they hardly spoke about it.

"I have work to do," Celebi said. She naturally had black rings around her eyes, but even that didn't disguise how tired and overwhelmed she was feeling. "I'll come visit again later if you're awake."

"Okay. But take care of yourself and get a good rest. You're a good friend."

"You too." She hugged her, then left to attend to her duties of helping to run the rebellion.

"I'm sorry, Celebi," Shaelin said quietly. "But it's either that both of us will die, or one of us will." She struggled to her feet, then walked over to the next bed where Trey the Treecko was fighting for his life. She was tired just in doing that; the lack of sun had taken a terrible toll on her health. But she had been gathering just enough power to save the other.

She produced a globe of sparkling water, then patiently gave it to Trey. Then she waited.

With the Sableyes' giggles echoing in his mind, Trey woke up in a fright, his heart pounding. A gentle female voice spoke from next to him. "Don't be afraid; you're safe here. And you don't want to get too stressed in the state you're in."

A rush of blood hit his head and made him feel dizzy. He breathed in deeply to calm down, then noticed a lovely scent. It was like fragrant grasses and spring flowers. He looked at the Pokemon beside him. She was small and low to the ground; her white paws had to rest on the side of the straw bed in order to look him face to face. And she had a grassy covering over her back, although it was looking a little yellowed and sickly. A wilting pink flower sat on one side of her head.

"Who're you?" he asked. The act of speaking informed him of how worn out and warm he still felt. The fever may have lost its grip for the moment, but he knew that he was still quite ill.

And she seemed ill too. "I'm Shaelin, the last of the Shaymin. Is your name Trey?"

He nodded. "How did you know that?"

"You said it a few times in your restless fever. That, and the names of your friends."

"My friends?" Thoughtlessly, he put his hand on his wrist, where Sally's friendship bracelet was still on. He looked around, but it was just him and Shaelin in a long empty infirmary. Something of the room spoke of despair rather than healing. "Where are my friends? Where am I?"

"This is the hospital area of our hidden base. But…" her eyes seemed quite sad, "You came here alone. We're not even sure how you got this far in your condition."

"Alone? But, but there were three of them. Stacy the Squirtle, Kip the Skitty, and Sally the human… have they been here?"

She shook her head. "No, I'm afraid not."

"So they.." got killed? He didn't want to say it, but the truth gripped his heart and crushed it. They had been killed. He remembered seeing Stacy get slashed by the Sableye executioners. He remembered seeing Kip get thrown into a wall and then not moving. And he remembered Dialga's roar when Sally had been taken directly to him.

Trey had already had a rough life back in the present (the past now, he glumly realized), so he had made himself tough in response. He normally didn't cry in front of anybody. But Shaelin's presence was soothing and comforting, a sharp contrast to the dead silence and stillness around them. And his illness made him feel weak, helpless, and exposed… just like he had been back at the execution site. He wanted to have been a hero then, and save everybody, but then he hadn't been able to do a thing.

Trey broke down and wept, soon hugging Shaelin as she stayed there for him.

As he felt no passing of time, he wasn't sure how long he spend crying. The Shaymin stayed with him, though, until he ran out of tears. "Sorry for taking up your time," he mumbled.

"There's no real time left, so that's nothing to worry about. Besides, so many people have lost so much in this dark era. Not even the best of us can keep it all inside. So what're you going to do now?"

"I don't know." Part of him just wanted to give up and it would have been very easy to go to sleep and never wake up. But that didn't feel right. Even if it would bring him back to his friends, he just had a feeling that they wouldn't appreciate it.

Another part of him wanted revenge, the part that had been denied killing Bloody Claw. But again, Kip's words held that back as the faint whispers of darkness tried to pull it forward. He didn't want to lose his mind, and therefore all his memories of his friends. But then, what was there left to do?

"What kind of base is this?" Trey asked. "It's very quiet."

"They made sure this area was quiet for healing," Shaelin told him. "This is the base of the rebellion against Primal Dialga."

"Primal Dialga?"

She nosed him with her snout. "And make sure you remember it. People get irritated if you use his old name of Dialga, while a few others get angry."

"What happened?"

"You don't know?" she asked, curious.

"I, um… I came from the past."

Her eyes lit up. "Directly before the era of darkness, back when there was a sun?"

He nodded. "Right."

"So how'd you get here?"

"Drakken the Dusknoir dragged me and my friends here"

Shaelin seemed puzzled. "Drakken? I don't recognize that name."

"Well he works for D… Primal Dialga. And he was apparently ordered to come back to my time, later to kill us. I don't know why, though. We were just a novice explorer team, still apprentices."

"Odd, but it must make some kind of sense to them. Anyhow, what happened is that in the past, Temporal Tower collapsed. The Tower was where Dialga lived and some force had corrupted it in an unknown manner. The Tower is connected to Dialga's power; thus, when it fell to corruption, his power fell into corruption. This drove him insane and caused him to destroy all time, sending the whole planet into a paralysis. After that point, he was known as Primal Dialga, for his mind and heart have been reverted to feral and primal states where he lives by instinct, not reason. Thus, he is extremely paranoid about his own survival and will stop at nothing to destroy anyone and anything that might destroy him.

"Many Pokemon, even legendaries like my clan, were killed or corrupted in the first attacks. And when darkness overtook the world, destroying the sun, stopping the wind, and ruining the waters, those of our Grass type began to die terrible wasting deaths." Shaelin rubbed her snout with her paw. "At this moment, the Grass Pokemon are almost all extinct. There's you, me, and Celebi."

Trey felt a chill through his body. It was bad enough to bear the deaths of his three friends; he could hardly imagine that all other Grass Pokemon were dead as well. But in a world without sunlight, how would they have survived?

"Celebi's a lot healthier than you or I, but the reason why is a great burden to her. She's known as the Time Travel Pokemon. Her power is linked strongly to Dialga's. While one lives, so does the other. She's leading the rebellion against Primal Dialga and she's done a remarkable job of staying sane. Mostly, anyhow. She's always been just a bit odd."

"Huh." Maybe he should join this rebellion. It would appease his desire for revenge to help them, but not in a way that would trigger the darkness to increase in his mind.

"I'm sure they would train you, if you wanted to join them," Shaelin said, as if reading his mind. "Once you got better, that is."

"Yeah. It might take a while, but… it's strange. Even though the time I came from had instability so you never knew just how long a moment would last, it's hard to think of a time like this, with no time."

"You just learn to put up with it. Most everyone is simply trying to just survive in this era, but Celebi's thinking of greater things." She pawed him. "I'm sorry for taking this long to say it, but I believe I can heal you up completely."

"You think?"

"The power of my clan is that of spring, of renewel, rebirth, and change." She looked sad for a moment. "Not that those things happen that much in this era. But my flower…" she rubbed the pink flower on her head, which surprisingly looked less wilted than before, "if you were to eat it, it should banish the illness and weakness inside you."

"Is it all right to do something like that?" Trey asked. It was part of her body, and not something that was regularly shed like the Gabite Scale. As it might also be painful, this seemed almost sacreligious to even suggest it.

"I offer my flower to you freely by my own paw, so it is fine. But it must be done quickly. It is a spring flower, and the blossoms don't last long in darkness."

"Okay, thank you. If there's anything I can do for you…"

"Just promise me that you will be loyal to Celebi. We three are the last of our type and she needs all the support she can get."

He hadn't ever met Celebi, having only read about her. But if she was standing against Primal Dialga, it was an easy choice. "I promise, I will work my hardest for her, and you."

Shaelin smiled, looking like some great worry had been alieviated. "Good. I've only just met you, but I have a feeling, deep inside… I believe in you, Trey." She then plucked the pink flower off her head and gave it to him.

Trey ate it as instructed. There was definitely a power to it, although it tasted mostly like a weak flavored rose. After he had completely swallowed it, the power it had immersed his body in a warm glow. His blood felt like it was burning at points as this power of spring razed his disease from within. And his body didn't feel like it was only healing. It felt like it was changing and growing.

Once the power settled down, he realized that it had done more. The Shaymin flower had allowed him to evolve into a Grovyle. He couldn't see any scars left from the Sableyes' attacks and his energy had been restored. He did seem oddly pale compared to what he should be, or maybe it was some trick of the strange lighting of the room.

"SHAELIN!" A pink blur zipped by him as Celebi (in an odd pink color, not light green as she should be) flew over to the Shaymin and hugged her. It was then that Trey noticed that Shaymin's grass had turned brittle, dry, and brown. She was dead.

"Celebi," a male voice called out, sounding annoyed at the interruption. Then there were two more in the room: Mew and some guy who looked kind of like Mew. The latter winced when he realized what had happened. "Oh."

Mew floated closer and looked over the Shaymin. Then she turned to Trey. "Did she freely give you her flower by her own paw?"

Trey's throat seemed to go dry as he began to realize what was going on. "Y-yes, she did and that's exactly how she said it."

"In exchange for what?" Mew then asked.

"That I promise my loyalty to Celebi… I'm sorry, she didn't tell me that…" he grimaced.

"Well then that's what we expect of you," the guy Trey couldn't identify stated firmly, although a flicker in his eyes showed that he was also unsettled by the death of the last Shaymin.


Trey was almost twice as tall as he had been before, so his movements were awkward at first. Or maybe that had to do with a lingering weakness from the infection. He followed Celebi through the underground base. It definitely wasn't a Mystery Dungeon, as it lacked the feel of wild magic. But, perhaps due to the legendaries here, there was a definite sense of tamed magic everywhere.

Celebi seemed to have her mind running in several different directions at once, perhaps avoiding thinking about Shaelin for the time being. "We don't have anybody really appropriate to train you. I have a lot of things to take care of… oh, and I need to get Mewtwo to do a final check on the life support systems before they go. The food here is bland, but that's the best we can manage without proper farming available. There is a schedule around here, but it's hard to describe; you'll just have to live out a couple of cycles to see. Our rebellion has… what kind of battle style do you have, Trey?"

It took him a moment to realize her question. "Oh, um… I go with speed and stealth, although I can get in a good hit every now and then."

"Ninja-like, huh? Well I wouldn't put you with the Poison crew; that won't be compatable and most of them over the world have slipped into primal states. Some types are sliding straight into primal while others are resisting it quite nicely. But then what about those of us who are getting suffocated by it?" She crossed her arms over her small chest as she kept floating forward, caught somewhere between being sad and being angry.

"It all still feels unreal to me," Trey said, feeling he should say something, but uncertain of if that was the right thing to say.

"Well you've caught a break in that your lighter skin seems to be photosynthesizing any light that it can get instead of dying for sunlight. So hopefully you'll be around for a decent bit. Okay, I think I've got it. There's a few other guys who fight like that. Over here." She went down a hall and led him into a dojo. It was spacious, but sparce in any décor, or anything at all.

In the dojo around a simple low table, Trey saw a Gabite, a Scizor, a Castform, a Lucario… and a Sneasel. The Castform twirled its frills. "Hi Celebi. What's up? We were just chatting on break."

"Hi guys!" she said cheerily. You would have thought she was actually happy, Trey thought, but he had a feeling it was a very good show of being happy, not the real thing. "I've got somebody new to join you for training. This is Trey; he just got out of the infirmary. This is Gala," she pointed to the Gabite, "Scepta," she pointed to the Scizor, "Bubbles," she pointed to the Castform, "Lilli," she pointed to the Lucario, "and Konga," she lastly named the Sneasel. "Bubbles, do you mind him joining your crew?"

"We'll see how he does," Bubbles replied.

"Okay, then she's your instructor for the time being. I hope this works out for everyone."

"Celebi!" Mew popped into the room. "We're about to head out."

"Was there anything else you needed us for before we did?" Mewtwo asked, leaning against the doorframe.

"Um… well…" she seemed lost.

"The life support system?" Trey said quietly, remembering that from her rambling talk earlier.

"Oh right! Thanks Trey! Yeah, everything looks good now, but that is one thing we don't want breaking down at any point."

Mewtwo nodded, then the three of them abruptly vanished.

"I wish we could have got Mew or Mewtwo to join the clan," Bubbles the Castform (and apparently the leader) said. "They've got to be masters."

"They're probably still conserving power for the sake of mortal Pokemon," Scepta the Scizor said. "Although I'd hate to see their full power if that's conserving it."

"So then, Trey," Bubbles said, floating over to him. She was a small Pokemon, translucent gray and somehow even less impressive than a Shuppet. "What kind of battle experience do you have?"

"I was an apprentice at an explorer's guild…" he wasn't sure how much to say past that. Or how much he could believe that Bubbles was the leader of this odd group of supposed ninjas. It didn't seem like anything he had thought about before.

"Time displaced, huh?" Before he could ask about that, she went on, "Well that's nice. But let's see you get into our mini dungeon and see how you do."

Konga the Sneasel snickered, riling up Trey some. "All right," he said, accepting the challenge.

The mini dungeon was particularly nasty despite being only a few levels. There were spikes that suddenly shot out from the floor, the walls, and even the ceiling. There were traps galore, even those that would trigger to fliers, or wall-walkers like him. While there weren't many wild Pokemon, what ones were there were really strong. One had to use ninja-like stealth and strategies to get in range and defeat them before they defeated the adventurer.

When he successfully navigated the mini-dungeon, Konga said, "You're too slow."

"What?" Trey asked, feeling his face get warm.

"You can be way faster than that," Scepta said. "Still, you've got a knack for trap and detection avoidance."

"Well it's something to start with," Bubbles said. "We'll work with you for a while. But don't expect it to be nice and easy."

"That's fine by me," Trey replied.

Maybe if he challenged himself through them, he wouldn't find himself helpless again.